From time to time, the Institute highlights career-length contributions of members that have had profound impact in the reach and impact of the profession and the standing of planning generally in society. Therefore, the Institute is pleased to pay tribute below to Jeanne Meldon who has worked tirelessly in planning for 50 years and has created a rich legacy of thought and activism in sustainable, placed-based community development.

Fifty years ago, in the Autumn of 1974 Jeanne entered the Department of Urban and Regional Planning in UCD which was then located in Earlsfort Terrace. Building on a stellar undergraduate career in Geography and Archaeology, Jeanne already had a well-developed interest in landscape and the environment. Her capacity for original thinking was evident from a prize winning 4,000 words paper on Changing Attitudes to Man-Environment Relationships that she presented as a first-year undergraduate to the Geography Student Conference in 1972. In it she argued with great foresight for a systemic approach to the totality of societal and environmental interactions in order that “the survival of the human race, or the desire to have a world worth living in, we must protect the environment from further ravages by man, and learn to live in it as but one small element in a huge universe”.

Jeanne was supported throughout the two-year planning course by a scholarship awarded by An Foras Forbartha and after graduation, the key phases of her career are briefly summarised here.

The planning practitioner

The early years 1976-1980 were very much about learning how to apply planning theories to real world challenges with appointments as a Planning Assistant in Galway, Wicklow and Kildare. After, that, Jeanne took a 10-year career break for family reasons between 1980 and 1990 but continued her strong interest in planning establishing the Dublin Planning Aid initiative, a free planning advisory service modelled on the Free Legal Aid Scheme. This initiative was very successful with a very significant personal commitment from Jeanne.

In 1988 Jeanne and her husband Jim Walsh moved to Celbridge. Within a very short period she became a voluntary planning advisor to community groups in Lucan and Leixlip which led to work as an independent planning consultant for An Taisce, the National Trust for Ireland. This move coincided with the emergence of major changes in the legal requirements for planning.

There were two major EU initiatives in the late 1980s that were highly pertinent: the EU Directive on Environmental Impact Assessment and separately the reform of the EU Structural Funds. In the absence of any guidance on how to respond to the emerging context Jeanne produced a key report on Structural Funds and the Environment: Problems and Prospects published by An Taisce in 1992. It became the key reference text for many years among professional planners and senior public servants.  It was also widely shared among environmental organisation across Europe. It was followed in 1993 by a report on Environmental Impact Assessment – Theory and Practice in Ireland prepared by Jeanne and others

The challenges at the time crystallised around large infrastructural projects to support an expanding tourism sector, especially in rural areas. Examples included the proposed Mullaghmore visitor centre in the Burren, Luggala car park, Powerscourt golf course and hotel, and in Dublin the extension of the National Gallery of Ireland. In each case there were concerns about inappropriate proposals for locations that in many instances ignored the wider landscape context. Locations were abstracted from the spaces that constituted their historical and environmental contexts.

In 1997 Jeanne wrote that in the absence of Strategic Environmental Impact Assessment individual projects are assessed without a context and “the seamless flow of landscape is lost”. Almost every one of these projects resulted in appeals to An Bord Pleanála. Jeanne was involved in several, most notably the Mullaghmore proposal, Carton estate and the National Gallery extension. None of these appeals were frivolous, there was much at stake as evidenced by the seniority of the legal and other professional teams assembled by the proposers.

Throughout these major planning debates Jeanne consistently relied on the interpretation of good planning principles and adherence to the basic public good dimension of planning in opposition to clamours in support of economic development projects regardless of their environmental (natural, aesthetic, architectural) impacts. In each case, many of the grounds for appeal developed and presented by Jeanne were upheld in the decisions of An Bord Pleanála, which were a source of immense satisfaction.

The same diligence and doggedness were applied later in relation to proposals for the development of lands at Donaghcumper adjoining the historic demesne landscape of Castletown in Celbridge.  Jeanne developed and presented at oral hearings the arguments for the protection of this unique historic landscape which were upheld in two separate appeals to An Bord Pleanála.

Jeanne’s work was not only about challenging inappropriate proposals for development. She also had leading roles in many important demonstration projects. For example, between 1993-96 she was the Manager and also a senior researcher on an EU funded LIFE project on Sustainable Tourism in Europe’s Peripheral Regions. The project challenged the prevailing orthodoxy that protection strategies for extensive scenic landscapes needed to be based upon acquisition or strict regulation of lands. Instead, it pioneered novel approaches that involved area-based landscape management and involvement of local communities. Sustainable communities were identified as a prerequisite to sustainable tourism in the landscape. The final report entitled Tourism and the Landscape: Landscape Management by Consensus contained many practical recommendations for the design of new policies and strategies for landscape management which were illustrated through three case-study landscapes. This was widely recognised as an excellent demonstration project that could be of benefit to policy makers and to planners in local authorities and other bodies throughout Ireland.

The LIFE project was followed in 1999/2000 by a more localised exemplar project. This time the focus was on a Strategy for Sustainable Tourism in the Coastal Zone of Mayo. It was part of a nation-wide pilot initiative on Tourism and the Environment. Jeanne along with Margaret Sweeney and Ian Douglas, Senior Planner in county Mayo, prepared a rural tourism plan that could be aligned with the objectives of the County Development Plan. Such coordination of sectoral and spatial planning was a rare occurrence at the time.

An opportunity to participate in a different type of demonstration project arose in 2000 when a team from Maynooth University, including Jeanne, were appointed by Meath County Development Board to support the preparation of an Integrated Strategy for Economic and Social Development of county Meath. This provided a unique opportunity to develop a comprehensive strategy for an integrated county-wide development plan.

Through the experience gained in successfully leading significant planning appeals and in managing demonstration projects Jeanne became more deeply involved in the preparation of national and regional strategies. She made submissions and provided advice to the officials responsible for the preparation of the National Sustainable Development Strategy for Ireland in 1997, the Regional Planning Guidelines 1999, the Planning Bill 2000 and the National Spatial Strategy, 2002.

The academic planner

In addition to her many roles as a practicing professional planner, frequently on a pro bono basis, Jeanne also had a part-time academic career in planning. From 1995 she was a part-time or occasional lecturer by invitation on postgraduate courses in UCD, UCC, University of Galway, DIT (now TUD) and Maynooth University. She was an External Examiner for the DIT MSc on Sustainable Development (1999-2003).  She was also a member of the team appointed by the Irish Planning Institute in 2009 to review the application for accreditation of a postgraduate planning degree in UCC.

Jeanne was also actively involved in several European research projects. Examples include

• INSURED – a project on Instruments for Sustainable Regional Development 1997-99
• INTERREG funded project on Local Government, Local Development and Citizen Participation 2000-02,
• INTERREG funded projects on Partnerships for Effective Local Development 2002-04
• Urban-Rural Relationships project funded for ESPON (the European Spatial Planning Observation Network) 2004.

Jeanne is the author / co-author of more than thirty publications including peer reviewed journal articles, book chapters, reports and conference proceedings. She was also frequently invited to present papers or act as rapporteur at conferences, seminars and workshops in Ireland and abroad. Papers were delivered on a broad range of themes including environmental impact assessment, tourism and the environment, structural funds, planning, sustainable development, the development plan and sustainability, regional development, landscape and forestry. The majority of these papers were subsequently published in books, reports or conference proceedings.

The Planner as a Public Policy Advisor

The 1990s was the great era of partnership models of governance in Ireland. New structures were established by governments to facilitate multi-stakeholder engagement with deliberations on policies and strategies in key areas of national importance. Jeanne was appointed by different governments to

• NESF, The National Economic and Social Forum for three terms, 1993-2003 and
• Comhar, The National Sustainable Development Partnership, 1999-2005.

Jeanne made significant contributions via written submissions and oral inputs to the discussions on many of topics considered by NESF that resulted in published reports on Equality Proofing Issues; Rural Renewal-Combating Social Exclusion; A Framework for Partnership – Enriching Strategic Consensus through Participation; Local Development Issues; Social and Affordable Housing and Accommodation; A Strategic Policy Framework for Equality Issues; and The Policy Implications of Social Capital.

She was also appointed to:

• The Building Regulations Advisory Body, 1995-2001;
• The National Development Plan Monitoring Committee, 1999-2006; and
• The Advisory Committee for the Environmental Protection Agency 2007-2009.

In addition Jeanne was active at the European level with appointments to:

• The European Commission advisory committee on Rural Development, 1998-2001; and
• The Steering Committee of the European Environment and Sustainable Development Advisory Councils 2003-2005. She was also a member of the Management board of this high-level network.

Her contributions in all of these fora were guided by a clearly articulated concept of sustainable development that encompassed economic, social, cultural and environmental dimensions; that was participative and inclusive, and also place-based at different spatial scales. This perspective was rooted in her vision of planning as a process in which the public interest was prioritised over private or personal gains.

Jeanne’s interests in recent years have focused mostly on architecture and Great Houses. As a direct descendant of the great architect A. W. N Pugin Jeanne was very much involved in the 2012 celebration of his birth. Following extensive fieldwork in England and Ireland and an exhaustive review of the Pugin letters Jeanne wrote a short biography of the architect that was included in the publication Pugin At Maynooth edited by Professor Marian Lyons.

In 2010 Jeanne was appointed by invitation as Director of the Castletown Foundation. It is a not-for-profit educational charity that has an advisory role to the Office of Public Works in respect of Castletown House and demesne. Jeanne’s expertise as a professional planner has been very much appreciated by the Foundation.

It is the Institute’s privilege to congratulate Jeanne on her achievements, and the breadth and depth of Jeanne’s contribution to planning over the past 50 years is an excellent demonstration of the versatility of the perspective of the professional planner and the qualities that brings to public discourse and debate concerning sustainable development. It is also an excellent demonstration of the degree to which the skills of the professional planner can be deployed at local level for the betterment of communities. Jeanne’s contribution stands as a shining example for others in the pursuit of their careers in planning and the Institute deeply appreciates that contribution. 

Update 1 September 2024: Sadly Jeanne passed away on 31 August 2024. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a hanam.