James Shorten

James began his planning masters in 1990 having been inspired by the The Limits to Growth, the Brundtland Commission, deep ecology and the (as then) Gaia Hypothesis, during his undergraduate geography degree at Durham. Planning seemed to be a way to do something about bringing human activity better into line with natural planetary systems.

During his Masters the Rio Summit happened and  Local Agenda 21 grew out of it. His thesis was one of the earliest assessments of the importance of the planning system to the rapidly emerging concept of sustainable development.

From there his career spanned campaigning, academia, national research projects, a large multi-disciplinary consultancy (Land Use Consultants), with rural planning and environmental sustainability as leading themes. From 2008 James has run his own businesses and social enterprises, and is now a director of TerraPermaGeo and has founded the Regenerative Settlement CIC. 

James’s work on rural sustainability lead him to research the merits of ‘Low Impact Development’ in Wales in 2002 for the Countryside Council for Wales, finding that the planning system was perversely adverse to some of the most sustainable forms of development occurring in the Welsh countryside. Nearly 10 years later James led the work to produce the One Planet Development Practice Guidance for the Welsh Government – detailed guidance on how One Planet Developments (OPD) should be assessed and implemented. OPD is arguably the most progressive planning approach in the UK, and James is not working on Regenerative Settlement, or ‘Re-Set’, as a development and expansion of this fit for the profound challenges contained in the climate and ecological emergencies.

He is a member of the Devon Net Zero Task Force. 

He believes the planning system, with greater imagination and fewer fetters, could be doing much more to address the climate and ecological emergencies.