The Ox-Cam Arc: Inclusive engagement and AI in strategic spatial planning

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government appointed The Future Fox to engage communities across the Arc of 3.3m people
MHCLG commissioned The Future Fox to conduct meaningful, innovative and inclusive community engagement, informing potential major regional policy changes in the Oxford-Cambridge Arc. The area comprising of five counties was identified to have the potential to be one of the most prosperous, innovative and sustainable economic areas in the world.
The consultation on the area’s Spatial Framework was a tremendous opportunity for a democratic, digital planning system, marking a return to strategic spatial planning with the community represented from the start.
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The engagement was run as a pilot in 2020 and subsequently rolled out in 2021.
Challenges
Spatial planning across the region of 3.3m people needed to take into account diverse stakeholder views on complex and long-lasting issues.
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Government and strategic planning consultations are typically complicated and lengthy, meaning only the most interested in planning will engage. People from younger age groups (U35s) and ethnic minorities are typically underrepresented in planning decisions. Local plan consultations typically don’t take a statistical approach to geographic or demographic sampling, and as a result at a strategic or regional scale of work, there is a lack of robust data to inform planning decisions.
Solutions
The Future Fox ran an end-to-end digital consultation on the digital engagement platform PlaceBuilder across 2 stages comprising:
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Creating highly visual engagement with quick polls targeted at younger audiences
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Creating a more formal site for the main consultation to appeal to all audiences, that retained high engagement rates through careful theme and questionnaire design
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The consultations covered a wide range of spatial topics in an accessible way, and allowed for quick or lengthier interactions with the consultation questions and content, depending on the user’s level of interest.
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Designing accompanying targeted, high-conversion social media campaigns with careful budget management.
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Consulting with key stakeholders across government departments to agree the data-driven approach.
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Establishing a sampling strategy to ensure geographic and demographic statistical representation
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Using AI to analyse the >15k written comments collected during the consultation.
PlaceBuilder's Impact
The consultations achieved particular success in engaging harder to reach groups, particularly younger age groups (18-30s) and ethnic minorities. Overall, platform conversion was up to a remarkable 28%, this was proven to be significantly more effective than a control survey using a common online survey form with just 3% conversion. The first phase of engagement achieved responses from proportionally more young people than the baseline (ONS).
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The large volume of data collected did not take long to analyse and summarise. 66,994 answers were instantly summarised and mapped. AI analysis was used to create a spatial heatmap of community sentiment, by specific, relevant themes, providing the GIS-compatible data layer.
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This first-of-its-kind digital consultation created a unique community opinion data set for spatial planning. The consultations demonstrated how accessible, meaningful and data-rich digital engagement can be, and its benefits to strategic digital planning.
"The platform was highly accessible, and the quality of the overall service was fantastic" - Jodie-Ann Bernard, Communications Lead, Oxford-Cambridge Arc Unit, MHCLG
"This is a fantastic opportunity for people across the Arc to make their voice heard and help create the future for their community that they want to see." - Housing Minister Rt Hon Christopher Pincher MP
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