Putting localism in place: Conservative images of the good community and the contradictions of planning reform in England

Over the past five years, the UK Coalition and subsequent Conservative governments have sought to develop an agenda of localism. Recent research has evaluated how this has played out in practice. This paper takes a different approach, interpreting how the language of community and place in English politics has been mobilised in reforms of the country’s planning system. We do this by tracing how conservative traditions of political thought and imagery of place were used to advance localism. This reveals a range of contradictions within the English localism agenda, and highlights the wider political challenges raised by attempts to mobilise the affective and morally-charged language of the local.