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Elgar Encyclopedia in Urban and Regional Planning and Design
ELGAR ENCYCLOPEDIAS IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES Elgar Encyclopedias in the Social Sciences serve as the definitive reference works to their fields. Each Encyclopedia is overseen by an editor internationally recognised as a leading name within the field, and contain a multitude of entries written by key scholars, providing an accessible and condensed overview of the key topics within a given subject area. Volumes in the series are commissioned across the breadth of the social sciences, and cover areas including, but not limited to, Political Science, Sociology, Human Geography, Development Studies, Social Policy, Public Management and Public Policy. Individual entries present a concise and logical overview of a given subject, together with a list of references for further study. Each Encyclopedia will serve as an invaluable resource for practitioners, academics, and students, and should form an essential part of any research journey. For a full list of Edward Elgar published titles, including the titles in this series, visit our website at www.e-elgar.com.
Elgar Encyclopedia in Urban and Regional Planning and Design
Edited by
Kristof Van Assche Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Alberta, Canada
Raoul Beunen Faculty of Science, Open University, the Netherlands
Martijn Duineveld Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Wageningen, the Netherlands
ELGAR ENCYCLOPEDIAS IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
Cheltenham, UK · Northampton, MA, USA
© Kristof Van Assche, Raoul Beunen and Martijn Duineveld 2023 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Published by Edward Elgar Publishing Limited The Lypiatts 15 Lansdown Road Cheltenham Glos GL50 2JA UK Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc. William Pratt House 9 Dewey Court Northampton Massachusetts 01060 USA A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Control Number: 2023946814 This book is available electronically in the Geography, Planning and Tourism subject collection http://dx.doi.org/10.4337/9781800889002
ISBN 978 1 80088 899 9 (cased) ISBN 978 1 80088 900 2 (eBook)
EEP BoX
Contents List of contributors Introduction to the Elgar Encyclopedia in Urban and Regional Planning and Design: the productive fiction of unity in diversity Kristof Van Assche, Raoul Beunen and Martijn Duineveld
x
1 Adaptive planning Gert de Roo 2 Adaptive reuse Bie Plevoets and Francesca Lanz
15 Blueprint planning Kristof Van Assche, Raoul Beunen and Martijn Duineveld
47
16 Boundary organisation Daan Boezeman
49
17 Boundary spanning Daan Boezeman
52
5
18 Brownfield development Luís Carlos Loures
53
8
19 Central planning, its geographies and scales Barbara Czarniawska
1
3 Advocacy planning Martijn Duineveld, Raoul Beunen and Kristof Van Assche
11
4 Affordable housing Alan Mallach
13
5 Agonism John Erik Pløger
16
6 Area-based management tools Froukje Maria Platjouw
19
7 Art: public art and planning Tony Matthews
21
8 Assemblage Gareth Abrahams
23
20 Citizen science in spatial and environmental problems Lasse Gerrits, Alexander Los and Sofia Pagliarin 21 Climate change adaptation planning and resilience S. Jeff Birchall and Danielle Koleyak 22 Colonial legacies in planning and design Kristof Van Assche, Martijn Duineveld and Raoul Beunen 23 Commons Stefano Moroni
9 Asset and asset-based development 27 Ivis García 10 Autopoietic social systems and planning thought Angelique Chettiparamb
24 Communicative planning theory and its critiques Raine Mäntysalo
31
35 11 Big data and machine learning Lasse Gerrits and Sofia Pagliarin
56
59
63
67
69
71
25 Complexity and planning Gert de Roo
74 78
12 Big Other Elham Bahmanteymouri
38
26 Conflict and shock Martijn Duineveld, Kristof Van Assche and Raoul Beunen
13 Biophilic urbanism Timothy Beatley
40
27 Conservation subdivision design Randall Arendt
80
14 Biopolitics Claudio Minca
44
28 Corruption Stefano Moroni
86
v
vi elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design 29 Creativity Raoul Beunen, Kristof Van Assche and Martijn Duineveld
88
30 Critical planning Martijn Duineveld, Raoul Beunen and Kristof Van Assche
90
31 Culture and planning culture Frank Othengrafen 32 Density Jill L. Grant
45 Environmental justice Stijn Neuteleers
136
46 European spatial planning Andreas Faludi
141
91
47 Experiment Torill Nyseth
145
95
48 Expertise and local knowledge Raoul Beunen, Martijn Duineveld and Kristof Van Assche
147
49 Foresight and visioning Timothy J. Dixon
149
50 Fragility, resilience and design Esther Charlesworth and John Fien
152
33 Dependencies in planning and governance 99 Kristof Van Assche, Raoul Beunen and Martijn Duineveld 34 Design: public–private divides in the urban realm Ali Madanipour
44 Energy and strategic energy planning 133 Martijn Gerritsen
101
35 Design: tensions and ambiguities Ali Madanipour
103
36 Desire, drive, disavowal Elham Bahmanteymouri
105
37 Digitalization in planning Anna M. Hersperger, Sofia Pagliarin and Lasse Gerrits
110
38 Disability and urban planning Lisa Stafford and Matt Novacevski 39 Dispositif John Erik Pløger
51 Garden city and Garden City ideas 156 Christine Garnaut Genius loci and design 52 Randall S. Lindstrom
159
53 Green activism Michael Hardman
164
114
54 Heritage planning Karim van Knippenberg
166
117
55 History: learning from urban and environmental history Jill L. Grant
40 Downtown development and revitalization 121 Dagney Faulk 41 Earthly attachments in the Anthropocene 124 Edward H. Huijbens 42 Ecosystems-based governance Froukje Maria Platjouw
128
43 Ecosystems services Davide Geneletti and Chiara Cortinovis
131
168
56 Homelessness policy and planning 174 Joshua Evans 57 Identity Martijn Duineveld, Kristof Van Assche and Raoul Beunen
178
180 58 Ideology Martijn Duineveld, Kristof Van Assche and Raoul Beunen 182 59 Inclusion/exclusion Martijn Duineveld, Raoul Beunen and Kristof Van Assche
contents vii 60 Indigenous planning Theodore Jojola
184
61 Informal settlements Debadutta Parida
188
62 Informality Raoul Beunen, Kristof Van Assche and Martijn Duineveld
192
194 63 Infrastructure and planning Tim Busscher and Marijn van Geet
77 Methods Kristof Van Assche, Martijn Duineveld and Raoul Beunen
232
78 Milieu Jean Hillier
234
238 79 Mixed-use Markus Moos and Tara Vinodrai 80 Modernism and planning Martijn Duineveld, Raoul Beunen and Kristof Van Assche
240
81 Multiplicity Freek de Haan
242 246
67 International and transnational planning 204 Raoul Beunen, Martijn Duineveld and Kristof Van Assche
82 Narrative Martijn Duineveld, Kristof Van Assche and Raoul Beunen 83 Neighbourhood design Ali Madanipour
248
68 Lacan’s four discourses in planning 206 Mohsen Mohammadzadeh
84 Network governance Joop Koppenjan
252
69 Lacanian approaches to planning Elham Bahmanteymouri
211
85 New public management Kris Hartley
256
70 Land consolidation Terry van Dijk
214
86 New urbanism Katherine Perrott
259
71 Legibility Derk Jan Stobbelaar
216
72 Line of flight Gareth Abrahams
219
262 87 Noise and city design Juan Miguel Barrigón Morillas, Guillermo Rey Gozalo and David Montes González
64 Innovation Kristof Van Assche, Raoul Beunen and Martijn Duineveld
198
76 Memory, legacy, history 230 Martijn Duineveld, Kristof Van Assche and Raoul Beunen
200 65 Institutions and institutionalism Kristof Van Assche, Raoul Beunen and Martijn Duineveld 66 Insurgent planning Efadul Huq
202
221 73 Livelihoods, planning for Martijn Duineveld, Raoul Beunen and Kristof Van Assche 74 Long-term perspectives and futures 223 Peter Pelzer and Wieke Pot 75 Master signifiers Mohsen Mohammadzadeh
227
88 Nomocracy Stefano Moroni
265
89 Object formation Henk-Jan Kooij
267
90 Organization theory, lessons for the relation between planning and politics Barbara Czarniawska
270
viii elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design 91 Participation Torill Nyseth
108 Rationality and planning Gert de Roo
323
92 Participatory planning and design 276 Jesus J. Lara
109 Regional design Terry van Dijk
327
93 Place-based development Greg Halseth, Laura Ryser and Sean Markey
110 Regional planning 329 Raoul Beunen, Martijn Duineveld and Kristof Van Assche
94 Place branding in strategic spatial planning Eduardo da Silva Oliveira
273
279
283
111 Research through design Sanda Lenzholzer 112 Resource towns: mining and social disruption Lochner Marais
331
95 Policy integration Jeroen J.L. Candel
287
96 Polycentricity Wil Zonneveld
289
113 Rhetoric James Throgmorton
335
97 Post-colonialism – and beyond Patrick Devlieger
294
114 Rhythmanalysis in planning Robin A. Chang
337
296 98 Post-disaster planning Robert Coates and Jeroen Warner
115 Rules Stefano Moroni
340
99 Power and planning Raphaël Fischler
300
116 Self-organization Ward Rauws
342
100 Power in planning literature Martijn Duineveld, Raoul Beunen and Kristof Van Assche
302
117 Shrinking cities and urban shrinkage 346 Marjan Marjanović
304 101 Power/knowledge Raoul Beunen, Martijn Duineveld and Kristof Van Assche
350 118 Smart cities: hype and reality Sofia Pagliarin and Lasse Gerrits
102 Property Benjamin David Davy
306
103 Property rights and planning Eran S. Kaplinsky
309
104 Public debate, discussion and dialogue 311 Noelle Aarts 105 Public interest Stefano Moroni
313
106 Public–private partnerships Stefan Verweij
315
107 Qualitative comparative 319 analysis in planning studies Lasse Gerrits and Sofia Pagliarin
119 Smart growth Katherine Perrott 120 Social capital in governance and sustainable development Stefan Partelow
333
353
356
121 Social-ecological systems Fikret Berkes
361
122 Social innovation and planning Gert Verschraegen and Stijn Oosterlynck
364
123 Social justice Susan S. Fainstein
369
124 Spatial planning concepts Wil Zonneveld
372
contents ix 125 Sprawl Hans Leinfelder and Edwin Buitelaar
374
126 Storytelling Terry van Dijk
376
127 Strata Gareth Abrahams
377
128 Strategic navigation Jean Hillier
379
138 Utopia David Pinder
129 Strategic spatial planning Raine Mäntysalo
382
130 Strategy Raoul Beunen, Kristof Van Assche and Martijn Duineveld
386
139 Values and rational judgments: the role of ethics Claudia Basta
131 Systems thinking Kristof Van Assche, Raoul Beunen and Martijn Duineveld
388
132 Therapy, planning as Lisa Schweitzer
391
133 Think tanks Daan Boezeman
394
395 134 Transition René Kemp and Patrick Huntjens
135 Transversality Jean Hillier
398
136 Trust Jasper R. de Vries
401
137 Urban climate responsive planning and design Sanda Lenzholzer
403 405
407
140 Verticality Ana Aceska
411
141 Walkability Katherine Perrott
414
142 Waste picking Radhika Borde
417
143 Youthification Markus Moos
419
144 Zoning Raphaël Fischler
422
Contributors Noelle Aarts is Professor Socio-Ecological Interactions. Focusing on conversations between people in different contexts, she studies inter-human processes and communication for creating space for sustainable change. She has published on several topics, such as frame construction in interaction about complex and contested life science issues, conflict and negotiation in the domain of nature and land use, dealing with paradoxes, ambiguity and ambivalence, and network building and self-organization for regional innovation and healthy landscapes. The starting point of Aarts’s work is the self-organizing capacity of people, constructed and expressed in the conversations they have and the stories they share. Structures arise from people excluding and including other people, resulting in more or less desired changes.
Conservation Advisor at the Natural Lands Trust in Media, Pennsylvania. In 2003 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Town Planning Institute in London, and in 2004 he was elected as an Honorary Member of the American Society of Landscape Architects. Among his seven books is Rural by Design (2nd edn, 2015). A full bio and many articles can be downloaded at no cost at www.greener prospects.com Elham Bahmanteymouri is a Senior Lecturer in Urban Planning at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She teaches Urban Land Economics, Urban Economic Development and Urban Economics at the School of Architecture and Planning. Bahmanteymouri has a bachelor’s degree in Economics and also a master’s degree in Urban and Regional Planning and Urban Design. She worked as a senior planner in different public and private sectors including the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development of Iran. She has particular expertise in the provision of urban growth management policies and the economic assessment of the housing and urban development policies, investigating the causes and consequences of the spatial inequality, housing unaffordability and urban poverty, supervising the preparation, implementation and evaluation of urban plans. In addition, the focus of her research is on Urban Critical Theories, Urban Economics, The Experience Economy, Sharing and Smart Economy, as well as Behavioural Economics from a Lacanian post-Marxist approach.
Gareth Abrahams is a leading scholar in Deleuzoguattarian scholarship and architectural theory. His unique approach draws together a detailed and intricate reading of Deleuze and Guattari’s core texts with over ten years’ industry experience working as a practising architect. By using a range of diagrams and detailed construction drawings to help navigate and engage with these links, his work provides fresh insight into concepts like the strata, machinic assemblage, the refrain, milieu and becoming. Ana Aceska is an Assistant Professor in Cultural Geography at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. Her research contributes to contemporary social science debates on urban change, divided cities and cultural heritage. She aims to understand the making of big histories and geographies, power relations and institutions, while focusing on the ‘small’, the city dwellers and their everyday lives, the excluded, the misrepresented and the marginalized. She teaches in the BA and MA programme Landscape Architecture and Planning at Wageningen University.
Claudia Basta is a researcher at the Dutch National Research Institute for the Living Environment in The Hague, and Utrecht University, the Netherlands. Basta supports Science for Democracy in identifying and formulating political initiatives lying at the intersection of science, policymaking and society. Timothy Beatley is the Teresa Heinz Professor of Sustainable Communities in the School of Architecture at the University of Virginia (UVA), USA, where he has taught for the last 30 years. Beatley is the author or coauthor of more than 15 books, including Green Urbanism: Learning from European Cities
Randall Arendt is a landscape planner, site designer, author, lecturer and an advocate of ‘conservation planning’ and conservation subdivision design. He is the founding president of Greener Prospects and serves as Senior x
contributors xi (recently translated into Chinese and Korean), Native to Nowhere: Sustaining Home and Community in a Global Age, Biophilic Cities: Integrating Nature Into Urban Design and Planning, and most recently Blue Urbanism: Connecting Oceans and Cities. Beatley’s book Ethical Land Use was declared, by the American Planning Association, to be one of the ‘100 Essential Books in Planning’. Beatley founded and directs the Biophilic Cities Project at UVA (http://biophilicci .org/) and is also co-founder of UVA’s ties Center for Design and Health. Beatley holds a PhD in City and Regional Planning from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Fikret Berkes is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Manitoba, Canada. He holds a PhD in Marine Sciences, and his work combines social and ecological perspectives for the study of relations between societies and their environments. Berkes is interested in social-ecological resilience, commons and traditional ecological knowledge. His honours include the IUCN CEESP Inaugural Award for Meritorious Research, IASC Elinor Ostrom Award for Senior Scholar and the ESA Sustainability Science Award for the book Sacred Ecology. https://umanitoba.ca/environment- earthresources/dr-fikret-berkes-profile-page Raoul Beunen is Associate Professor of Environmental Governance at the Open Universiteit, the Netherlands. His research explores the potentials and limitations of environmental policy and planning from the perspective of adaptive governance and sustainability. It focuses on innovation and evolution in governance, paying attention to the dynamics of policy implementation and integration, multi‐level governance, participatory approaches and trust, and institutional change. He has published widely on these issues, drawing on empirical studies concerning spatial panning, environmental governance and nature conservation in various countries. Notable publications include two books on Evolutionary Governance Theory (EGT). These books present a novel theory for analysing and explaining the processes of change and innovation in governance, based on the co-evolutions between actors, institutions and discourses. S. Jeff Birchall, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Local-scale Climate Change
Adaptation/ Resilience in the School of Urban and Regional Planning, Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Alberta, Canada, where he serves as Director of the Climate Adaptation and Resilience Lab. Birchall has broad research and teaching experience in climate/ environmental change and planning, and specific expertise in local governance and sustainability. He is a registered professional planner (RPP, MCIP) with education in geography, environmental studies and planning, climate change and sustainability. Daan Boezeman is a Senior Policy Analyst at the Department of Water, Agriculture and Food of PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency. He is particularly interested in patterns of institutional change and the role of (scientific) knowledge in public policy. He studies mainly agri-environmental governance and policy instruments. He worked as an assistant professor at the departments of Geography, Planning & Environment and Public Administration at Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and as a visiting professor at the University of Alberta, Canada. Boezeman was trained as an economist and political scientist and did his PhD on knowledge production in climate change governance. Radhika Borde is Lecturer in Sustainability Transitions and Social Justice, School of Geography, University of Leeds, UK. She is a human geographer with a strong interdisciplinary orientation, focusing on nature–culture issues, environmental social movements, environmental health, sacred ecologies, disease ecologies, gender and WASH and circular economies. Edwin Buitelaar, PhD, is a Professor of Land and Real Estate Development at Utrecht University, the Netherlands, and a senior researcher of urban development at PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency. He publishes regularly on land and real estate development, urban development, urban inequality and segregation, and planning law. His recent publications include Cities, Economic Inequality and Justice (Routledge, 2017) and Planning, Law and Economics (Routledge, 2018). Tim Busscher is an Assistant Professor in Infrastructure Planning at the Faculty of
xii elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design Spatial Sciences, University of Groningen, the Netherlands. His research focuses on management strategies, particularly project and program management. He also focuses on institutional analysis, in particular on the planning, realization and renewal of transport infrastructure networks. Jeroen J.L. Candel is an Associate Professor at the Public Administration and Policy Group of Wageningen University, the Netherlands. In his research, he studies policy change and stability in the fields of food and agricultural policy. His theoretical contributions primarily relate to questions of policy integration, EU governance and democratic innovation. Robin A. Chang is a Postdoctoral Researcher and Lecturer at the Chair of Planning Theory and Urban Development of the Faculty of Architecture (RWTH Aachen University, Germany). Her process- and temporality-oriented work draws on her PhD research examining temporary use stabilization in Rotterdam (the Netherlands) and Bremen (Germany). Prior to this, she practised community and land use planning in Canada after obtaining her BPl at the University of Northern British Columbia. Esther Charlesworth is the founder of Architects without Frontiers (AWF). Since 2002, AWF has undertaken over 42 health, education and social infrastructure projects across 15 countries for vulnerable communities. AWF has been described by ABC radio broadcaster Phillip Adams as ‘destined to develop into one of the greater forces of good on this battered planet’. Charlesworth is also a Professor in the School of Architecture and Design at RMIT University, Australia, where she established the Master of Disaster, Design and Development degree [MoDDD] in 2015. MoDDD alumni are now directing major design and disaster reconstruction projects across the public, private and development sectors, globally. Angelique Chettiparamb is Professor of Urban Planning and Governance and Research Division Lead for the Department of Real Estate and Planning, University of Reading, UK. Chettiparamb is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Planning Theory and has published extensively on a range of issues in India and the UK. Besides ongoing work on civic
societies in the UK, she is currently working on a policy engagement project on rental housing for migrants in Kochi, India. She is actively involved in learned societies and is the Secretary General of the Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP). Robert Coates’s research focusses on urban environmental governance and the political ecology of urbanization. He has written widely on urban hazards and vulnerability as they relate to state interventions in Brazil, including on disaster infrastructures, education programmes and rights and citizenship. He teaches and supervises on these themes, and on development, social theory and Latin America and the Caribbean more broadly. Coates holds a PhD in Brazilian Studies (Geography) from King’s College, London (2017), and MScs in Latin American Development (ILAS, London, 2011) and Postcolonial Politics (Aberystwyth, 2003). Chiara Cortinovis is currently Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow at the Landscape Ecology Lab, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany, doing research within the field of sustainability science. She works at the interface between urban planning and ecology to investigate how nature can make our cities healthier, more liveable, and resilient to climate change. Her current research focuses on urban densification and its environmental and social impacts. In general, she is interested in the relation between urbanization patterns and wellbeing, and in innovative planning approaches that integrate ecological knowledge. Barbara Czarniawska is Professor Emerita at University of Gothenburg, Sweden, Doctor honoris causa at Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden; Copenhagen Business School, Denmark; Helsinki School of Economics, Finland; Aalborg University, Denmark and Turku School of Economics, Finland. She is a member of the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Royal Engineering Academy, the Royal Society of Art and Sciences in Gothenburg, Societas Scientiarum Finnica and British Academy. Czarniawska takes a processual perspective, exploring such phenomena as big city management, the robotization of work and personnel management of spies. She is interested in techniques of fieldwork and the application of narratology to organization studies.
contributors xiii Benjamin David Davy is a former Chair of Land Policy, Land Management and Municipal Geoinformation (TU Dortmund, Germany) and since 2019, Visiting Professor of Law (University of Johannesburg, South Africa). He was President of the International Academic Association on Planning, Law and Property Rights (PLPR) and of the Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP). He was Essay Editor of Planning Theory and co-editor of the Town Planning Review. He is a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of the American Planning Association and Planning Theory and Practice. Davy has published on planning theory, property, border studies and spatial justice. Freek de Haan is a sociologist, human geographer and philosopher interested in urban political economy, smart cities, speculative metaphysics and science and technology studies. He currently works as an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Public Administration at the Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Gert de Roo is Professor of Spatial Planning at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. Planning theory and Governance dynamics are among his lectures. De Roo has a great interest in fundamental uncertainty and what it does for policy and planning of dynamic cities. De Roo has written about 30 books, the latest of which deals with planning and complexity. His latest book is the Handbook on Planning and Complexity (Edward Elgar Publishers, 2020). De Roo’s work is currently about adaptive planning as an alternative in moments of change. Jasper R. de Vries works as Associate Professor at the Strategic Communication Group of Wageningen University, the Netherlands. With a background in both spatial planning and communication science, he focusses on the role of trust in communication and interaction in environmental change processes in rural areas (e.g., nature conservation, water management, sustainable agriculture). His research is located in Europe, North America and sub-Saharan Africa. De Vries is specifically interested in how different forms of trust develop, interrelate and shape planning processes.
Patrick Devlieger is a sociocultural anthropologist whose current teaching and research focuses on posthuman, design and visual and experimental anthropology. He links theoretical and methodological approaches of anthropology, pertaining to individual, community, and cosmos, and to material culture. His research is always inspired by an understanding of disability across geographical and historical contexts. His current research focuses on the historic leprosy settlements of Kalaupapa in Hawaii and of Iyonda in DR Congo. Timothy J. Dixon (Tim Dixon) is Emeritus Professor at the University of Reading, UK (School of the Built Environment), a Research Associate at the Global Centre for Healthcare and Urbanisation and a Visiting Fellow at Kellogg College, UK. His research encompasses city foresight, futures studies, sustainable futures in the built environment and social sustainability. He led the University of Reading’s input into the ‘Reading 2050’ vision for a smart and sustainable city and was co-chair of the Reading Climate Change Partnership. His book on Urban Futures (Policy Press) won the best book award 2022 (Urban Affairs Association). Martijn Duineveld is Associate Professor at the Cultural Geography Group Wageningen University, the Netherlands and he was codirector of the Centre for Space, Place and Society (2019–22). He is co-founder and active contributor to the emerging body of literature on Evolutionary Governance Theory. Currently he is involved in the W*O*L*F* project which exposes how big industry obstructs transitions to a low-emission society and climate justice. Joshua Evans is a human geographer with a broad interest in geographies of marginalization. His research has examined (a) spaces of care, home and work and their role in shaping the lived experiences of socially marginalized and vulnerable individuals and (b) spaces of policy development and implementation and their role in the creation of healthy, enabling and equitable urban environments. Evans’s research draws upon a variety of theoretical frameworks including governmentality theory, actor-network theory, and assemblage theory. He has published in a variety of scholarly journals including Progress in Human
xiv elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design Geography, Social & Cultural Geography, and Health & Place. Susan S. Fainstein is a Senior Research Fellow in the Harvard Graduate School of Design, USA, where she previously was a Professor of Urban Planning, teaching courses in planning theory and urban redevelopment. Previously she taught at Rutgers and Columbia Universities. She has received the Distinguished Educator Award of the Association of American Schools of Planning (ACSP) and her book The Just City won its Davidoff award. Among her other publications are The City Builders: Property, Politics, and Planning in London and New York, Restructuring the City and Urban Political Movements. Andreas Faludi is Emeritus Professor of Spatial Policy Systems in Europe. His specialties are planning theory and methodology, the study of Dutch, European and comparative planning. Publications include A Reader in Planning Theory (1973), Planning Theory (1973/1984), Flexibility and Commitment in Planning: A Comparative Study of Local Planning and Development in the Netherlands and England (co-author, 1983), Critical Rationalism and Planning Methodology (1986), A Decision-centered View of Environmental Planning (1987), Rule and Order: Dutch Planning Doctrine in the Twentieth Century (together with A. van der Valk , 1994), The Making of the European Spatial Development Perspective: No Masterplan (together with B. Waterhout, 2002), Coherence, Cooperation: European Spatial Planning in the Making (2010), The Poverty of Territorialism (2018) and Faludi Blogging (2022). In 2008, the Blekinge Institute of Technology and in 2014, the University of Groningen awarded him honorary doctorates. Dagney Faulk has worked on numerous Indiana-focused policy studies on a variety of topics including fixed-route bus transit, the regional distribution of state government taxes and expenditures, school choice and property tax issues. Her research focuses on regional economic development issues and state and local tax policy. She is co-author (with Michael Hicks) of the book Local Government Consolidation in the United States (Cambria Press, 2011). She is co-editor
(with James Connolly and Emily Wornell) of the book Vulnerable Communities: Research, Policy and Practice in Small Cities (Cornell UP, 2022). She received her PhD in economics from the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University. John Fien is Professor of Practice in the School of Architecture and Urban Design at RMIT University, Australia. With an academic career spanning four decades, he was previously Executive Director and Professor at the Swinburne Leadership Institute, Professor of Sustainability at RMIT University and Professor of Environmental Education at Griffith University, Australia. Raphaël Fischler is Professor of Urban Planning and Dean of the Faculty of Environmental Design at the Université de Montréal, Canada. His research concerns the history, theory and pedagogy of planning and the contemporary evolution of planning practices. He earned degrees at TU Eindhoven, the Netherlands, MIT and UC Berkeley, USA, was a postdoctoral fellow at the Technion and a Visiting Lecturer at MIT, and taught for over two decades at McGill University, Canada, where he directed the School of Urban Planning. He is a Fellow of the Canadian Institute of Planners and of the Ordre des urbanistes du Québec. Ivis García, originally from Puerto Rico, is an Associate Professor in Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning at Texas A&M University, USA. García specializes in housing, community development and engagement – primarily of Latino/a/x communities. She has spent time as a professional planner in Albuquerque, New Mexico, San Francisco, California, Springfield, Missouri, Washington, DC, and Chicago, Illinois. She approaches her work from the AssetBased Community Development perspective (ABCD) and she is a board member of the ABCD Institute at DePaul University, USA. García has a PhD in Urban Planning and Policy from the University of Illinois at Chicago, USA. Christine Garnaut is Adjunct Associate Research Professor in Planning and Architectural History at the University of South Australia, Australia. She is the immediate past president (2018–22) of the
contributors xv International Planning History Society. Garnaut’s research focuses on planned twentieth-century environments mostly in Australia. She has published on the application of the Garden City idea, mainly in South Australia, and in relation to Adelaide’s model garden suburb of Colonel Light Gardens (1917) planned by Charles Reade (1880– 1933). Her research into the suburb’s planning and design history informed planning policy associated with its listing in 2000 as a state heritage area. Davide Geneletti is Professor of Spatial Planning at the University of Trento, Italy, Head of the Planning for Ecosystem Services and Urban Sustainability Lab. Geneletti specialized in impact assessment of projects and plans; urban climate adaptation; ecosystem services and nature-based solutions; multicriteria analysis. He was formerly Research Fellow at Harvard University and Visiting Scholar at Stanford University, Consultant for UNEP, UN-HABITAT and the European Commission. He was awarded with the F.W. Bessel Research Award by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for his scientific activity in the field of environmental planning and is a highly cited researcher (top 2 per cent) by Stanford-Elsevier standardized list since 2020. Lasse Gerrits is Academic Director at the Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands, previously Professor in Political Science at the Otto-Friedrich University Bamberg, Germany. His research focuses on the complexity of collective decision making, with theories and methods drawing from the complexity sciences and evolutionary theories. Martijn Gerritsen is a PhD candidate in Planning at Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands. He studies how Dutch energy transition policy is made and implemented at the regional level. He is particularly interested in the relations between the energy transition and spatial planning. His research is part of the Dutch Research Council (NWO) MARET programme that investigates the societal aspects of the energy transition. Martijn has a background in international relations and environmental policy, urban studies, and geographical education and communication.
David Montes González is currently working as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Extremadura, Spain, focused on the assessment and management of transportation noise in urban environments and the relationship of road traffic noise with the urban planning of cities and the architectural characteristics and communication functionalities of their streets. Guillermo Rey Gozalo is PhD in Applied Physics and researcher at the Lambda Acoustics Laboratory of the University of Extremadura, Spain. Environmental Acoustics is his main area of research. The development and evaluation of methodologies for the analysis and assessment of urban noise have been the focus of much of his research. Models relating to urban and meteorological variables and sound levels, analysis of the features of urban green areas and their relationship with citizen perception, analysis of the effects of noise on the population, design of new acoustic materials from recycled materials are some of his current lines of research. Jill L. Grant, PhD FCIP, is Professor Emeritus of Planning at Dalhousie University, Canada. Her research examines approaches to city building including themes such as sustainable community design, neighbourhood change and planning practice. She is the author or editor of six books: Changing Neighbourhoods: Social and spatial polarization in Canadian cities (UBC Press, 2020), Seeking Talent for Creative Cities (University of Toronto Press, 2014), Reader in Canadian Planning (Nelson, 2008), Planning the Good Community: New urbanism in theory and practice (Routledge, 2006), Towards Sustainable Cities (Ashgate, 2004), The Drama of Democracy: Contention and dispute in community planning (UoT Press, 1994). Greg Halseth is the Canada Research Chair in Rural and Small Town Studies at the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC), Canada, where he is also a Professor in the Geography Program and the Co-Director of UNBC’s Community Development Institute. His research examines regional development processes, rural and small town community development, and community strategies for coping with social and economic change. Michael Hardman (Mike Hardman) is Professor of Urban Sustainability at the
xvi elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design University of Salford, UK. His work has focussed on topics from green activism and the informal growing movement, to upscaled urban agriculture and radical sustainability initiatives in cities. He currently leads and is involved in a number of projects in the likes of Africa, North America and across Europe, exploring themes from mainstreaming green social prescribing to the impact of grassroots urban farming movements.
Metzger; Deleuze and Guattari for Planners (InPlanning e-book, 2013); Complexity and the Planning of the Built Environment (2012) edited with Gert de Roo and Joris Van Wezemael, the Ashgate Research Companion to Planning Theory: Conceptual Challenges for Spatial Planning (2010) edited with Patsy Healey, Critical Essays in Planning Theory (2008) three volumes, edited with Patsy Healey.
Kris Hartley is Assistant Professor in the Department of Public and International Affairs at City University of Hong Kong. He researches global-to-local policy transfer in the application of technology to sustainability transitions and has published books with Cambridge University Press and Routledge Press. He has previously been a Fulbright Scholar and has held faculty appointments at Cornell University, USA, and University of Melbourne, Australia, among others. He received a PhD in Public Policy from the National University of Singapore, a Master of City Planning from the University of California, Berkeley, USA and an MBA from Baylor University, USA.
Edward H. Huijbens is an Icelandic geographer and graduate of Durham University, UK. He chairs Wageningen University’s research group in cultural geography. Huijbens works on earthly attachments, spatial theory, issues of regional development, landscape perceptions, the role of transport in tourism and polar tourism. He has authored over 40 articles in several scholarly journals and edited volumes, published four monographs in both Iceland and internationally and co-edited four books.
Anna M. Hersperger, Professor Doctoratus Honoris, heads the Land Use Systems Group at the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL, where she is also a member of the WSL Directorate. Her work focuses on urban regions and landscapes as changing human-environmental systems and, in particular, understanding the role of spatial planning and land use policies in changing metropolitan regions. She evaluates policy instruments and processes, with a particular interest in the impact of digital transformation on planning processes in recent work. Jean Hillier is Professor Emerita in the Centre for Urban Research at RMIT University, Australia. Hillier’s research interests include post structural planning theory and methodology for strategic practice in conditions of uncertainty, planning with non-human animals and problematization of cultural heritage practices in spatial planning. Her work has been translated into Danish, Italian and Mandarin. She numerous books like Connections: exploring contemporary planning theory and practice with Patsy Healey (2015), edited with Jonathan
Patrick Huntjens is an award-winning author of the international bestseller Towards a Natural Social Contract (2021) and holds the position of Professor of Governance of Sustainability Transitions, Maastricht Sustainability Institute (MSI), School of Business and Economics (SBE), Maastricht University, the Netherlands. He is also Professor of Social Innovation & Governance for Sustainability at Inholland University of Applied Sciences. In this role, he was awarded the national title ‘Professor of the Year 2021’. For the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), United Nations, he serves as lead author of the Transformative Change Assessment (2022–24). Efadul Huq is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Science & Policy Program at Smith College, USA. Huq’s research and teaching span areas of environmental justice, international community development, urban sustainability and political ecology with a geographic focus on South Asia and the United States. Theodore Jojola (Ted Jojola), PhD, is a Distinguished Professor and Regents’ Professor in the Community & Regional Planning Program, School of Architecture & Planning, University of New Mexico (UNM). In 2012 he founded the Indigenous Design
contributors xvii & Planning Institute. From 2008 to 2010, he was Visiting Distinguished Professor at Arizona State University at the School of Geographic Sciences and Planning. He was Director of Native American Studies at UNM from 1980 to 1996. He is co-editor of two books – The Native American Philosophy of V.F. Cordova entitled How It Is (U. of Arizona Press, 2007) and Reclaiming Indigenous Planning (McGill-Queens University Press, 2013). He is an enrolled member of the Pueblo of Isleta. Eran S. Kaplinsky, SJD (Toronto), LL.M. (Toronto), LL.B. (Tel Aviv) is a Professor of Law at the University of Alberta, Canada. His research focus is property law, expropriation and compensation, and municipal and land use planning law. René Kemp is an eco-innovation and governance expert who is well-known for his work on transition management and reflexive governance for sustainable development. He is involved in research projects on plastics recycling, multiple value creation, energy citizenship and the role of hydrogen in the energy transition. At the School of Business and Economics at Maastricht University, the Netherlands, he co-leads the MORSE initiative about problem-based research on resilience, responsibility and sustainability. Danielle Koleyak is currently the Principal Climate Strategist of Climate Resilience Strategy and Planning with the City of Edmonton, Canada. Her current work focuses on municipal climate change mitigation and adaptation planning. She has a background in environmental science, with a Master’s Degree in Environmental Design, focusing on the integration of environmental objectives into land use planning. Henk-Jan Kooij is a Geographer and Spatial Planner at the Department of Geography, Planning and Environment of Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands. He specializes in bringing together the social sciences and environmental geography approaches trying to understand the complex interactions between the human and nonhuman world. Consequently, his research focus is on the interface between these worlds, such as governance of the energy transition, strategic energy planning, biodiversity decline
in the rural areas and landscape restoration, the relationship between the built environment and physical activity. Joop Koppenjan is Emeritus Professor of Public Administration at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands. His research topics include public policy, policy networks, public private partnerships and public management, with a focus on governance, stakeholder involvement, public values and sustainability. Areas of application are infrastructure-based sectors such as transport, water and energy, and social sectors such as social support, care and safety. He is internationally recognized as an authority in the field of network governance and public private partnerships. In 2016 he published together with Erik Hans Klijn the monograph Governance Networks in the public sector (Abington/New York: Routledge). Website: https://www. eur. nl/ people/ joopkoppenjan/ Francesca Lanz is Assistant Professor of Interior Architecture at the Department of Architecture and the Built Environment and visiting researcher at the School of Arts and Cultures, Newcastle University, UK. Her academic expertise spans different disciplines ranging from interior architecture, critical heritage studies and museum studies. Her research interest revolves around the role of the built heritage and museums in contemporary societies with key attention to neglected heritages and difficult memories and stories. On these topics, she has a rich track record of publications and funded projects. Jesus J. Lara is Professor of City and Regional Planning at the Knowlton School, USA. His research and pedagogy are centred on sustainable urban design, Latino Urbanism, community development and on the sociocultural factors which influence planning and design. His research in urban planning further examines the effects of social and economic inequity as it relates to ethnicity and how this influences access to social and cultural infrastructure and, consequently, the health and wellbeing of individuals and communities. His teaching, research and community service emphasize a social consciousness that focuses on enhancing the built environment’s ability to generate social capital.
xviii elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design Hans Leinfelder is Associate Professor and Vice Dean for Education at the Faculty of Architecture of KU Leuven, Belgium, and a member of the P.PUL research group at the Department of Architecture of KU Leuven. His academic research is on substantive and policy related aspects of urbanism and spatial planning. In the past, he has been working in academia as scientific researcher and research assistant at Ghent University, Belgium, and as policy maker and director of the Planning, Policy and Legislation Division at the Spatial Planning Department of the Flemish Government. Sanda Lenzholzer is Full Professor at Wageningen University, the Netherlands, Visiting Professor at Politecnico di Milano, Italy and Principal Investigator at Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions, the Netherlands. She studied Landscape Architecture in Germany and Urbanism in the UK. Subsequently, she worked as a designer in practice in the Netherlands and Germany. In 2004 she changed to academia, to Wageningen University, and has specialized in climate-oriented design and the relationship between research and design. She contributes to improving the knowledge basis of climate-responsive urban and landscape design. Furthermore, she conducted extensive studies into the methodology of Research Through Design, especially in landscape architecture. Randall S. Lindstrom, PhD, is an architect, academic and author. In more than 40 years of practice, he has served clients on four continents and received frequent professional recognition. In 2011, his focus shifted to research and teaching at the School of Architecture and Design, University of Tasmania, Australia. Recent publications include a monograph, Kenosis Creativity Architecture: Appearance through Emptying (Routledge, 2021), in which the ancient notion of kenosis is explored, through architecture, to show creativity as the emptying by which appearance is made possible. His current work, An Architecture of Place, is scheduled for publication in 2024. Alexander Los is an urban environment and climate change expert specialized in urban microclimate, climate change mitigation, air pollution and citizen science. Los has a scientific background in climate change and has
working experience in both academia and the private sector. His research activities are focused on citizen initiatives for urban sustainability transformation and on local/personal air pollution exposure by making use of model simulations and observations, including citizen science data. Luís Carlos Loures is a Landscape Architect and Agronomic Engineer, Full Professor and President of the Polytechnic Institute of Portalegre, Portugal, who holds a PhD in Urban Planning, a Post Doc in Sustainable Production and Habitation in Derelict Land Reclamation, focusing the subject of Circular Scapes. During his academic career he taught in various courses at several universities in four different continents, and coordinated numerous financed research projects focusing on urban planning, landscape reclamation and urban redevelopment, and the use of urban planning as a tool for achieving sustainable development. Ali Madanipour (MArch, PhD) is Professor of Urban Design at the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, Newcastle University, UK. His research has engaged with the urban transformation processes and their social and environmental implications, with particular emphasis on public space, urban neighbourhoods, social exclusion and urban governance. His books include Public and Private Spaces of the City (Routledge, 2003), Urban Design, Space and Society (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) and Handbook of Planning Theory (Routledge, 2018). His most recent book is Rethinking Public Space (Elgar, 2023). Alan Mallach, a Senior Fellow at the Center for Community Progress, has been engaged with housing, urban neighbourhoods and cities as a scholar, practitioner and advocate for over 50 years. He has taught at Rutgers University, Pratt Institute and elsewhere, and lectured widely in the United States, Europe and Japan. Author of The Divided City: Poverty and Prosperity in Urban America and Smaller Cities in a Shrinking World: Learning to Thrive Without Growth among other books, he is also an accomplished pianist and the author of two books on Italian opera. Raine Mäntysalo, DSc (Arch.), is Full Professor of Strategic Urban Planning and
contributors xix Head of Department at Aalto University School of Engineering, Department of Built Environment, Finland. He has also a Title of Docent in planning theory and communicative planning at University of Oulu, Finland. Lochner Marais is a Professor of Development Studies at the Centre for Development Support at the University of the Free State, South Africa. He is also an Honorary Professor at the Sustainable Minerals Institute, University of Queensland, Australia. He serves on the editorial board of Habitat International and is also the Specialty Chief Co-editor for the Cities in the Global South section of the journal, Frontiers in Sustainable Cities. His research interests include housing policy, small cities and towns and public health focusing on children. In addition to concentrating on these themes separately, he focuses on integrating them. Marjan Marjanović is a PhD Researcher and a Teaching Fellow at the Bartlett School of Planning, University College London. His doctoral research project focuses on the governance of circular economy transitions in shrinking cities and regions. Marjanović previously researched urban shrinkage and related policy and planning environments in the United States. His research interest lies in the domain of regional development, planning for shrinking cities, urban governance and politics, strategic spatial planning, planning theory, urban circular economy and EU territorial development policies. He is particularly interested in understanding how ideas shape governance and policymaking processes in cities and regions. Sean Markey, PhD MCIP RPP, is a Professor and Certified Planner with the School of Resource and Environmental Management at Simon Fraser University, Canada. Markey’s research concerns issues of local and regional economic development, rural and small town development, and sustainable planning and infrastructure. He has published widely in academic journals and has co-authored/edited a number of books. Sean continues to work with municipalities, non-profit organizations, Indigenous communities and the business community to promote and develop sustainable forms of community and regional development.
Tony Matthews is an urban planner, scholar and international advocate for good cities. His award-winning work addresses current and emerging urban challenges through research, engagement and practice. Matthews has a passion for translating insights into understandable and actionable terms, with benefits for policymakers, professionals and communities. His publications have been translated into French, Italian and Spanish. A faculty member at Griffith University, Australia, Matthews is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Engineering and Built Environment and the Cities Research Institute. Through his advocacy, engagement and communication, he informs policy decisions and shapes realworld outcomes in cities. Claudio Minca is a cultural geographer with a strong interest in social and political theory. His main research projects have focused on the relationship between spatial theory, biopolitics and modernity. He has also written extensively on philosopher Giorgio Agamben and legal theorist Carl Schmitt. His most recent books are Appunti di Geografia (2022), Camps Revisited (2019, with I. Katz and D. Martin), After Heritage (2018, with H. Muzaini), Hitler’s Geographies (2016, with P. Giaccaria), Moroccan Dreams (2016, with L. Wagner), On Schmitt and Space (2015, with R. Rowan). he was recently awarded an ERC Advanced Grant for the project: TheGAME: Counter-mapping informal refugee mobilities along the Balkan Route. Mohsen Mohammadzadeh is a Senior Lecturer at The University of Auckland, New Zealand. He has qualifications in Planning, Urban and Regional Planning and Design, and Civil Engineering. His research interests include critical urban theory, planning in late capitalism, alternative planning theories, urban automation, transportation and infrastructure planning. Markus Moos is Professor in the School of Planning at the University of Waterloo, Canada. He is also a registered professional planner. His research is on the changing economies, housing markets, social structures, generational dimensions such as youthification and sustainability of cities and suburbs. He is the editor of A Research Agenda for Housing (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019) and co-editor, with Robert Walter-Joseph,
xx elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design of Still detached and subdivided? Suburban ways of living in 21st century North America (Jovis Press, 2017). Juan Miguel Barrigón Morillas was born in Alcántara, Spain. He graduated in Physics in 1985 and received his PhD in Physics in 1991 from the University of Extremadura, Spain. In 1999 he promoted the Acoustics Laboratory of this University. He is currently Senior Researcher and Professor at the University of Extremadura. His research in Environmental Acoustics is focused on understanding the temporal and spatial structure of urban noise and its relations with urban structure. Moreover, he is interested in understanding which physical variables can best explain the effects of noise and the quality of urban sound environments. Stefano Moroni is Professor of Planning at the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies, Polytechnic University of Milan, Italy. His main research interests are in planning theory, applied ethics, theory and philosophy of law. Stijn Neuteleers has a background in sociology and philosophy and is currently Assistant Professor at the Department of Environmental Sciences of the Open Universiteit, the Netherlands. His research is situated at the intersection of environmental philosophy, ecological economics, and governance studies. Central research topics include value pluralism, motivations, duties, justice, and limits to markets. Matt Novacevski has more than 12 years’ experience in planning, placemaking, engagement and research. He has long been interested in understanding the tangible and intangible elements that make places tick. His master’s thesis on place identity in Victorian peri-urban growth towns won a Commendation at the 2016 Victorian Planning Institute of Australia awards. He is also a member of the Thrive Research Hub at University of Melbourne, Australia. Torill Nyseth, PhD, is Professor in Planning at the Arctic University of Norway. Her research interests are urban planning, citizen participation, urban governance and place development. Eduardo da Silva Oliveira is an international expert in spatial planning, territorial
governance and economic geography, focusing on urban and regional areas in Europe and sub-Saharan Africa. His research evaluates the impact of strategic spatial planning on social and economic development and environmental sustainability. He is currently a Lecturer at Thomas More University of Applied Sciences, Belgium, shaping future African-centred entrepreneurs, innovators and sustainability leaders through his teachings in the Postgraduate in African Business Studies and International Tourism and Leisure programme. Stijn Oosterlynck is a Full Professor in Urban Sociology at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. He is a member of the sociological Centre for Research on Environmental and Social Change and the Antwerp Urban Studies Institute. He is also Scientific Director of Hannah Arendt Institute for Urbanity, Diversity in Citizenship. His research is focused on poverty and diversity in cities, the politics of urban development, place-based forms of solidarity, city-state relations and urban civil society. Frank Othengrafen is Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at TU Dortmund, Germany. In his research, he focuses on the analysis and comparison of planning practices and cultures, the development and testing of innovative approaches and intelligent strategies for urban-regional transformation processes and the examination of the limits and possibilities of planning instruments for shaping spatial transformation. Sofia Pagliarin holds a PhD in Urban Studies and Spatial Planning and Development obtained in 2014 through a co-tutorship between the Bicocca University of Milan, Italy and KU Leuven, Belgium. Her main research interests lie in urban transitions, from metropolitan land management and consumption to the planning and implementation of large-scale urban development projects (including infrastructure), to the digitization processes of European city administrations. The main research approaches adopted by Pagliarin are complexity-informed, namely qualitative methods (i.e., in-depth, dialogical interviews) and configurational comparative methods (CCM) for the social sciences (in particular, Qualitative Comparative Analysis, QCA).
contributors xxi Debadutta Parida is a PhD Candidate in the School of Urban and Regional Planning, University of Alberta, Canada. He is interested in evolution of urban governance in the context of overlaps between climate risks and southern urbanism. He is particularly interested in the areas of risk communication and management, urban informality and local conflict. Stefan Partelow is a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Life Ethics at the University of Bonn, Germany and an affiliate researcher at the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT) in Bremen, Germany. He focuses on the governance and sustainability of common-pool resources and public goods, specializing in ocean issues. He is well versed in interdisciplinary approaches to social-ecological systems analysis, as well as combining quantitative and qualitative methods. He is the co-founder and co-host of the In Common podcast, featuring interviews with researchers and practitioners on science, environment and sustainability. Peter Pelzer is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Utrecht University, the Netherlands, affiliated with the Urban Futures Studio and programme director of Continuing Education at the Faculty of Geosciences. In both his teaching, public engagement and research he is fascinated by longtermism, imagination and spatial planning (‘planology’). Katherine Perrott, PhD, is a Lecturer in the School of Planning at the University of Waterloo, Canada. She is an accredited professional planner with a background in land use planning and urban design consulting. David Pinder is Professor of Urban Studies at Roskilde University, Denmark. His research and teaching centre on urbanism and on the ways in which urban spaces are produced, imagined, performed and contested. He has written widely on utopian ideas and practice in relation to modern urbanism, and also on art, performance and spatial politics. Among his publications is Visions of the City: Utopianism, Power and Politics in TwentiethCentury Urbanism (2005). He previously taught at Queen Mary University of London and has also held visiting fellowships at Princeton University, USA, CUNY Graduate Centre, USA and Lund University, Sweden.
Froukje Maria Platjouw is a lawyer specialized in environmental and marine law and governance and matters of coherence and coordination in public administration. She works as a Senior Researcher at the Norwegian Institute for Water Research (NIVA). Her key research interest is the legal analysis of laws and policies to identify gaps, overlaps and inconsistencies and to suggest the changes necessary to improve the effectiveness, harmonization and coherence of legal frameworks, at the international, EU and national levels alike for better protection of the environment. She currently coordinates the EU Horizon Europe funded ‘CrossGov’ project. Bie Plevoets studied Interior Architecture in Hasselt and Conservation of Monuments and Sites at the Raymond Lemaire International Centre for Conservation in Leuven. John Erik Pløger is Professor Emeritus at the Department of Global Development & Planning, University of Agder, Norway. He has published on urban and planning theory, planning and agonism, participation processes and vitalism and urban planning. He is currently finishing a book on The Dispositif City (in Danish). Wieke Pot is Assistant Professor at the Public Administration and Policy Group at Wageningen University, the Netherlands. She is specialized in long-term governance in the fields of water management and climate change and holds a PhD and MSc degree in public administration. Before her academic career, Pot has been a consultant and manager at public and private sector organizations, amongst others via Boer & Croon and at AkzoNobel. She also teaches at the Netherlands School of Public Administration. Pot aims to increase understanding of what enables governments to make forward-looking and inter-generational decisions that contribute to achieving sustainable and resilient societies. Ward Rauws is Associate Professor in Spatial Planning at University of Groningen, the Netherlands. His research interests include urban and peri-urban transformations, urban planning and governance, and self-organization and complexity science. He is the coordinator of AESOP’s thematic group Complexity & Planning and cofounder of Young Planners
xxii elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design Society Ekistics. He also lectures in courses on urban design, neighbourhood revitalisation and planning theory, and coordinates the international master’s programme in Environmental and Infrastructure Planning. Laura Ryser is the Research Manager for Rural and Small Town Studies at University of Northern British Columbia, Canada. She has been engaged in several national research teams and large projects, focusing on socio-economic changes in resource towns, in Canada and abroad. She published widely on these topics. Lisa Schweitzer is a Professor of Urban Planning specializing in justice and ethics. Lisa Stafford (PhD) is Senior Researcher ARC DECRA Fellow in the School of Geography, Planning and Spatial Sciences, University of Tasmania, Australia, whose expertise and passion is in planning inclusive cities and communities. Stafford’s research focuses on promoting equity and spatial justice in planning practice, walkable-wheelable neighbourhoods, inclusive active and public transport strategy, and universal design of public infrastructure. She is also a highly experienced participatory researcher and community planner who specializes in the design and use of inclusive creative methods to uphold children and disability rights and ensure all voices are heard in research and public planning. Derk Jan Stobbelaar is a TeacherResearcher in Landscape – Human Relations at the University of Applied Sciences Van Hall Larenstein, Velp, the Netherlands. He was formerly Professor of Sustainable Landscape Development, holds a PhD in the landscape quality of organic and conventional farms and is chairman of the municipality advisory board for the Wageningse Eng. James Throgmorton’s work has focused on the roles of rhetoric and narrative in planning, especially with regard to making city-regions more just and ecologically sustainable. He is the author of Planning as Persuasive Storytelling (University of Chicago Press, 1996) and co-editor (with Barbara Eckstein) of Story and Sustainability (MIT Press, 2003). More recently, he authored Co-crafting the Just City (Routledge, 2022), and several related articles. This later work draws heavily on his ten-plus years as an elected city
council member in Iowa City, Iowa, including the period from 2016 through 2019 when he also served as mayor. Kristof Van Assche is currently a Full Professor (since 2016) in planning, governance, and development at the University of Alberta, Canada and also affiliated with the Center for Development Research (ZEF), Bonn University, Germany as a senior fellow, and with the Harris Centre for Regional Policy, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada, as a research fellow. Before coming to Alberta (in 2014), he worked at Bonn University (ZEF) as a senior researcher, Minnesota State University (St Cloud), USA, as an Associate Professor and Wageningen University as an Assistant Professor. He is interested in evolution and innovation in governance, with focus areas in spatial planning and design, development and environmental policy. He has worked in various countries, often combining fieldwork with theoretical reflection: systems theories, interpretive policy analysis, institutional economics, poststructuralism and others. Together with some colleagues, he has developed Evolutionary Governance Theory (EGT), which aims to discern realistic modes of transition and reform, between social engineering and laissez-faire. Terry van Dijk, driven by a curiosity about how people organize to optimize the built environment they call home, studies design in spatial planning processes. He has published widely about peri-urban planning and design practices in site development projects as well as water management practices. Marijn van Geet is a PhD Researcher in Transport Infrastructure Planning at the Department of Spatial Planning & Environment at the University of Groningen. He holds a MSc (2014, cum laude) in Water and Coastal Management from the University of Oldenburg, Germany and in Environmental and Infrastructure Planning (2015) from the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. Karim van Knippenberg holds a PhD in Spatial Planning. His research focuses on the potential redevelopment of cultural heritage for creating community cohesion, social integration and economic welfare. Gert Verschraegen is Professor of Sociology at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. His
contributors xxiii research interests are in social theory, cultural sociology, the sociology of science and knowledge and global and transnational sociology. He edited Imagined Futures in Science, Technology and Society (Routledge, 2017, with Frédéric Vandermoere), Divercities: Dealing with Diversity in Deprived and Mixed Neighbourhoods (Policy Press, 2018, with Stijn Oosterlynck), and the Elgar Encyclopedia of Global Social Theory (Edward Elgar, forthcoming, with Raf Vanderstraeten). Stefan Verweij is an Assistant Professor of Infrastructure Planning, Governance and Methodology at the Department of Spatial Planning and Environment at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. His research focuses on the design, implementation and performance of collaboration in cross-sector governance networks, in particular Public– Private Partnerships (PPPs). He recently published a co-edited volume about the performance advantage of PPPs with Edward Elgar (2022). A monograph about the collaborative advantage of PPP projects in the Netherlands is published with Boom Bestuurskunde (2023). Tara Vinodrai is Associate Professor at the Institute for Management and Innovation at the University of Toronto, Canada. She holds a graduate appointment to the Department of Geography and Planning and is a Faculty Associate of the Innovation Policy Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, Canada. Vinodrai’s research focuses on urban, economic and technological change in cities and the implications for inclusive economic development, planning and policy. She
has provided advice to large cities, smaller communities and all levels of government related to innovation, economic development and regional competitiveness. Jeroen Warner is a Senior Associate Professor of Disaster Studies at Wageningen University, the Netherlands. He coordinated the European Horizon 2020 project EDUCEN, on cities, cultures and catastrophes, and won a CAPES scholarship as Special Visiting Professor at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. A founder member of the London Water Research Group, Warner works on domestic and transboundary water conflict and cooperation, multi-stakeholder participation in resource management and water governance. He published several books and over 100 academic and professional articles. Warner is Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Water Governance, associate editor of Natural Hazards and editor with Regions and Cohesion. Wil Zonneveld is Professor Emeritus of Urban and Regional Planning in the Department of Urbanism, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, TU Delft, the Netherlands. He has a key interest in the conceptualization of space and territory at the regional scale and beyond. In his work, he puts a strong emphasis on visualization and connections with governance capacity and the political struggles which are a key feature of spatial conceptualization. Together with Vincent Nadin he edited The Randstad: A Polycentric Metropolis (Routledge, 2021) and with Michael Neuman The Routledge Handbook of Regional Design (2021).
Introduction to the Elgar Encyclopedia in Urban and Regional Planning and Design: the productive fiction of unity in diversity
differences between these disciplines or more specifically between planning and design, we would stress the shared focus of these disciplines on the organization of the environment of human beings. This organization can be analyzed, planned, designed, engineered, managed and organized in many different ways. It concerns physical and engineering aspects, social aspects and the various ways in which organizations and communities plan, design, coordinate, steer and strategize. This broad focus on spatial organization is reflecting and reflected in the contingent structure and dynamics of a set of scientific disciplines and in cultural distinctions and political boundaries between countries, regions and local communities. Despite these layered differences, many academic disciplines and policy domains interested in the organization of space share some concepts, fragments of a vocabulary and many people active in them would be interested in learning about at least some other fragments, and about the connectivities and disjunctures marking the terrain. Indeed, planning and design have diverse roots, and within planning and design some areas of investigation and practice have developed into semi-autonomous fields (think transportation planning), while convergences with other domains and disciplines (think housing, ecology) created new resonances, but also misunderstandings. At the same time, there are shared roots in planning and design, and many in theory and practice look at the past, at older concepts, and at other places to find inspiration. This search for inspiration then creates new reinterpretations, and a new relevance to a mapping of the mosaic. Indeed, the concepts explored in this encyclopedia reflect the ongoing co-evolution between the various disciplines, policy domains and related planning and design practices. New concepts emerge all the time, while existing ones gain new meanings, and others lose traction and disappear from the evolving vocabulary of planning and design. These concepts and their meanings are temporary outcomes of ongoing processes of social learning and competition. On the one hand shared understandings of certain concepts are developed to gain mutual clarity, while simultaneously alternative interpretations and new concepts are introduced to highlight or construct differences. The above
What is an encyclopedia? In the twenty-first century, it cannot be the enlightenment product it was in the eighteenth century. That is, it cannot go unquestioned, it cannot pretend to give a complete overview of the universe or a part thereof, and it cannot ignore that the world is not a puzzle. An encyclopedia cannot be a list of concepts which together cover everything, and which fit together seamlessly. By now, after a few revolutions and turns in most disciplines, we know that knowledge cannot be neutral, that narratives, ideologies, assumptions, methodological fetishes, policy fashions and community desires as well as conceptual frameworks, discursive migrations and social memory shape what counts as knowledge, as a relevant concept, and what looks compatible. For few fields is this truer than for urban and regional planning and design. Urban and regional planning and design are terms used to label a multitude of scientific disciplines, policy domains, sectors and practices. Some of these bear the name of planning or design, such as urban planning and urban design while others go by under other names, such as natural resource management, urban studies or landscape architecture. Some focus on a specific land use activity, such as housing, infrastructure or green urban space, others take a more comprehensive perspective. The ‘field’ addressed in this encyclopedia thus covers well-known disciplines like spatial planning, urban planning, land use planning, transportation planning, infrastructure planning, tourism planning, community planning, landscape planning, landscape architecture, urban design, but certainly has overlap and linkages with adjacent fields like geography, land administration, environmental management, natural resource management, environmental engineering, organization studies, communication sciences. Rather than emphasizing 1
2 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design notions imply that this encyclopedia reflects a particular and a temporal consolidation of the vocabulary used in planning and design. It is neither complete nor definitive. It certainly doesn’t include all relevant concepts and terms. We neither had the ambition, nor the illusion of comprehensiveness. The vocabulary of planning and design is enormous, and each planner and designer would put forward a personal selection of concepts considered to be pivotal and important. Each contribution furthermore represents a personal interpretation of the meaning and relevance of a certain concept. Other authors would likely have highlighted other things. The selection of concepts included in this encyclopedia first and foremost reflects the diversity of the vocabulary of planning and design. Furthermore, the encyclopedia aims to highlight the diversity and evolution of interpretation of these different concepts. For many concepts we have asked the contributors to reflect on the development of the concept over time and on the different definitions or understandings that co-exist. We feel that understanding this diversity is more interesting, honest and useful than trying to consolidate definitions that at best reflect current power balances, rather than absolute knowledge. This would also contribute to the reproduction of power relations and conceptual boundaries, and the last thing we want is for this encyclopedia to reinforce hegemonic discourses. There are a few ways in which we tried to avoid this trap of simply reproducing power/ knowledge relations. First, we tried to avoid the impression of comprehensiveness and fixed meanings, and we tried to persuade our contributors to do the same thing. If an encyclopedia suggests reflecting an immutable order of things, this only naturalizes this order. In his book The Order of Things, Michel Foucault already brought to the fore the ease by which we assume a certain order to be natural and to need a more profound reflection on the underlying assumptions and understandings of the world – a perspective nicely phrased in his comment about the taxonomy of animals in a certain Chinese encyclopedia: In the wonderment of this taxonomy, the thing we apprehend in one great leap, the thing that, by means of the fable, is demonstrated as the exotic charm of another system of thought, is
the limitation of our own, the stark impossibility of thinking that. (Michel Foucault, The Order of Things, p. xv)
Second, and related to this, we carefully emphasized the contingent character of disciplinary and administrative boundaries throughout, with concepts often claimed by one discipline or subdiscipline, by one administrative domain, while these concepts clearly exist in others as well, and with different disciplines rewriting the histories of concepts, methods, practices to make them fit their own set of values, methods and their own ideal role in spatial organization. Many ideas and practices fit in several disciplines, and the turf battles between disciplines and domains become reflected in the self-organization of disciplines as an ongoing assemblage of concepts. Third, we tried to emphasize that, indeed, all disciplinary and administrative boundaries are contingent and that their histories are continuously rewritten. Concepts with evershifting boundaries thus suggest the stability of disciplines and administrations with, in reality, ever-changing boundaries. Such situations can be better represented by clearly stating from the outset that concepts travel, transform and can be productive in a variety of new settings. The evolving theories and practices of spatial organization borrow from each other, contradict each other, and complement each other. All this takes place in complex histories where images of these histories are part and parcel of the tactics, strategies and simple interactions that take place. This makes historical reconstructions and historical depth all the more important. It is just that histories have to be treated as contextual, and as written with a purpose. Fourth, we encouraged a critical attitude, not necessarily as ideologically driven scorching critique of all existing systems of planning and governance, and not always as a dogged search for hidden agendas and marginalizing mechanics, but at least as a systematic avoidance of copying disciplinary or administrative rhetoric, and an avoidance of taking self-descriptions of theories and practices at face value. Indeed, social-economic transformations and transitions are very much necessary, but that does not mean anyone speaking about them in normative terms is immediately right. Critique also means a careful deliberation of strengths and weaknesses of a concept or practice, and this again
kristof van assche, raoul beunen and martijn duineveld
introduction 3 is context-dependent: even if something is not necessarily true, it could still have a variety of positive effects, and these might outweigh, under certain circumstances, the benefits of optimizing certainty. Of course, all of this is up to the reader. Fifth, and flowing out of the previous ones, we tried not only to accept but also encourage frictions and contradictions between contributions, between concepts and perspectives. This, in our view, encourages readers to think for themselves, to assess which concepts, which interpretations, are most useful for the situation they are in. It also helps to clarify the nature of different perspectives on certain issues, the compatibility and incompatibility with alternatives, and the importance of the underlying assumptions regarding good planning and design, the good community, the most important problems, or, more technically, acceptable research methods. We, as editors, would be most delighted if the encyclopedia leads to reflection and discussion, rather than creating false clarity by essentializing definitions and smoothing over difference in perspective. Sixth, our contributors demonstrated throughout that the relations between a concept and a discipline are not always the same. The same is true for the relations between a method, a theory, a concept and a discipline. For some planners, large-scale datasets are seen as quintessential for planning; for others, planning is more about predicting future events without much intervention, and for many, planning is still about more, say, the cocreation of spaces embodying or allowing the pursuit of common goods. More ambitiously still, planning and design can be understood as contributing to the creation of community visions which can be translated into strategy, representing the direction a community wants to take, towards a more desirable future. In the other direction, certain theories have very clearly delineated methodological implications, can even be centered around a method, while others are open to methodological experimentation and development, maybe because they allow more easily for rhizomatic connections with other theories or fields of application. Seventh, we refrained from imposing one perspective on the relation between theory and practice, and from defining ‘practice’ as being primarily political, administrative, technical or artistic. This also means we
did not take a position regarding the roles of planners in the organization of space, nor on the correct place of experts and expertise in governance, and in spatial governance. Each planning system, each community has its own answers and its own problems in this regard. Many of the perspectives represented in this encyclopedia reveal other aspects of this positionality, and many concepts carry built-in assumptions, regarding the role of planning and design, the role of planners, designers and the nature of their knowledge. Of course, such a list sets us up for questions about our own positioning. While we believe this introduction has already introduced much about our positionality, it might be helpful to distill a few points more clearly. For us, although not for all contributors, planning and design are never isolated and insulated activities. One could present certain forms of urban and regional planning and design as technical knowledge which can simply be applied, but such a presentation is highly problematic. We understand planning and design as always embedded in broader governance systems, which are part of a community. Governance, then, is the system through which a community takes collectively binding decisions, including decisions about the organization and use of space. The values in the communities, the dominant narratives and ideologies, the fears and desires, as well as the power relations, the map of actors and their identities, and the available policy tools will have an effect on the kind of planning that becomes possible and desirable. For us, there is always planning. Maybe there are no planning departments staffed by people with planning degrees reading papers in planning journals, but planning there is. As long as human beings have lived together and developed settlements, planning and design were part and parcel of their actions. Space is not organized randomly in societies, and a variety of actors, institutions and forms of knowledge are involved. Planning as coordination of spatial organization has to be recognized in its true variety of manifestations. Only then can one assess what can and should be improved and how. Not all planning systems contribute to visions about the future of the community, and here we do take a normative stance: they ought to. Planning and design can greatly amplify the problemsolving capacity of countries, regions and
kristof van assche, raoul beunen and martijn duineveld
4 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design communities, and they can find and create assets and qualities in places and landscapes where other domains of governance would not find them. Planning and design, by spatializing problems and problematizing space, can indeed be prime sites of policy integration and for community strategy, and such activities are essential if we are serious about facing the grand challenges of our time. For us, everything in a planning system has the potential to change anything else. One can call this co-evolution. Here we specifically refer to the co-evolution of forms of knowledge, tools of coordination and actors themselves. Even the subjective positions and narrative identities of these actors can transform through participation in planning. Space and ecology are not only transformed by planning, but, in their materiality, in their narrative and practical affordances, always shaped by the systems of spatial governance. The structure of planning systems will differ, as will the concepts and narratives circulating, the patterns of participation and representation, the level of ambitions, or the role of design, but a pattern of co-evolution is always there. For both the analyst and practitioner of spatial organization, awareness of this mutual shaping of planning and community, of the elements of systems of planning and design, is always useful. Not all connections are important or relevant, but a priori not seeing them makes any analysis or intervention vulnerable. Such a perspective on planning and design also makes it important, and here we return to our first paragraphs, to keep a broad spectrum of conceptual tools available for the analysis of planning and design and their potential and limitations in a particular context. It means that different planning theories, methods and many forms of knowledge that are distinctly not planning, can play a role in a system of spatial organization, as
well as many policies, plans and laws usually not in the toolbox and the purview of planners. Understanding both what planners do in a community, and how planning by non-planners works, requires a broad understanding of planning, a set of conceptual tools which does not pre-define what planning is, which does not mix up normative and analytic aspects of planning and which is highly reflexive. If our tools already tell us what planning is and should be, then it becomes hard to recognize all manifestations of planning, as well as the potential benefits of unexpected forms. Many citizens and decision-makers in the Global South have experienced not only the legacies of colonialist planning, but also the effects of recent planning theory and practice still blind to those legacies and to the existence of alternative traditions, creatively hybridizing old and new, local and imported, formal and informal, and, not unimportantly, planning and design. With time passing, the vocabulary of planning and design will evolve. Some concepts will fall out of fashion, new ones will enter and meanings will change. Such is the nature of the encyclopedic exercise. We, as editors of an encyclopedia, are convinced that these are no reasons to abstain from publishing an encyclopedia. The collective effort of over 100 contributors produced something that has enough roots and rhizomes, linking forward and backward in time, and into the virtual of conjecture and hope, to make it function, to inspire discussions and conversations for hopefully quite a while. We thank our esteemed contributors for their insight, their patience and their willingness to be part of such collective effort. Kristof Van Assche, Raoul Beunen and Martijn Duineveld See also: the rest of this encyclopedia
kristof van assche, raoul beunen and martijn duineveld
1. Adaptive planning
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Introduction
Adaptive planning can be seen as the institutional and organizational response to autonomous and spontaneous change. It is about how to relate to these changes and how such changes can be influenced. Adaptive planning is therefore meant to enable adaptive behavior in the daily environment. Adaptive planning:
Adaptivity is often mentioned these days as the answer to uncertainties in the city with its social dynamics and spatial transformations. These uncertainties are partly the result of changes happening beyond the planner’s control. Most striking are city-transcending developments. The emergence of the information society is one of many uncertainties that are turning the city in unknown directions (OECD, 2019). The digital revolution is gradually transforming the city. The US mortgage crisis of 2007, on the other hand, came out of the blue and paralyzed the housing markets in the Western world. For years, planners had no control over urban developments. It was common to see such developments as an anomaly that had to be wiped out quickly. However, the mortgage crisis did not stand alone. The realization dawned that crises come and go and there is always something that undermines the control of urban space. Accepting that change is a part of life and happens all the time, spontaneously and autonomously beyond the planner’s control, paves the way for adaptive planning.
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Planning is traditionally about rational interventions in space and place. Usually, little attention is paid to time. Adaptivity addresses time. More precisely, it is about adapting behavior to changes that happen from one moment to the next. Adaptivity stands for:
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acts in response to change; identifies opportunities and limitations associated with change; tries to accommodate or mitigate change; builds capacity to perform in moments of change (De Roo et al., 2020a).
Being aware of these dynamics and transformations and by actively working on the adaptive capacity of the daily environment, a proactive attitude comes into play about what might be and has not yet happened. This presupposes that there is institutional and political room for dynamism and spontaneous change, without this change being able to take place completely unrestrictedly. Organizationally and in terms of planning, it is about balancing the extent to which change can be expected and the ability to accommodate or mitigate this change under predefined conditions. In other words, adaptive behavior depends on the circumstances, is situational in its approach and consequently there is not one but several types of adaptive planning (De Roo et al., 2020b). The question then is how these types of adaptive planning differ. And whether it is possible to distinguish adaptive planning with appropriate rationalities, in accordance with traditional and contemporary planning.
Definition and focus
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acknowledging time and again that it had to be done differently (driven by failure); opportunities to learn (monitoring).
a world in flux, with nonlinear change and transformation as natural phenomena (nonlinearity); behavior of people and their institutions being aware that predicting the future is not always an option (uncertainty); area-specific responsiveness to change (situational); experimenting, if not then improvise. This experimenting requires coordinated, decentralized efforts (bottom up); a step-by-step approach (flexibility), using trial-and-error strategies (feedback) and multiple perspectives (variation);
Types Still in control. There is one type of adaptive planning where the planner remains in control, and space and place are still conditioned in a traditional way (Smit & Wandel, 2006). However, it is about the specific situation in which a conscious choice is made to allow activities in a designated area to proceed autonomously and spontaneously. A popular example of recent times is giving room to 5
6 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design rivers that had been brought under control by canalization. In response to climate change and the need for biodiversity, dikes and dams are being adapted so that these rivers can meander again. As a result, the buffer capacity for river water increases considerably, nature benefits from it and the landscape becomes more attractive. The applicable actions can be justified as a ‘rationality of letting go’: the environment is conditioned to allow use to take its course. When time is on our side. For the other types of adaptive planning, change dominates. In these situations, adaptive planning is responsive. The way depends on expectation of what is to happen, what can happen and how much or how deep the daily system is affected. With this in mind, adaptive planning can relate to change in several ways, for example: slow versus sudden change, foreseen versus unexpected change, and system change versus partial change. If there is an idea of what is to come, but the extent to which change will have an effect and the form it will take is largely unknown, time is the main asset. It makes it possible to formulate possible strategies. Experiments and learning processes make sense, hence a ‘rationality of adaptive learning’. Examples are the spatial impact of climate change, the introduction of self-driving cars and speed lanes for e-bikes and the spatial transformation of inner cities due to internet shopping. Living labs, serious gaming and charrettes are all part of these processes of experimenting and learning, meant to explore alternatives and to increase the capacity to act adaptively. From the foreseeable to the unexpected. Then there are situations that occur unannounced, turn the everyday environment upside down in a split second and can lead to a society in shock. These unannounced events can range from situations that are somehow foreseeable to occur occasionally, for example earthquakes, without knowing the timing and destructive force with which they unfold in the future, to events that assert themselves without a track record and therefore are completely unexpected. Earthquakes are often expected based on events in the past. Protocols have been established to act immediately, first to ensure that as much as possible is done to get people to safety, and then to minimize the damage, quickly followed by reconstruction work (Crowley & Elliott, 2012). This could be labeled as ‘anticipatory rationality’. That gert de roo
includes the evaluation of such events in order to learn from and be even better prepared for next time. Hurricane Katrina that flooded New Orleans in 2005 (Graham, 2006) was not only unexpected and unimaginable, but there was also no institutional intent to act, either immediately or in the long run, causing the survivors to leave the area, often for good. In the event of the unexpected happening and being unprepared, difficult discussions arise about what exactly is going on, leading to multiple interpretations and speculations. Even if there are no signs of a possible change coming, there must be the ability to respond to change: a rationality focused on assertive behavior. Being ready for change means being prepared by building capacity to act on whatever kind of change. Transformative capacity. One can discern a version of adaptive planning aimed at transformative capacity. This variant becomes relevant when actors can see the circumstances under which they are confronted with a process of change in the light of a better perspective on the future. The role of planning then is to know the area’s strengths and weaknesses, to involve the societal groups present, and to explore the opportunities and willingness to transform the area when the opportunity arises. This can be the case if an area is stuck in its development, cannot get out on its own and additional effort is needed to break out of this ‘lock in’. In the Netherlands, a region with intensive livestock farming was hit hard by swine fever. This meant reducing agricultural activities to several clusters, with buffer zones around them. In addition, the area was made attractive for alternative functions intended to provide the region with greater economic resilience in the future. This is about transformative capacity, which is not just about being ready for change, but about making positive use of the momentum as well: never waste a good crisis.
Conclusion In dynamic times, it is far from easy to recognize changes that may have major consequences. Change is often understood afterwards, which may be too late to interfere. Adaptive planning therefore means ‘being prepared’ to be able to ‘move along’ and then ‘influence’ what is to come. Consequently, investing in the ability to perform in moments
adaptive planning 7 of change is also what adaptive planning is about. Gert de Roo
References Crowley, K., & Elliott, J. R. (2012). Earthquake disasters and resilience in the global North: Lessons from New Zealand and Japan. Geographical Journal, 78(3), 208–215. De Roo, G., Rauws, W., & Zuidema, C. (2020a). Adaptive planning and the capacity to perform in moments of change. In G. De Roo, C. Yamu & C. Zuidema (Eds.), Handbook on complexity and planning (pp. 85–109). Edward Elgar Publishing. De Roo, G., Rauws, W., & Zuidema, C. (2020b). Rationalities for adaptive planning to address uncertainties. In G. De Roo, C.
Yamu & C. Zuidema (Eds.), Handbook on complexity and planning (pp. 110–150). Edward Elgar Publishing. Graham, S. (2006). ‘Homeland’ insecurities?: Katrina and the politics of ‘security’ in metropolitan America. Space and Culture, 9(1), 63–67. OECD. (2019). Good governance for critical infrastructure resilience, OECD reviews of risk management policies. OECD Publishing. Smit, B., & Wandel, J. (2006). Adaptation, adaptive capacity and vulnerability. Global Environmental Change, 16(3), 282–292. See also: systems thinking, social-ecological systems, rationality, institutions, conflict and shock, expertise and local knowledge, participation, social justice, environmental justice
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2. Adaptive reuse
Whilst until the nineteenth century the design of new constructions and preservation and reuse of older buildings were strongly intertwined, in the twentieth century this was to change. Throughout Western countries, ideas promoted within the Modern Movement shore up a new architectural and urban design approach, based on the idea of building anew and pursuing the development of new architectural typologies and languages hinged on the implementation of new contemporary living scenarios, building techniques and materials. This not only meant that far fewer buildings were to be reused, but also eventually contributed affirming the longlasting idea that building from scratch was the actual scope of the architectural endeavor. Meanwhile, heritage conservation became a specialized discipline that started to bloom in those same years, partially as a reaction to this approach and its outcomes. Adaptive reuse came to the fore of the debate within such a context, in the early 1970s. Initially the term was mostly associated with a line of thought that was chiefly conservation-oriented though engaging widely with urban regeneration; it looked at the preservation and adaptive reuse of old buildings as part of making ‘a good city’ as much as protecting its cultural built heritage. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s adaptive reuse intervention increased both in number and variety, accompanied by a steady accumulation of literature on the subject, with a steep acceleration by the end of the century.
Introduction Adaptive reuse defines a mode of intervention onto the built environment that substantially deviates from the modernist way of ‘clean sweep’ planning and building from a tabula rasa. It is linked to but distinct from the twentieth-century conservation movement for its future-oriented perspective and its designerlike and creative nature. In the current architectural context, adaptive reuse is increasingly deployed as an umbrella term for the sheer variety of interventions that variously involve the transformation of a pre-existing redundant architectural asset or site for a new or different use. The major relevance of adaptive reuse in the contemporary architectural debate, however, lies in its potential to offer a new conceptual framework to think processes of creation of space through practices of transformation, reappropriation and resignification, and to relate them with emerging considerations pertaining to the socio-cultural and environmental sustainability of the architecture.
History The term ‘adaptive reuse’ entered the architectural discourse in the 1970s; however, the practice of adapting and reusing disused edifices, structures and construction materials for new purposes and in relation to changing needs and cultural contexts, architectural fashion or technological advancements of the time, is in effect as old as the building practice itself. Repurposing redundant or obsolete buildings conveniently located and structurally secure was already common practice in medieval times – and possibly before – if nothing else because this was in fact easier and cheaper than their demolition and reconstruction. When reusing the building fabric in situ was not possible or convenient, high-quality materials such as natural stone, solid wood or brick were often retrieved from such buildings to be reused in new construction. Motivations for reusing existing buildings, however, often exceeded the merely economic and pragmatic aspects, involving symbolic, political, historic, artistic, aesthetic and place-attachment considerations as well.
Current views Albeit not a new phenomenon, in the last two decades, adaptive reuse has come to the fore of contemporary architecture as both a teaching and research field as well as on the ground of design practice. Present-day motivations bolstering such growing interest in reuse vary from environmental and sustainability considerations to socio-cultural motives. From an ecological perspective, the reuse of an existing building generally needs fewer resources and building materials than constructing a new building. Nowadays, Europe’s construction (and demolition) sector is responsible for over 35 percent of Europe’s total waste; 50 percent of all extracted material resources in Europe serve the construction industry. Adaptive reuse of existing buildings can be a way to reduce this environmental impact. However, adaptive reuse projects draw on a much wider 8
adaptive reuse 9
Source: Plevoets & Van Cleempoel 2019.
Figure 2.1 Development of adaptive reuse as a discipline on the crossing between architecture and conservation
range of considerations. These include, for example, heritage-making and memory practices, place attachment and belonging, as well as the informal practice of reappropriation of neglected and leftover urban spaces by new, evolving and often marginalized or minoritarian communities. Therefore, adaptive reuse projects today span from high-profile commissions by socalled starchitects to more small-scale and top-down initiative and including chiefly conservative interventions as much as projects involving major changes onto the building fabric, as well as temporary projects, buildyour-self experiments, art-based actions and much more. The proliferation of adaptive reuse on the ground has been accompanied by an equally growing corpus of studies. The range of terms used today to name the process of adaptive reuse is extremely wide – including remodeling, rewriting, rereading, undoing, adaptation, recycling, alteration, upcycling, reactivation, transformation, conversion, refurbishment or renovation umbaukultur. There is currently no shared or common definition of adaptive reuse. In fact, although these terms are often used interchangeably, they cover slightly different meanings, and in that they demonstrate and ongoing attempt
to define critical analytical categories and positions for the study and practice of this still-emerging field. At the same time, these different terms and concepts offer a richness in theoretical angles and interdisciplinary overtures from which to address the subject.
Looking forward In a literature review, Lanz and Pendlebury (2022) update and complement previous similar work (e.g., Plevoets & Van Cleempoel 2019, 16–23) discussing the most recent scholarly literature on adaptive reuse. They highlight how early publications on the subject draw together the conservation focus, the creative possibilities and issues of practicality. They consisted mainly in what the authors call ‘Atlases’ and ‘Handbooks’ – with the first ones collecting excellent examples to illustrate adaptive reuse practice, and the second aiming at instructing it. Thematically, there is a notable and enduring emphasis in these publications on the legacies of industrialism and reusing redundant industrial buildings and structures, with a focus on demonstrating that adaptive reuse is practical, achievable and economic and the overarching objective
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10 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design
Source: Lanz & Pendlebury 2022.
Figure 2.2 Thematic timeline of most recent publications (2000–2020) focusing on adaptive reuse
to posit adaptive reuse as an architectural intervention as much as building anew. In their article, Lanz and Pendlebury identify a trajectory in the development of the debate on adaptive reuse that points toward an increased theoretical engagement with the subject and enquires into principles and epistemologies for adaptive reuse. In that, they sustain, the debate is opening up to new potential interdisciplinary connections within and beyond the domain of architecture and design that might expand and enrich the debate involving reflections pertaining to issues of place and heritage-making and enabling it to account for the social, cultural and political entailments of adaptive reuse interventions, which remain so far inadequately considered overall. The definition proposed here builds on that to understand adaptive reuse as a designed process of transformation of a redundant architectural assemblage for a new or different use; termed as a practice of ‘translation’ and ‘resignification’ of a preexisting building or site, ultimately aimed at its reactivation and reappropriation by present-day communities. Bie Plevoets and Francesca Lanz
bie plevoets and francesca lanz
Bibliography Brooker, G., & Stone, S. (2018). Re-readings: 2: Interior architecture and the principles of remodelling existing buildings. Riba Publishing. Lanz, F., & Pendlebury, J. (2022). Adaptive reuse: A critical review. The Journal of Architecture, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080 /13602365.2022.2105381 Machado, R. (1976). Old buildings as palimpsest. Towards a theory of remodeling. Progressive Architecture, 11, 46–49. Plevoets, B., & Van Cleempoel, K. (2019). Adaptive reuse of the built heritage: Concepts and cases of an emerging discipline. Routledge. Scott, F. (2008). On altering architecture. Routledge. Stone, S. (2020). Undoing buildings. Routledge. Wong, L. (2017). Adaptive reuse extending the lives of buildings. Birkhäuser. See also: adaptive planning, heritage planning, downtown development, asset-based community development, memory
3. Advocacy planning
behave too much like the experts or too patronizing.
Critiques
Introduction
Advocacy planning can also be criticized for its implicit adversarial relation between ‘communities’, and ‘government’ or ‘administration’, while advocates for participatory planning and governance would argue that governments, certainly municipal governments, can create or co-create structures of participation which enable communities to voice their concerns and ideas, to integrate local knowledge and to simplify the navigation of complex and often opaque bureaucracies. Advocacy could thus be seen as perpetuating tensions and distinctions while this is not always necessary, and while shifting the balance between participation and representation might be possible in a more structured manner. Advocacy in such perspective can be seen as a transitional work, while in a more conflict model of democracy, it is needed on a more permanent basis. Outside the North American context, advocacy planning looks different, as the relations between neighbourhoods or racialized groups as ‘communities’ differ, just as the spatial planning system and relations with private sector parties, in particular developers, differ. Nevertheless, inequality and disempowerment occur in many places and systems, and assisting disenfranchised groups and areas to navigate complex bureaucratic systems is often welcomed locally. Also, factions in the administration which might have agreed for a long time, but are unable to speak up, might welcome advocacy planning, and might encourage it through direct or indirect subsidy, which is especially helpful as financing for advocacy planners, and thus their independence, is often precarious. Martijn Duineveld, Raoul Beunen and Kristof Van Assche, Editors
Advocacy planning emerged as a normative perspective on planning in the US in the 1960s, mostly associated with the names of Paul Davidoff and Linda Davidoff. The basic idea is that in the complex systems of planning and governance of the US, and by extension other developed countries, inequalities persist and that many communities are not well served by these planning and governance systems. Nor are they able to speak and lobby for themselves, as navigating those systems takes time, knowledge and connections. In the US context, this was and often is a matter of race, not only class, and it is a matter of administrations defining common goods together with private sector interests and well-connected groups.
Roles of planners Planners, then, could play a role in empowering citizens and marginalized communities by listening, understanding, observing and trying to come to alternative plans and policies, distinct from what emanated from the administration, or to refine and improve such plans. In some cases, the focus was on activism in the sense of stopping plans which threatened the community as such, as in the large-scale modernist proposals for urban renewal and associated demolition. Advocacy planning in the US context functioned as a counter-pressure against the tendency to separate land use functions, against Euclidean zoning, and against the move of services and businesses out of older neighbourhoods. While Jane Jacobs did not use the term, her work in various US and Canadian cities can be considered advocacy planning as well. Mentioning Jane Jacobs and Paul Davidoff in the same breath indicates the diversity of approaches which could be termed advocacy planning, as well as some potential critiques. The degree of participation can differ, the critical versus positive component, the degree of involvement by planners, ranging from lobbying for already crystallized community visions, to co-creating such visions. Advocates for more radical self-organization would argue that advocacy planners could
Bibliography Clavel, P. (1994). The evolution of advocacy planning. Journal of the American Planning Association, 60(2), 146–149. Davidoff, P. (1965). Advocacy and pluralism in planning. Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 31(4), 331–338. 11
12 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design Jacobs, J. (1969). Strategies for helping cities. The American Economic Review, 59(4), 652–656. Stieglitz, O. (1999). Advocacy planning and the question of the self and the other. Critical Planning, 6, 1–57.
See also: common goods, communicative planning, critical planning, local knowledge, modernism, environmental justice, power/ knowledge, social justice
martijn duineveld, raoul beunen and kristof van assche
4. Affordable housing
Affordable housing should also be distinguished from housing assistance in the form of housing allowances or housing benefit, known in France as Allocation de logement familiale (ALF) and in the United States as Housing Choice Vouchers (HCV). These terms all refer to financial assistance provided to low-income households to subsidize their rent in private-market accommodation, as distinct from housing specifically built for that purpose. That definition of affordable housing encompasses an almost mind-numbing variety of possible alternative models. The next part of this chapter provides a short overview of the key features of the principal affordable housing models, followed by a short discussion of some of the most important planning and design issues associated with the provision of affordable housing.
Definitions Affordable housing is a protean term, meaning anything from specific government lowincome housing programs to, as defined by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, any ‘housing on which the occupant is paying no more than 30 percent of gross income for housing costs, including utilities’ (HUD, 2011). It can refer to a specific subsidized lower-income housing program, can be used as a generic term for subsidized housing or as an even broader generic term for any housing which a lower-income household can reasonably afford, whether or not subsidized. The term is widely used in the United States, while both affordable housing and other terms, such as social housing, or in France Habitations à Loyer Modéré (HLM) or moderate-rent housing, are used in European and other nations. The use of the term as a descriptor for subsidized housing for low-income households is much more recent than the phenomenon of subsidized housing itself and dates in the United States from the early 1980s, where it arose at least in part as a seemingly more politically acceptable substitute for the terms subsidized housing, or low-income housing. It reflects, furthermore, that the issue of affordability, that is, the severe housing cost burdens incurred by lower-income families for even a modest house or flat, has come to be the most persistent and widespread housing challenge in the United States and Western Europe today. The flexibility of the term has led some to apply the term to private-market housing that is itself affordable to lower-income households, usually as a result of low quality or weak housing market conditions, which in the United States are sometimes called naturally occurring affordable housing or NOAH (Carlisle, 2017). Most often, however, the term is used in the United States and elsewhere to refer to housing that has been subsidized to a belowmarket price or rent, usually through public subsidy, but also through regulatory means, and provided to households falling below a defined income level or meeting other criteria. Thus, affordable housing is defined in Ireland and the United Kingdom as housing ‘for those whose needs are not met by the market.’
Models of affordable housing Who is affordable housing for? The number of households whose needs may not be met by the market varies widely depending on the nature of the regional economy and housing market. In some low-cost areas it may be limited to the poorest households, or in expensive cities like London or San Francisco it can include most of the population. Different affordable housing models are designed to serve different segments of the population. In the United States, public housing is largely reserved for the poorest families, while projects built with the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC), the principal US affordable housing program, are reserved for families earning 60 percent or less of the regional median income, or roughly the lower onethird of the population. By contrast, in the city of Vienna the majority of households are eligible for social housing, and half of the city’s population lives in subsidized city-owned and cooperative housing. In France, three distinct HLM tiers exist, each with a different level of public subsidy. The lowest tier is targeted toward the poorest families, while more than half the population is eligible for the highest-tier projects (Mallach, 2010). In the final analysis, eligibility for affordable housing reflects not only housing needs, but also differences in national government policy, economic resources and political preferences. 13
14 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design What forms does affordable housing take? The great majority of affordable housing projects in developed nations take the form of rental housing, where the dwelling is owned by a housing provider and rented to a qualified household. A housing provider can be an arm of municipal government as in Vienna, a cooperative association, a not-for-profit private corporation or a for-profit private corporation. A smaller share of affordable housing is sold to lower-income homebuyers at affordable prices rather than rented. In the United Kingdom, a variety of intermediate approaches including Rent to Buy and Shared Ownership schemes exist to enable lowerincome families to become homeowners over time. How is affordable housing financed? To the extent that affordable housing is designed to serve households whose needs cannot be met by the market, it must sell or rent at levels below those of the market in the city or region where it is built. That, in turn, requires the involvement of the public sector, through either financial or regulatory measures, to make it possible. The most common financial measures are government grants, which reduce or eliminate that part of the development cost that must be supported by debt which must be paid back out of rents, lowinterest loans, which reduce the cost of repayment and full or partial waiver of taxes. The French government offers all three for HLM projects. Waiving VAT can substantially reduce the cost of housing in many European nations, while in the United States, waiving or reducing annual property taxes can have a significant effect on tenants’ rents. A different approach is to create affordable housing through the planning process. Under what is known as inclusionary zoning or inclusionary housing, developers of marketrate housing are required, or in some cases given incentives, to include affordable housing in their projects. This model was first adopted in parts of the United States in the 1970s and has since spread in different forms to many countries (Calavita & Mallach, 2010). In the United States, the percentage of affordable housing required is usually between 10 and 25 percent, while in the United Kingdom it is often 50 percent or more (Monk, 2010). As with other affordable housing programs, affordable housing created through inclusionary programs can take the form of either sales or rental housing. alan mallach
Affordable housing and urban planning In recent decades, the inclusion of affordable housing in any community’s housing stock has become a recognized element in urban planning and planning law. France and Ireland, as well as New Jersey, Massachusetts and California among US states, have further enshrined into planning law the principle that all municipalities should contain their ‘fair share’ of affordable housing. Thus, even where affordable housing is actually produced by private entities, local – and in some cases regional – governments have become de facto partners in meeting housing needs which cannot be met through the market. This imposes a stringent responsibility on local governments and on the planners who advise them not only to contribute to meeting local and regional housing needs, but to do so in ways that further the best interests of both the residents of affordable housing and the community as a whole. The French Loi Solidarité et renouvellement urbain (Loi SRU) established the principle that at least 25 percent of the dwelling units in each French municipality (commune) should be affordable housing, and that each commune must make steady progress toward that goal. Similarly, in California, regional agencies adopt fair share plans, which allocate affordable housing targets to their constituent municipalities. Elsewhere municipalities set their own goals, often through a legally mandated housing element in their general plan. Even then, however, the question of who should benefit from affordable housing can be a challenging one; many US suburban communities would rather build affordable housing for the elderly than for families, particularly those with school-age children, while many French communes show a strong preference for the higher HLM tiers over than the lower. Where affordable housing should be built, and how it should be integrated into the larger built environment are critical questions. Historically, affordable housing has often been treated as a pariah and segregated from more ‘desirable’ residential areas. In the United States, most affordable housing has been built in often-struggling central cities rather than in their affluent suburban neighbors, and within those cities in their most impoverished neighborhoods. Vast,
affordable housing 15 segregated affordable housing projects such as the so-called grands ensembles in Paris’s suburbs or the public housing built in US urban centers from the 1950s through the 1970s have subsequently often become source of economic and racial conflict and discontent. Many of those projects have since been reconfigured or completely demolished. In more recent years, pressure has grown to locate affordable housing in areas which offer access to better jobs and public services, and to better integrate it into the urban fabric. That involves not only thoughtful location decisions, but creative design and site planning to ensure that they fit into and enhance their surroundings. Part and parcel of this effort has been growth in mixed-income projects. Where it was once shunned, affordable housing is now routinely included in large-scale residential developments in Europe and in the United States. The 6500-unit Riem Airport redevelopment in Munich contains roughly equal proportions of subsidized rental housing for low-income families, assisted rental and home ownership for middle-income families and private-market housing for the more affluent (Daldrup et al., 2010). Alan Mallach
Bibliography
perspective. Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. Carlisle, C. (2017). NOAH: The new housing acronym you need to learn. American Bankers Association. ABA Banking Journal, 109(5), 64. Daldrup, A., Lütke, E., & Zlonicky, P. (Eds.). (2010). Large-scale projects in German cities. Jovis. Mallach, A. (2010). France: Social inclusion, fair share goals and inclusionary housing. In Calavita & Mallach (Eds.), Inclusionary housing (pp. 203–238). Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. Mironova, O., & Waters, T. (2020). Social housing in the U.S. Community Service Society. Monk, S. (2010). England: Affordable housing through the planning system: The role of section 106. In Calavita & Mallach (Eds.), Inclusionary housing (pp. 123–168). Lincoln Institution of Land Policy. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. (2011). Glossary of terms to affordable housing. See also: advocacy planning, commons, homelessness, inclusion/exclusion, ideology, participation, power and planning, social justice, zoning, social capital
Calavita, N., & Mallach, A. (Eds.). (2010). Inclusionary housing in international
alan mallach
5. Agonism
and praxis of parrèsia did not include women, slaves or foreigners. A parrèsian democracy needs an agonistic structure to find out ‘who take[s] charge in the town’ (2010, 155). However, if being a modal force to ensure a governmentality, where the exercise of power is through a ‘true discourse’ (159), parrèsia may be dangerous to democracy from the influence of, for instance, immoral speakers or a lack of truth. The possibility of a false parrèsia led the Greeks to discuss ‘the dangerous relations which seem to exist between democracy, logos, freedom, and truth’ (Foucault, 2001, 77), while they also recognized that a true discourse will only come to light in a conflict and from contestation. Although Foucault saw the agõn and parrèsia as forces to the formation and conduct of souls indispensable from politics, he had only a few remarks on the relation between power, agonism and parrèsia (e.g., 2010, 104– 105). On the relationship between agonism and power the most quoted is:
Agonism is the locus of the contestation of political, institutional and governmental practices. The agonistic relationship is constitutive of the self through what one opposes and what opposes one. The Ancient Greek philosophy discussed the agõn as a game of persuasion and contest of truth. The agõn democracy of contestation needs parrèsia or parrhesia, the fearless speech, frankness. Modern philosophy on agonism has Friedrich Nietzsche as a key figure. He saw agonism as necessary for self-development but also representing the will to power. Other core thinkers are Hannah Arendt’s the passionate agonal drive, Carl Schmitt’s claim that all political concepts have a polemical meaning focused on conflict, and Jürgen Habermas’s that the public sphere is a competitive agonal game.
Agonism, courage of truth Agonism to Ancient Greek philosophy was a force of political life. The polis, being citizens ‘concerned with the affairs of the town’ and meeting at the agora (Foucault, 2010, 104), is where the act of parrèsia as a game of persuasion is played out from the use of a ‘true, reasonable discourse’. The agõn game is a rivalry with others, where logos by the act of parrèsia is to be tested in a dispute on how ‘the identity of the discourse’ is homogeneous or not to each dialogue participant (371). Foucault demonstrates that parrèsia to Greek philosophers concerned more than an art of debating, where discourses competed. Parrèsia means speaking what one knows is true regardless of consequences. This courage of truth telling is not only speaking of what one believes from knowledge is true (episteme), but the courage to speak ‘despite rules, laws, and customs’ (parrèsia) and from the force of others benevolence, sympathy, friendship (eunoia) (372). The effect of parrèsia being a modality of truth telling is an ‘agonistic structure’ of difference and discursive strategies (2010, 55) practiced within politics (power), law (in/justice) and moral (confessing) (154). Parrèsia designates the right to have a say linked to citizenship and politics and thus ‘allows freedom for others, who also wish to command’ (105) to enter the strife. The right to
At the very heart of the power relationship, and constantly provoking it, are the recalcitrance of the will and the intransigence of freedom. Rather than speaking of an essential freedom, it would be better to speak of an ‘agonism’ – of a relationship which is at the same time reciprocal incitation and struggle; less of a face-toface confrontation which paralyzes both sides than a permanent provocation. (Foucault, 1986, 221–2)
Foucault calls this agonism ‘a permanent political task inherent in all social existence’ (223).
Identity/difference The democracy of free speech articulated as parrèsia is thus ‘the exercise of power through a true discourse’ (Foucault, 2010, 159), but a truth is to be disputed as reasonable, for instance by having a trial on meaning. A competing parrèsia cannot be plain rhetoric, because then it is a technique of speaking (e.g., lying) and not necessarily a truth speaking. The agonistic struggle is the strife between rivals contesting discourses, interpretations and truths at play. The agõn game builds on a claim against some others and for something provisioning one’s own position through a persuasion done from an identity/ difference position. 16
agonism 17 Epistemic, discursive and meaning differences created generate a distance between citizens that cannot be reconciled rationally. The agonism of difference ‘cultivates the appreciation of contingency and disjunction in the experience of identity’ and enhances the experience of being part of and learning from a relationship between ineradicable differences (Connolly, 1991, 179). This position may be constitutive to both an ethic of care for others and a care for the conquest itself with its potential for a (temporary) conversion of differences, community making and tolerance enabling individuals to come to terms with the interdependence between the identity/difference split within one-self and towards others. Martin Heidegger suggests seeing agonism as an Auseinandersetzsung; controverses and disputes setting things and words in front of each other making an ‘engagement in which differences appear sharpened, in which questions [are] posed, not answered’ (Milchman & Rosenberg, 2003, 10). Auseinandersetzung is a critical encounter, where ‘the agonal moment’ requires the other as a way to find out ‘what is one’s own’ (10) by confronting one’s own thinking and meanings with the other’s difference. It is this clash between differences that Heidegger (and Hannah Arendt) calls the Streit: the strife between thoughtful minds at odds problematizing experience and thinking. The agõn game and its test of truth confronts subjects with the Other that opposes one’s truth (Foucault, 2011) and a parrèsian space of persuasion is needed allowing the Other the freedom of speech. The agõnattitude prepares humans to recognize the Other as someone worth competing with as s/he contests the self and one’s world understanding. This is to recognize the Other as ‘an adversary’.
We/they In his 1932 book Der Begrieff des Politischen, Carl Schmitt claims true politics is an antagonistic encounter. Antagonism is an ineradicable ground and force to politics and social relations, because there is no homogeneous demos (Mouffe, 2005). Pluralism, to see things from multiple perspectives, is a permanent contention about and contestation of politics, knowledge and values constitutive to endless efforts to construct ever new
hegemonic discursive articulations. The impossible final reconciliation of an antagonistic struggle makes a moment of decision and closure of disagreements precarious, but a deliberative democracy believing the aggregation of knowledge makes the order of politics solid is impossible try to escape from pluralism. Every order is temporary and contingent (Mouffe, 2013). Difference and otherness are a constitutive outside of politics, democracy and the self. The we/they opposition in politics and culture is, where ‘they’ are constituted as an enemy with whom one does not share any common ground. Democratic politics needs the antagonistic constitution of a we/they position to be tamed, and one way is to make a space for an opponent ‘with whom one shares a common allegiance to the democratic principles of “liberty and equality for all”, while disagreeing about their interpretation’ (Mouffe, 2013, 7). The plural Others become ‘adversaries not enemies’ (Mouffe, 2005, 20). An antagonistic position transformed to a democracy of adversaries is an agonistic democracy respecting the right of the opponent to disagree and fight for her/his ideas against others. It allows difference to be constitutive to an endless struggle of being able to make a new political and/or discursive hegemony. An adversary is a subject who not only has a will to power, but who respects the opponent as mate. This position makes it possible to sublimate irreducible disagreements by a ‘conflictual consensus’, where the opponent stands as a friendly competitor and not an enemy to be destroyed (Mouffe, 2013, 8). A conflictual consensus accepts a decision will be accompanied by dissent. Mouffe argues that the force of agonism must be played out by engaging in the political ‘war of position’ (Mouffe, 2013). Compared to this, the challenge to planning is that the possibility of making a conflictual consensus is to be done within an institutional design, where planning is a governing apparatus to prepare plans and projects for a decisive political act. Institutions secure a single set of values for decision and point at a certain outcome. Political studies criticize this imbalance from saying there is no democracy without multipolarity and antagonism. A democratic parrèsia is a demos that builds on the full citizenry of free expression and agonistic respect. A democratic agonism is a never-ending articulation of opposition, john erik pløger
18 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design difference and dissensus done by subjects with a will to power (Foucault, 2013).
The agõn institutionalized Democracy in Greek philosophy was discussed around the right to parrèsia and defining the parrhesiast as ‘the courageous teller of truth’ (Foucault, 2011, 14). The figure of a parrhesiast refers to an attitude or a will to not being governed and the act of expressing a critique of the dominant polis-logos. A democracy and its institutionalized rights can never be just in a multiverse society. Democracy is in itself an unequal distribution of power, when it builds on forms of representation rather than the demos (Rancière, 2010). A consensus is always a partial agreement since it is an act of exclusion of otherness and difference. The challenge to planners supporting parrèsia and the agonistic strife is to find a space to act against attempts to make a democratic neutralization of parrhesia and the parrheisast, for instance by taming pluralism through a forced consensus or a silencing of planners by not allowing them free speech (Kristina Grange). Seeing agonistic contention as a generative force and resource of politics (Bonnie Honig) includes exploring the potentials and effects of disagreements on ‘ecological’ issues and transforming the irreducible and ineradicable difference or ‘ecological agonism’ productively to politics and management rather than trying to eliminate differences and disagreements by a forced consensus (Amanda Machin). There can be no democracy without disagreements and there is thus only the agonistic space possible to a true democracy. This space of agonism signifies a non-hostile mode of interaction and a struggle or rivalry on difference and power never to be settled. To institutionalize agonism thus seen may include the need for an ethical agonism (e.g., virtues, values), a decisional agonism (e.g., conflictual consensus) and contestability (e.g., dissent) (Lowndes & Paxton, 2018). The institutionalization of agonism requires an openness to challenge and an agonistic participatory and provisorial design; a ‘what if’ planning praxis (Jean Hillier, 2003). Agonism is not only about persuasion and contestation, but also emotions and passion. The given, the common, arguments, knowledge and truths are contested from reason and john erik pløger
passion, and planning may need ‘the quarrel’ to challenge the inegalitarian logic of politics (e.g., consensus) (Jacques Rancière). The void between identity and difference is constitutive to politics as well as to subjectification and if to overcome this split, planning needs to build on agonistic respect. In fact, the ongoing contestation of political and planning discourses and power mechanisms needs ‘the recalcitrance of the will’ and ‘intransigence of freedom’ acted out through ‘a permanent provocation’ (Michel Foucault). John Erik Pløger
References Connolly, W. E. (1991). Identity/difference. Democratic negotiations of political paradox. The University of Minnesota Press. Foucault, M. (1986). The subject and power. In H. L. Dreyfus & P. Rabinow (Eds.), Michel Foucault. Beyond structuralism and hermeneutics. The Harvester Press. Foucault, M. (2001). Fearless speech. Semiotext(e). Foucault, M. (2010). The government of self and others. Lectures at the collège de France 1982–1983. Picador. Foucault, M. (2011). The courage of truth. Lectures at the collège de France 1983– 1984. Palgrave Macmillan. Hillier, J. (2003). Agoni’zing over consensus: Why Habermasian ideals cannot be real. Planning Theory, 2(1), 37–59. Lowndes, V., & Paxton, M. (2018). Can agonism be institutionalized? Can institutions be agonised? Prospects for a democratic design. BJPIR (The Journal of Politics & International Relations), 20(3), 693–710. Milchman, A., & Rosenberg, A. (Eds.). (2003). Foucault and Heidegger. Critical encounters. University of Minnesota Press. Mouffe, Ch. (2005). On the political. Routledge. Mouffe, Ch. (2013). Agonistic. Thinking the world politically. Verso. Rancière, J. (2010). Dissensus. Continuum. See also: power in planning, power/ knowledge, conflict, institutions, inclusion/ exclusion, critical planning, modernism, power/knowledge, debate and dialogue
6. Area-based management tools
Link to theory, discipline and method ABMTs can have a wide variety of management objectives, including the preservation of important ecological or geomorphologic processes, the conservation and management of species, the protection of beautiful seascapes, cultural, archaeological or historic sites, recreation and public enjoyment, environmental monitoring and assessment, and scientific research. As such, ABMTs have the potential to conserve ecosystems that are unique, particularly rich in species, or representative of biogeographical units. ABMTs are designed to achieve these objectives by managing the pressures from human uses, such as fishing and shipping, which negatively impact the ecosystem and resources of a geographically defined area. The degrees of protection which can be adopted in such areas are very different, ranging from areas of strict protection where uses are excluded to areas where multiple uses are allowed and regulated. As a result, ABMTs are a useful tool to implement an ecosystem approach as well as a precautionary approach (UNGA, 2007). In the literature, six categories of ABMTs have been distinguished: fishery-related ABMTs, shipping-related ABMTs, ABMTs related to deep seabed mining in the area, ABMTs related to underwater cultural heritage and natural heritage, conservation-related ABMTs (such as marine protected areas), and Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) initiatives. A commonality to all these tools is that the management measures they include are applied to a defined area, usually through the creation and implementation of a management plan. Management plans guide implementation of the tool by outlining tool objectives, dedicated management measures and monitoring and review requirements, which help support and track progress towards a desired goal or commitment (Muraki Gottlieb et al., 2018).
Key definition An area-based (or spatial) management tool is an approach that enables the application of management measures to a specific area to achieve a desired policy outcome (UNEP, 2018).
Brief history The term ‘Area-based Management Tools’ (ABMTs) is an umbrella concept that originates from a 2006 UN Report on the Ecosystem Approach (UN, 2006). According to the United Nations General Assembly, implementation of an Ecosystem Approach could be achieved through, amongst others, the use of a broad range of management tools for the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity, including sector-specific and integrated ABMTs on a case-by-case basis, based on the best available scientific advice and the application of the precautionary approach and consistent with international law. Currently, a wide variety of ABMTs exist, each with their own purpose, mandate and authority. Some tools are focused on managing individual activities in a specific area, such as marine protected areas, fisheries closure areas, pollution management zones and seabed mining exclusion areas. Other tools, such as marine spatial planning and integrated coastal zone management, seek to coordinate several types of activity in the same area (UNEP, 2018). The concept of ABMTs has achieved particular global resonance in recent years, as part of biodiversity conservation targets and the negotiation of an international legally binding instrument (under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea) for the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction (Gissi et al., 2022). In these areas, ABMTs are generally far less developed compared to those in national waters that are subject to the rights and obligations of single coastal states. ABMTs have also been identified as a key mechanism for delivering global biodiversity goals and in particular Sustainable Development Goal 14 (Reimer et al., 2021).
Discussions and critique ABMTs can be effective in targeting specific problems, related to a single sector, area or management problem. Effectiveness is dependent on several factors though. These factors are predominantly related to governance arrangements, institutional capacity to ensure enforcement, societal challenges related to multiple actor groups and environmental factors. A general hindering factor 19
20 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design pertains to power relationships and equity in ABMTs’ designation and implementation, both within and between countries, with respect to the use of marine resources. Concerns for equity are particularly relevant in marine areas under national jurisdiction, for instance with respect to equal access to natural resources for multiple economic actors and local communities. Concerns about equity and power relationships have also been raised on areas beyond national jurisdiction for deep seabed mining and on fishery closures. In these contexts, transparency and inclusiveness are particularly important to ensure (Gissi et al., 2022). Another concern relates to ABMTs’ potential to generate multiple benefits at the same time. Cross-sectoral ABMTs, such as MSP, are those managed to coordinate multiple uses at sea towards the common overarching objective of sustainable development. They usually work by harmonizing sectoral management and related ABMTs through the cooperation of respective responsible authorities (e.g., fisheries agencies and conservation agencies). Where multiple goals need to be accomplished, implementation of ABMTs should therefore take into account synergies and trade-offs between policy goals. This requires coordination between initiatives established by different organizations and responsible authorities to ensure a holistic ecosystem-based governance approach and transformation to sustainability.
Link to other concepts ABMTs are an umbrella concept that is considered useful for the purpose of the Ecosystem Approach as well as MSP. As an umbrella concept it comprises tools such as Areas of Particular Environmental Interest; Ecologically and Biologically Significant Areas; Emissions Control Areas; Fisheries Restricted Areas; Marine Protected Areas;
froukje maria platjouw
Marine/Maritime Spatial Planning; Other Effective Area-based Conservation Measures; Particular Sensitive Sea Areas; Special Areas of Conservation; Site of Community Importance; Specially Protected Areas; Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems. Froukje Maria Platjouw
References Gissi, E., et al. (2022). Contributions of areabased management tools to the 2030 agenda for sustainable development. Journal of Cleaner Production, 330, 129910. Muraki Gottlieb, H., Laffoley, D., Gjerde, K., & Spadone, A. (2018). Area based management tools, including marine protected areas in areas beyond national jurisdiction (IUCN Report). Reimer, J. M., Devillers, R., & Claudet, J. (2021). Benefits and gaps in area-based management tools for the ocean Sustainable Development Goal. Nature Sustainability, 4(4), 349–357. United Nations. (2006). Report on the work of the United Nations open-ended informal consultative process on oceans and the law of the sea at its seventh meeting. (A/61/156 of 17 July 2006). United Nations. (2007). Report of the secretary-general of the United Nations General Assembly on oceans and the law of the Sea. (A/62/66/Add.2 of 10 September 2007). Paragraphs 117–118. United Nations. (2018). The contributions of marine and coastal area-based management approaches to sustainable development goals and targets. (UN Regional Seas Reports and Studies No. 205. See also: asset-based community development, regional planning, policy integration, downtown development, smart growth
7. Art: public art and planning
and interpersonal experiences connected to artworks. Individuals, groups and communities can experience intrinsic values when their identities and experiences are reflected. The instrumental values of public art are broader social benefit(s), including social inclusion, welfare, community development and socioeconomic regeneration. Methods for documenting, examining, understanding and critiquing public art are numerous. Among those commonly used are photography, observation, site surveys, spatial audits, stakeholder interviews, intercept surveys and focus groups (Matthews & Gadaloff, 2022). Conceptual and blue sky research related to public art may happen prior to artworks being created if art producers want to understand what communities and stakeholders value as art consumers. Empirical research generally occurs after the fact, with scholars investigating production decisions and processes, or discerning the perceptions and responses of producers and consumers of artworks.
Defining and promoting Public art is broadly defined as artwork(s) intentionally commissioned and located in accessible outdoor or indoor spaces, for aesthetic, cultural or experiential purposes. Created for public audiences and comprising permanent or temporary exhibits, public art includes murals, sculptures, installations, lighting schemes and soundscapes. These may be presented as singular media or combined in two- or three-dimensional formations. Public artworks are often displayed upon, or interwoven with, architectural surfaces and landscaping. When related to the multi-sensory realities of urban spaces, public art can communicate with broad audiences across time, language and space. Public artworks can also invite broader exploration of the places they inhabit. Advocates of public art highlight its economic (marketing, innovation, urban design), social (urban rejuvenation, community uplift) and environmental (activating greenspace, reimagining heritage spaces) benefits, as well as its capacity to enhance the imageability of cities. Its capacity to attract investment, tourists and knowledge workers is also well studied (Moore, 2014). Controversy and community opposition is also documented. Too much reliance on public art over other social infrastructure provision may lead to criticism from communities, art practitioners and scholars (Trivic, 2020).
Art and urban revitalisation Public art often links practically to urban renewal schemes and planning projects that employ a ‘creative placemaking’ approach. Art-driven schemes can be designed to have place-based outcomes, yielding positive physical, economic and/or social impacts (Moore, 2014). Informed by both economic objectives and the social impact of art, creative placemaking utilises public art and other culture to renew and improve the liveability, vitality and vibrancy of places (Zitcer, 2018). City councils and property developers frequently commission and incentivise public art projects to kickstart renewal processes. Incentives may include offering short-term leases to creative professionals to generate a sense of liveliness in a precinct, or payments to building owners to provide external walls to be used as canvases. Neoliberalism and the rise of governmentality place strong emphasis on the promoted images of contemporary cities (Guinard & Margier, 2018). City officials in many jurisdictions have come to value public art as a low-cost tool for urban uplift, placemaking and marketing. A hazard is that any improvements to urban amenities are prioritised for wealthy tourists and urban professionals with high incomes. In such cases, public art provision can be a key driver of gentrification.
Values and methods Interventions in the public realm through arts-focused programmes have been common in the UK, USA, Europe and Australia since the 1980s, with many other countries using similar approaches since. This makes city councils the primary commissioners of public art globally. Along with artists and support workers, they are the producers of public art. Communities, tourists and anyone else interacting with public artworks are the consumers. Two distinct conceptual values can be considered when theorising public artworks: intrinsic and instrumental values (Speight et al., 2017). Intrinsic values are the individual 21
22 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design Artworks commissioned primarily for urban marketing purposes are unlikely to reflect the identities or aspirations of existing urban communities. This can lead to bland artworks in overly sanitised urban environments which lack a sense of place and meaningful identity. Such works might draw cultural tourists but are unlikely to energise surrounding communities.
Challenges and learning A key challenge for creative placemaking is balancing policy development, funding requirements and community expectations. Within these programmes, it is an essential councils ensure that living, working and recreation spaces are fit for purpose and meet the needs of residents. Quality public art can assist with urban renewal but cannot uplift entire communities alone. As such, urban renewal programmes should focus first on addressing deep social, economic and environmental problems before commissioning artworks (Trivic, 2020). Cities and regions learn from each other’s experiences and results with public art production, helping build confidence and vision for commissioning new artworks. City councils sometimes respond to the increasing profile of public art by requiring that art plans be tied to development budgets. Depending on circumstance and context, artworks and styles may be deemed acceptable based on a particular quality, theme, materials selection or medium. In a small professional field, successful artists with highly recognisable styles may become overexposed within a particular city, region or country. Three useful insights on public art provision through planning practice are provided by Zebracki et al. (2010). First, while the producers of art may be convinced their endeavours create positive and lasting instrumental impacts, their judgements are likely biased and may overestimate success. Second, the claims of art producers may be valid and real, but they are based in personal perspectives
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and do not represent the full spectrum of stakeholder perceptions. Third, planners should be mindful that different actors will have different references for success and criteria for measurement, meaning it is important to account for these during consultation processes. Perhaps the key message for planners interested in public art provision is that the potential for success is much higher when artworks are sympathetic to setting and location, as well as the communities who coinhabit the space. Tony Matthews
References Guinard, P., & Margier, A. (2018). Art as a new urban norm: Between normalization of the city through art and normalization of art through the city in Montreal and Johannesburg. Cities, 77, 13–20. Matthews, T., & Gadaloff, S. (2022). Public art for placemaking and urban renewal: Insights from three regional Australian cities. Cities, 127. Moore, I. (2014). Cultural and creative industries concept – A historical perspective. Procedia – Social and Behavioural Sciences, 100, 738–746. Speight, E., Zebracki, M., & Sumner, A. (2017). (Re)Making public campus art: Connecting the university, publics and the city. Public Art Dialogue, 7(1), 6–43. Trivic, Z. (2020). Community arts and culture initiatives in Singapore: Understanding the nodal approach. Routledge. Zebracki, M., Van Der Vaart, R., & Van Aalst, I. (2010). Deconstructing public artopia: Situating public-art claims within practice. Geoforum, 41(5), 786–795. Zitcer, A. (2018). Making up creative placemaking. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 5, 739456. See also: design, downtown development, new urbanism, modernism, narrative, storytelling, line of flight, creativity
8. Assemblage
to it’ (Anderson & McFarlane, 2011, 124). Anderson and McFarlane argue that such diversity should be encouraged within the literature to ensure the concept continues to expand and evolve in new and unpredictable ways. Whilst this approach to ‘assemblage thinking’ has been largely uncontested within geography, the idea of a diverse conception of the assemblage has been strongly contested within Deleuzoguattarian scholarship. Buchanan (2017, 2021) challenges the idea that the assemblage should be defined without linking it to Deleuze and Guattari’s core texts or their philosophical project more broadly. Such ‘illusionary’ or ‘synthetic’ understandings of the assemblage, he adds, ‘continue to act as though the concept was invented by Deleuze and Guattari, but . . . does not feel obligated to draw on their work in its actual operation or development’ (2017, 457–474). The literature thus provides us with two very different ways of conceptualising the assemblage and its role within spatial studies. Using terms within the literature, we can broadly distinguish these as ‘assemblage thinking’ and an ‘authentic’ Deleuzoguattarian assemblage theory and method.
Key definition In the conclusive chapter of A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari provide us with one of the most insightful yet most loaded definitions of the assemblage: Assemblages are already different from strata. They are produced in the strata… but operate in zones where milieus become decoded: they begin by extracting a territory from the milieus. Every assemblage is basically territorial . . . This is the first division of every assemblage: it is simultaneously and inseparably a machinic assemblage and an assemblage of enunciation . . . The assemblage is also divided along another axis. Its territoriality (content and expression included) is only a first aspect; the other aspect is constituted by lines of deterritorialization that cut across it and carry it away. (1987, 504)
Key people, publications, discussion and critique Of all the concepts set out in Deleuze and Guattari’s core texts, the assemblage seems to have attracted the greatest interest amongst theorists working in the social and spatial disciplines. In urban theory, it has been used to explore critical urbanism (Dovey, 2011). Whilst in geography, it has been used to consider an alternative to neoliberal ideology (Collier & Ong, 2008). This growing interest in the assemblage has resulted in a range of different definitions and sources of references. The Deleuzoguattarian assemblage has been used alongside DeLanda’s ‘neoassemblage theory’ (2016), the Latourian assemblage and common-sense uses of the term which identify the assemblage as an ‘aggregate’ of pieces (see Buchanan, 2017, 2021). For Anderson and McFarlane (2011) such diverse interpretations point to a broader shift in the field of geography and urban planning, which they label ‘assemblage thinking’. If we are to understand and develop this shift, they argue, then all variants of the assemblage should be treated as equally valid regardless of their philosophical origins or uses. As they note, ‘there is no single “correct” way to deploy the term, nor does any theoretical tradition or style hold an exclusive right
A Deleuzoguattarian definition of the assemblage The Deleuzoguattarian assemblage is complex, and so to develop an ‘authentic’ understanding of it, we must try to unpick some of the key references set out within A Thousand Plateaus (see also Abrahams, 2020, 2021). The quotation used to introduce this entry in the encyclopedia is a good place to start. From this we can identify three insights. (i) The first insight is used to locate the assemblage as something that is ‘produced in the strata’ but should not be confused with the strata (see entry for Strata). (ii) The second insight is the most difficult to follow and relates to its formation. We are told that the assemblage does not simply manifest on the strata but is produced through a series of transformations. This quotation presents us with a chain of such transformation that starts from milieus within the strata. Some of these milieus are decoded and collected into ‘pockets’; territories are then extracted from these 23
24 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design decoded milieus, which evolve into territorial assemblages. We are also told that these transformations are directed by two mechanisms: the machinic assemblage (of desire) and the assemblage of enunciation. (iii) The third insight presents us with a shift away from this territory and thus a breakdown of the territorial assemblage. Here Deleuze and Guattari describe this as a ‘line of deterritorialisation’ (see entry for Line of flight). The encyclopedia entry for strata provides us with the planar structure we need to help us with the first of these insights. To navigate the second, more complex insight, we must first understand what they mean by the milieu and locate it within the strata’s body plan. In the third and 11th chapters of A Thousand Plateaus we are told that all milieus are formed of four zones, which they define as exterior, interior, intermediary and associated milieus (1987, 49–51; 313). In the third chapter, ‘10,000 B.C.: The Geology of Morals (Who Does the Earth Think It Is?)’ Deleuze and Guattari tell us that: The materials furnished by the substratum constitute an exterior milieu for the elements and compounds of the stratum under consideration, but they are not exterior to the stratum. (1987, 49)
In this, Deleuze and Guattari suggest that compounds produced on one stratum serve as the exterior milieu to another. We can imagine this by thinking about a building design. Concrete roof tiles, timber battens, breather membranes and timber rafters are all compounds produced on their own respective strata. When we design and build a roof for a building, these compounds are selected and drawn into a new, more complex stratum as the exterior milieu from which a new plane of content will form. The development of this roof stratum sees these materials drawn together in different combinations based on their functional attributes (to keep out the rain and wind, allow for air movement or as structural support). This produces a series of intermediary states (milieus) before a specific combination is bound together as a fully articulated
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compound (interior milieu) on the plane of expression. Deleuze and Guattari tell us that the transition across planes is still based on the functional role of the materials and compounds. As such, it should be understood as a change in magnitude not a change in kind (Abrahams, 2019, 2021).
Two machines In the 11th chapter, ‘1837: Of the Refrain’, Deleuze and Guattari present us with a second movement across the stratum. Rather than moving from an external milieu into an interior milieu, this second scenario considers the sequence of transformations used to form the assemblage. In this second scenario, There is a territory precisely when milieu components cease to be directional, becoming dimensional instead, when they cease to be functional to become expressive. There is a territory when the rhythm has expressiveness. What defines the territory is the emergence of matters of expression (qualities). (1987, 315)
This quotation shows us that the transformation that ‘extracts territory from milieu’ is achieved because the materials that form the exterior milieu change in nature as they move from the plane of content into the plane of expression. Rather than serving a functional role in a compound, they produce or contribute to an ‘expressive statement’. In the example of the roof design, we could imagine that this expressive statement is formed by extending the eaves far beyond any functional purpose i.e., to shed water away from the building envelope. This transformation changes this part of the building from a functional component in the stratum to a quality (see Abrahams, 2021 for a detailed example). The two machines identified by Deleuze and Guattari help us expand our understanding of this transformation. In ‘10,000 B.C.: The Geology of Morals (Who Does the Earth Think It Is?)’, Deleuze and Guattari tell us that the machinic assemblage has three roles in the stratum. It is responsible for drawing materials into the strata, directing the transition across planes within the strata and connecting one stratum to another (1987, 73). The machinic assemblage, therefore, is responsible for transforming the milieu in both scenarios:
assemblage 25 from a milieu into a milieu and from a milieu into a territory. This tells us that the machinic assemblage, alone, is not responsible for producing a territorial assemblage. We thus need to take account of the second kind of assemblage to understand why this second scenario is different from the first. One of the most detailed explanations of this second assemblage is presented in the fourth chapter of A Thousand Plateaus, ‘November 20, 1923 – Postulates of Linguistics’. In this Deleuze and Guattari note that, The order-words or assemblages of enunciation in a given society (in short, the illocutionary) designate this instantaneous relation between statements and the incorporeal transformations or noncorporeal attributes they express. (1987, 81)
As this quotation suggests, the relation between the two components forming the territory (the statement and the quality) are not given within the machinic assemblage. They are determined by an unconscious set of relations that influence the formation of language; namely the ‘assemblages of enunciation in a given society’ (1987, 81; 84; 90). Unlike the machinic assemblage, which produces very specific transformations and movements within the strata, this second assemblage is a kind of sub-language operating within a given society that remains collective even when connecting to an individual or a group (1987, 100).
Away from the territory We can now see why both of these assemblages are needed in the formation of the territory. One forms the expressive statement and drives the process of ‘extracting the territory from the milieu’, whilst the other produces the link between the expressive statement and the quality expressed. We come now to the third insight from Deleuze and Guattari’s definition of the assemblage. This is a further set of transformations that take us away from the territory and along a line of ‘deterritorialisation’. Importantly, Deleuze and Guattari identify this line of deterritorialisation as something that is inherent within the structure of the assemblage. In doing so, they avoid the risk of treating change as something that is
exclusively produced from outside an assemblage. In doing so, Deleuze and Guattari show us that all assemblages contain forces that drive its formation as well as its break down which, in turn, lead to the formation of a new territory (1987, 54). As they note A territory is always en route to an at least potential deterritorialization, even though the new assemblage may operate a reterritorialization . . . (1987, 326)
What we can see here is that the assemblage is always in a state of movement: either transforming into a territory or transforming away from this territory. We must be mindful, therefore, that when we identify an assemblage, we are only identifying it as a ‘snapshot’ in this continuous movement between territory and de-territory (see entry for Line of Flight). Gareth Abrahams
References Abrahams, G. (2019). The building as a Deleuzoguattarian Strata / Machinic assemblage. Architectural Theory Review, 23(3), 363–379. Abrahams, G. (2020). The Strata/Machinic assemblage and architecture. Deleuze and Guattari Studies, 14(4), 604–633. Abrahams, G. (2021). The milieu and the territorial assemblage: Insights from architecture. In P. de Assis & P. Giudici (Eds.), Machinic assemblages of desire: Deleuze and artistic research 3. Chapter Orpheus Institute Series (pp. 403–418). Leuven University Press. Anderson, B., & McFarlane, C. (2011). Assemblage and geography. Area, 43(2), 124–127. Buchanan, I. (2017). Assemblage theory, or, the future of an illusion. Deleuze Studies, 11(3), 457–474. Buchanan, I. (2021). Assemblage theory and method. Bloomsbury Press. Collier, S. J., & Ong, A. (2008). Global assemblages anthropological problems. In S. J. Collier & A. Ong (Eds.), Global assemblages (pp. 3–21). Blackwell Publishing Ltd. DeLanda, M. (2016). Assemblage theory. Edinburgh University Press. gareth abrahams
26 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987 [1980]). A thousand plateaus. The University of Minnesota Press. Dovey, K. (2011). Uprooting critical urbanism. City, 15(3–4), 347–354.
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See also: strata, milieu, line of flight, method, modernism, power in planning, power/ knowledge, narrative, critical planning, ideology, critical planning, systems thinking, autopoiesis
9. Asset and asset-based development
unemployment and poverty grew dramatically in the inner city. While universities, governments and foundations during this time focused on what these communities did not have (e.g., jobs) and what the problem was (e.g., unemployed individuals), John Kretzmann and John McKnight (a professor and a community organizer at the Urban Research Center at Northwestern University in Chicago) decided to focus on the talents and gifts of community residents that could be used for community development (e.g., the fact that women could take care of children and could collectivize to start a childcare center). They said that communities could regain their lost strength by using what they already had within them. They named this strategy ‘assetbased community development.’ In 1993, they wrote a book, Building Communities from the Inside Out: A Path toward Finding and Mobilizing Community Assets to explain everything they had learned about this method during their four-year research visiting over 300 low-income and working-class communities across the United States. The ABCD Institute, now based at De Paul University in Chicago, Illinois, has created a network of about 60 trainers and authors who have spoken in every state across the United States to spread ABCD as a community development strategy. Among the most prominent examples, Mike Green, Henry Moore and John O’Brien wrote and edited in 2006, When People Care Enough To Act: ABCD In Action. In 2010 Peter Block, an ABCD consultant based in Cincinnati, Ohio, co-authored with John McKnight The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods. The ABCD model was adopted in Canada in an ABCD movement led by Cormac Russell who has traveled to more than 35 countries to give talks on his writing on ABCD. In 2021 and 2022 Dee Brooks and Michelle Dunscombe, who are based in Australia, hosted ‘The Unconference: A Participant Driven Gathering,’ an international conference that nurtures an ABCD global network. For three decades ABCD has been a growing community development movement.
Various community development approaches are used to empower individuals in urban planning processes and develop stronger neighborhoods, towns and cities. Most of these approaches put emphasis on using assets that already exist within a community and supplementing them with outside assistance. One of these key approaches to community development is asset-based community development (ABCD). This approach pays attention to identifying and mobilizing the community’s assets (that is, skills and strengths) instead of concentrating on its needs and deficits. ABCD is about the self-empowerment of a community from the inside out using what it already has, before turning to outside help.
Definition ABCD could be used in urban planning to bring a positive change in a community by recognizing the problem-solving capacities, strengths and skills of its individuals, associations and institutions and mobilize them to respond to challenges by creating new opportunities for economic development, housing, transportation, etc. Instead of relying on outside resources (e.g., government agencies, universities, banks, etc.), the approach argues that is better to build the future of the community first with the assets that exist within (e.g., the gifts of individuals and associations) and second with the help of existing resources (e.g., institutions including urban planning departments, foundations, non-profits, etc.). According to ABCD the self-determination of the community creates sustainable development because the communities are not dependent on foundations, universities and government agencies to create change. Given the importance of the assets from within the community, a considerable amount of time is spent mapping assets. Once assets have been mapped, individuals, associations and institutions work together to mobilize those assets and envision a plan with the community at the center of decision-making processes.
Asset-based community development vs needs-based community development
A brief history
Kretzmann and McKnight argued that the needs-based development was taken as the more traditional approach to community
During the oil crisis and inflationary pressures in the United States in the 1970s, 27
28 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design development. For example, founders always wanted to give to initiatives which help individuals experiencing homelessness or unemployment. Urban planners concentrated on vacant properties and blight. And schools were thinking about single mothers, dropouts and drug dealing. Foundations, planning departments and schools, thus, concentrated on what is wrong with people and the community. Meanwhile, ABCD wanted to concentrate on what was right about the community, what were the skills of those who often seemed marginalized. Although both needs-based and asset-based developments bring changes on personal as well as organizational levels, these changes are brought by using totally different methods. Here are the key differences between these two popular approaches to community development: ●
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The needs-based community development approach is somewhat opposite to the ABCD approach. It focuses on determining the needs and problems of the society rather than on its powers, strengths and resources. It looks to external resources like funds and investment to build community. On the other hand, ABCD looks to the resources present within the community. In needs-based community development, money is the main resource. Without it, the community will not be able to survive. On the other hand, relationships and connections are the main resources in the ABCD approach. A community established using the ABCD approach falls apart when it shifts its focus to money. Needs-based community development is driven by organizations and institutions consisting of professional staff. They are answerable to institutional stakeholders. On the other hand, ABCD is led by community members who co-invest their assets and drive their own projects for a better community.
Theory The theory behind ABCD is based on the idea that communities have people with different skills that can be utilized to help fellow community members meet their goals. While outside assistance is required at times, a permanent change can only be achieved if the ivis garcía
community takes responsibility for driving that change from within. Assets of ABCD are categorized into the following six categories. Individuals. Residents of a community have three forms of gifts. Gifts of the head: it involves things they have knowledge about and love talking about them with others. For instance, knowledge of computers, history, building techniques, etc. Gifts of the hand: it involves skills that they possess and can benefit others by using them. For instance, cooking, painting, music, etc. Gifts of the heart: it involves things they are passionate about. For instance, caring for special needs children, those experiencing homelessness, older adults, etc. All these assets should be found and shared with people who need them. Communities should use them to set the foundation for change. Associations. Associations consist of two or more people who share a common interest or passion. They use their gifts to achieve a common goal. Some examples of associations are neighborhood associations, block groups, churches, etc. Institutions. Institutions consist of paid groups of people who are organized in a defined manner to perform different tasks related to a common goal. They can be government agencies such as municipalities and healthcare centers or private institutions such as schools, colleges and libraries. Institutions have resources they can use to help people in the community. Physical space. Physical spaces are important places where people gather to perform similar activities. They can be schools, parks, pools, coffee shops, etc. Each physical space has its unique strength that should be recognized so people can use it to achieve their goals. For example, a farmers’ market could be organized at a local park or a meeting at a city library with the purpose of making the community better. Exchange. People who have different abilities and skills come together and work collaboratively with other community members to exchange ideas and resources; as a result, a connection is established between them. Finding people and their skills and then allowing them to exchange
asset and asset-based development 29 resources takes a lot of time. It is generally done through relationship building. Shared culture and history. Every community has a shared culture and history that binds its members together. There are certain events or stories that they celebrate together. These events and shared stories are another important asset communities can use to become their better versions.
Basic tools of ABCD A community requires these tools to build by finding and using its assets. Asset Mapping. Each community has a set of assets that it needs to recognize to use it. For this purpose, communities use the ‘asset mapping’ tool. It is a tool that divides a community’s assets into different categories (the most common categories have already been discussed above). Capacity Inventory. To build a community, it is important to first recognize its assets and then look for outside assistance. The capacity inventory tool helps a community find and prepare a list of assets. Doctors, nurses, lawyers and carpenters are all examples of assets that communities find and use for development purposes. Time Banks. These are different ways in which individuals connect with each other and exchange skills without any monetary exchange. It allows communities to enhance their skill set and save money at the same time. For instance, a nurse decides to offer her services to an older citizen for a few hours every day; in return, she gets meals three times a day.
Steps required to practice the ABCD approach If a community knows the basic principles and tools of ABCD, it can practice this community development approach using the following steps. Collect and share stories. Stories of a society represent its culture and history. When people listen to them, they learn about the skills and gifts that their community has or used to have. It motivates them to utilize those skills again for a better
future. From stories, it is easy to identify what motivates community members and what they are passionate about. Create a group of committed people. Now, people who have played a leadership role or are currently playing this role will come forth. Gather them and create a group. They will have the skills, gifts and strengths required to identify community assets and motivate other individuals to move toward a mutual goal. Create an asset map. Institutions, associations and individuals work together to recognize already existing assets of the community. They identify connections that they can use to create more developmental opportunities in urban planning. A list of individual, association and institution assets is created. It helps the community understand what it has and how it can maximize assets for economic development and urban planning. Establish connections with the help of connectors. One of the most important steps is to strengthen the existing relationships and establish new relationships to promote the exchange of skills and gifts. This is where connectors come to help. They connect people having certain gifts with people who don’t have those skills. Create and drive the development plan. After identifying assets and creating groups, it is important to draw a roadmap or plan consisting of achievable steps or actions. The community will utilize its own resources to create new opportunities for individuals, face current challenges, and consistently act on the plan. Secure outside resources and investments required to build a sustainable community. The community will first focus on utilizing its own assets. Once they all have been consumed, it will get investments and funds from external sources to ensure its consistent development. A list of needed resources and funds will be prepared beforehand, so the community does not have trouble arranging them when the need arises.
Discussion The ABCD approach promotes the involvement of citizens for the betterment of a community. Community members engage in different activities and connect with others to ivis garcía
30 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design exchange their skills to build a wider skillset. Many communities have used this approach to develop their infrastructure using their local assets. Still, ABCD encounters different challenges. One of these challenges is maintaining internal control without the interference of the external agencies. At times it becomes difficult to avoid dependency on external resources and agencies. Another challenge is that ABCD cannot be implemented in all sorts of environments, particularly in hostile environments where social hierarchies have created differences among people who do not want to cooperate with one another. Many communities also lack knowledge about strategy creation and implementation; as a result, fragmented solutions are offered which do not assimilate different perspectives of different sectors.
ABCD critiques While supporters of the ABCD approach claim that it offers many benefits, there are many critiques of ABCD. One of the main criticisms is that ABCD, in a way, is neoliberal because it accepts that the state is proving less welfare for people. ABCD enthusiasts would argue that ABCD is in fact a response to the retreat of the state in low-income communities. Some critics say that the ABCD approach does not consider power dynamics in society. On the other hand, Kretzmann says that power is a zero-sum game, meaning if someone gets it, the other person loses it. But the ABCD approach focuses on the ‘win–win’ attitude, meaning no one loses anything or both parties gain something. Some critics also think that the ABCD approach is not based on reality; it is too optimistic. From Kretzmann’s point of view, optimism is about finding and imagining opportunities in every situation, which can be achieved if you work consistently.
Conclusion To give citizens power and form sustainable communities, the ABCD approach guides
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people to leverage their own resources instead of asking external agencies to help them. It tries to find connectors and create groups so they can establish lasting relationships between individuals, associations and institutions. ABCD focuses on the community’s strengths and not on its weaknesses. So far, it has helped many communities create a strong foundation and grow without fully depending on external agencies. Ivis García
Bibliography García, I. (2020). Asset-based community development (ABCD): Core principles. In Phillips, R., Trevan, E., & Kraeger, P. (Eds.), Research handbook on community development. Edward Elgar Publishing. Green, M., & Moore, H. (2007). ABCD: When people care enough to act (1st ed.). J. O’Brien (Ed.). Inclusion Press. Kretzmann, J. P., & McKnight, J. (1993). Building communities from the inside out: a path toward finding and mobilizing a community’s assets. Evanston, IL: Chicago, IL. McKnight, J., & Block, P. (2010). The abundant community: Awakening the power of families and neighborhoods. Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Nel, H. (2018). A comparison between the asset-oriented and needs-based community development approaches in terms of systems changes. Practice, 30(1), 33–52. Stoltenberg Bruursema, C. (2015). Assetbased community development: A path toward authentic community development practice. SPNHA Review, 11(1), 7. Turner, N., Kretzmann, J. P., & McKnight, J. (1999). A guide to mapping and mobilizing the associations in local neighborhoods. Asset-Based Community Development Institute, Institute for Policy Research. See also: narrative, identity, downtown development, memory, power, self-organization, participation, autopoiesis, institutions
10. Autopoietic social systems and planning thought
these exchanges according to its own terms, i.e., self-referentially. By relying on a distinction from the environment to define itself, autopoietic systems are free to create and recreate their own structure and by doing so evolve without losing their identity as long as the distinction with the environment is maintained. Luhmann maintains that there are three types of autopoietic systems – living systems (all biological forms), psychic systems (all conscious individuals) and social systems. Life is the mode of autopoiesis (self-production) for biological systems, thoughts are the mode of production for psychic systems and communications are the mode of production for social systems. Whilst non-social systems in the environment of the social system (biological, psychic, non-autopoietic mechanical systems and so on), can ‘irritate’ or ‘perturb’ the communication within a social system, the communications are always only produced self-referentially, i.e., in relation to other communications in the social system. The system and internal structures are created and recreated in the present by operations through the mode of production. As the system is a product of its own operations, present-day systems theories take practice as the starting point. It focuses on modes of operations, selfreferentiality, the persistence of distinction from the environment and so on that allow the continuance of the system in its environment. As Nassehi (2005, 181) explains ‘In the end, a system is anything but an algorithm of practice – it is the practice itself. A system is not a mechanical device that controls everything which happens inside of it. In short: it is what happens inside of it’.
Autopoiesis Autopoiesis as a concept for the social sciences was developed to a high degree of refinement through the work of Niklas Luhmann in his book Soziale Systeme (1984) in German (translated into English in 1995, as Social Systems), and then later by others. The theory has its origin in biology and was first coined by two Chilean biologists, Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela who, in the 1970s, were attempting to distil the real meaning of life in the biological world by studying a living cell. The term ‘autopoiesis’ translates from Greek to mean ‘self-producing’ (autos = self, poiein = to make) i.e., the outputs of the systems are its own inputs, different from say a chemical factory where outputs are different from the inputs. Though ‘original’ in many respects, the theory draws from the work of others too such as Heinz von Foerster’s ‘order from noise’ principle; George Spencer Brown’s Boolean logic; Husserl’s phenomenology and Parsons’s structural functionalism (Luhmann, 1995, 1997; Rasch & Wolfe, 2000). Rasche and Wolfe (2000, 12) point out that traditionally, cybernetics and systems theory has been regarded as politically suspect on the left, due to an emphasis on control and equilibrium. Second generation cybernetics, which the theory of autopoiesis draws upon, focuses instead on recursiveness, contingency, chance and subjectivity therefore leading to a different metaphysics. Rather than defined by a structure or a goal or a state of being, for Luhmann, a system comes into being by creating a distinction between the ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ by demarcating a boundary and then a selection. In selecting, the system chooses or ‘actualises’ from a range of possible selections. Enforcing a selection allows a system to reduce the ‘noise’ in the environment and thus build up an order from complexity. The border is, however, open in the sense that there is an exchange between the system and the environment (much like a living organism exchanges matter and energy with its environment), but the system concerned processes
The concept of functional differentiation The concept of functional differentiation is fundamental to Luhmann’s social systems. He contends that in modern times, to deal with its own internal complexity, a social system creates distinctions (boundaries) within itself, thus replicating within the initial creation of the boundary of the system with its environment. The replication of a boundary within leads to functionally differentiated sub-systems, each of which shares the overall system’s mode of communication but are functionally specialised and distinct such as the legal system, the economic system, the political system, the scientific system, the 31
32 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design artistic system, the religious system and so on. Each of the functionally differentiated systems develops a binary code to sort communications relevant to itself. For example, the binary code for the legal system is legal/ illegal, for the economic system profit/loss, for political system power/no power, for the scientific system truth/untruth, for the artistic system beauty/ugliness and for the religious system belief/disbelief. All communication that cannot be processed by the respective code of the sub-system is just noise for that functional sub-system. In this sense, the binary code helps a system find ‘meaning’ in communications (Luhmann, 1995). For a particular functional sub-system, all other functional systems exist in their environments. They may ‘irritate’ or ‘perturb’ a sub-system, but the communications that take place within the sub-system is entirely dependent on the communications that exist within that sub-system. For example, climate change can trigger communications that are processed on the binary code of power/ no power within the political system, legal/ illegal within the legal system, truth/untruth within the scientific system, profit/loss within the economic system and beauty/ugliness in the art system. Functional sub-systems further differentiate within themselves to create ever more sub-systems that work based on specific binary codes. These sub-sub-systems allow for selectivity in processing information and are thus a mechanism through which social systems as a whole acquire the capacity to process complexity. Functional systems thus make possible the continuance and evolution of communications which is the mode of operation of autopoietic social systems (Nassehi, 2005).
Types There are two other specific types of social systems that warrant attention. These are ‘organisations’ and ‘interaction’ systems. Organisations are constituted through rules of admission, and they are concerned with ‘decisions’. For an organisation, within a particular contingent situation, a limited range of possibilities for decisions exists. Once a decision is taken the contingency gets fixed in a decision. This decision then constitutes a condition for other decisions in the future, whilst also itself relying on past decisions. Organisations thus connect decisions and through this process angelique chettiparamb
allow functional systems to reduce uncertainty and complexity. They provide the empirical manifestation of functional systems by being able to localise decisions that are important for the functional system (Baraldi et al., 2021). Decisions can be defined by three different decision premises. First are programs which are frameworks for evaluating a decision. They limit the possibilities of communication by setting goals or specifying the conditions that must be met to trigger a decision. Specific communication channels are the second premise. These give decisions a binding character ensuring that they are enacted in the whole organisation. Finally, the members themselves. Though specific roles restrict decision making, the individual makes a difference. Organisationally, this results in specific individual careers. Together the three above decision premises – programs, channels of communication and members – create structures of expectation which allow the organisation to function. Every role is assigned programs (tasks), channels of communication (departments) and members (a person) and as long as all three do not change simultaneously, the organisation can continue to operate and process contingent communications into decisions (Baraldi et al., 2021). The second important social systems are ‘interaction systems’. These are systems that use co-presence to create a boundary and thus delimit themselves. The individuals in an interaction system exist not as independent entities, but as ‘psychically institutionalized social artefacts’ (Luhmann, 1995, 405), thus the exchange is treated as an interaction between two social systems. Interaction systems are episodes in which societal experimentation is possible and thus they make societal evolution possible. ‘Meaning’ is a selection from a host of possibilities and for interaction systems to process meaning they need to be structured in the temporal, factual and social dimension. Temporally, interaction systems are episodical in nature due to the need for co-presence. Therefore, each episode is linked to both past episodes as well as future episodes with which it forms a sequence. In the factual dimension, interaction systems must choose themes for communication which then structure the interaction system. In the social dimension, interaction systems are structured by who participates, which are in turn influenced,
autopoietic social systems and planning thought 33 though not determined by, the wider obligations they have outside the interaction system. In Luhmann’s (1995, 423) words, Interaction systems can contribute to societal evolution or not; they contribute if they initiate the formation of structures that prove successful in the societal system. Without the enormous field of experiment that interactions provide and without the societal negligibility of the cessation of most interactions, societal evolution would be impossible, and to this extent society itself depends on a difference between society and interaction.
Planning Luhmann (1997) discusses planning both as an activity within society and planning as political steering of society. Planning as an activity in society can be observed. However, this activity of self-observation itself can be observed. Planning makes a model of the system to direct itself. The activities of planning make this model visible. Since no system can completely describe itself, planning necessarily leaves things out. When society observes planning, corrections by society for planning’s initial observation are possible. However, planning anticipates its observation and makes corrections accordingly. This introduces ‘double contingency’ for planning which will make it a contested activity. There are always people who are affected by planning, and they will, if possible, change what is planned. It is always also a contingent activity that must be worked out at any given time and space as adequate consensus (Luhmann, 1997). Though Luhmann is, in general, sceptical of planning due to the ‘double contingency’, he admits the possibility of steering due to possibilities for introducing ‘asymmetries’ in distinctions. Asymmetries are the reduction of difference from a given or desired path but also the construction of a difference when a change is induced by introducing a preferred direction. Thus ‘the equalization of educational chances, says the purpose, shall not be reached by decreasing but by increasing the education for all’ (Luhmann, 1997, 46). These asymmetries become ‘principles’ that are forced upon steering by society as a whole through its observation. A few planning theorists have engaged with the theory of autopoiesis in planning. For instance, Chettiparamb (2007) uses the concept of functional systems and interpenetration
to discuss how planners can achieve collaboration across self-referential functional systems; Van Assche and Verschraegen (2008) discuss Luhmann’s views on the limits of planning and steering. Jacobs (2016) discusses the relevance of Luhmann’s systems theoretical perspective for spatial planning in cross-border regions; Chettiparamb (2018) argues that the theory of autopoiesis provides answers that reply to ‘how to’ questions in planning and Chettiparamb (2020) discusses how autopoiesis can allow planners to make sense of empirical situations involving compulsory purchase of land. The theory has also influenced neighbouring disciplines. This is a short introduction to some of the basic concepts of the theory of autopoiesis and the ways in which it has been used in planning. Luhmann’s work is extensive and spans a number of functional systems engaging with a vast range of concepts. It is highly original and aims to provide a theory of modern society that takes into account its complexity. Hopefully this introduction will encourage and help readers to engage with the theory and explore further its relevance for planning. Angelique Chettiparamb
Bibliography Baraldi, C., Corsi, G., & Esposito, E. (2021). Unlocking Luhmann: A keyword introduction to systems theory. Bielefeld University Press. Chettiparamb, A. (2007). Dealing with complexity: An autopoietic view of the people’s planning campaign, Kerala. Planning Theory and Practice, 8(4), 489–508. Chettiparamb, A. (2018). Meta-operations, autopoiesis and neo-systems thinking: What significance for spatial planners? Planning Theory, 17(4), 628–643. Chettiparamb, A. (2020). Autopoietic interaction systems: Micro-dynamics of participation and its limits. International Planning Studies, 25(4), 427–440. Jacobs, J. (2016). Spatial planning in crossborder regions: A systems-theoretical perspective. Planning Theory, 15(1), 68–90. Luhmann, N. (1995). Social systems. Stanford University Press. Luhmann, N. (1997). Limits of steering. Theory, Culture and Society, 14(1), 41–57. angelique chettiparamb
34 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design Luhmann, N. (2018). Organization and decision. In D. Baecker (Ed.), R. Barrett (translation). Cambridge University Press. Nassehi, A. (2005). Organizations as decision machines: Niklas Luhmann’s theory of organized social systems. The Sociological Review, 53(1_suppl), 178–191. Rasch, W., & Wolfe, C. (Eds.). (2000). Observing complexity. Systems theory and postmodernity. University of Minnesota Press.
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Van Assche, K., & Verschraegen, G. (2008). The limits of planning: Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory and the analysis of planning and planning ambitions. Planning Theory, 7(3), 263–283. See also: systems perspectives, self-organization, identity, narrative, social-ecological systems, rhetoric, complexity, institutions
11. Big data and machine learning
potentially telling of something (Mackenzie, 2017). The question of which pieces of data become related is a matter not of predefined conceptual frameworks but rather of statistical operations that traverse the data space. New data entering the space, or older data being discarded, may render new outcomes. The ‘remixing’ (Mackenzie, 2017) of different types of data and of various collections or sets of data is one of the key aspects of big data, as is the transformation of entire datasets when combined with other sets in various ways.
Introduction The abundance of data and burgeoning availability of computational power regarding all aspects of urban life has made big data analytics and machine learning available to a much bigger audience than ever before. Data is generated from many sources, e.g., local (e.g., traffic counters) and global sensors (e.g., satellites), individual devices (e.g., mobile phones) and user-generated (e.g., social media). In principle, this could offer a wealth of data to any urban and regional planner. In reality, there are considerable hurdles to overcome before that data may become useful. For starters, the data is unsorted and dissimilar, as such requiring considerable processing. This may be done via machine learning. This chapter discusses the nature of big data and machine learning (in contrast to e.g., common automation). We provide brief explanations of the core operations of big data, algorithms and machine learning, and discuss the transformations that take place throughout the process of turning raw data into machine operations. Besides the technical complexities, we argue that those technologies deserve great scrutiny as they may produce adverse effects without much transparency.
Algorithms The if–then rules that sort, classify, categorise and relate data in the data space in order to render predictions are called algorithms. Those algorithms can be simple or complicated and may be combined. There is nothing novel about the algorithms as such but advances in computing technology mean that massive amounts of data can be processed quicker than ever before. When it comes to the algorithms deployed in big datasets, a principal distinction can be made between reactive systems, i.e., algorithms that trigger an automated response; and pre-emptive systems, i.e., algorithms that utilise historic data to infer predictions about future behaviour (Yeung, 2018). Examples found of the first kind are strewn across many cities. For example, a speed trap camera (sensor) may register the speed of cars passing by (data). A decision rule that categorises cars running above the speed limit as offenders is an algorithm that operates a reactive system. An example of a pre-emptive system could be the use of different types of sensors to monitor a city’s water delivery system to predict at what spots leakage may occur soon (Priyanka et al., 2021).
Sensors and (big) data Technology requires input of some kind to function. In the case of digital technology, such input comes in the shape of empirical data collected through sensors. Sensors come in many shapes and forms, ranging from traffic loop detectors to ticket gates, to GSM-antenna readings of smartphones being carried around. While such data can tell planners and administrators something about the city when treated in isolation, it is the combination of various separate and disparate data streams that can bring about surprising insights. Volumes of data consisting of dissimilar data that are constantly in flux, i.e., data being added to the database and removed again, that are very large, and that are not prestructured are generally referred to as big data. Together, these data form a high-dimensional data space in which every piece of data in its juxtaposition with other pieces of data is
Machine learning When algorithms that sort, classify and relate data come together render predictions out of an unstructured, diverse and dynamic dataset, it is called machine learning (Flach, 2012; Mitchell, 2013). Machine learning comes in two principal categories. Supervised learning sees human operators process an initial dataset somewhat representative of the larger dataset such that the main if–then rules are set. Human training of the machine has at its advantage that operators are much quicker at recognising what data represents, thus giving 35
36 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design the machine a solid basis for processing the larger dataset. The predictions rendered are then checked against the actual outcomes such that the fit between the data and the predictions can be improved. The disadvantage is that there is still a need for considerable input from those operators, which is initially time-consuming. When there is no human operator involved in the processing of data, this is called unsupervised learning. The machine still tests the predictions against the actual outcomes but does so without intervention. It is expected that the machine will get better over time as it builds a library of what data may be related, as such speeding up the processing of new data that comes in. Unsupervised learning is extremely hard to get done correctly compared to supervised learning. Supervised learning is therefore more prevalent in real-world applications.
Critique The promises of big data and machine learning in urban and regional planning are immense. One can imagine how much more factual knowledge a planner could consider when developing plans. There is also a lofty promise that machine learning could come up with new solutions to spatial problems. However, the potential is not fulfilled. In reality there are many hurdles. These issues can be divided into two broad categories: technical limitations, and the social embedding of technology. Technical limitations: Technically, there are quite a few limitations. For starters, classification of data, while very easy for human operators, is extremely hard for machines and it takes considerable time for the machine to be successful. Secondly, machine learning is prone to bias as it seeks confirmation rather than deviation of patterns (Kolkman, 2020). This can happen in both supervised and unsupervised learning. Recent scandals in predictive policing expose the weaknesses inherent in machine learning. An example can be found in Ferguson (2017) where the machine drew very crude conclusions about the cooccurrence of crime in neighbourhoods populated by a specific demographic. Predictions are made on the basis of historical data, thus perpetuating old truths instead of discovering news ones. The third problem is related to the second, namely that normalisation may occur once the predictions are followed up by lasse gerrits and sofia pagliarin
planners and administrators (Coglianese & Lehr, 2017). Predictive policing is very much a textbook example of self-fulfilling prophecies generated by the machine. Fourthly, the focus on learning from data cloaks the fact that ‘forgetting’ is very difficult and underdeveloped (Bourtoule et al., 2019). The machine’s algorithms are trained on existing datasets. As mentioned before, these databases may be dynamic with new data added continuously. But while older data can be discarded, the machine cannot stop knowing what it has gathered from those older data. That is, the algorithms were developed on the basis of said data and continue to be in place even after the data have been discarded. Last but not least, machines struggle to explain how a certain prediction has come about. Given the vast amounts of data and the many computational operations taking place, it is nigh impossible for the machine to give an intelligible explanation for its outcomes (Beierle et al., 2003). Planners may rely on their output but cannot know how that output was established. This could be a problem if the recommendations are turned into plans. Social limitations: The technical limitations point to another set of limitations, namely on the side of the users and the ways in which it is deployed in decision-making (Gerrits, 2020). For starters, many users lack the knowledge to understand exactly how the technology works and how certain outputs are computed. While machines can make the life of planners convenient, it is never wise to work with something that is not well understood. Users are also poor monitors, which is problematic especially in the case of unsupervised machine learning. It may also induce a kind of passiveness on behalf of the planner who follows the machine’s output without considering its meaning or, worse, claim that ‘it is the data’ in order to justify a decision (Haque & Mantode, 2013). The lack of a comprehensive knowledge base that is constantly updated, i.e., planning capacity in relationship to said technology, means that the actual power lies with the enterprises offering the technologies. This is especially prevalent in city administrations with many things to attend to at the same time. Too many city administrations have bought into smart city technology without understanding it, as such handing over their autonomy to others. The third problem concerns privacy and the freedom of citizens to
big data and machine learning 37 lead their urban life without being closely monitored. Monitoring is a standing practice in many cities across the world, usually for the sake of safety. Big data and machine learning go one step further. Not only does it collect data at the individual level, it also aggregates, synthesises them and attaches a likelihood of a certain outcome to those individual behaviours. This comes with many privacy concerns (Yeung, 2018).
Conclusions This chapter discussed the state of big data and machine learning in relationship to urban and regional planning. While there is considerable hype and some unfulfilled promises around those technologies, there is no denying that they are gaining ground. We discussed some of the main operations involved in transforming sensor data (of any kind of sensor) to predictions for the city. We noted considerable technical problems, as well as significant social limitations. As such, it is not a surprise that big data and machine learning are still something of a niche interest in planning at the time of writing. Considering the rapid development of technology, however, it is likely that the role of those technologies will grow over time. Lasse Gerrits and Sofia Pagliarin
References Beierle, C., Kern-Isberner, G., Bibel, W., & Kruse, R. (2003). Methoden wissensbasierter Systeme: Grundlagen, Algorithmen, Anwendungen (2., überarb. u. erw. Aufl. 2003). Vieweg+Teubner Verlag. Bourtoule, L., Chandrasekaran, V., Choquette-Choo, C., Jia, H., Travers, A., Zhang, B., … Papernot, N. (2019). Machine unlearning. ArXiv:1912.03817 [Cs]. http:// arxiv.org/abs/1912.03817 Coglianese, C., & Lehr, D. (2017). Regulating by robot: Administrative decision
making in the machine-learning era. The Georgetown Law Journal, 105, 78. Ferguson, A. (2017, December 29). Is “Big Data” racist? Why policing by data isn’t necessarily objective. Ars Technica. Flach, P. (2012). Machine learning: The art and science of algorithms that make sense of data. Cambridge University Press. Gerrits, L. (2020). Soul of a new machine: Self-learning algorithms in public administration. Information Polity, 1–14. Haque, A., & Mantode, K. L. (2013). Governance in the technology era: Implications of actor network theory for social empowerment in South Asia. In Y. K. Dwivedi, H. Z. Henriksen, D. Wastell, & R. De’ (Eds.), Grand successes and failures in IT. Public and private sectors (Vol. 402, pp. 375–390). Springer. Kolkman, D. (2020). The usefulness of algorithmic models in policy making. Government Information Quarterly, 37(3), 101488. Mackenzie, A. (2017). Machine learners. MIT Press. https://mitpress.mit.edu/ books /machine-learners Mitchell, T. M. (2013). Machine learning. McGraw-Hill. Priyanka, E. B., Thangavel, S., Madhuvishal, V., Tharun, S., Raagul, K. V., & Shiv Krishnan, C. S. (2021). Application of integrated IoT framework to water pipeline transportation system in smart cities. In J. D. Peter, S. L. Fernandes, & A. H. Alavi (Eds.), Intelligence in Big Data technologies – Beyond the hype (pp. 571– 579). Springer. Yeung, K. (2018). Algorithmic regulation: A critical interrogation: Algorithmic regulation. Regulation & Governance, 12(4), 505–523. See also: methods, modernism, power in planning, power/knowledge, expert knowledge, narrative, ideology, futures, creativity, inclusion/exclusion, assemblage, big Other
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12. Big Other
Language and the orders Other is located in the realm of the symbolic order, that is, social orders and discourses. The symbolic order is one of the three orders – Symbolic, Real and Imaginary (see the desire, drive and disavowal entry) – on which Lacan based his work. ‘The signifier is the constitutive unit of the symbolic order’ (Evans, 2006 [1996], 189); however, there are not ‘any fixed relations between signifier and signified’ (Evans, 2006 [1996], 204). The symbolic order is a heterogeneous domain, a universe of symbols and relations. For Lacan, the symbolic is the realm of language, social structures and social bonds, law and regulations, as well as Other (hegemonic ideology), which together constitute culture and society. Lacan (2006) developed the Saussurean linguistic formula based on two elements – the signifier and the signified – to express his own psychoanalytical approach. According to Lacan, a signifier does not refer directly to the signified; rather, it refers to another signifier(s) which it generates in an endless process of signification as signifying chains. ‘A signifying chain can never be complete, since it is always possible to add another signifier to it’ (Evans, 2006 [1996], 190). Namely, a signifier represents a subject for another signifier rather than presenting something for someone. The signified is logically produced as ‘a mere effect of the play of signifiers, an effect of the process of signification’ (Evans, 2006 [1996], 189). Furthermore, for Lacan (Evans, 2006 [1996], 189), language is a system of signifiers and ‘the effects of the signifier on the subject constitute the unconscious, and hence also constitute the whole of the field of psychoanalysis’. Consequently, the Other is the field of the signifiers and signifying chains, language and hegemonic discourses, norms, values and ideologies. Other is always incomplete: there are missing signifiers in the chain of signifiers.
Definitions The Lacanian concept of the Other provides an effective analytical concept by which planning theorists and policy analysts are able to cover both subjective and objective dimensions of plans and policies. Lacan borrowed the term ‘Other’ from Hegel (Evans, 2006 [1996]). The history of the concept of other (non-capitalised) goes back to Hegel’s master–slave dialectical bonds as a constituent of a subject and its self-consciousness (Kojève & Queneau, 1969). Namely, what defines a subject is his/her relationship with other subjects (in a philosophical interpretation of being human) or other actors in a society. Otherness or other refers to another subject outside of our community or outside of our norms and constituted discourses, that is an unknown subject or unfamiliar discourse that might be seen as a potential threat to us. However, for Lacan, the other referred to a pole between a ‘subject–object dialectic, to alterity in general and, usually when capitalised (big Other), [it refers] to the “symbolic order” and unconscious’ (Payne & Barbera, 2010, 521). ‘Lacan equates Other as the radical alterity with language and the law’ (Evans, 2006 [1996]). Other (big Other) is not another subject but is designated as ‘a locus, the locus in which speech is constituted’ (Lacan, 1993, 272). In the Lacanian clinical perspective, the mother occupies this locus of Other for the child, a perfect subject who responds to the child’s demands; however, as soon as the child discovers this Other is incomplete, another entity may take on this locus for the subject. In fact, any actors may occupy this position, including our colleagues and other agents in society such as leaders, market interests, decision-making institutions, government, laws, values, norms, the word of God (religions), as well as hegemonic ideologies. When Lacan states that ‘speech originates not in the ego or even in the subject, but in the Other, [he] is stressing that speech and language are beyond one’s conscious control; they come from another place, outside consciousness, and hence from the unconsciousness that is the discourse of the Other’ (Evans, 2006 [1996], 136). Lacan (2006, 10) emphasised that ‘the unconscious is the Other’s discourse’.
No matter how many signifiers one adds to the signifying chain, the chain is always incomplete; it always lacks the signifier that could complete it. Lacan introduces the algebraic symbol for the barred Other A to show the incompleteness of Other. This ‘missing signifier’ S(A) (in Lacanian algebra) is constitutive of the subject. (Evans, 2006 [1996], 99)
38
big other 39
Desire and planning and the Other Importantly, desire (see the desire, drive and disavowal entry) first emerges in the field of the Other, such as law, government and the dominant ideology. It means although the subject desires to fill the lack in the symbolic order (for example the lack of affordable housing in the current economic situation), the subject unconsciously acts in a compatible manner with the desire of the Other. In fact, the Other commands the subject to reflect the Other’s desire. Since the dominant ideology occupies the society’s unconscious and commands individuals to behave in a certain way, the desire still exists in relation to other actors in the society. Therefore, desire is a social product under a hegemonic ideology that is the realm of Other. ‘Desire is not the private affair it appears to be but is always constituted in a dialectical relationship with the perceived desires of other subjects [and Other] in a society’ (Evans, 2006 [1996], 39). This explains why we as individuals desire to conform and to please Other (dominant rules, laws, norms and values), by giving society what we think it wants, so we can belong to a community and connect with others. Gunder (2003, 2010) and Gunder and Hillier (2004) argue that policy makers and planners make plans and policies in a way that accommodates the desire of the Other, such as societal legitimisation and prestige, neoliberal ideology and its fantasies (e.g., sustainability, liveable city, democracy for all among many other fantasies), government strategies, norms, values and orders. Based on the Lacanian concept of the desire of Other, the authors discuss ethical features of the planning profession that are also ethics of the Real, or the ethics of enjoyment from the lack in the symbolic order. In fact, planning
ontologically emanated from the desire to fill the deficiencies or lack (see the desire, drive and disavowal entry) in the hegemonic discourse of capitalism. In this manner, planning produces fantasies to make and sustain this hegemonic discourse as a complete discourse. Accordingly, planning tends to align with the hegemonic reasoning of the market, which encourages profit maximisation. Elham Bahmanteymouri
References Evans, D. (2006 [1996]). An introductory dictionary of Lacanian psychoanalysis. Routledge. Gunder, M. (2003). Passionate planning for the others’ desire: An agonistic response to the dark side of planning. Progress in Planning, 60(3), 235–319. Gunder, M. (2010). Planning as the ideology of (neoliberal) space. Planning Theory, 9(4), 298–314. Gunder, M., & Hillier, J. (2004). Conforming to the expectations of the profession: A Lacanian perspective on planning practice, norms and values. Planning Theory & Practice, 5(2), 217–235. Kojève, A., & Queneau, R. (1969). Introduction to the reading of Hegel. Basic Books. Lacan, J. (1993). The psychoses: The seminar. Book III. 1955–56. Routledge. Lacan, J. (2006). Ecrits. Norton. Payne, M., & Barbera, J. (2010). A dictionary of cultural and critical theory (2nd ed.). Wiley-Blackwell. See also: desire, dialogue, participation, ideology, narrative, line of flight, modernism, power in planning, power/knowledge, critical planning, advocacy planning
elham bahmanteymouri
13. Biophilic urbanism
world. We might say then that Biophilic Cities are ‘cities that love nature.’ There is a growing body of research and evidence that demonstrates the power of nature and the many benefits provided by nature. Roger Ulrich’s pioneering study of the recovery of gallbladder surgery patients is often cited as the beginning of much of this work: finding that patients with rooms with views of nature (as opposed to rooms with a view of a brick wall) recovered more quickly and needed fewer painkillers (e.g., Ulrich, 1984). A large body of more recent research confirms and amplifies this healing and restorative power of nature (e.g., see Williams, 2018). In a study published in BioScience, for example, greener, more biophilic urban neighborhoods are associated with lower levels of depression, anxiety and stress (for example, Cox et al., 2017). The design and planning implications of biophilia are considerable. Yale professor Stephen Kellert developed a set of experiences and characteristics of Biophilic Design (Kellert & Calabrese, 2015). In this framework, there are direct experiences of nature (seeing or hearing an animal), indirect experiences (plant and animal images, natural colors and materials) and experiences of space and place. Kellert’s typology and writing remain an important typology, though there have been more recent frameworks helpful in applying biophilic design principles, especially the 15 Patterns of Biophilic Design, developed by Bill Browning and colleagues at Bright Terrapin Green (e.g., see Bright Terrapin Green, undated). These patterns encapsulate much of the evidence of what humans have evolved to prefer in terms of nature and landscapes. They include for instance the theory of Prospect and Refuge (included in both the Kellert and Browning frameworks): that humans on the one hand prefer expansive landscapes with wide and distant views (‘prospect’ and the ability to see enemies and danger), and on the other safe spaces (‘refuge’) from which to be hidden from view. Biophilia holds that many of the things in nature we are attracted to and find beauty in are signals of their evolutionary value. We are drawn to flowers and to water, for example because in the deeper evolutionary history of our species these have signaled an abundance
Introduction Biophilic Urbanism begins from the premise that nature is not optional, but an essential element of human life and as such must be present in the cities and urban neighborhoods where humans increasingly live. It is a vision for future global urbanism that reimagines cities as ecosystems, and urban buildings and neighborhoods embedded in nature, where residents are immersed and surrounded by a seamless web of nature. The vision seeks to overcome the modern disconnect from nature and to return to an understanding of humans as not separate from but an essential part of nature. Wildness and proximity to many other forms of (nonhuman) life are seen as important qualities of cities. Biophilic Urbanism, or Biophilic Cities, can also be understood as a global movement of cities. The Biophilic Cities Network was officially launched in 2013 and now includes 26 ‘partner cities’ (which apply for membership), as well as several thousand individual members and several hundred organizations (who simply sign an online pledge). Activities of the Network include sharing of innovation and best practice, for instance through an online journal (Biophilic Cities Journal) and short documentary films. Cities in the Network work together to advance the vision of natureful cities in many different ways, including through city-to-city agreements, hosting visiting delegations and participating together in activities and events, such as thematic working groups and monthly partner city calls, among others (e.g., see BiophilicCities.org). The starting point for Biophilic Urbanism is the concept of Biophilia, or what Harvard entomologist and conservationist E.O. Wilson defines as ‘the innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes,’ in his foundational book by the same name (Wilson, 1984, 1). Wilson is responsible for popularizing this idea – that as a species we have coevolved with nature and are drawn to and respond to essential biophilic qualities such as trees and greenery, birdsong and the presence of water. The shorthand is: ‘a love of nature,’ and if we attach cities or urbanism, we imagine places that reflect this innate attraction to the natural 40
biophilic urbanism 41 of food and resources, and ultimately the fitness of a landscape or place to sustain human survival. Biophilic qualities are also multisensory, so they include, for instance, sounds from nature, from rustling leaves to birdsong to the rush of water from a stream or waterfall. From this growing evidence about the power of nature, it is increasingly argued that design must work to include natural features and elements: trees, natural light, plants and greenery and water, among other elements. Biophilic Design generally refers to efforts to include nature elements at the scale of the building or site. Increasingly there is recognition that homes and offices should be designed to include nature, such as operable windows with views of nature, interior greenery and ecological design elements such as vertical gardens and rooftop meadows. There are many impressive examples of biophilic design at the building or project scale, and especially seen in the work of firms such as WOHA, Vo Trong Nghia, MVRDV and CookFox, among others.
What is a Biophilic City? A Biophilic City, however, is more than a city of many biophilic buildings. The vision and practice of Biophilic Cities is spatially broader and more comprehensive. It seeks to protect, grow and celebrate nature in all or most species of a city, including between and beyond buildings. From room/rooftop to region/bioregion, Biophilic Urbanism seeks to achieve a continuous and seamless natural system. A Biophilic City is a city where every building or site works to maximize connection to the natural world. A Biophilic City then is a nature-rich city, with abundant biodiversity, and where nature integrated into all or most of the spaces of the city, from rooftops and building facades to larger ecological features such as rivers and forests. It is more ecologically holistic and integrative and emphasizes ecological connections and connectivity between built and natural elements in the city (the rooftop meadow connects with the forest canopy which connects to ground level parks and nature). The city is understood as an ecological system, in which humans live and work, and in this way the vision works to overcome the usual sense of humans being separate from or apart from nature. In a Biophilic City,
residents are immersed in nature, and embedded in the natural world. Nature is all around us in cities and often in places we may not at first imagine it to be: it is above us in treetops and below our feet in diverse microbial life of soil. It includes marine and aquatic life that may be difficult to see or directly experience. It is a dynamic nature, in the sense that it is changing by the hour, day and season: it can be found at night in the nocturnal mammals moving around the city, for instance, and in the millions of birds migrating through the city at night, at specific times of the year. The city is understood as a three-dimensional habitat. An important element of Biophilic Urbanism is the important role that nonhuman life plays, and the important ways in which cities are envisioned as places of habitat. Biophilic Cities are rich in biodiversity and conservation of biodiversity is a priority at the scale of building, site and city. Evidence suggests, for instance, that humans enjoy birdsong, and the greater the diversity of the birdsong the more pleasurable (e.g., Ferraro et al., 2020). Partly this multispecies aspect of Biophilic Cities draws from an ethical sense of the care for nonhuman life. In Biophilic Cities there is an ethical duty to work towards coexistence, making room for other animals and biodiversity. Wildness is also a key goal and element of the vision as well. Rather than invoking more traditional notions of Wilderness (such as expressed in the US Wilderness Act of 1964), that see nature as pristine, distant and remote, and absent of humans (i.e., a faraway place to periodically visit). Wildness, on the other hand, understands the force and power and wonder of nature all around us, where we live in cities. It might be expressed through the improbable behavior of an urban bird or the immense hydrologic force of an urban river flowing (and sometimes flooding), or from a vacant lot or other urban space allowed to return to a native forest. A related idea can be seen in the power of awe. We ought to want to live in places where we are surprised by what we see and experience, by the immensity and vastness of the natural world. A Biophilic City is a place, ideally, where there are many opportunities to see and experience awe: from a glimpse of an urban whale or dolphin to an appreciation of the remarkable ant life in cities. A Biophilic City both works to ensure the presence of timothy beatley
42 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design awe-inducing nature, and also invests in programs and initiatives that ensure that residents experience this nature. We know as well that nature in cities is not fairly distributed. Especially in American cities where long standing segregation (and the practice of redlining) and systemic racism have led to vastly different experiences of and access to nature. In neighborhoods of color tree canopy cover and access to parks and greenspace is often dramatically lower (e.g., Locke et al., 2021). Correcting these inequities is a priority in a Biophilic City and can be seen especially in the recent work in many cities to establish minimum tree canopy cover and to focus tree planting and the establishment of new parks in underserved neighborhoods. Biophilic Urbanism seeks, as well, to propel residents outside. Inside lives are a reality in most cities (by many accounts we spend 90 percent or more of our day inside). Cities like Edmonton, Canada, a partner city in the Biophilic Cities Network, have adopted plans and policies (and a Winter Strategy) to entice residents outside, to enjoy the outside natural world at times of the year when snow and cold weather discourage it (e.g., Beatley, 2017). Biophilic Cities are also defined importantly by the relationships and connections residents have with the nature around them, not simply by the presence or absence of nature. This includes the ways residents connect with (or not) the nature around them, the extent to which they recognize and care about this nature, and the actions and commitments they make to protect and restore this nature. The vision of Biophilic Urbanism, then, can be said to be defined in part by achieving a Biophilic Culture. Equally true, a Biophilic City can be defined by the priorities and commitments of its leaders and governance decisions. What actions, commitments and ordinances are adopted by the city to protect nature within its borders? What portion of a city’s budget is devoted to protecting, restoring and celebrating the nature in a city. A Biophilic City can be judged in part by its decisions, policies and laws. Examples include the adoption of mandatory bird-safe design standards in cities like San Francisco, Toronto and New York, and local budgets that set aside minimum resources for biodiversity conservation. Many cities are also establishing new leadership positions aimed at giving nature a greater timothy beatley
voice and focus on local decisions (e.g., for instance, Los Angeles recently appointing a City Forest Officer, or Vancouver’s appointment of a standing Bird Committee).
Critique of Biophilic Cities? There are several lines of critique that are often leveled at Biophilic City advocates. Some question the premise that close proximity to nature is viewed as desirable for many or most residents of cities. Some would say contemporary urban society is characterized more by biophobia, or a fear of nature, than biophilia. There are also critical views expressed about the vision of immersive nature. In cities like Singapore, there are undesired consequences of immersive nature – for instance, a worry that high-canopy urban forests serve to contain and trap air pollutants from autos. There is a strong strand of critique that expresses a deep concern about the gentrification and displacement effects of investing in more nature in cities (what might be described as the ‘High Line effect’). Even among biophilic advocates there is a recognition of the need to address these kinds of unintended consequences. There is a variety of practical questions that often arise. Who (or how) will extensive urban green programs be paid for and what about the financial and other costs connected with maintaining a biophilic urban environment, such as a green street or rooftop meadow? Biophilic Design has sometimes been criticized for its overly anthropocentric perspective, which emphasizes the physical and mental health benefits of access to nature. These benefits are real and increasingly recognized by the medical community through nature prescriptions. There is no question that natural elements such as large trees and abundant bird life deliver immense personal health benefits. This has been especially apparent during the global Covid pandemic as more people have sought the respite and solace of parks and nature. Yet, the vision of Biophilic Cities is as much biocentric as it is anthropocentric: it recognizes that there is an ethical duty to make room for and coexist with many other species, and that birds and nature have inherent moral value irrespective of the positive benefits they provide for humans. Others have questioned whether the vision and practice of Biophilic Urbanism, as applied in the more affluent cities of the Global North,
biophilic urbanism 43 is relevant or applicable to conditions of the Global South, where conditions of poverty and prevalence of informal housing dominate. A legitimate complaint to a certain degree, there is a strong case to be made that biophilic and nature-based solutions are even more relevant in such cities as nature helps address serious problems in food security, water and energy scarcity and community-based economic development (for some examples, see Beatley, 2017). The Biophilic City as a vision is adapting to some critiques, for instance its tendency to focus on local nature (trees along the street, green walls, protection of local birdlife) without much connection with or concern about how nature is unraveling at the global level. There are now calls for truly nature-loving cities to take steps to protect more distant nature, and in fact one of Wilson’s powerful parallel ideas is Half-Earth or setting aside half of the planet for nature (see Wilson, 2017). Biophilic Cities must increasingly also be understood as ‘Half-Earth Cities’ that work to protect global as well as local nature (e.g., see Beatley & Brown, 2021). Timothy Beatley
References Beatley, T. (2017). Handbook of biophilic city planning and design. Island Press. Beatley, T., & Brown, J. D. (2021). The halfearth city. Environmental Law and Policy Review, 45, 775–819.
Cox, D. T., et al. (2017). Doses of neighborhood nature: The benefits for mental health of living with nature. BioScience, 67(2), 147–155. Ferraro, D. M., et al. (2020). The phantom chorus: Birdsong boosts human well-being in protected areas. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 287, 20201811. Kellert, S., & Calabrese, E. (2015). The practice of biophilic design. London: Terrapin Bright LLC, 3, 21–46. Locke, D., et al. (2021). Residential housing segregation and urban tree canopy in 37 US cities. npj Urban Sustain, 1, 15. Terrapin Bright Green. (undated). 14 patterns of biophilic design. https:// www.terrapinbrightgreen.com/reports/14 -patterns/ Ulrich, R. (1984). View through a window may influence recovery from surgery. Science, 224(4647), 420–421. Williams, F. (2018). The nature fix: Why nature makes us happier, healthier, and more creative. W.W. Norton. Wilson, E. O. (1984). Biophilia: The human bond with other species. Harvard University Press. Wilson, E. O. (2017). Half-earth: Our planet’s fight for life. Liveright. See also: conservation design, smart growth, garden city, ideology, infrastructure, narrative, social-ecological systems, transitions, transversality
timothy beatley
14. Biopolitics
Genealogies Diverse genealogical trajectories of the emergence of the term ‘biopolitics’ are offered by different fields and in relation to the various national academic contexts. However, according to many key sources, the term was first advanced in the second decade of the twentieth century by political scientist Rudolf Kjellén, who was possibly influenced by the German Lebenphilosophie tradition and, more broadly, by the organic theory of the state that was popular in many scientific and political circles during that period. While Thomas Lemke (2010) argues that the concept of biopolitics emerges in particular from Kjellén’s organicist idea of the state as a ‘living form’, Italian political philosopher Roberto Esposito (2008) suggests that this process of ‘biologization’ of politics in Kjellén’s work must be read by taking into consideration also the influence of Jakob von Uexkiill, who in 1920 famously suggested that the German state’s vital needs should be compared to those of a human body. Kjellén is notoriously also acknowledged as the scholar who coined the term ‘geopolitics’, a term that would gain enormous currency in Germany and the rest of Europe in the decades to follow and that was presented as a typical manifestation of an organic understanding of the state according to which geography and biology merged and conflated in supporting the idea of a nation’s vital and living space. This was an approach to life and politics that would tragically be associated with the thanatopolitical practices of Hitler’s Third Reich, a true ‘biocracy’ according to Esposito. Biopolitical, as a term and as an analytical framework, fundamentally disappeared from post-war academia, possibly because it was associated with its infamous and genocidal applications. Only in the 1970s would French philosopher Michel Foucault, with a series of pathbreaking interventions, propose the concept of biopolitics as a critical way to describe the modern state’s politics of life and the related government of the population. His 1976 essay ‘Right of Death and Power over Life’ has been for long considered as a key text in opening the social sciences and humanities to biopolitical understandings of past and contemporary regimes of population government. For Foucault, in fact, a whole system of surveillance, inspections, classification and reports was established at the end of the seventeenth century and during the course
Definitions In the past three decades the concept of biopolitics has become increasingly relevant in the social sciences and humanities. Biopolitics concerns all aspects of the politicization of life. A biopolitical perspective is therefore often adopted to critically engage with questions of population and body management, including biosecurity, public health and the welfare state. The relevant literature therefore considers biopolitics as both an analytical framework and an increasingly pervasive strategy and governmental tool in late modern societies. The politicization of life is in fact directly implicated in the determination of family values, abortion and euthanasia, but also detention, social discrimination and individual body politics. The academic work on biopolitics, despite some disciplinary differences, is broadly characterized by some fundamentally common starting points. First, Michel Foucault’s writings are generally recognized as the original source of the current interest in biopolitics and of the alleged ‘biopolitical turn’ in some academic fields. Second, while fundamentally rejecting any deterministic and merely biological understanding of politics (as advanced in the past by some positivistic work in political science), this literature nonetheless acknowledges the need to investigate in depth the relationship between science, and the life sciences in particular, in shaping ideas of the social and of governmentality adopted by modern states, starting from the nineteenth century. Third, there exists some consensus around the fact that a large part of this recent interest for the biopolitical has been ignited, on the one hand, by the emergence of ever-new biomedical horizons that have opened the ground to forms of management of life in need of adequate conceptualizations; on the other, by the widespread use of biometrics and biosecurity devices in relation to the war on terror launched by the Bush administration after the attacks of 9/11. More recently, biopolitical perspectives have also been used to engage with questions related to the global mobility of migrants and refugees, and questions concerning the political responses to the Covid-19 pandemic. 44
biopolitics 45 of the eighteenth century in order to classify and qualify people as population and politicize their lives as one of the main tasks attributed to the state. He identified this system as the emerging of a new technology of power, as a true ‘biopolitics’. Giorgio Agamben’s writings – which gained center stage in critical academic fora trying to reconceptualize ‘the political’ in light of the post 9/11 explicit and pervasive reemergence of spaces of exception across the globe – have been key in reformulating Foucault’s work on these topics, bringing questions of biopolitics to the core of contemporary debates in political philosophy and beyond. While Agamben (1998) links the exercise of sovereign power with the realization of modern biopolitical regimes, a series of other interventions (also penned by Italian political philosophers) has taken the discussion on biopolitics to different conceptual shores. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri in Empire (2000), for instance, describe a new stage of capitalism – a sort of biocapitalism – marked by the merging of economics and politics, (bio)creativity and the human body. Roberto Esposito’s numerous essays on immunity and the biopolitical have instead been influential in the recent focus on manifestations of ‘affirmative politics of life’. Other important scholarly work has also critically reread Foucault in light of recent technological and political developments, proposing new interpretations of contemporary forms of biopolitics. These include, among many others, Donna Haraway’s speculations on the postmodern body, Nikolas Rose’s work on ‘the politics of life itself’, and Achille Mbembe’s considerations on the implementation of necropolitics. The impact of these and many other interventions had been often presented as a ‘biopolitical turn’ in diverse realms of intellectual investigation in the social sciences and the humanities.
governance of refugees, asylum seekers and stateless individuals. Accordingly, a biopolitical framework has been adopted to study a whole set of different camps, from Auschwitz to Guantanamo, to refugee camps across the globe, as well as spaces of humanitarian intervention. While new perspectives on ‘biological citizenship’ and post-citizenship have contributed to emerging debates on the biopolitical, recent research has also offered a biopolitical perspective on more-than-human geographies and animal geographies, including reflections over past and contemporary policies of ‘rewilding’ nature. In conservation biology, biopolitics has also inspired reflection on environmental risk and safety, and the realization of ‘biopolitical environmental citizens’. While most of this critical literature seems to endorse a rather ‘negative’ understanding of biopolitics, presenting it as a form of power to be contested for its violent penetration into everyone’s life and the associated body politics, at the same time, it is important to note that work largely inspired by feminist theory has productively linked affective politics to the emergence of forms of ‘affirmative biopolitics’, where the biopolitical is recognized as a potential domain of individual and collective empowerment and a different type of politics may be advanced. Overall, in light of the rapid biotechnological developments affecting all aspects of our everyday life and of the expansion of geopolitical interventionism on a global scale in order to counteract terrorism and to respond to global health crises, the biopolitical turn may have a significant impact on the social sciences and the humanities also for the decades to come. Claudio Minca
Enter the empirical
Agamben, G. (1998). Homo Sacer. Stanford University Press. Campbell, T., & Sitze, A. (Eds.). (2013). Biopolitics: A reader. Duke University Press. Esposito, R. (2008). Bios: Biopolitics and philosophy. University of Minnesota Press. Lemke, T. (2010). Bio-politics: An advanced introduction. NYU Press. Minca, C. (2015). The Biopolitical imperative. In J. Agnew et al. (Ed.), A companion to
As a result of this ‘turn’, a growing body of conceptual but also empirical work has accordingly focused on the proliferation of spaces of exception, carceral geographies, new forms of bordering and border management, as well the government of people’s mobilities. Questions of individual life and body politics have often been discussed in research on migration control and the
Bibliography
claudio minca
46 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design political geography (pp. 165–186). Wiley Blackwell. See also: power/knowledge, big Other, inclusion/exclusion, earthly attachments and the
claudio minca
Anthropocene, ideology, social-ecological systems, strategy, method, social justice, environmental justice, indigenous planning, colonial legacies, post-colonialism
15. Blueprint planning
A history of critiques Critiques of blueprint planning are common and diverse. The lack of flexibility and adaptivity has been criticized frequently, and both the process leading up to the plan and the process of implementation afterwards were targeted. Since Wildavsky and others’ dissection of implementation in the 1970s, the implementation process has been understood more as a process of co-evolution, while the process of plan formation was expected to become more participatory, in order to accommodate different interests and forms of knowledge. Proponents of social-ecological systems and resilience thinking argued for the building of adaptive capacity in governance, while procedural planning theorists argued that what ought to be optimized were procedures, or spatial forms. In line with Wildavsky, complexity theory and systems theory would argue that blueprint planning is problematic because, within a governance system, there is always imperfect self-awareness, imperfect understanding of the environment the plan is expected to transform and imperfect understanding of the relations and feedback loops between the governance systems and the embedded social and ecological systems. This means that unexpected shifts within governance or community might happen, which erode the support for the plan, and that unanticipated effects of the plan are likely to occur, in the sense that something different might happen in physical space, or that the interpretation of the result might be different from the original intention. Kristof Van Assche, Raoul Beunen and Martijn Duineveld, Editors
Origins Blueprint planning has roots in both architecture and engineering and is often associated with either technocratic or design-oriented approaches to planning. In blueprint planning, procedures for implementation cover detail and structure, and decision-makers can see from the outset what the result of the plan would be. Approaches that understand the implementation of policies and plans as a clear and simple process, as linear or predictable, are often associated with ideas of blueprint planning: one requires a blueprint which can then be ‘implemented’. Blueprint planning as design can be traced to the early modern nation states, where power and expertise became centralized to such extent that new neighbourhoods and whole cities could be designed and built under the same organizational umbrella, under the auspices of the ruler. Architects became planners, yet without much of the balancing of interests we now associate with planning, except for the balancing of interests within court and administration. With the expansion of bureaucracies in the eighteenth century and the proliferation of public works and public health measures in the nineteenth century, emerging democracies (in Western contexts) became more expert-driven and more leaning towards blueprint solutions for various social and economic problems. Blueprint planning started to serve as a tool for policy integration, whereby various issues could be addressed in one spatialized policy, a design. Blueprint planning in the later twentieth century became associated with modernism of the substantive sort, starting from the idea that spatial organization could be optimized based on technical expertise. Thus, a perfect spatial organization could be defined, largely independent of context, and, where enough expertise was available, blueprints could be produced which would address the observed problems and potentials of a site in an objectively superior manner. Under so-called high modernism, this was upscaled to the level of the territory of the nation, which could be optimized in such manner. A ‘correct’ spatial organization, as in the Soviet jargon, comes out of such high modernist large scale planning.
Bibliography Chaffin, B. C., Gosnell, H., & Cosens, B. A. (2014). A decade of adaptive governance scholarship: Synthesis and future directions. Ecology and Society, 19(3). Harrison, P., & Croese, S. (2022). The persistence and rise of master planning in urban Africa: Transnational circuits and local ambitions. Planning Perspectives, 1–23. Pressman, J. L., & Wildavsky, A. (1984). Implementation [etc]. University of California Press. Scott, J. C. (2008). Seeing like a state. Yale University Press. 47
48 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design Van Assche, K., Verschraegen, G., & Gruezmacher, M. (2021). Strategy for collectives and common goods: Coordinating strategy, long-term perspectives and policy domains in governance. Futures, 128, 102716.
See also: central planning, design, expertise, ideology, policy integration, regional design, strategy, new urbanism, modernism, futures
kristof van assche, raoul beunen and martijn duineveld
16. Boundary organisation
Boundary organisations The concept of boundary organisations is grounded in constructivist science and technology studies. Scholars in this tradition have convincingly argued that what sets science apart from non-science is not the result of a set of essential features or methods. Gieryn (1983), resonating symbolic interactionism, argued that the cognitive authority of science over truth is the result of effective ‘boundary work’, a process in which scientists demarcate and defend their work and output as distinct from non-science. This line of thinking also proved useful for the study of scientific advisory organisations (Jasanoff, 1990), in which scientists and policy makers argue over what delineates the ‘scientific’ and ‘political’ aspects of their task. Jasanoff, and many following afterwards, found that the blurring rather than the detachment of both can lead to productive science-based policy making. This raises somewhat of a paradox. Highlighting how science and politics are enmeshed and knowledge claims contingent, may also open up the knowledge claims by these advisory organs as biased threatening their epistemic authority. In that sense it might seem surprising that ‘weakly institutionalised knowledge withstands partisan attacks and manages to keep the engines of policy humming without paralysing conflict or stifling dissent’ (Jasanoff, 2011, p. 307). David Guston (1999) coined the formal entities that link and stabilise the boundary between science and politics ‘boundary organisations’. These organisations, and scientific advisory bodies at large, find themselves confronted with demands of both science and policy. They receive policyrelated assignments, often involving multiple policy dossiers, and need to provide knowledge that is scientifically rigorous and useful for policy at the same time. Also drawing on principal–agent theory, Guston distinguishes three characteristics of such organisations. First, they are sites allowing for coproduction of scientific and social order by creating a space, and possibly the incentives, to work on boundary objects or standardised packages. Boundary objects are flexible enough to be used in different social worlds without losing their identity, such as policy-oriented models or norms. Standardised packages are less plastic and change practices at both sides of the boundary. An example are the protocols for impact assessments. Second, these
Scientific knowledge and the policy process Scientific knowledge is central to many planning controversies. In struggles over new wind parks, infrastructure or hazardous facilities, knowledge claims are often contested. Many complex planning processes depend on science and experts to identify impacts and alternatives, as well as to anticipate future changes. Legislation on land use and natural resources often requires scientific assessments of risks based on ‘best available science’. Unsurprisingly, assessing and evaluating the role of scientific knowledge in policy and planning has attracted a range of academic disciplines. For a long time, experts were seen to contribute to an ongoing rationalisation of the policy process. More evidence-based policies would equal more effective and efficient policies. This modernist perspective, in which science fills a reservoir of knowledge waiting to be applied in policy, is criticised for being unrealistic, undesirable and unfit for contemporary societal problems. Social science has demonstrated how the scientisation of politics went hand in hand with a politicisation of science. Still, linear models inform the popular understanding of the science–policy relationship, as well as many of the theoretical metaphors. Think for instance of the notion of a ‘gap’ between science and politics, seeking to understand why scientific knowledge, even when relevant and communicated timely, is often not used in policy and planning. Both the critique on modernist perspectives as well as the metaphor of a gap raise questions about how to understand the institutional arrangements at the intersection of science and politics. While the need to bring science and policy together is almost beyond dispute nowadays, the understanding of the patterns of exchange and the conditions under which this exchange is effective is, however, limited. ‘Boundary organisations’ often play an important role in that science–policy interface and are advocates as a particularly promising way to reconcile scientific knowledge and effective action (Clark et al., 2016). 49
50 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design organisations involve both scientific and political actors, as well as professionals mediating the two. Third, operating at ‘the frontier of two relatively distinct social worlds’, boundary organisations have a ‘dual accountability’ to both worlds. These double lines should also guarantee their role of mediator. In her work on advisory organisations Jasanoff (1990) explains how the demarcation and negotiation of acceptable ways of exchange between social worlds is central to practices of deconstructing and reconstructing knowledge for policy. Boundary organisations allow both science and politics to construct acceptable exchanges in ways favourable to their own logics and perspectives. They produce ‘serviceable truths’: constructs that pass scientific tests and are tailored to the needs of the policy process but are not primarily intended for the scientific debate (yet may very well have structurating effects in debates in planning disciplines). Besides being epistemically and politically robust, durable claims also need to be socially robust. Scholars observe how boundary organisations have to be responsive to demands for transparency, participation and democratisation in Western societies to uphold an image of legitimacy (Bijker et al., 2009). Often, their output is suggested to be effectively usable only when it is simultaneously perceived as credible, meaning scientifically adequate, salient, meaning relevant and timely for decision makers, and legitimate, meaning acceptable to a divergent set of stakeholders (Cash et al., 2003).
Stretching the concept Boundary organisations proved to be a highly generative concept, with applications in technology transfer, health risk assessment, agricultural extension, natural resources management, climate change adaptation as well as in urban and regional planning. Following the application and criticisation the concept has been elaborated. For the sake of brevity, I focus on three main issues here. First, Guston’s take that boundary organisations operate at the intersection of ‘two relatively distinctive social worlds’ (1999, p. 93) is criticised its tendency of treating science and politics as homogenous and static domains. The norms, practices and discourses in, say, civil engineering, hydrology and climate science (or between policy domains and administrative law) differ fundamentally, and vary across daan boezeman
time and space. Later contributions treated it as an empirical question in which social worlds are involved and how boundary organisations are in a dynamic struggle to meet their demands to uphold an image of legitimacy. Second, progress has been made on articulating the mechanisms that make boundary organisations work. The robustness of claims is suggested to be enhanced by practices such as reciprocal communication, mediation and translation, and by institutional features to create the systematic commitment to those practices and to stimulate members to cooperate (Cash et al., 2003). Think of the rule systems for membership, ownership, conflict resolution and independence (Boezeman et al., 2013). In the process of assembling serviceable truths or boundary objects, boundary organisations offer spaces to deconstruct the facts and values embedded in claims or protocols. Which is followed by coordination across domains to stabilise the credibility and usefulness of its outputs. These practices are to be understood within wider institutional and discursive patterns (i.e., ‘civic epistemologies’) that affect their possibilities. A third line of work has taken inspiration from dramaturgical analysis by highlighting front stage and back stage practices within these organisations (e.g., Bijker et al., 2009). This perspective looks at how boundary organisations work to shape their front stage identity, e.g., as impartial, timely or scientific, by responding to the expectations of different audiences. This is complemented by an analysis of back stage practices in which boundary organisations position themselves and their products vis-à-vis dominant actors, ideas, narratives and institutional patterns of all involved social worlds. In iterative processes boundary organisations recruit support for their ideas, became sensitive to scientific and political no-go areas and collect dominant ideas they have to relate to. These back stage practices enable the enrolment of a network of important actors to maintain support after delivering outputs. The importance of specific lines of work to coordinate and position itself among social worlds differs between long-time standing organisations and ad hoc committees (Boezeman et al., 2013). This conceptual stretching has strengthened the boundary organisation literature. However, the concept is now also loosely applied and used for all kinds of ‘intermediary organisations’. This not only risks
boundary organisation 51 reifying the contingent boundaries between science and policy, but also to black box what is taking place at those sites (Gustafsson & Lidskog, 2018). Moreover, the concept is used interchangeably with boundary work in the literature. Boundary organisation then signifies the different institutional arrangements one can find at the science–policy interface, e.g., formal organisations, informal networks or individuals (Clark et al., 2016). While this is understandable, it can come at the cost of losing a bit of analytical sharpness and opportunities to elaborate on the differences among the formal organisations one encounters.
Conclusions and prospects The concept of boundary organisations has attracted substantial scholarly interest. Originally perceived as intermediary organisations between science and politics, these entities have lines of accountability to both. The success of boundary organisations is dependent upon their ability to meet the demands of different social worlds that provide the necessary resources for their operation. At the same time their dual nature also grants them a degree of independence for them to enable a site for assembling serviceable truths or boundary objects. The stability of boundary organisations is therefore dependent upon both their independence as well as their dependence on the different involved social worlds. Later work enriched the concept with a sharper understanding of the practices through which those organisations function. Besides empirical work, interesting avenues for further elaboration of the concept are to bring science and technology studies in conversation with related concepts in other disciplines in organisation studies or political science. While sharing an empirical interest for the same phenomena, scholarly exchange between those literatures remains very limited. Further work on boundary organisations may benefit from dialogues with the literature on boundary spanning and think tanks to further refine the conceptualisation of their coordinating repertoires within current contexts characterised by the politicisation of scientific knowledge and expertise. Daan Boezeman
References Bijker, W. E., Bal, R., & Hendriks, R. (2009). The paradox of scientific authority: The role of scientific advice in democracies. MIT Press. Boezeman, D., Vink, M., & Leroy, P. (2013). The Dutch Delta Committee as a boundary organisation. Environmental Science and Policy, 27, 162–171. https://doi.org/10.1016 /j.envsci.2012.12.016 Cash, D. W., Clark, W. C., Alcock, F., Dickson, N. M., Eckley, N., Guston, D. H., Jäger, J., & Mitchell, R. B. (2003). Knowledge systems for sustainable development. PNAS, 100(14), 8086–8091. Clark, W. C., Tomich, T. P., van Noordwijk, M., Guston, D., Catacutan, D., Dickson, N. M., & McNie, E. (2016). Boundary work for sustainable development: Natural resource management at the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). PNAS, 113(17), 4615 LP–4622. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0900231108 Gieryn, T. F. (1983). Boundary-work and the demarcation of science from non-science: Strains and interests in professional ideologies of scientists. American Sociological Review, 48(6), 781–795. http:// www.jstor.org/stable/2095325 Gustafsson, K. M., & Lidskog, R. (2018). Boundary organizations and environmental governance: Performance, institutional design, and conceptual development. Climate Risk Management, 19, 1–11. Guston, D. H. (1999). Stabilizing the boundary between US politics and science. Social Studies of Science, 29(1), 87–111. https:// doi.org/10.1177/030631299029001004 Jasanoff, S. (1990). The fifth branch: Science advisers as policymakers. Harvard University Press. Jasanoff, S. (2011). The practices of objectivity in regulatory science. In C. Camic, N. Gross, & M. Lamont (Eds.), Social knowledge in the making (pp. 307– 337). University of Chicago Press. See also: think tanks, boundary spanning, organization theory, ideology, critical planning, agonism, power in planning, power/ knowledge, transitions, futures, conflict
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17. Boundary spanning
exchange role (Bednarek et al., 2018). Hence, the concept of boundary spanning helps a better understanding of coordination work, yet not so much the processes of mixing and stabilising elements of different social worlds by more collective entities. Within the urban and regional planning literature, work on boundary spanning has largely focused on the organisation of collaboration, and not so much on the circulation of knowledge claims per se. Daan Boezeman
The concept of ‘boundary spanning’ emerged in organisation studies in the 1970s. As organisations grow and differentiate, specialised suborganisations develop their own idiosyncratic norms, timeframes, coding schemes and values that result in mismatches between other subunits and the external environment. Boundary spanning signified the roles of individuals in communication networks of organisations to link internal networks to external sources of information in order to overcome distortions and obstacles. This helped inform studies of the roles, patterns and technologies of intermediaries in innovation processes (Howells, 2006). Studies of boundary spanning have shed light on the critical practices of governance, membership, ownership and production control that facilitate collaboration to make intermediary organisations work (O’Mahony & Bechky, 2008). Therefore, the boundary-spanning literature shares an empirical interest with the concept of ‘boundary organisations’ even though intellectual exchange between those two bodies of literature is scarce. Moreover, application of boundary spanning predominantly focuses on individuals (sometimes referred to as ‘boundary workers’ or ‘practitioners of the science–policy interface’) and how they can be trained and strengthened to play their
References Bednarek, A. T., Wyborn, C., Cvitanovic, C., Meyer, R., Colvin, R. M., Addison, P. F. E., Close, S. L., Curran, K., Farooque, M., & Goldman, E. (2018). Boundary spanning at the science–policy interface: The practitioners’ perspectives. Sustainability Science, 13(4), 1175–1183. Howells, J. (2006). Intermediation and the role of intermediaries in innovation. Research Policy, 35(5), 715–728. O’Mahony, S., & Bechky, B. A. (2008). Boundary organizations: Enabling collaboration among unexpected allies. Administrative Science Quarterly, 53(3), 422–459. See also: boundary organisation, organizations theory, ideology, think tanks, expertise, systems thinking, inclusion/exclusion, methods, autopoiesis
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18. Brownfield development
brownfield development offers unique opportunities for the creation of multifunctional landscapes, viewing their value to society in an increasingly broader sense, while recognizing that more than ecological reclamation and redevelopment opportunities, brownfields embodied alternative social, cultural and economic values. These new trends are evident not only in several seminal works developed during the first decade of the twenty-first century (Berger, 2006; Waldheim, 2006; Kirkwood, 2001), but also in several international design competitions promoted to transform large-scale brownfields all over the world. Downsview Park, located at a derelict military air base in Toronto and Fresh Kills reclamation project, the world’s largest landfill on Staten Island, New York, are representative of these tendencies and fully present examples of landscape reclamation practices applied to brownfields in North America (Waldheim, 2006). In Europe, the Parc de la Villette design competition held in 1982 – according to Turner (2004, p. 208) ‘the twentieth century’s most important park design competition’ – created a momentum for the beginning and dissemination of largescale land transformation projects; proving this is the International Building Exhibition (IBA) in which various architects, landscape architects, urban planners and environmental engineers got together with numerous other specialists and worked for ten years in the Ruhr Valley, Germany, exploring innovative possibilities, programmes, functions and uses for brownfield redevelopment projects. Those competitions showed that perceptions concerning what might constitute land transformation have changed towards environmentally cognizant sensibilities and contributions from a broad array of specialists (Burley, 2001) because more than greening, it is necessary to create conditions that enable economic development and attract people to those spaces. Indeed, the fact that these landscapes, originally viewed as threats, became increasingly recognized as opportunities, not only because of their location, proximity with infrastructure, uniqueness in form and configuration, but also because they often became the only lands available for (re)development in attractive urban areas, introduced significant changes on existing practices and approaches towards brownfield development. Though primarily site-specific and driven
Brief history Brownfield development refers to the transformation of derelict areas into productive ones, remediating environmental contamination and revitalizing surrounding communities and ecosystems, while promoting sustainable development and a better quality of life for current and future users. The legacy of derelict, idle, obsolete and often abandoned postindustrial structures and sites we face today in our landscapes is, arguably the result of human current and former uses of land. One way or another, the present situation, enabled by technological innovation and structural economic change, is founded on human (ab)use of this limited and valuable resource, and in its increasing ability to affect large landscapes. As humanity moved from agriculture to industry, the desire for ‘progress’ and faith in technology implied that the Earth was a place to extract resources and its ‘complementary’ idea: that the Earth could absorb any impact imposed by humankind. However, changes in society’s values that began in the 1960s enabled a different view, according to which the former production and consumption patterns were no longer acceptable. As these landscapes become economically disadvantaged, environmentally degraded and socially distressed, several planners, designers and developers started to react to the decline, both by looking for answers to the social and economic problems caused by growing wasteland and abandoned sites (Loures, 2011) and by developing new methods to transform them, considering that the issues facing brownfield (re)development today are multidimensional, including sociocultural, economic and environmental and aesthetic dimensions. In fact, as it was mentioned before, it is increasingly acknowledged that previously developed land, as is the case of brownfields, constitutes an undervalued asset towards urban redevelopment, representing a significant opportunity to promote sustainable landscapes.
Link to theory and method All over the world, several regions and countries have begun to embrace the notion that 53
54 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design mainly by economic motivations, undervaluing the importance of a contextual approach to promote sustainable development, they became much more inclusive and holistic, providing directions on how ecological restoration, cultural preservation, economic development and public needs and interest should be met. These new perspectives and approaches, besides addressing issues at multiple scales and across diverse areas of concern, acknowledged that benefits could arise from reclaiming and incorporating the historic value of significant brownfield sites within the city, suggesting that the resolution of the natural and cultural conflict, evident in previous approaches which focused either land restoration or cultural preservation alone, influenced both design perspectives and processes. Still, regardless of the approach used, planning and design options should maximize the reuse of previously developed land by using methods and principles which enable the redefinition of brownfields through community-based interdisciplinary actions, integrating multifunctional longer-term solutions based on social-cultural, economic and environmental and aesthetic objectives.
Discussions and critiques Researchers and academics have been committed to the development of frameworks and methodologies that enable the creation of better brownfield development projects. While at the beginning the practices and approaches towards brownfield development were primarily site-specific and driven mainly by economic motivations, undervaluing the importance of a contextual approach in achieving sustainable redevelopment, now they tend to be much more inclusive and holistic, providing directions on how ecological restoration, cultural preservation, economic development and public needs and interest should be met. These new perspectives and approaches, besides addressing issues at multiple scales and across diverse areas of concern, acknowledged that benefits could arise from incorporating existing and remnant patterns of development into brownfield redevelopment projects, suggesting that the resolution of the latent natural and culture conflict, evident in previous approaches
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which focused either land restoration or cultural preservation alone, might influence both design perspectives and processes. However, regardless of the approach used, time, planning and design options have increasingly tended to maximize the reuse of previously developed land by using methods and principles which enable brownfield development through community-based interdisciplinary actions, integrating multifunctional longer-term solutions based on social-cultural, economic and environmental and aesthetic objectives. In this sense, from an overall viewpoint brownfield development represents a subject of real sustainable dimensions, given that it tackles environmental, social and economic issues, which are the main pillars of sustainability. In fact, brownfields, generally harming the environment, constitute a spatial planning problem, with specific economic, social and environmental implications, which require the formulation of solutions that will meet the needs of society in a sustainable way. In this regard it is essential to acknowledge not only that environmental restoration is not sufficient, but also that the contribution of each landscape component to brownfield development is equally important offering different redevelopment opportunities and enabling landscape to fulfil multiple functions in an integrated way. Luís Carlos Loures
References Berger, A. (2006). Drosscape: Wasting Land in Urban America. Princeton Architectural Press, New York. Burley, J. (2001). Environmental Design for Reclaiming Surface Mines. The Edwin Mellen Press, New York. Kirkwood, N. [Ed.]. (2001). Manufactured Sites: Rethinking the Post-Industrial Landscape. Taylor & Francis, London and New York. Loures, L. (2011). Planning and Design in Postindustrial Land Transformation: East Bank Arade River, Lagoa – Case Study. Tese de Doutoramento, Universidade do Algarve, Faro, Portugal. Turner, T. (2004). City as Landscape: A PostModern View of Design and Planning.
brownfield development 55 Spon Press – Taylor & Francis Group, London and New York. Waldheim, C. [Ed.]. (2006). The Landscape Urbanism Reader. Princeton Architectural Press, New York.
See also: adaptive reuse, ecosystems-based governance, livelihoods, planning for, milieu, social-ecological systems, design, tensions, regional design, regional planning, narrative, place branding
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19. Central planning, its geographies and scales
Not surprisingly, these translations from central plans into expectations about local plans were inconsistent more often than not – even if they came from the same source. One result was that, given the numerous individuals charged with the enterprises’ fulfilling the plan, unexpected areas of autonomy arose. This mixture of control and autonomy produced consequences that can be summarized as follows:
Planning in a centrally planned economy It is commonly assumed that central planning was restricted to totalitarian regimes – most recently to pseudo-socialist and communist regimes such as the late Soviet Union and its allies. Yet spatial spreading of central planning was, and still is, much wider. Many former centrally planned economies still engage in central planning, in both the private and public sectors. Moreover, there is a striking similarity between central planning and socalled ‘strategic planning’ in large private and public units. The traditional depiction of a socialist economy defines a management system as a set of principles and tools applied by central economic authorities to evoke particular decisions and actions on the part of economic units, as required by a central plan formulated by these authorities. In practice, however, just as there is no perfect competitive market, there was no perfectly centrally planned economy. A scrutiny of the translation of plans into management and then operations revealed one undeniable result: nothing went as planned. There were many informal ways of influencing the actual performance of enterprises, and even the formal economic instruments often changed their direction when applied in practice. One reason for the complexity was that the central plan had already been independently translated into local realities in two places before the enterprises or their General Managers (GMs) received it. One place of translation was obviously the Head Offices of Trade (HO-Ts, each situated in a large city), and the others were local authorities. The local authorities consisted of local administrative authorities, local political authorities and local unions or self-management bodies. One may suspect that even those three units translated the plan differently, but because of the ruling role of the Polish United Workers’ Party (PUWP), their translations were usually aligned to each other by the local party committee.
1. Decision-making processes were extended over time in the hope that inconsistent expectations would be reconciled. 2. There was a general feeling of powerlessness because GMs could not act upwards, even in the most absurd situations. 3. Consequently, the GMs, convinced that the safest decisions were the best, tended to avoid risks, no matter how great the potential economic gains. An experiment changing regulations on the responsibility for waste and deficits resulted in substantially increased sales and somewhat increased deficits, which was treated by the GMs as proof that the innovation had failed. 4. Faced with conflicting expectations, GMs made choices that could be harmful to the enterprise or its clients but that protected the GMs from punishment. When in doubt, they followed the rules. 5. A prolonged experience of role conflict produced negative psychological effects (Czarniawska, 1985). Plans and their effects meet powerfully once more – at the time of reporting. In the view of HO-Ts, the reports sent by the GMs understated their capacities (and consequently exaggerated their needs) and overstated their achievements. HO-T representatives considered these inaccuracies to be the GMs’ ‘insurance policy’ – a way of minimizing their failures in advance. The GMs agreed that the reports were inaccurate, but they explained it differently. Their demands were exaggerated because they were never met (a well-known bureaucratic vicious circle) and the GMs’ achievements may have been overstated because of the irrational competition for information among various authorities.
Planning in a market economy Between 1980 and 1981, I studied corporations located in Massachusetts (Czarniawska, 56
central planning, its geographies and scales 57 1985). Many of these corporations were of the same size as the Polish Head Offices of Trade, and there were central plans in US corporations, but this central planning looked different. In the corporations that I described under the label of Autonomy, the CEOs set their own objectives based on information collected from both above (the general preferences, trends and directions of expansion favored by their headquarters, CHQs) and below (the aspirations and resources of subordinates in their own division). These plans were subsequently submitted for evaluation at the CHQs, and when disagreements arose, intensive negotiations began that did not always reach consensus. Ultimately, the CHQ usually allowed the CEOs to make their own decisions but then controlled their actions very tightly. In general, the CEOs believed that the main concern of the CHQs was to create conditions that facilitated the achievement of objectives, and their primary responsibility was to advise and guide. The final outcomes were one- and five-year plans for the entire corporation. Yet the delegation of responsibility produced riskavoiding behavior, just as the fear of punishment did for the Polish GMs. Half of the corporations I studied had a planning process that differed from that of the Autonomy corporations: I labelled these types of process Control. In these corporations, the CEOs received broad corporate guidelines concerning strategic plans; a list of financial and qualitative objectives; and lists of restrictions, resources, critical areas and general scenarios – the possible future condition of the economy, for instance. Equipped with these lists, the division initiated a bottomup planning process. This was followed by a negotiation process, induced primarily by negative reactions from CHQs over what was perceived to be an inadequate contribution. The next step was to complete a plan format, with sometimes as many as 15 key objectives and 30 ‘supporting objectives’; they tended to be numerical and highly detailed, all recorded in a relatively formalized way. However, emergency interventions occurred during the year, and changes were introduced to the plans. If the necessity for change arose at the division level, there would be more negotiations than if it arose at the CHQ level. The CEOs were, by and large, pleased with this planning process, emphasizing its clarity.
Comparisons between the two types of planning revealed that Autonomy corporations shared two main characteristics: size (large), and a rapidly changing environment (continuing changes in technology, and therefore in products, and strong and dynamic competition). These characteristics may have produced what can be called ‘a forced delegation’. No one at the top wished to take responsibility because it was impossible to control all the variables. The corporations grouped under the label of Control could be large, but if they were, they were more concerned with stability than growth, and were operating in relatively stable markets. Other corporations operated in a rapidly changing environment, but because they were small, it was relatively easy for CHQ to control the fulfillment of their plans. Comparison between Polish and US planning processes revealed some expected differences but also some less expected similarities. Central planning in US corporations was always more ‘participatory’, but it must be stressed that this participation was limited to the highest levels: operation levels were never included in planning. Interestingly enough, the new Polish procedures introduced by the 1975 reform aimed at imitating the management pattern of US companies. The reform did not work, mostly because it did not conform to the prevailing political climate and because of constant political interventions. The CEOs did not mention any political interventions, local or federal. There could be various reasons for this: either there were no political interventions (after all, these companies were hardly arms producers), or the people interviewed did not wish to inform a researcher from a socialist country about them. Perhaps in the USA, as in Poland, the decisive influence of politics was to be found not in the small intrigues of local party committees, but in the general political system that gave legitimacy to certain procedures and routine actions. In all cases, however, similar phenomena could be observed: the understating of capacities and the overstating of achievements, and, in the case of delegated responsibility, risk avoidance. General conclusions concerning central planning can be formulated as follows: as long as planning permits participation and negotiation, as well as a change of plans in emergency situations, the process barbara czarniawska
58 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design contributes to the feeling of clarity and welldirected activity (Czarniawska, 2012).
Does the analogy still hold after 40 years? There were, and are, many similarities between central planning in a planned economy and in large corporations. Strategic planning is central planning; the difference lies primarily in size. As Whittington (1993) noted, strategic planning also plays a clearly political role: reproducing the conditions of hierarchically organized capitalist society, normalizing the existing structures of Western societies and universalizing the goals of the dominant elites. Strategyformation patterns are difficult to change, as they are ‘founded on real economic, social or political conditions’ (32). Thus, it is appropriate to follow the unusual path indicated by de Certeau (1988), who suggested that whereas strategy expresses what bosses want, it is through tactics that subordinates find ways to circumvent or straightforwardly resist it. ‘Strategies (. . .) conceal beneath objective calculations their connection with the power that sustains them from within the stronghold of its own “proper” place of institution’ (de Certeau, 1988, 20). Whereas strategists produce plans and budgets, those who are to implement them translate and transform them for their use, creatively mixing routines and improvisation. [A] tactic depends on time – it is always on the watch for opportunities that must be seized ‘on
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the wing’. Whatever it wins, it does not keep. It must constantly manipulate events in order to turn them into ‘opportunities’. (de Certeau, 1988, 19)
This quote captures well the practices of the Polish GMs, whereas the US CEOs, especially those grouped under the Autonomy label, can be seen as strategists, with tactics being shifted further down the hierarchy. Thus, planning is always related to politics – on several levels – and its connection to performance is always complex. Not surprisingly, this observation is corroborated most strongly in public sector organizations, of which urban planning is the best example. Barbara Czarniawska
References de Certeau, Michel (1988). The practice of everyday life. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Czarniawska, Barbara (1985). Controlling top management in large organizations. Aldershot: Gower. Czarniawska, Barbara (2012). Does planning belong to the politics of the past? Contemporary Economics, 6(4): 36–48. Whittington, Richard (1993). What is strategy and does it matter? London: Routledge. See also: ideology, narrative, institution, futures, organization theory, strategy, systems perspectives, power in planning, power/ knowledge, inclusion/exclusion, blueprint planning, advocacy planning
20. Citizen science in spatial and environmental problems
Citizen science has a long history. For more than a century, lay people contributed to scientific progress by sharing their observations, e.g., bird watchers helped with the mapping of seasonal bird migration (Silvertown, 2009) and stargazers mapping the passing of celestial bodies (Dickinson et al., 2010). More recently, advances in computing power and network technology, especially through the Internet of Things (IoT), have enabled vastly more powerful forms of citizen science. This includes the use of smartphones to automate data collection, and distributed computing to sift through data and solve problems that would otherwise require more resources and effort. This technological paradigm shift facilitates the collection, management and analysis of various types and volumes of data and streamlines data flow and the dissemination processes (Newman et al., 2012). Not only may these technical capabilities allow citizens to engage with professional scientists, they may also enable them to take an active role in codesigning the entire scientific process.
Introduction Geo-fenced and geo-referenced social media and other forms of citizen science can support various efforts in solving spatial problems. The arrival of affordable and user-friendly digital technologies – the smartphone chief among them – opens up a range of possibilities in terms of monitoring, anticipating and shaping the environment. This chapter explores this emergent trend and gives examples of how these technologies combine with decentralised data collection to lead to citizen science and bottom-up actions in support of spatial and environmental solutions.
What is citizen science?
Main characteristics
Citizen science is defined as the engagement of non-academic volunteers – hence the term ‘citizen’ – for the collection and analysis of all kinds of data in cooperation with or even outside of the formal scientific institutions. Besides volunteering their labour to support scientific research, citizens can also engage because they understand that scientifically grounded actions are necessary to better manage precious commons, i.e., collectively sustained resources. Hence, citizens contribute in several ways to scientific efforts, either by engaging and participating actively in research with their situated knowledge, or by enhancing the reach of scientists through the collection of data from many places and time points beyond the capacities of the scientists themselves. The latter delivers bigger and more finely grained databases while the former democratises science by generating knowledge by citizens in all stages of the scientific process. Citizen science also increases scientific literacy, enhancing the participants’ understanding of the problem they are concerned about, and the scientific processes central to gaining that deeper understanding (Bonney et al., 2009). In addition, it creates larger awareness of the dynamics of the world, e.g., the struggle of certain species in changing environmental conditions.
Traditionally, citizen science referred mainly to ‘communities or networks of citizens who act as observers in some domain of science’ (Goodchild, 2007, p. 218). Nowadays, the European Citizen Science Association (ECSA) understands citizen science as the participation of the general public in scientific processes, where citizens are actively involved in the scientific endeavour that generates new knowledge or understanding. The ECSA laid out ten key principles of citizen science. From this list, some key attributes of citizen science can be laid out. First, citizen science is rooted in the voluntary effort of making available the labour and time of citizens to collect and share information, as well as actively engage with the academic communities, (non-)governmental organisations and other public and private bodies, to co-create scientific knowledge together with (or beyond) official institutions. The engaging character of citizen science relates to its second key characteristic: it is usually group-based, meaning that citizens do not act in isolation but are members of local, national or international networks of people (e.g., initiatives, organisations, associations) that address their interest and concerns about commons, i.e., shared resources. These characteristics turn citizen science into an open and participatory approach to science, 59
60 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design reducing the distance between science and society, and contributing to the goal of an inclusive society. Over time, citizen science developed into two distinct types. The majority of approaches fall under the header of contributory citizen science (scientists design the project, develop participatory technologies or strategies, citizens join as data gatherers). A small group falls under the header of co-creation and participation (citizens are involved at all stages, research is open, shared and reflexive; Vohland et al., 2021).
Citizen science in practice As citizen science builds on volunteering time and labour, the intrinsic motivation to participate in a project is essential. At an individual level, participants can be motivated by, for example, interest in nature, environmental concerns, curiosity in technology or eagerness to develop social contacts, etc. Therefore, projects in which citizens contribute with their observations to scientific results, typically reward participants with essential information and feedback on their input. Integrated discussion boards, furthermore, commit participants to the citizen initiative and will increase the quality of the observations. As an example, the biodiversity project eBird can be mentioned, which developed from a supportdemanding process in locating and reporting bird information into a successful initiative which helped bird watchers to embrace the excitement of getting better at their craft while simultaneously impacting the future. Another example demonstrates the determination of the ‘Hollandse Luchten’ (‘Dutch Skies’) community, which shares a feeling of urgency about an environmental pollution problem, to move from an experimental initiative into an impactful action by using its own data to improve policy design. Examples such as these demonstrate that citizen science can establish a direct relationship between action and environmental and spatial changes. In contrast to such participatory initiatives, certain types of ‘big data’ science projects can significantly benefit from the support of volunteers to perform data conditioning and analysis using gaming approaches. For example, participants in Foldit and GalaxyZoo analysed the data where they are rewarded as in other computer games with ‘Highscores’ when generating new solutions (Franzen, 2019).
Tools The improved accessibility to technological devices equipped with global positioning system (GPS) receivers – from pure GPS devices to sports watches and smartphones – allows the accurate association of citizens’ observations with geographical coordinates and locations. In particular, the use of smartphones, equipped with citizen science apps, makes participation in initiatives highly intuitive and easy to learn, in turn improving accessibility. This is particularly relevant in domains such as environmental sciences, epidemiology, emergency management and spatial planning. In the literature, this type of citizen science is also referred to as volunteered geographic information (VGI) and user-generated or crowd-sourced content, as well as participatory geographic information systems (GIS) and public participation GIS (PPGIS). Beyond the capabilities of those modern devices, advances in sensor technologies, and in particular the rapid increase of IoT-enabled devices, make sensors available to citizen science initiatives with a high potential to complement existing institutional networks (Paul and Buytaert, 2018). Open data management and code sharing platforms are used widely to allow efficient data and code exchange among participants. Prominent examples of open platforms are Github and Gitlab. But it also includes interactive computing services, such as Jupyter Lab, contributing to transparent development of modern, open-source citizen science analysis tools.
Data and data quality Citizen science tends to generate vastly more and more diverse data, which is a boon for scholars in perpetual need of more data. The data collected has to be processed in the same way as any other form of data. However, tackling the quality of citizen science data can be a challenging process (Dickinson et al., 2010). Besides crowd-sourced data accuracy concerns, the open data access policy of citizen sensing initiatives frequently raises privacy concerns and can cause conflicting General Data Protection Regulation situations, which may impose trade-offs between data quality, privacy protection, resource security, transparency and trust. Inevitably, the quality of citizen science data is subjected to lower standards than
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citizen science in spatial and environmental problems 61 commonly maintained in science. This may hamper the process of transforming such data into meaningful scientific insights. The issue of data quality affects both the citizen science community as well as the researchers processing crowd-sourced data. While citizens might be less aware of limitations imposed by lower data quality, researchers may be able to cope with such uncertainties using advanced technologies, such as machine learning and artificial intelligence (to extract meaningful insights from the data). Generally speaking, larger communities create more data, which is beneficial for quality control purposes. Also, data quality is not only dependent on the skills of the people collecting it. For example, the quality of ambient air pollution measurements depends on the quality of the pollution sensors used, on the correct handling, positioning and maintenance of the device, and on the calibration accuracy (Gupta et al., 2018). In the case of classification projects, however, data quality depends on the skills of the observer to correctly determine the species observed. In the latter case, a large number of observations helps to reduce the incorrectly classified species.
Conclusions In its limited form, citizen science can help planners in collecting more finely grained data about various planning and environmental issues. In its broader scope, it can cocreate inquiries and develop joint, broadly supported solutions. Examples range from data-driven slum upgrading to crowd-creative design. Co-designed spaces may be both onsite and online (e-participation). Such forms of engagement may also contribute to stronger identification with sites and to placemaking, as citizens develop a more intimate relationship with the area they are investigating. Citizen science may also be deployed to understand how tourists relate to places they visit. Looking ahead, there is a general trend towards applying machine learning and artificial intelligence as a way of dealing with the issues about data (quality) mentioned above. Citizen science is not the ultimate solution to planning issues. Problems with data and other technical challenges aside, it is also subject to the same issues that hamper other forms of interactive planning: unequal access, a certain basic level of technological literacy, as well as the tensions between direct
democracy and representative democracy. Another issue is the need for funding and sustained support. Citizen science has been recognised by many organisations, such as the European Union and the European and US national space agencies as a relevant avenue to promote ‘downstream’ application development related to big data resources. Lasse Gerrits, Alexander Los and Sofia Pagliarin
References Bonney, R., Cooper, C.B., Dickinson, J., Kelling, S., Phillips, T., Rosenberg, K.V., Shirk, J., 2009. Citizen Science: A Developing Tool for Expanding Science Knowledge and Scientific Literacy. BioScience 59, 977–984. Dickinson, J.L., Zuckerberg, B., Bonter, D.N., 2010. Citizen Science as an Ecological Research Tool: Challenges and Benefits. Annu. Rev. Ecol. Evol. Syst. 41, 149–172. Franzen, M., 2019. Zum Wandel der wissenschaftlichen Wissensproduktion durch Big Data: Welche Rolle spielt Citizen Science? Österreich Z Soziol 44, 15–35. Goodchild, M.F., 2007. Citizens as Sensors: The World of Volunteered Geography. GeoJournal 69, 211–221. Gupta, S., Pebesma, E., Degbelo, A., Costa, A.C., 2018. Optimising Citizen-Driven Air Quality Monitoring Networks for Cities. ISPRS International Journal of GeoInformation 7, 468. Newman, G., Wiggins, A., Crall, A., Graham, E., Newman, S., Crowston, K., 2012. The Future of Citizen Science: Emerging Technologies and Shifting Paradigms. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 10, 298–304. Paul, J.D., Buytaert, W., 2018. Chapter One – Citizen Science and Low-Cost Sensors for Integrated Water Resources Management, in: Friesen, J., Rodríguez-Sinobas, L. (Eds.), Advances in Chemical Pollution, Environmental Management and Protection, Advanced Tools for Integrated Water Resources Management. Elsevier. Silvertown, J., 2009. A New Dawn for Citizen Science. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 24, 467–471. Vohland, K., Land-Zandstra, A., Ceccaroni, L., Lemmens, R., Perelló, J., Ponti, M., Samson, R., Wagenknecht, K., 2021. Editorial: The Science of Citizen Science
lasse gerrits, alexander los and sofia pagliarin
62 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design Evolves, in: Vohland, K., Land-Zandstra, A., Ceccaroni, L., Lemmens, R., Perelló, J., Ponti, M., Samson, R., Wagenknecht, K. (Eds.), The Science of Citizen Science. Springer International Publishing, pp. 1–12.
See also: big data and machine learning, expertise and local knowledge, modernism, inclusion/exclusion, participation, narrative, power in planning, methods, self-organization, power/knowledge, creativity
lasse gerrits, alexander los and sofia pagliarin
21. Climate change adaptation planning and resilience
disruption and impacts from climate change, in terms of both exposure and vulnerability. Climate change impacts can be in the form of sudden shocks, such as intense rainfall events, or slow onset stresses such as long-term drought. Both types of impacts interact with urban systems. Additionally, climate change is often a risk multiplier, amplifying existing stressors. The way a city is planned can affect the exposure of people or infrastructure to climate change risks. Climate change impacts are often geospatial in nature. In some cases, impacts can be very localized, only exposing infrastructure or people at a small spatial resolution, such as a neighbourhood. These types of granular impacts, such as river or coastal flooding, interact with planning tools like spatial land use plans and regulations. Alternatively, exposure may be applied broadly across an entire city for risks such as hail or drought. These may have to be dealt with through non-geospatial planning tools like design standards. Additionally, a climate event may occur outside of urban planning boundaries but still impact it. Examples of this include poor air quality resulting from a wildfire upwind of a town, or water security concerns resulting from impacts on an upstream water source. Regardless of the spatial scale, and whether climate change is a direct cause or an exacerbating effect, extreme and highly variable conditions can result, requiring flexibility in planning approaches. Climate change also interacts with urban planning in the context of vulnerability. Vulnerability is the sensitivity of a system to an impact or risk. How vulnerable a system is, depends on several factors. In an urban planning context, this can relate to variables such as age or condition of infrastructure, or socioeconomic indicators of a community. Ultimately climate change will disproportionately affect those components of the system that are more vulnerable. Decisions made regarding infrastructure and land use can influence exposure and vulnerability to climate change (Kehler & Birchall, 2021). Planners have tools that can directly impact exposure to climate risks, such as geospatial plans or regulations that limit or restrict development or require that specific accommodations be made in areas of high risk (such as a floodplain or steep slope). Asset management and engineering codes or standards can be updated with climate modelling data to better prepare municipal
Definitions Urban planning is the intentional design, regulation and management of land and natural environment, infrastructure and socioeconomic systems within a defined geospatial boundary (Huxley & Inch, 2020). Urban planning sets rules and approaches for managing complex socioecological systems. This can be focused on physical planning, such as the preparation of geospatial and land use plans like zoning bylaws that control the location of different types of development, or can take the form of policies, including climate-related strategies (Poku-Boansi & Gobbinah, 2018). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) defines climate change as an observable change in the state of the climate taking place over an extended period of time (IPCC, 2021); climate change is the observable change in climate norms and the resulting impacts on human and natural systems, characterized by extremes and variability in weather conditions. In the climate change context, adaptation is the process of preparing for and making accommodations to withstand actual or expected climate change impacts (IPCC, 2021). This can take the form of many different types of interventions from physical infrastructure to policy. In urban planning, adaptation refers to making modifications to urban planning tactics in order to minimize and accommodate the negative impacts of climate change while simultaneously identifying and capitalizing on potential opportunities. Resilience refers to the ability to change, adapt or transform in response to disruption or stressors (e.g., Birchall et al., 2022; Tyler & Moench, 2012). Resilience means that change can result in a new state with characteristics different from the original state, while retaining essential structure and functionality.
Climate change and urban planning Exposure and vulnerability. Cities—as concentrations of people, infrastructure and socioeconomic activity—are vulnerable to 63
64 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design infrastructure (such as a dike or seawall) for climate impacts. Policies that include flexibility to variable climate extremes, such as protection of important ecosystems like wetlands, are also needed. These elements can work together to reduce exposure and vulnerability of people and property. Planning decisions dictate urban features for decades into the future, thus must be flexible and based on climate data and scenarios that are both current and reflective of the localized setting.
Enabling adaptation Climate change is already affecting every settled region in the world (IPCC, 2021). These changes manifest in a variety of impacts that have potential to disrupt humans’ quality of life. In order to minimize disruptions from climate change, it is important that decision makers plan, prepare for and adapt to these changing conditions (Bonnett & Birchall, 2020). Adaptation planning as a practice is still in its infancy, however there are enabling factors that can facilitate this work at the local scale. A strong mandate for adaptation planning, stemming from local decision makers endorsing and championing proactive adaptation, can enable action. This supports administrative leadership to facilitate internal buy-in, which can make taking meaningful and sustained adaptation action easier. Importantly, those responsible for developing and executing climate adaptation actions must have the capacity to do so. This includes access to necessary resources and expertise. Community support can galvanize leadership resolve, and drive climate change adaptation to transcend political partisanship. This can enable priority and long-term commitment to actions. Ultimately, a mandate to act, internal buyin and community support can work together to enable climate change adaptation planning. The next steps involve translating commitment into adaptation strategies and action plans, incorporating these into planning and decision-making processes and further into practice and granular planning tools. Adaptation planning success can be improved by approaching this work with flexibility and the willingness to accommodate uncertainty. This includes the incorporation of a process that supports continual learning through monitoring and evaluating how plans and actions perform in practice. s. jeff birchall and danielle koleyak
Resilience in planning Resilience in urban planning refers to the ability of a city to be flexible and transform in response to stressors like climate change and the associated impacts. In this context, and to understand how resilience can be supported in an urban planning setting, it is useful to organize the discussion around three key elements of resilience (Tyler & Moench, 2012): systems, agents and institutions. In urban planning practice, these elements can work together to influence planning outcomes, including translating climate change adaptation goals into meaningful actions. Systems. Cities are complex entities that include both engineered and natural systems that are important for a city to function. To be resilient these systems need to be redundant, robust and equitably distributed so that disruption in one area or component does not cause a cascading failure throughout the system (Tyler & Moench, 2012). Physical infrastructure and ecosystems are important components of urban systems in terms of climate adaptation. Traditionally, more effort has been placed on structural engineered solutions such as river dams or sea walls. These are expensive and static solutions that may not be robust enough to handle the extremes and variabilities of climate change (Bonnett & Birchall, 2020). Structural solutions are designed to specific criteria, often based on historical data or experienced events, which are not relevant under a changing climate. Structural solutions can offer a false sense of security to communities, leading to complacency and exposing the community to cascading failures. For example, a catastrophic river dam failure can lead to failures downstream in other structural components such as transportation and power systems. This increases the exposure and vulnerability of the community to climate impacts. Ecological-based adaptations, such as protected natural wetlands or naturalized coastlines, provide ecosystem services that naturally bolster the community’s resilience to climate change extremes by improving robustness and redundancy (Bonnett & Birchall, 2020). Such non-structural solutions are more flexible to climate variabilities than structural solutions, while simultaneously providing co-benefits beyond climate adaptation such as biodiversity improvements or community access to nature. These non-structural
climate change adaptation planning and resilience 65 systems strengthen a community and can be prioritized in planning through a stronger focus on conservation and restoration of key ecosystems. Agents. In the context of adaptation planning, agents include individuals such as local decision makers and municipal planners. For an agent to facilitate resilience, they need leadership support, and the capacity to prepare for and respond to climate change impacts. They need access to appropriate resources (funding, personnel, scientific data) and support for continual learning and improvement (Birchall et al., 2022). Furthermore, agents approving granular planning tools such as land development applications, for example, need appropriate training on how to incorporate climate change considerations effectively. In order for agents to be most effective, and efficiently mainstream climate change thinking, efforts must be across departments and units. Institutions. Institutions are the formal and informal societal norms that influence behaviours. In the urban planning context this includes strategic plans, land use and development regulations and standards, policies and other planning tools. Resilient institutions enable agents to be proactive in responding to system vulnerabilities, make science and evidence-based decisions and facilitate the flow of information (Tyler & Moench, 2012). While high-level strategic plans can easily incorporate statements around adaptation planning, there can be challenges in translating these statements into specific planning tools and actions, such as restricting below-grade development in flood prone areas (Birchall et al., 2022). Planning and policy tools need to accommodate flexibility due to the uncertainty of climate impacts. This can be difficult for traditional planning practice as planning tools typically require specific targets and criteria for implementation. Furthermore, the planning process does not always incorporate a strong mechanism for monitoring and evaluating actions. This is fundamental for agents to continually learn and build capacity to make stronger science- and evidence-based recommendations.
Key takeaways ●
Cities are becoming increasingly exposed and vulnerable to the extremes of climate change, and as a result
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adaptation planning is becoming increasingly important in order to improve community resilience. Incorporating both structural and nonstructural adaptations can help to bolster a system’s resilience to climate change impacts, while also offering co-benefits to a community. Empowering agents to apply climate change science and adopt a culture of evaluation and continual learning from adaptation actions in practice can support evidence-based decision making. Flexibility within institutional planning and policy tools can help decision makers to better prepare for, and cope with the variabilities of climate extremes. While adaptation planning is relatively new in practice, it has the potential to improve community resilience. S. Jeff Birchall and Danielle Koleyak
References Birchall, S.J., MacDonald, S., and Baran, N. (2022). An assessment of systems, agents, and institutions in building community resilience to climate change: A case study of Charlottetown, Canada. Urban Climate, 41: Article 101062. Bonnett, N., and Birchall, S.J. (2020). Coastal communities in the circumpolar north and the need for sustainable climate adaptation approaches. Marine Policy, 121. Huxley, M., and Inch, A. (2020). Urban planning. In Kobayashi, A. (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of Human Geography (second edition). Amsterdam: Elsevier: 87–92. IPCC. (2021). Summary for policymakers. In Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press. Kehler, S., and Birchall, S.J. (2021). Social vulnerability and climate change adaptation: The critical importance of moving beyond technocratic policy approaches. Environmental Science and Policy, 124: 471–477. Poku-Boansi, M., and Gobbinah, P.B. (2018). Are we planning for resilience in s. jeff birchall and danielle koleyak
66 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design Ghana? An analysis of policy and planners perspectives. Cities, 72: 252–260. Tyler, S., and Moench, M. (2012). A framework for urban climate resilience. Climate and Development, 4(4): 311–326.
s. jeff birchall and danielle koleyak
See also: adaptive planning, self-organization, design, social-ecological systems, biophilic cities, regional design, ecosystems services, complexity, modernism, dependencies, urban climate responsive planning and design
22. Colonial legacies in planning and design
or observations. Planners, and urban designers, can however become more aware of the diversity of colonial legacies in the cities and systems they operate in, as well as of the local assessments and hybridizations of these legacies. Acknowledging the simplicity and incompleteness of our typology, we distinguish between spatial, organizational, political and cultural legacies.
Introduction Colonialism left legacies in colonized and colonizing places, and some places are both colonized and colonizing. So-called settler states, where immigrants completely transformed social-ecological systems, reducing indigenous people to a displaced and dispossessed minority, offer a particular set of challenges, for planning and for society as such. In planning and design, a rich literature has developed on post-colonialism, mostly focusing on former colonies, and partly overlapping with analyses of informality, modernization, economic development and elite rule. Indigenous planning is a field growing in importance, while planning in former colonies offers a rich mosaic of approaches offering both tradition and innovation. Despite all this progress, it remains worthwhile to reflect on different types of colonial legacies in urban planning and design.
A diversity of legacies Spatial legacies themselves can be diverse and trigger complex path dependencies and interdependencies. Colonial extractive economies often eroded the ecological quality of natural areas and created monofunctional cultural landscapes, and rural settlements with few resources and little institutional capacity. Parts of the larger cities might be transformed according to neoclassical or modernist principles, but, as colonialism also triggered largescale urban growth, most urban areas became de facto informal. That is, traditional forms of coordination were eroded while the new formal system, imposed by the colonizing power, did not function. In areas with dominant resource extraction, the infrastructure and settlement structure were often organized around the needs of that activity, with little flexibility, and little investment useful for other activities. Organizational legacies can be multi-layered. The multi-level governance structure imposed by colonial powers and inherited by later regimes could not easily be dismantled, offered some benefits for those in power to govern, and, in some cases, engendered identification with the new administrative entities or scales. Planning systems might have been imposed, including their configuration of rules and roles, power and knowledge, but, more often, colonial regimes did not pay much attention to the development of the organizational structures and practices we call planning. Rarefied design projects might have signaled the presence of the colonizer, but the actual importance of planning organization often came after the heydays of colonization. Post-colonial states aiming to ‘catch up’ with the West used Western consultants and studied Western models of planning to grasp the benefits and see what needed modification. The attractiveness of modernist models of planning and development was widespread. In other cases, colonial regimes started to invest in infrastructure, social and
Altered spaces In many former colonies, colonizers might have left, but they left a thoroughly changed, often scarred, social and physical landscape. Elite structures and ethnic identifications transformed during and after colonialism, as did systems of administration and organization. Ideas of city and city building, of good infrastructure, desirable development, quality of life, progress and expertise entered or changed. In many cases, hierarchies installed by colonial overlords were not dismantled but overtaken by local elites, while sometimes the state structures, never fully rooted in local realities, crumbled. Modernism became vilified by some governments as tainted by colonialism, or even its most problematic symptom and technology of power, while other regimes in the global south saw and see it as a neutral technocratic way to move beyond both colonial and pre-colonial legacies. For planners, not all colonial legacies are easy to discern or entangle, let alone to remediate or eradicate. Planners do not possess an overview of society which provides absolute clarity and comprehensiveness. They—fortunately—do not have the power to transform societies according to their own taste 67
68 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design educational programs, and planning capacity towards the end of their rule, under internal and external pressures to improve the welfare of their overseas subjects. The idea of spatial planning itself, and the associated set of policy tools, was well known among postcolonial elites early on, as many had lived and studied abroad, and some had played a role in colonial administration. Political and cultural legacies are, certainly, even more complex, diverse and problematic. We already indicated the elite creation after the collapse of colonial rule, where elites might choose to reorganize administration and space, accept it for a while, or use these patterns of organization more deliberately to govern in a style perceived as modern. After colonial rule, the system of participation and representation evolved differently in each country, and this process was often fraught with strife, as many citizens in the new regime did not feel enfranchised, and as the external and internal boundaries were colonial constructs. This made for a stark difference with cultural boundaries, and therefore made conflict more likely and a smoothening role of informal institutions in governance less likely. In planning, such political and cultural legacies reverberate, and co-define what is desired and possible in spatial organization. Participatory planning can be very challenging under such high pressure. Meanwhile, international fashions in planning, urban design and architecture, as well as trends in public administration (new public management, digital transformation, innovation discourses) are circulating and influencing the Global South in patterns which still cannot be understood without reference to former colonial relations or neocolonial relations.
Concluding: roles revisited What planners can do and should do under such circumstances, and we can speak cautiously here of the Global South we hinted at in previous paragraphs. After distinguishing different types of legacies, one can add that a high degree of reflexivity with planners and in planning systems is highly desirable. This entails not only a reflection on colonial legacies in the ideas and forms of organization one is working in and with, but also a careful
reflection on the options to further enfranchise groups as yet not well represented in governance, and in the planning system. Planning in such a perspective could contribute to activism ‘from the middle’, where bottom-up activism in and beyond planning can be encouraged. Finally, planners striving for social and environmental justice can carefully delineate the extent of their powers, as individuals and as a planning system. If de facto, the world of planning interventions does not reach the majority of people living in informal settlements, this cannot go unnoticed. It can inspire strategizing that, in one case, leads to planning reform, in other cases to innovative planning projects, and yet elsewhere to governance reform beyond planning. Kristof Van Assche, Martijn Duineveld and Raoul Beunen, Editors
Bibliography Bhabha, H. K. (2012). The location of culture. Routledge. Hibbard, M. (2022). Indigenous planning: From forced assimilation to selfdetermination. Journal of Planning Literature, 37(1), 17–27. Porter, L. (2006). Planning in (post) colonial settings: Challenges for theory and practice. Planning Theory & Practice, 7(4), 383–396. Roy, A. (2009). Why India cannot plan its cities: Informality, insurgence and the idiom of urbanization. Planning Theory, 8(1), 76–87. Sandercock, L. (2004). Commentary: Indigenous planning and the burden of colonialism. Planning Theory & Practice, 5(1), 118–124. Silva, C. N. (Ed.). (2019). Routledge handbook of urban planning in Africa. Routledge. Watson, V. (2009). Seeing from the South: Refocusing urban planning on the globe’s central urban issues. Urban Studies, 46(11), 2259–2275. See also: post-colonialism, power in planning, power/knowledge, ideology, memory, history, inclusion/exclusion, informality, informal settlements, participation, livelihoods, dependencies
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23. Commons
And she continues: ‘Without defining the boundaries of the CPR and closing it to “outsiders”, local appropriators face the risk that any benefits they produce by their efforts will be reaped by others who have not contributed to those efforts’ (Ostrom, 1990: 91; see on this also Ostrom, 1995: 35–36). Ostrom’s commons are therefore not – as usually interpreted – a third alternative to public and private property. This seems true only if we consider private property as a kind of property always owned by a single individual for his or her sole use. However, this is a misconception: private property can take very different forms, including several kinds of collective private property. In conclusion, the issue in this case is not to contrast ‘private property’ with ‘common property’ but to distinguish, within private property, the case of ‘individual property’ from that of ‘collective (or group) property’ (Moroni, 2014). In a third, more recent conception, the term ‘commons’ is used to indicate goods to which everyone should have the right of access (Rodotà, 2012), such as water (Mattei, 2013) and food (Vivero-Pol et al., 2018). According to Rodotà (2012), access to these common goods must be first of all guaranteed by the Constitution; in this regard, he speaks of ‘constitutionalism of needs’. As Mattei (2016: 75) puts it: ‘The commons are not concessions. They are resources that belong to the people as a matter of life necessity. Everybody has a right of an equal share of the commons and must be empowered by law to claim equal and direct access to it’. These are therefore goods that escape the logic of exclusive use. In other words, commons in this sense do not admit discrimination in access to them. Note the clear difference with respect to the ‘commons’ of which Ostrom speaks, the success of which depends, as underlined, on clear boundaries that exclude those who are not co-owners. In conclusion, some terms are more fortunate than others: they are rhetorically attractive, appear at the right time, etc. However, once the ‘emerging’ phase has been passed, the concepts must be clearly and unambiguously defined and delimited. To reset the whole discourse more rigorously, one could even do without the term ‘commons’ altogether. In each of the three senses considered, other terms – less ambiguous and more
The term ‘commons’ is used with increasing frequency in the public debate and scientific literature (including urban studies, planning theory, legal and human geography). However, it is often ambiguous and used to denote different things. It is helpful to distinguish among three different uses of the expression ‘commons’: first, commons as nobody’s goods; second, commons as some people’s goods (more precisely, of a group); third, commons as everybody’s goods (i.e., goods to which all must have access). These uses are now considered one by one in detail. The term ‘commons’ was first used by Garrett Hardin (1968) in a celebrated article. In Hardin’s conception, commons are nobody’s property – that is, goods which have no definite owner. As a result, everyone takes full licence to use them. The well-known central thesis of Hardin’s work is that, under such conditions, each individual is concerned with the immediate personal advantages that he/ she can gain from using such goods, and not with the negative effects that affect others and are diluted over time. Hardin considers two situations of this kind: overuse of resources and environmental pollution. In a second (different) meaning, the term ‘commons’ was subsequently used in the influential study by Elinor Ostrom (1990). In this case, the term denotes not so much goods owned by nobody as goods jointly owned by a group: that is, by a circumscribed set of individuals. The group of co-owners of certain assets have an exclusive right to them and can exclude all other individuals and groups from access to and use of them (in Ostrom’s examples, exclusion is pervasive: Block, 2011). It is no coincidence that Ostrom indicates, among the prerequisites for commons to function effectively, the existence of clear and welldefined boundaries of the goods in question. Ostrom (1990: 91) writes: Defining the boundaries of the CPR [commonpool resource] and specifying those authorized to use it can be thought of as a first step in organizing for collective action. So long as the boundaries of the resources and/or the specification of individuals who can use the resource remain uncertain, no one knows what is being managed or for whom.
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70 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design consolidated – could easily come to aid: for example, ‘free goods’ [res nullius] in the first case; ‘collective properties’ or ‘group properties’ in the second (Moroni, 2014); ‘fundamental goods’ (Ferrajoli, 2013) or ‘global public goods’ (Kaul et al., 1999) in the third. Note that all three notions are crucial for planning theory and practice, but in quite different ways. To understand the potential role of planning in regard to ‘commons’, it is therefore indispensable to demarcate the three aforementioned situations and the distinctive features of each. Stefano Moroni
References Block, W. (2011). Review of Ostrom’s governing the commons. Libertarian Papers, 3(21): 1–11. Ferrajoli, L. (2013). La democrazia attraverso i diritti. Roma-Bari: Laterza. Hardin, G. (1968). The tragedy of the commons. Science, 162: 1243–1248. Kaul, I., Grunberg, I., & Stern, M.A. (eds.). (1999). Global Public Goods. New York: UNDP. Mattei, U. (2013). Protecting the commons: Water, culture, and nature. South Atlantic Quarterly, 112(2): 366–376.
stefano moroni
Mattei, U. (2016). First thoughts for a phenomenology of the commons. In: R. Morea and C. Delmas (eds.), Socialisation and Commons in Europe. Constructing an Alternative Project. Brussels: Transform, 75–86. Moroni, S. (2014). Towards a general theory of contractual communities. In: D. Andersson and S. Moroni (eds.), Cities and Private Planning. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 38–65. Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the Commons. New York: Cambridge University Press. Ostrom, E. (1995). Designing complexity to govern complexity. In: S. Hanna and M. Munasinghe (eds.), Property Rights and The Environment. Washington: The World Bank, 33–45. Rodotà, S. (2012). Il diritto di avere diritti. Roma-Bari: Laterza. Vivero-Pol, J.L., Ferrando, T., De Schutter, O., & Mattei, U. (2018). Introduction: The food commons are coming…. In: L. Vivero-Pol, T. Ferrando, O. De Schutter, and U. Mattei (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Food as a Commons. London: Routledge, 1–21. See also: institutions, property, systems perspectives, self-organization, social-ecological systems, inclusion/exclusion, dependencies, property rights
24. Communicative planning theory and its critiques
by money- or power-mediated overriding or manipulation of dialogue. However, being an ideal situation, it was not for Habermas a real-world possibility, but rather a yardstick with which to ‘measure’ the degree of communicative rationality in actual public governance – which also necessarily has to resort to instrumentally rational decision-making on issues consensually agreed to belong to the realm of operational action. The communicative planning theorists took on these ideas in their criticism of the prevailing rationalist and systems approaches to planning theory. Forester (1989) was concerned with the dominance of instrumental rationality in planning that tended to turn issues worthy of political deliberation in the public sphere into matters of technical operations. He used Habermas’s lifewordly criteria in describing how planners in such technicization of planning may manage trust, consent, truth, and also comprehensibility in their dealings with the public. In order to restore the planners’ alertness to matters deserving communicative deliberation, Forester suggested critical listening and making sense together. He also made a crucial distinction between planning problems of technical uncertainty and political ambiguity. While instrumentally rational action is appropriate in dealing with problems of technical uncertainty, there is usually a degree of political ambiguity in planning problems, in how they and their proposed solutions are to be found and framed, by whom and with what justification (Forester 1993). Sager (1994), in turn, attacked in his criticism, especially Charles Lindblom’s incrementalist planning theory. Lindblom had extended his approach to planning from instrumentally rational considerations to the political sphere that also incorporated interest groups into the planning processes beyond the parliamentary bodies. However, as Sager pointed out in his criticism, Lindblom conceived such processes to proceed through bargaining and compromise seeking between interest groups that would act as ‘watch dogs for their own interests’, without attempting to seek mutual understanding between each other. Instead of aiming for consensus, win– win solutions between the self-motivated interest groups would be encouraged. In Sager’s view, this would rather technicize the political process itself into a kind of mutually opportunistic calculus of trade-offs and deals in the ‘political market’ of interests.
Communicative planning theory Communicative planning theory took shape during the 1980s, and in the early 1990s it received a dominant position in the theory discourse, being labelled as the communicative or argumentative turn in planning theory. The main contributors to the theory, John Forester, Patsy Healey, Judith Innes and Tore Sager, differ in their emphases and sources of influence, such as American (neo-)pragmatism, Giddens’s structuration theory, and complex systems research, but they all share in rooting their thinking to Jürgen Habermas’s theory of communicative action and related work. The main insight they drew from Habermas was the claim that modern society, through its gradually increasing complexity and the following need to rationalize its functions through monetary exchange mechanisms and regulative power, has become alienated from the lifeworlds of its people. To restore the centrality of lifewordly values and beliefs in how modern society is run, communicative action in the sense of dialogue drawing on these values and beliefs, ought to be reintroduced in decision processes, according to Habermas. For him, this meant the need to introduce an alternative kind of rationality to societal decision-making, besides the hitherto dominant instrumental rationality that focuses on calculative operations on its commodified and bureaucratized subjects (such as consumer, wage-earner, property owner, service user, subjective right holder, voter). Habermas formulated communicative rationality as a form of rationality for dialogues on societal ends in the public sphere, and he introduced three lifewordly criteria to be met in such rational discourse. It meant consensus-seeking argumentation and persuasion that would be made truthfully in accordance with the moral values shared in the community and the commonly held notions on true knowledge. For Habermas, such a discourse in the public sphere would restore the legitimacy of public governance. In an ideal speech situation, communicative rationality would be perfect and not distorted 71
72 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design What Sager suggested, instead, was dialogical incrementalism. It meant dealing with technical uncertainties in terms of incremental planning, by making short-term plans and learning from feedback and experience from previous short-term plans and their implementation. In the political dimension, in turn, it meant Habermasian dialogue supporting communicative rationality in the public sphere in the preparation of such plans.
Critiques and responses Towards the end of the 1990s, critical voices on communicative planning theory also began to appear, and they intensified during the 2000s. Among the first were accusations of idealism and utopianism of the theory, claiming that the theory neglects the decisive role of biased power relationships in planning practices, in its idealizations of communicative rationality in planning – thus leaving the planners frustrated and helpless. This criticism was countered by arguments that the theory was not delusional on how economic and political power may be excessively used in real-world planning to circumvent communicatively rational action, but that conceptualizing theoretically ideal circumstances for communicative rationality was necessary to critically identify such instances of domination, and, based on this, develop measures to counteract such domination. More severe, Foucault-inspired, criticisms followed in the wake of Bent Flyvbjerg’s (1998) famous Aalborg case study. The basic argument was that the Habermasian view of power neglects the deeper dimensions of structural power that determine how the actors’ roles, self-images and understandings in planning are shaped and maintained. The core problem would thus not be the use of power by certain economically and politically powerful actors, preventing communicativeness in the public sphere, but the ‘apparatus’ of power that makes this sphere, and the subjectivities and issues they deal with, biased to begin with. Indeed, communicative rationality, too, can be criticized with such a perspective of power analytics: it places those verbally and argumentatively skilled and educated in favourable positions and emphasizes formation and justification of issues through verbal reasoning, thereby marginalizing other modes of communicating and evaluating meaning, such as conveying and sharing raine mäntysalo
emotional or aesthetic content, or generating information through experimentation and brainstorming. In planning, and especially in urban design, such modes of communication are crucial, too. The concept of communicative rationality is based on the assumption that, in principle, a shared horizon of lifeworldly values and understandings would be reachable if the participants withdrew from their use of economic and political power. Many argue, in turn, that in the present world we lead our lives in a society so differentiated into various cultural and social factions that there is no returning to such a uniform culture that the idea of a shared lifeworld entails. The search for consensus in a communicatively rational planning argumentation, legitimized by the idea of a shared lifeworldly horizon, is thereby revealed to be a form of coercion. The participants’ individual differences are set aside, and they are offered a uniform identity as rational and moral beings. The Habermasian communicative planning theory is unable to deal with conflicting conceptions of reality. In the 2000s, an alternative theoretical approach to planning emerged that took conflict as its point of departure, not consensus. It became known as agonistic planning theory (e.g., Hillier 2003; Pløger 2004), originating in Chantal Mouffe’s political theory of agonistic pluralism. Contrary to the Habermasian notion of a universal reason offering a basis for communicatively rational political action, Mouffe claimed that there is no such foundation for political action. Instead, she saw conflict and antagonistic relations between actors to be at the core of politics. The problem, then, also in planning, would be how to ‘domesticate’ these antagonisms into handling the conflictual issues in a mutually respectful manner, thereby turning the mutual enemies of antagonism into adversaries of agonism. However, the consensus orientation of communicative planning theory is sometimes exaggerated in the critical accounts. Already Healey, in her ground-breaking 1992 article, emphasized that while communicative planning is about making sense together, as Forester (1989) had said, we still live differently with our different systems of meaning, and full agreement on planning decisions may be unreachable. Thus, according to Healey, planning communication should concentrate on reaching an achievable level of mutual understanding for the planning task
communicative planning theory and its critiques 73 at hand, while maintaining critical awareness of that which is not understood. Later on, she emphasized the role of shared physical place in facilitating stakeholders’ different views. People from diverse backgrounds still share a physical place in which they live and work, and when this place becomes an object of planning, they often share a concern for its future, despite having different ‘moral orders’ (Healey 1997). Forester, in turn, has turned his attention to planners’ stories in dealing with differences and mediating negotiations between stakeholders with conflicting interests – partly revisiting the ideas he presented already in his 1987 article Planning in the face of conflict. In his later work, Habermas, too, has withdrawn from the centrality of consensus, and he has emphasized the role of democratic institutions alongside the public sphere of communicative action, in bringing difficult democratic processes to closure – such as the necessity of parliamentary voting when agreement on a political decision is not reached. Other theorists of deliberative democracy have gone further in the direction of acknowledging conflict as an essential and, as such, legitimate condition in political life, and communicative planning theory has followed suit. More recently, Sophie Bond (2011) has proposed an integrative approach, utilizing the strengths of both communicative and agonistic planning theory. And then, a weakness, unifying both communicative and agonistic planning theories, is their concentration on the procedural conditions for democratic planning, while somewhat losing sight of the substantive side. As, especially, Susan Fainstein (2010) has observed, when focusing on procedural conditions for participatory democracy, the communicative planning theory fails to recognize
that such conditions may produce socially unjust outcomes. Procedural rules on democratic processes cannot guarantee socially just outcomes by themselves. Raine Mäntysalo
References Bond, S. (2011). Negotiating a ‘democratic ethos’: Moving beyond the agonistic – Communicative divide. Planning Theory 10(2), 161–186. Fainstein, S. (2010). The Just City. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Flyvbjerg, B. (1998). Rationality and Power. Democracy in Practice. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Forester, J. (1989). Planning in the Face of Power. Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press. Forester, J. (1993). Critical Theory, Public Policy, and Planning Practice. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Healey, P. (1992). Planning through debate. The communicative turn in planning theory. Town Planning Review 63(2), 143–162. Healey, P. (1997). Collaborative Planning: Shaping Places in Fragmented Societies. London: Macmillan. Hillier, J. (2003). Agon’izing over consensus: Why Habermasian ideals cannot be ‘real’. Planning Theory 2(1), 37–59. Pløger, J. (2004). Strife: Urban planning and agonism. Planning Theory 3(1), 71–92. Sager, T. (1994). Communicative Planning Theory. Aldershot: Avebury. See also: rationality, modernism, power, agonism, rhetoric, narrative, complexity, systems perspectives, conflict, creativity, institutions, storytelling
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25. Complexity and planning
this produced knowledge, understanding and social progress, with a science referring to certainty, causality and objectivity. However, this view also blinded, and other realities were not seen, including a world in flow, change and transition, and the ubiquity of rise and fall, trends and crises. The first academic steps to break free from this static worldview were taken in the late 1940s, when cybernetics took an interest in open systems that are not in equilibrium (Keller Fox, 2008: 63). Such systems show a tendency towards equilibrium, but never reach a definitive end. Or should it be that these systems are dead? Cybernetics influenced systems theory, leading to chaos theory, followed by the complexity sciences, out of which one particular message emerged: in time developments show non-linear behavior. With open systems out of balance, complexity offers a ‘non-linear’ alternative perspective, which can be understood as transformative developments in a world where fluctuating influences from interfering contexts matter. The first to see the possibilities for complexity in the urban landscape were from outside the domain of planning. Crosby, a systems theorist, observed that ‘Cities, and social systems generally, have long been recognized as having basic, non-linear, dynamic properties in which the decisions of human actors play an essential role’ (1983), but also saw that no one wanted to see cities as nonlinear decision systems. Therefore ‘The question of “control” and “intervention” in such situations requires an understanding of these systems to a far deeper extent than is now the case’ (Herman and Prigogine, in Crosby, 1983). Spatial modelers, such as Peter Allen and Michael Batty, were susceptible to this mission on non-linearity. Batty observed: ‘our understanding of cities has not kept pace with our desire to implement effective, yet invisible, unselfconscious styles of planning. This is beginning to change but it requires a dramatic shift in the way we think about cities’ (2005).
Complexity Complexity is everywhere, it is part of nature and culture and therefore an intrinsic part of our existence. Complexity is, as well, spatial planning’s blind spot. Traditionally as a ‘science of purposeful interventions’ the intention of planning is to solve problems ‘permanently’ while controlling, managing and creating the daily environment for people to live in. This man-made, planned reality is miles away from a reality of complexity and its autonomous and spontaneous change. Gradually, planners are beginning to understand the relevance of this complexity and are increasingly taking the position that autonomous and transformative change in the daily environment should not be ignored. It leads to the discussion of how complexity can be incorporated into planning as a ‘natural’ feature of the urban environment.
The relevance of time and nonlinear behavior Complexity is about a world in flow, with change and transformation beyond human control. While there is not one agreed definition of ‘complexity’, most, if not all, definitions share an understanding of spontaneous, transformative and irreversible change that is represented by dynamic patterning in an environment that is continuously out of balance. There are multiple ways to capture this complexity. Consequently, there are several ‘complexity sciences’. Complexity is at odds with the classical understanding of a world that is fixed and frozen, and unchangeable because it ‘is’. For long this was the world of planning, in which time was considered irrelevant. And planners saw it as their task to remove its anomalies or to implement improvements as a steppingstone towards a predefined desired future. Planners were not the only ones rationalizing about actions without any notion of time. The static view on the world was dominant in every part of society and reached its climax in the twentieth century, with its all-encompassing perspectives such as modernism, functionalism and materialism. Unmistakably
Modelers versus theorists While modelers were progressing in their understanding of a world that is inherently non-linear, theoretical reasoning about nonlinear developments within the urban environment remained minimal throughout the 1990s. Planning was strongly committed to taking the communicative turn, stressing the 74
complexity and planning 75 importance of shared knowledge and reaching consensus about local interventions. In retrospect, communicative rationality and collaborative planning are also means of coping with the increasing uncertainty in planning. While these lead to an agreed reality, a non-linear reality is proposed as an alternative to capture uncertainty from the perspective of complexity. Both an agreed upon and a non-linear reality offer an alternative to the traditional reality of facts and the assumption of certainty within reach. Around the turn of the millennium, some planning theorists also began to consider the relevance of non-linearity, self-organization and dynamic complexity. In July 2005, in Vienna, a working group on Complexity and Planning was established under the banner of the Association of European Schools of Planning, seriously trying to find synergy between planning theorists and modelers. This proved to be a major source of inspiration, with several books, special issues and papers on the issue of planning and complexity, and with theorists and modelers, also from outside Europe, discussing together the intertwining of complexity with planning. These discussions visualized a diversification of planning approaches for situations that differ in their degree of uncertainty and susceptibility to change. This development also led to a new set of concepts within the domain of planning.
point of discussion within the complexity sciences. The ‘wickedness’ of planning issues is partly due to their ‘self-organizing’ nature, for which – like ‘wickedness’ – there is a growing interest in planning. Self-organization refers to spontaneous and unintended phenomena as the aggregated outcomes of individual actions. These phenomena take place beyond the planners’ control, they are nevertheless quite relevant to planning as they shape the environment as well. Self-organization is a concept addressing spontaneous order, first mentioned by the psychologist Ashby in his Principles of the Self-organizing Dynamic System (1947). Self-organization can be explained in four steps that lead to change and transformation. The first step would be the appearance of tensions in an existing situation. This can be seen as a symmetry break that builds up energy that will eventually lead to a critical point, the second step. Beyond this point, energy is being unleashed, and all that is involved adjusts their positions towards a ‘least effort’ state or a good or preferred ‘fit’ with the environment. This results in a fourth step, which is spontaneous pattern formation to be seen as an unintended but collective outcome. To some extent these steps can be recognized, becoming subject to intervening . . . or to let it go, to go along with it, and to adapt.
Wicked problems
Adaptivity is often seen as the opposite side of the coin it shares with self-organization. Adaptivity is not an expression of spontaneous change but is the response to it. It is then about the way in which planning is able to respond to unforeseen, autonomous or spontaneously occurring changes, the way in which planning is able to influence such changes and how planning may increase the options for dealing with change (De Roo et al., 2020). Adaptivity is a new topic and still faces a definition problem. It is clear however that spatial development, prior to the time when it became a planned and controlled activity, was always adaptive in nature. Contemporary planning can designate spatial developments from a ‘controlling’ position to allow these developments to take place without being conditioned. And from an ‘anticipatory’ position, planning can also accept that there are changes that happen autonomously and spontaneously, sometimes even against expectations, and therefore want
Horst Rittel (1930–90), a German planning scholar at the University of California in Berkeley, proposed the concept of ‘tame’ versus ‘wicked’ problems (Rittel, 1972). Wicked problems are a category of issues that are essentially unique, rather hard to define, connected to and influenced by a wider field of issues and therefore difficult to completely solve. There is no clear and straightforward solution for these ‘wicked’ issues. In 1974 Ackoff spoke of ‘messes’ to qualify these unstructured and ill-defined problems interacting with other problems in an uncoordinated way. Rittel saw the relevance of dynamically interfering contexts, which is very much at odds with the traditional scientific attitude of observing the problem in isolation. While Rittel’s wicked problems did not become mainstream in the planning debate, 20 years later they have become the central
Adaptivity
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76 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design to be prepared for this possibility. In those cases, adaptivity is about the capacity to perform in moments of unintended change and transformation. Cities show characteristics of a complex adaptive system. Such a complex adaptive system manages to persist, even in periods of turmoil and turbulence, because it has the possibility to self-organize internally while having the capacity to adapt to external circumstances and to find a new and better fit with its environment. This provides temporal stability that can become steppingstones towards ‘higher’ levels of organization, with the system having the potential to transform in time, based on an interdependency between the system’s robustness and flexibility. This complex adaptive system is always in a state of becoming, drifting towards an external point of stability, a power law or attractor, progressing in an environment that is in between order and chaos. This is what cities do, continuously seeking a balance internally between spatial functions and structures, while showing interdependencies with the outside world and its flow of people, capital, resources, energy and much more. It explains why cities hardly ever disappear while continuously transforming and progressing in time.
‘theory of complex phenomena’. What comes from this kind of reasoning is a differentiation of problems on the basis of degree of complexity along a spectrum with certainty, uniformity and order on one side, and uncertainty, diversity and chaos on the other. In the complexity sciences the relational consequences from this differentiation in between order and chaos is yet hardly understood, while for planning this is much more obvious with a spectrum in between two paradigmatic rationalities, the technical referring to a factual reality, and the communicative achieving an agreed reality. Planning is relevant to the complexity sciences because of its awareness of situational circumstances and the relevance of intersubjective interaction. This leads to spectrum language (De Roo et al., 2020) with ‘language’ that differs by category of situations, provides these with appropriate logic, each with a rationality that frames these situations and connects them with appropriate actions and approaches. It allows planners to make distinctions between situations, in order to determine how differently to act under varying circumstances.
Order and chaos
Complexity is more than positioning situations on the spectrum and acting accordingly. Situations should also be seen in their development, in which case they will shift across the spectrum, from order to chaos, and from technical to communicative rationality. How this works is best explained by chaos theory. Chaos theory takes the outcomes of a situation as input for the next step in development. The growth and decline in population for example, is a non-linear development with a step-by-step change that is already ingrained in more or less fixed mutual relations between ‘constant’ factors and ‘variables’. This is about slow transformation. In addition, there is fast transformation, which is explained in 1961 with the discovery of the meteorologist Lorentz how a system can be touched to its very foundation. As a result, the ‘constant’ factors also change, so that the development of the system could go in an unexpectedly different direction. Proportionality is then completely lost, which can mean that ‘a small deviation at the beginning can lead to far-reaching consequences in the long term’. Such a shock in development
Complex adaptive systems provide an explanation of why cities are alive and keep on developing. This systemic behavior is called ‘complexity’ and addresses the idea of a world that exists in between order and chaos, between uniformity and diversity and between factual and agreed realities. This view differs completely from a world of certainty, stability and control. In a ‘complex’ world, uncertainty is fundamental, and certainty only exists in various degrees. The mathematician Warren Weaver (1894–1978) made a distinction between ‘simple problems’, ‘disorganized complexity’ and ‘organized complexity’ (1948). He considered ‘simple problems’ to be straightforward and predictable issues, therefore ‘certain’ and seen by Rittel as ‘tamed’. The ‘chaos’ of ‘disorganized complexity’, according to Weaver, relates to multiple connected issues (networks). In between these two there is ‘organized complexity’, which concerns problems that Rittel called ‘wicked’ and best to refer to as ‘complex adaptive systems’. This is not that different from Hayek’s gert de roo
Transformation
complexity and planning 77 is also part of planning practice and is in the complexity sciences referred to as bifurcation. The non-linear world of complexity touches planning in different ways. The 2008 crisis that hit the housing market and the economy of the Western world left many planners wondering about non-linear change. Other rapidly emerging changes in the city cannot be ignored, such as the disappearance of shops from inner cities due to purchases via the Internet, the rise of Airbnb, the local impact of climate change and the expected arrival of the self-driving car. While the complexity sciences study autonomous and spontaneous change, this can never be the whole story, because intentional change made by purposeful interventions through planning remains a necessity. Gert de Roo
References Ashby, W.R. (1947) Principles of the SelfOrganizing Dynamic System, The Journal of General Psychology, 37(2): 125–128. Batty, M. (2005) Cities and Complexity; Understanding Cities with Cellular
Automata, Agent-Based Models, and Fractals, The MIT Press, Cambridge (US). Crosby, R.W. (ed) (1983) Cities and Regions as Nonlinear Decision Systems, AAAS Selected Symposium 77, Westview Press Inc, Boulder (US). De Roo, G., Yamu, C., Zuidema, C. (eds) (2020) Handbook on Complexity and Planning, Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham (UK). Keller Fox, E. (2008) Organisms, Machines, and Thunderstorms: A History of SelfOrganization, Part One, Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences, 38(1): 45–75. Rittel, H.W.J. (1972) On the Planning Crisis: Systems Analysis of the ‘First and Second Generation’, Bedriftsøkonomen, 8: 390–396. Weaver, W. (1948) Science and Complexity, American Scientist, 36: 536–544. See also: adaptive planning, self-organization, social-ecological systems, systems thinking, institutions, polycentrism, autopoiesis, transition
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26. Conflict and shock
differences between actors in planning, which typify first of all those actors. Moreover, such conflicts can spill over to the community, reversing the assumed direction of representation. This same bidirectional relation between planning and community affects the transformation of subjects in and through conflict. Actors can be transformed through participation in governance, which then reshapes the base, while in the other direction, the ever-shifting landscapes of discourse in the community will at some point redefine subjectivities which is bound to affect planning.
Conflicts in planning have been studied from many angles. In consensus models of planning (and policy), conflict is certainly not appreciated. Most of the planning literature recognizes conflicts as part and parcel of planning, given the diversity of interests and the attraction of power, yet this is seen as a problem. A major exception in recent planning theory, inspired by Laclau, Mouffe, and in the background Hegel, is the agonism perspective developed by Pløger, Hillier, Mantysalo and others (see elsewhere). If we understand politics and planning as truth finding for the collective, and if truth finding is a dialectic process, then opposing opinions and conflict are not only useful but necessary. This is especially the case when systems of governance are controlled by powers that pursue their own interests, vs collective ones. Planning is then a place and a moment to speak up, to give voice to those marginalized in space and economy and to let conflict play out.
Productivity? If we accept that identity is a narrative construction which guides the selection and construction of other narratives, and which shapes and is shaped by ideology, history, group and place, then one can quickly grasp how conflict can invoke and reshape identity, and how this process can affect virtually anything in the community. Luhmann presents this as a tendency of conflict to spread, and to polarize identities and ever-growing discursive configurations. This can lead to a transformation of politics into identity politics, where positions are taken because of an identity adopted, and where those identities are seen as immutable and incompatible. Deliberation then becomes extremely difficult, and conflict will become more corrosive than productive. Such processes of conflict, polarization and identity politics can lead to shocks, events for which the governance system has no immediate answer, and which cause damage to the community. Shocks can be the result of conflicts in the community or from external events, and those can be observed or unobserved. Conflicts, in other words, are features of social systems, while shocks are not. Understanding how societies can respond to disasters and calamities, as shocks, requires grasping that difference, and the propensity of shocks to engender conflicts, which then makes a coordinated response more difficult. If we understand planning as an important site of coordination, in the preparation for, mitigation of and response to disaster (think climate shocks), such relation between shock, conflict and identity ought to be considered. Martijn Duineveld, Kristof Van Assche and Raoul Beunen, Editors
Lineages Machiavelli, not a Hegelian or Marxist, also argued for the value of disagreement, dissensus and conflict in governance, but made a distinction between productive and unproductive conflicts, with unproductive as that which threatens the stability of the polity, of the governance system. The idea being here that such a system can be shaken up but not broken, as this would make self-transformation impossible, and jeopardize the coordination of collective action, or the capacity to achieve anything. Productive conflict could occur when it allowed hidden voices and perspectives to emerge by exposing a greater diversity of ideas, possibly leading to better policy solutions, and reducing the risk of growing resentment and explosions later. For Foucault, conflicts could be productive in a different sense, that is, by creating and transforming objects and subjects. A new object can emerge in planning as a tool to promote the interests of one party, while it can also be the pacifying or unifying outcome of conflict. Conflicts in planning often result from different perspectives in the community, but not necessarily so; they can result from 78
conflict and shock 79
Bibliography Collins, M. (2010). Conflict and contact: The ‘humane’ city, agonistic politics, and the phenomenological body. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 28(5), 913–930. Folke, C., Hahn, T., Olsson, P., & Norberg, J. (2005). Adaptive governance of socialecological systems. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 30, 441–473. Flyvbjerg, B., & Richardson, I. (2002). Planning and Foucault. Planning and Foucault. In Allmendinger, P., & TewdwrJones, M. (Eds), Planning Futures: New Directions for Planning Theory. Routledge.
Pløger, J. (2004). Strife: Urban planning and agonism. Planning Theory, 3(1), 71–92. Van Assche, K., Gruezmacher, M., & Beunen, R. (2022). Shock and conflict in social-ecological systems: Implications for environmental governance. Sustainability, 14(2), 610. See also: social-ecological systems, agonism, systems perspectives, memory, ideology, power in planning, power/knowledge, critical planning, transition, advocacy planning, communicative planning
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27. Conservation subdivision design
The conservation subdivision approach Whenever a property is subdivided, an opportunity exists to add land to a community-wide open space network. Because CSD focuses development on half the buildable land, at least 50 percent of each property’s unconstrained acreage can be added to the community’s open space network. To achieve this result, the full number of homes permitted under zoning would be located on more compact lots, similar to the way that successful golf course developments are designed – with the open space adding economic value and livability to the homes on those lots. In another parallel, the open space systems in both CSDs and golf course developments are identified first, and designed around, ensuring they do not consist of meaningless fragments, as happens with most cluster designs and PUDs (Planned Unit Developments). Communities preserve open space for many reasons such as protecting streams, water quality, plant and animal habitat, ‘rural character’, property values, access to nature and recreational areas and reduction of municipal costs. To achieve these and other goals, the CSD process involves three steps:
Definition Conservation Subdivision Design (CSD) is an enlightened approach to residential neighborhood design in which a substantial percentage of unconstrained (buildable) land is permanently protected by locating the normally permitted dwellings on the balance of the property in a ‘density-neutral’ manner. It also considers land from an area-wide perspective, across entire municipalities, creating ‘Maps of Potential Conservation Lands’ to guide designers of individual developments so that the open spaces protected on each property align with and add to a community-wide network of protected conservation lands.
Brief history The origins of CSD lie in the twin concepts of ‘planned unit developments’ and ‘clustering’, with ordinances allowing each approach beginning to appear by the mid-1960s. Unfortunately, neither approach has realized its potential, with the open spaces usually consisting of largely unbuildable land, and relatively little upland area preserved – except in meaningless fragments and leftover slivers. (Sadly, the excellent, exemplary 1928 design of Radburn, NJ was largely ignored by developers following the Great Depression and WWII, and by the engineers who gradually replaced landscape architects in the field of subdivision design during the postwar era.) After 25 years of seeing largely disappointing results (in terms of land conservation) from cluster and PUD regulations, the author devised the CSD approach to correct those deficiencies. CSD differs from the earlier concepts by significantly increasing the percentage of unconstrained land that must be conserved (in addition to unbuildable land) and requiring that it be far less fragmented. In addition, it also establishes a special four-step design process, supplemented by community-wide maps of potential conservation lands to protect interconnected greenway systems.
1. Preparing Community Assessments to evaluate development trends. 2. Identifying Primary and Secondary Conservation Areas. 3. Following the Four-Step Design Process.
Community assessments The Community Assessment process helps local officials and residents see the ultimate result of continuing to implement current land-use policies. Most local ordinances allow or encourage standardized layouts of ‘wall-to-wall’ houselots. Over many decades this process produces a broader pattern of wall-to-wall subdivisions, leading to the development of nearly every unprotected acre of buildable land (Figure 27.1).
Wall-to-wall subdivisions Community Assessments typically include:
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conservation subdivision design 81 3.
Mapping future patterns of potential conservation and development across the entire community, based upon the data collected in the previous two steps (Figure 27.3).
Mapping potential conservation lands
Figure 27.1 The pattern of wall-to-wall subdivisions evolves over time in most communities with conventional zoning and subdivision ordinances
1. Analyzing growth projections in terms of number of dwellings and number of acres likely to be developed under present regulations. This sometimes takes the form of ‘build-out maps’ (Figure 27.2), which help residents and officials to visualize the future as it would unfold under current codes. 2. Evaluating land-use regulations and offering constructive recommendations about how conservation techniques could be incorporated.
Many communities have adopted comprehensive plans or open space plans containing detailed inventories of natural and historic resources. However, to effectively create an interconnected open space network, communities should also create a Map of Potential Conservation Lands to guide decisions regarding which lands to protect in new developments, supplemented by strong ordinances to implement those plans (Figure 27.3). This kind of map starts with information contained in the community’s existing planning documents. The next task is to identify two kinds of resource areas: Primary and Secondary Conservation Areas. Primary Conservation Areas consist of only the most severely constrained lands, where development is typically restricted under current codes and laws, such as wetlands, floodplains and slopes exceeding 25 percent. Secondary Conservation Areas include all other locally noteworthy or significant features of the natural or cultural landscape, including mature woodlands, hedgerows and freestanding trees or tree groups, wildlife habitats and travel corridors, prime farmland or farmland of statewide significance, groundwater recharge areas, greenways and trails, river and stream corridors, historic sites and cultural features, and scenic viewsheds. Residents should be involved in identifying Secondary Conservation Areas, which are typically unprotected and zoned for development. The Mapping Process. Primary Conservation Areas are identified first on a base map showing lands already protected, such as wetlands, floodplains, steep slopes, parks, land trust preserves and properties under conservation easement. That is followed by adding the potential Secondary Conservation Areas as described above. Although this exercise is not an exact science, it helps officials and residents visualize how various kinds of resource areas are connected. randall arendt
82 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design
Figure 27.2 The illustration shows existing conditions on the left (primarily undeveloped land), and the potential development pattern (right) that is very likely to unfold if current conventional zoning and subdivision regulations continue to be implemented
Figure 27.3 Creating a map of Potential Conservation Lands gives clear guidance to landowners and developers where development is encouraged and where conservation areas exist in relation to property boundaries. Overlaying conservation areas on tax parcel maps (right) is one way of showing this information
Conservation subdivision design Typically, in unsewered areas, CSD conserves at least 50 percent of the buildable land as undivided permanent open space. The first and most important step in designing a CSD is to identify the land to be preserved. The community-wide Map of Potential Conservation Lands can be used as a template for identifying conservation areas. To create subdivisions around the central organizing principle of land conservation, ordinances need clear standards guiding the development design process. The approach described below reverses the usual sequence randall arendt
of steps by moving open space delineation to the front end of the design process, so that it will consist of high-quality uplands instead of mostly leftover bits and pieces of unusable or highly constrained land. The number of houses permitted is a function of the density allowed within the zoning district, as shown on a ‘Yield Plan’ (a sketch showing the maximum number of lots that could realistically be achieved with conventional development, illustrated in Figure 27.4). In unsewered areas, local officials should require a 10 percent sample of the most questionable lots – which they would select – to be tested for septic suitability. Any
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Figure 27.4 Conventional subdivisions typically avoid the unbuildable Primary Conservation Areas but disregard Secondary Conservation Areas. Creating a Yield Plan is useful for estimating a site’s capacity for new houses and for showing how a conventional layout is likely to impact many important features on dry uplands
lots failing that test would be deleted, with applicants submitting revised sketches minus those lots. Alternatively, density is calculated on the net buildable acreage (total parcel size minus wetlands, floodplains and steep slopes). Alternatively, density is calculated on net buildable acreage (total parcel size minus wetlands, floodplains and steep slopes). To encourage CSD usage, ordinances should classify it as a ‘by-right’ Permitted Use and should also classify conventional layouts as a Conditional Use. The rationale for these classifications is that conventional layouts prevent the realization of important Comprehensive Plan goals such as farmland preservation and habitat protection. Applicants wishing to create conventional subdivisions should be required to present a clear and compelling case demonstrating why dividing all (or most of) the land into houselots and streets better implements key Comprehensive Plan goals and official policies, compared with CSD. Alternatively, another approach to ensure that CSD is implemented is to halve the density allowed for conventional subdivisions, with CSD providing the only path to achieving full density. This approach is far more effective than
offering density bonuses for CSDs, as they are routinely ignored by most developers.
The four-step design process A key feature of CSD is the four-step design process, described (and illustrated) in Figure 27.5. Step One: Identify Land for Permanent Protection. Areas identified on the community-wide Map of Potential Conservation Lands are incorporated into proposed conservation areas. Primary Conservation Areas are identified first, followed by Secondary Conservation Areas. Before identifying these areas on a conceptual site plan, a detailed site analysis should be conducted to precisely locate features to be conserved. After ‘greenlining’ these conservation elements, the remaining parts of the property become the Potential Development Areas. Step Two: Locate House Sites. Sites for individual houses are identified within the Potential Development Areas to randall arendt
Figure 27.5 Primary Conservation Areas include all constrained land areas – typically wetlands, steep slopes and floodplains. Other critical and sensitive areas, if present, (such as sinkholes) should also be included. Secondary Conservation Areas are noteworthy features of a property that are typically unprotected under local ordinances and are vulnerable to change. These can include woodlands, greenways, trails, river and stream corridors, prime farmland, wildlife habitats and travel corridors, historic or cultural features and scenic viewsheds. After eliminating the Primary and Secondary Conservation Areas, Potential Development Areas comprise the remaining land, which must contain enough acreage for the maximum number of lots permitted under zoning. The second step in the design process is to locate house sites to maximize views of, and accessibility to, the open space. Connecting house sites with streets and trails is the third step in the conservation subdivision design process, followed by drawing lot lines
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conservation subdivision design 85 maximize views of, and easy accessibility to, the protected open space. Step Three: Connect House Sites with Streets and Trails. The third step involves aligning the streets and trails to serve the new homes. Step Four: Define Lot Lines. Drawing in the lot lines is the final and least significant part of the conservation design process.
Land protection tools A wide array of tools is available to protect the conservation lands in CSDs. The most effective protection tool is a permanent conservation easement, typically held by land trusts and units of government. Other tools such as deed restrictions and covenants are not nearly as effective in protecting land in perpetuity and are not recommended. Ownership of permanently protected conservation lands may take several forms: ●
●
●
●
A homeowners’ association can own and manage the conservation land (with automatic membership and the ability to place liens on the properties of members failing to pay their dues). Land trusts can own and manage land with resources of particular value to their mission. Individual residents can own large ‘Conservancy Lots’ for their private use. Municipalities or other governmental agencies can own and manage the land.
Management Plans should be required in every CSD, detailing how the land is to be managed, the frequency of specific management tasks, and the entities responsible for such management. Sources: All graphics are provided courtesy of Natural Lands, Media PA. Randall Arendt
Bibliography Arendt, Randall, 1996. Conservation Design for Subdivisions: A Guide to Creating Open Space Networks, Island Press. Arendt, Randall, 1999a. Growing Greener: Putting Conservation into Local Plans and Ordinances, Island Press. Arendt, Randall, 1999b. Crossroads, Hamlet Village, Town: Traditional Design for Neighborhoods Old and New, American Planning Association, Planning Advisory Service Report 487/488. Arendt, Randall, 2010. Envisioning Better Communities: Seeing More Options, Making Wiser Choices, Planners Press. Arendt, Randall, 2015. Rural by Design: Planning for Town & Country, Planners Press and Taylor & Francis. See also: new urbanism, garden city, smart growth, design, social-ecological systems, ecosystems services, heritage, asset-based community development, biophilic cities, regional design
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28. Corruption
factors (besides, obviously, the ‘psychological’ predisposition of those involved and certain contextual ‘habits’). The first factor is any form of discretionary power in the differentiated assignment of advantages and disadvantages; this discretionary power may be in the hands of rule-makers or bureaucrats. The second factor concerns the economic gains associated with this kind of power: the larger the gains at stake, the greater the incentives for corruption. The third factor is the amount of the gain (resulting from the illicit action) in comparison with the probability of incurring punishment. These three determining factors are typically present in many of the land-use planning systems in force. First, orthodox (and still widely accepted) planning systems entail treatment markedly differentiated among various areas and owners; this fact channels benefits towards certain people (i.e., the owners of the areas that are granted development rights) and away from others (i.e., the owners of the land that is denied development rights). Second, planning decisions generate significant increases in values: a line on a land-use plan can generate huge financial yields. Third, in the land-use planning domain, the advantages accruing from bribery are generally large compared with the minimal chances of actually being caught (this often depends on the complexity and intricacy of planning laws and regulations in many countries). To sum up: corruption can only occur when a politician or a public official has the opportunity to use his/her power selectively, with limited risks and in a way that induces developers and landowners to pay to obtain highly rewarding favourable treatments (Gardiner, 1985). In short, landowners and developers are not in themselves more prone to corruption than other kinds of owners or entrepreneurs. Instead, certain planning systems in themselves ‘incentivise’ corrupt behaviours.
Introduction and definitions Corruption is unfortunately frequent in the land-use planning field. Considered in what follows are types of corruption, negative aspects, factors favouring corruption, and strategies suggested to counteract it (Chiodelli and Moroni, 2015). There are three prevalent types of corruption. First, there is legislative/regulatory corruption. Individuals or interest groups can bribe rule-makers to introduce or revise rules to improve the economic benefits associated with certain options. For example, ‘palms may be greased’ so that a land-use plan in preparation conforms to the corruptor’s wishes (e.g., to ensure that a particular area X is recognised as developable). Second, there is bureaucratic corruption. Individuals or interest groups can, for instance, bribe public officials to speed up procedures (e.g., to issue a building permit). Third, there is public works corruption; that is, graft involved in building infrastructure. Note that corruption is not only negative per se (i.e., because it breaches the basic principles of respect for the rules of the game and fairness) but also because it generates undesirable consequences. First, it damages the credibility of institutional and political systems, undermining people’s trust in them. Second, it diminishes the efficiency of the bureaucratic machine; for instance, because contracts are not awarded to the most efficient bidders or because corrupt public officials deliberately create hurdles to increase their options of intervening and receiving kickbacks. Third, corruption alters the allocation of public funding. Fourth, corruption negatively alters market systems: in particular, it inhibits genuine market functioning by distorting the prices, incentives and opportunities that economic agents face. The impact and weight of each of these negative effects obviously depend on the geographical, cultural and political context in which corruption takes place.
Fighting corruption Different ways to combat corruption in planning have been suggested. With regard, for instance, to regulatory and bureaucratic corruption – the first two cases mentioned above – the following four strategies have been proposed. (These strategies presuppose the existence of a constitutional democratic regime; if this was not the case, more radical reforms would obviously be needed.) First, favour more radical forms of transparency
Structural factors Generally speaking (Rose-Ackerman, 1997), corruption in the public sphere requires the co-presence of at least three ‘structural’ 86
corruption 87 in the interaction between public parties and private ones. According to this view (Mazza, 1997, 2004), it is not discretionary judgements or differentiated allocation per se that create corruption, but secret negotiations. Because bargaining between public and private subjects is inevitable in the land-use field, the primary way to fight corruption is, therefore, to recognise negotiations of this kind explicitly and define more adequate procedures for them. Second, organise public auctions of development rights. According to some (Traina, 2013), this would foster an open platform on which landowners and developers can compete for the developable quotas available; the administration chooses the highest bids which will bring the most advantages to the city as a whole. Third, introduce more severe and systematic taxation on any increase in land value due to planning decisions (Day, 1995). Fourth, drastically reduce discretionary public power and the possibility of differentiation by dispensing with zoning in favour of more general and abstract ‘urban codes’ (Moroni, 2007, 2010). The second and third approaches retain zoning (i.e., differentiated land-use regulations and different development ratios defined a priori), but they seek to reduce the risk associated with it. By contrast, the first and the fourth approaches are two (different) attempts to avoid traditional zoning: in the first case, zoning is defined in itinere, so to speak, while in the fourth case, it is not employed at all. In conclusion, and irrespective of which option is considered most suitable (to be noted is that some of the strategies mentioned above may also be combined), it is essential to recognise that corruption is a crucial problem for planning theory and practice (Chiodelli, 2019). Stefano Moroni
References Chiodelli, F. (2019). The illicit side of urban development: Corruption and organised crime in the field of urban planning. Urban Studies, 56(8): 1611–1627. Chiodelli, F., Moroni, S. (2015). Corruption in land-use issues: A crucial challenge for planning theory and practice. Town Planning Review, 86(4): 437–455. Day, P. (1995). Land: The Elusive Quest for Social Justice, Taxation Reform and a Sustainable Planetary Environment. Brisbane: Australian Academic Press. Gardiner, J.A. (1985). Corruption and reform in land-use and building regulation. In M. Wachs (ed.), Ethics in Planning. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 121–142. Mazza, L. (1997). Trasformazioni del piano. Milano: Angeli. Mazza, L. (2004). Progettare gli squilibri. Milano: Angeli. Moroni, S. (2007). Planning, liberty and the rule of law. Planning Theory, 6: 146–163. Moroni, S. (2010). Rethinking the theory and practice of land use regulation: Toward nomocracy. Planning Theory, 9: 137–155. Rose-Ackerman, S. (1997). The political economy of corruption. In K. A. Elliott (ed.), Corruption and the Global Economy. Washington: Institute for International Economics, 31–60. Traina, D. (2013). Lo jus aedificandi può ritenersi ancora connaturale al diritto di proprietà. Rivista giuridica dell’edilizia, 56: 257–299. See also: institutions, inclusion/exclusion, conflict and shock, systems thinking, informality, social capital, rules, power in planning, power/knowledge, rationality, ethics
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29. Creativity
institutional design can guarantee an optimal creative contribution to the planning process. Yet, institutional design, the patterns of rules and roles, design of procedures and the always unique balance between participation and representation in a planning system, do make a difference. One example of this is the reduction of design to the materialization of a wish list which cannot be criticized, and where each element must become visible in one discrete spatial element. Another example would be the hemming in of design thinking in one phase of the planning process, after which bureaucratic procedures take over, or, alternatively, late-stage political interventions in the design which disturb its internal cohesion. The creative potential of design in such cases is clearly underused, and one can easily add the example of participatory planning processes, where none of the participants is in fact allowed to participate in the design, or, more broadly, to think creatively. This brings us to creativity beyond design, that is, beyond the invention of spatial form. Creativity can also extend to the inventive, non-routine application of knowledge to planning processes, to the creation of stories and visions, to the imagining of possible uses, and, last but not least, to the creative crafting and use of procedures, policy tools and forms of organization (one can speak of creative bricolage). Creativity can extend to the sinuous relation between tactics and strategy, where accepted goals (embodied in a plan, say) for the strategy might require short-term actions, adaptations, and where slight modifications of the strategy might increase its chances of survival and implementation. The value of creativity in so many manifestations reminds us of the limitations of formal institutions and warns us against the looming risk, in complex governance systems, of functional stupidity, in this case the belief that simply following procedures, without creativity, flexibility and continuous reflection on means and ends will lead to the best possible spatial organization. Raoul Beunen, Kristof Van Assche and Martijn Duineveld, Editors
Space for creativity? Planning is not always seen as a creative endeavour, and in certain planning systems planners do not have much space for creativity, as creativity is reserved for private actors or politicians. If planning is about the facilitation of private development, then little creativity is possible. If, on the other hand, planning can co-create visions for the future which embody collective goals, then creativity becomes possible. If planning is allowed to entertain design perspectives, to reinvent spaces, then the room for creativity increases. The importance of creativity for design is commonly accepted, and in this view, the relation between planning and design will shape the space for creativity in planning. As planning is about the balancing of interests and perspectives, design cannot be dominated by one interest, one person, or by a pursuit of beauty. Rather, we would place the importance of design for planning in the possibility to work on several problems at the same time, to integrate policies more powerfully than in other forms of spatial planning (less focused on spatial context and on the possibilities to change this context). And we might add, in the discovery and creation of qualities in a particular space. If design thinking can accompany all phases of the planning process, the power of design could be harnessed, while reducing the risk of undermining fairness, diversity and functionality.
Manifestations of creativity If planning systems can accommodate design perspectives, this can certainly create spaces for creativity, where alternative spatial organizations can be imagined, and interrogated with regard to the values important for the community. If planning is merely the application of rules, or the catalysing of private development, and if many other policies are applied, in particular places, without reference to planning, then many real options for spatial organization which can accommodate several policy goals at the same time, will not be observed. Still, the quality of the design, of the input of design to the planning process, will hinge on the skills of the designer, and no
Bibliography Albrechts, L. (2005). Creativity as a drive for change. Planning Theory, 4(3), 247–269. Appleyard, D. (1978). The major published works of Kevin Lynch: An appraisal. The Town Planning Review, 49(4), 551–557. 88
creativity 89 Hillier, J. (2008). Plan (e) speaking: A multiplanar theory of spatial planning. Planning Theory, 7(1), 24–50. Merrey, D. J., & Cook, S. E. (2012). Fostering institutional creativity at multiple levels: Towards facilitated institutional bricolage. Water Alternatives, 5(1), 1–19. Van Assche, K., Beunen, R., Duineveld, M., & de Jong, H. (2013). Co-evolutions of
planning and design: Risks and benefits of design perspectives in planning systems. Planning Theory, 12(2), 177–198. See also: innovation, critical planning, agonism, design, new urbanism, institutions, conservation design, new urbanism, line of flight, complexity, asset-based community development, design: tensions, culture, identity
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30. Critical planning
main culprits (if it was not the whole capitalist, or in later terms neo-liberal system), but for most of this generation of critical planners and planning critics, the aim was to make planning more inclusive and progressive, rather than dismantling planning as such. Harsher words could be found for some favorite planning tools, such as zoning, which was often found to favor exclusion and separation much more easily than inclusion, fairness, redistribution, and, more elementarily, the mixing of land uses and coexisting of people. Critical planning could find inspiration in both modernist and post-modern theories, and the Habermas revival in planning theory in the 1980s can be regarded as a form of critical planning in a modernist vein, aiming at emancipation of the disempowered through a focus on inclusive and power-free decision-making procedures and arenas. The Foucault–Habermas controversy, starting in the 1970s and never really subsiding, cannot be interpreted as progressive vs conservative planning, but rather as critiques of governance and planning which converge in practical goals, starting from different epistemological foundations. Martijn Duineveld, Raoul Beunen and Kristof Van Assche, Editors
Critical planning is more than the history of planning critique, just as critical art goes beyond the genre of art criticism. Critiques of planning can come from the outside, and from the inside, and can be intended to improve planning or to question planning as such. Planning can be deconstructed as a neoliberal practice, as a (neo-) colonial system of oppression, or, from a different political angle, as a conspiracy against private property and initiative. Critical planning, in order to make a difference in the world, needs either support in the planning system, or in the broader community, which can put political pressure on that system. If the ideology of the critics differs too much from the values in the community and/or the governance system, this will lead to either silencing of the critics or to long drawn-out conflicts, if the critics can harness the resources for that. It is also possible that the critics to partly accommodate and adapt to working within a given governance system and community, in order to influence existing practices, and in order to instigate self-transformation rather than revolution. Critical planning can but does not necessarily focus on increased citizen participation, as the relation between the critics and the locals, or ‘the masses’ can differ according to context and ideology. In a socialist perspective, increasing participation in a bourgeois society leads to more bourgeois planning, while for others, direct participation can engender conflicts which would undermine the institutional order and hence democracy, in the long run. In communities where critiques of planning and politics are widely shared, strengthening local participation can be embraced by critical planners. Critical planning can stem from the ideological left or right, but most of what is usually labeled as such can be located on the left, where, especially in the 1960s and 70s, critiques of capitalism (now resurgent) entailed critiques of its system of spatial organization. Coalitions between economic and political elites were exposed to structure space, and its signification (as with Henri Lefebvre). Developers might have been presented as the
Bibliography Fainstein, N. I., & Fainstein, S. S. (1979). New debates in urban planning: The impact of Marxist theory within the United States. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 3(1–3), 381–403. Flyvbjerg, B. (1998). Rationality and power: Democracy in practice. University of Chicago Press. Hillier, J. (2003). Agon’izing over consensus: Why habermasian ideals cannot beReal’. Planning Theory, 2(1), 37–59. Klosterman, R. E. (1985). Arguments for and against planning. The Town Planning Review, 5–20. Mäntysalo, R. (2004). Dilemmas in critical planning theory. In B. Stiftel and V. Watson (eds), Dialogues in urban and regional planning (pp. 338–359). Routledge. See also: modernism, agonism, power/knowledge, systems thinking, ideology, narrative, rationality, adaptive planning, public debate 90
31. Culture and planning culture
History The debate on planning culture goes back to the 1960s. Here, the concept of culture unfolded its power and attractiveness because it addressed those aspects of planning action that a solely rational logic of argumentation consistently ignored. According to Friedmann (1967), this included, for example, subjective values and appreciations, patterns of perception, ideological attitudes as well as intuitions and traditions, which represent the most important (legitimation) source for planners in decision-making processes and which influence planners’ actions significantly. The term (planning) culture was first directly used two years later by Bolan (1969). He used the term to describe the institutional or political environment of local decision-making processes by summarising the political influences in planning processes that represent a counterweight to planning rationality and affect planning outcomes. However, this does not mean that a clear or firm understanding of planning culture has emerged during that period. It was not until the early 1990s that the notion of planning culture was taken up again by various authors. Booth (1993) for example, argues that planning has to be understood as a culturally defined process in which local planning practices are formed. These can be characterised by the specific interactions of political decision-makers and planners, and by the meanings or expectations that politics and planning attach to the planning concepts and instruments used by planners. Following this line of argument, the legal and administrative frameworks cannot completely define planning practices; they rather represent a corridor of action that is perceived and interpreted by actors. The application of planning instruments, the implementation of planning strategies, the change of planning regulations and the production of the built environment are thus expressions of habitualised (planning) cultures that only become tangible in their practical implementation (Othengrafen et al., 2019). This also finds its expression in the seminal book of Sanyal (2005a). He uses the term planning culture to find out whether there is a cultural nucleus that significantly influences planning practices and can be understood as an ‘independent variable’. Furthermore, the interest is to analyse whether planning practices across various nations are converging because of globalisation and related social
Definitions Planning culture thus stands for an explanatory approach in planning research that differs from other planning theoretical approaches, as it understands planning practices as culturally embedded activities (Othengrafen et al., 2019; Othengrafen & Reimer, 2013). By doing so, it focuses primarily on the interplay of manifested elements (e.g., legal foundations, administrative organisational structures, plans, strategies and concepts) and non-manifested elements (e.g., individual and collective modes of perception and internalised patterns of action) to contribute to a deeper understanding of planning practice. This also includes ‘short-term day-to-day decision making and planning practice’, ‘artefacts durable over the medium-term such as specific planning policies, documents, plans or other materials’ and ‘planning policy frames durable over decades that underlie the former’ (Valler & Phelps, 2018, p. 700). Planning culture can be understood as ‘collective intelligible social practices’, referring to a number of incorporated and (implicit) routinised recurrent regularities about how to behave and act in specific situations (Othengrafen & Reimer, 2013, pp. 1272–1273). It attempts to identify the patterns of thinking, the attitudes and the action routines of planners and planning institutions on the basis of typical (social) orientations, ideas and associated value attitudes. Planning culture thus intends to analyse different beliefs, attitudes, ideas, norms, values, frames and behaviours that underlie and influence local or regional planning processes and obviously guide the actions of members belonging to a specific culture. The way in which the respective actors understand their roles and tasks, how they perceive problems, deal with them and apply certain rules, procedures and instruments are thus characteristics of a planning culture. This is situation-specific and context-bound, so that planning culture always reflects local and regional practices. As planning cultures are formed as a function of cultural structures and discourses, they are subject to constant change. 91
92 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design and economic developments. The focus here is on the dynamics of planning cultures. Sanyal (2005b) explicitly points out here that planning cultures are by no means rigid cultural formations, but are closely interrelated with social, political and economic processes and are therefore subject to constant change.
Theoretical debates The debates on planning culture are thus still in their infancy and thus still diverse. However, the notion of planning culture ‘has considerable value as a research heuristic and explanatory variable in comparative research’ (Zimmermann et al., 2018, p. 35), offering a conceptual approach ‘to explain the multiple trajectories of change and the diversity of local and regional planning practices’ (Othengrafen & Reimer, 2013, p. 1281). As scientific approaches such as institutional theories, rational choice approaches or actorbased theories have considerable weaknesses in explaining performance and change in planning practice (Zimmermann et al., 2018, p. 41), the turn to culture is used here as a kind of counter-concept to the existing system of thought and order in the field of urban and regional planning. Here, culture provides a reference system for a society, organisation or group, consisting of specific symbols or artefacts (e.g., material forms of expression) and social ideas, forms of thinking, ways of feeling, values and meanings, which in turn materialise in symbol systems or artefacts and define the perception, thinking and actions of their members (Othengrafen et al., 2019). In terms of their theoretical positioning, we can mainly distinguish between a cultural or organisational studies approach and a practice theory approach (Othengrafen et al., 2019; Zimmermann et al., 2018). Following approaches from organisational and cultural studies, planning culture focuses on the analysis of manifested and non-manifested cultural elements of spatial planning. The local practices and routines of planners emerge here in the interplay between visible (spatial) structures, e.g., the architecture of a city or existing planning documents (‘planning artefacts’) and the specific planning framework conditions and institutional contexts in which they are embedded (see also Valler & Phelps, 2018). Planning artefacts are seen here as
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manifested symbols or expressions of planning practices as well as deeper social values, attitudes, traditions and knowledge systems. Of particular importance here is that spatial or planning artefacts influence the meanings or expectations that politicians, planners and other actors attach to the goals to be achieved or the instruments used. At the same time, political and planning decisions set the framework for urban structures, the architecture of a city or other visible (physical) artefacts, so that a mutual influence of artefacts, planning policies and societal values, norms and traditions can be observed here. Through such a systematic view of planning, this approach aims to understand and analyse the different patterns and forms of planning practice in different spatial and cultural contexts (contextualisation of planning practice). In addition to approaches that focus on the analysis of manifested and non-manifested elements of planning practice, it is possible to identify those that view planning cultures in terms of a practice-theoretical perspective. According to Zimmermann et al. (2018, p. 42), ‘theories of practice see planning as knowledge-based social routine actions, not as a structure, a tradition, or a configuration of symbols, text or artefacts’. Thus, the focus here is particularly on planners as acting subjects. Planning cultures refer to the way in which the respective actors understand their roles and tasks, how they perceive and deal with problems in a situation-specific and context-bound manner, and how they apply certain rules, procedures and instruments. Planning practices – at both the individual and the collective level – arise primarily from the dynamic interplay of cognitive attitudes and guiding planning concepts, interactions between groups of actors and the planning law context. This allows for explaining the maxims of action of the planners observed, their specific perceptions and evaluations, as well as the self-understandings that determine their actions and that make up a planning culture (Othengrafen et al., 2019). Consequently, the practice-theoretical perspective accepts, that planning culture is not a homogeneous entity, but rather characterised by diverging interests, ideas and diverse negotiation processes. It is thus a multitude of different practices, which together make up a planning culture.
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Uses and futures The concept of planning culture is increasingly used to analyse (local) planning practices in depth. As a research heuristic and explanatory variable in comparative research it thus has considerable value for planning theory and practice. As an empirical research concept, planning culture is only partially convincing so far, as a multitude of possible analysis categories, indicators and variables are subsumed under the term, which are hardly manageable and examinable in their interplay. Thus, it is not surprising that empirical analyses follow different approaches, methods and categories, which leave planning culture as a concept somewhat fuzzy (Fürst, 2016). According to Taylor (2013), planning culture is furthermore not suitable to conceptualise questions of stability and change in planning practice adequately, meaning that comparative planning research in particular does not benefit from the current debate on planning cultures. Taylor (2013) instead highlights the importance of historical institutionalism, which is more appropriate to identify past decisions and experiences that are embedded in local institutions and planning practices, and to examine the extent to which these affect intended changes. However, recent research shows that planning culture research and historical institutionalism, which often focus on a national level, are not mutually exclusive, but can complement each other well: ‘Whilst a historical institutional development approach emphasizes the external world in which planners work, a planning culture perspective sheds light on the interior world of planning practice’ (Jackson, 2022, p. 6). This shows that planning culture as a concept still needs to be further developed, especially in distinction to similar approaches (e.g., institutional thought, governance, policy analysis) (Othengrafen et al., 2019; Zimmermann et al., 2018). However, the planning culture approach undoubtedly also offers great potential for further development in planning theory and practice. In this context, the added value of planning culture as a concept will presumably become clear when it succeeds in making it manageable for empirical research work. It is precisely the breaking down of its theoretical (over-)complexity to
empirical planning research, i.e., the adaptation of the concept into empirically and comparable research designs, research, that poses a great challenge. A stringent and strictly operationalisable model with fixed criteria and indicators is of little help here. Rather, it is important to apply planning culture as an analytical-conceptual approach in which cultural influencing factors are given space and opportunity to be integrated into the analysis of urban and regional planning practices. Frank Othengrafen
References Bolan, R. S. (1969). Community decision behavior: The culture of planning. Journal of the American Planning Association, 35(5), 301–310. Booth, P. (1993). The cultural dimension in comparative research: Making sense of development control in France. European Planning Studies, 1(2), 217–229. Friedmann, J. (1967). A conceptual model for the analysis of planning behavior. Administrative Science Quarterly, 12(2), 225–252. Fürst, D. (2016). Planungskultur – Fruchtbare neue Konzeption? disP – The Planning Review, 52(4), 67–75. Jackson, J. T. (2022). Local planning cultures? What Glasgow, Melbourne and Toronto planners say. International Planning Studies, doi:10.1080/13563475.2022.20431 48 (online first). Othengrafen, F., & Reimer, M. (2013). The embeddedness of planning in cultural contexts: Theoretical foundations for the analysis of dynamic planning cultures. Environment and Planning A, 45, 1269–1284. Othengrafen, F., Reimer, M., & Danielzyk, R. (2019). Planungskultur. In T. Wiechmann (Ed.), ARL-Reader Planungstheorie, Vol. 2 (pp. 155–165). Springer Spektrum. Sanyal, B. (2005a). Comparative planning cultures. Routledge. Sanyal, B. (2005b). Hybrid planning cultures: The search for the global cultural commons. In B. Sanyal (Hrsg), Comparative planning cultures (pp. 3–25). Routledge. Taylor, Z. (2013). Rethinking planning culture: A new institutionalist approach. Town Planning Review, 84(6), 683–702.
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94 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design Valler, D., & Phelps, N. A. (2018). Framing the future: On local planning cultures and legacies. Planning Theory & Practice, 19(5), 698–716. Zimmermann, K., Chang, R., & Putlitz, A. (2018). Planning culture: Research heuristics and explanatory value. In Thomas
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W. Sanchez (Ed.), Planning knowledge and research (pp. 35–50). Routledge. See also: narrative, institutions, organizations, memory, futures, identity, systems thinking, complexity, expertise, inclusion/ exclusion, informality, self-organization
32. Density
sq. km. The most densely populated contemporary city is Dhaka, Bangladesh, with over 47 000/sq. km.
Density: from problem to promise
Density and modern planning
Urban planning has always been concerned with the number of people (i.e., population density) and the number of dwelling units (i.e., residential density) per given area (e.g., hectare, acre, square mile, square kilometre). Density matters because the number of people living in an area affects demand for services (such as water, sewerage, waste disposal, energy, schools, transport, retail) and can affect social well-being and health outcomes. Density can be measured in various ways. Differences in what is being calculated and what makes density comparisons challenging. At the city-wide scale, densities are given in number of people per square kilometre or per square mile: the denominator used may be the developed urban area or the area under political control, leading to different density estimates. At the smaller neighbourhood or project scale, often used in policymaking, densities are rendered in people, households, dwelling units or habitable rooms per hectare, acre or relevant local units of measurement. Planners may focus on gross density (the number of people or units divided by the total urban area) or net density (divided by the area designated for housing). Although plans often speak about the number of people expected to live in new developments, planning policies typically regulate the number of dwelling units permitted: they cannot affect how many people live in a studio flat or a four-bedroom house. When a large number of people share a small number of rooms, planners speak of ‘overcrowding’. In some jurisdictions, plans have sought to attract densities that include a minimum number of people and/or jobs per unit area to achieve a ‘jobs/housing balance’ and reduce the need for commuting to work. By their nature, cities have higher densities than smaller settlements. Ancient cities were compact, with densities likely around 10 000–20 000 people/sq. km. Contemporary urban densities tend to be lower, because cities have large areas devoted to commercial and industrial uses, and vast low-density suburbs: London, UK, has around 5700 people/ sq. km, Amsterdam 4400/sq. km, and Hong Kong 6800/sq. km. Some central city neighbourhoods, especially those with many highrise apartment buildings, may exceed 25 000/
Modern town planning originated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to respond to concerns about the health and economic impacts of overcrowding in poor neighbourhoods. Epidemics of cholera, typhus, tuberculosis, influenza and other diseases swept the densely populated housing of the poorest classes in industrial cities. In 1890, the journalist Jacob Riis published How the other half lives, documenting slum conditions in New York City: he illustrated the way that land-use regulations stripped residents of light and air in cramped tenement apartments. In England in the same decade, Ebenezer Howard advocated Garden Cities as a better option: planned lower-density satellite towns where working families could enjoy sun and health. Convinced that highdensity housing generated disease, crime, disorder and misery, early planning proponents (like Raymond Unwin and Thomas Adams) argued that ‘nothing is gained from overcrowding’. Density was a problem for planning to solve, often by initiating programmes of slum clearance or by placing limits on the number of units permitted in new projects (see Figure 32.1). For much of the twentieth century, cities and states institutionalised the mission of planning and delivering homes set in spacious, green suburbs. Urban densities declined in response to a mix of policies, practices and processes. Planning and engineering policies produced wider streets, larger lots and rules that privileged low-rise buildings. Real estate development grew in importance as an industry, facilitated by state practices that encouraged economies of scale to produce more units. Household economics improved for a growing middle class that could afford private automobiles, had access to inexpensive borrowing and aspired to home ownership. Accessible reproductive technologies and social processes favouring late marriage and small families contributed to declining household sizes. Together these factors meant that population densities fell in Western cities after the Second World War. By the late twentieth century, however, planners had become concerned about sprawl: the endless, auto-oriented, low-density spread 95
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Figure 32.1 In the nineteenth century, parts of Paris were rebuilt at medium to high densities. Many urban designers praise such forms
of cities that critics like Jane Jacobs condemned. Several new theories of urban planning began to promote higher densities in compact cities. Sustainability theories held that density could reduce land and energy consumption; new urbanists believed that dense communities would be more vibrant, walkable and integrated; smart growth advocates saw higher densities as using land and services more efficiently. Many proponents of higher densities argued that dense housing would improve affordability, social mix and sociability (see Figure 32.2).
A new consensus A new consensus that saw promise in higher densities had developed amongst planners by the early twenty-first century. Rising interest in promoting creative cities competing in a global context added to the lustre jill l. grant
of high-density, well-designed, culture-rich urban cores. With the rise of neoliberalism (with its faith in the ability of the market to resolve issues), governments often eased planning regulations to streamline development processes, remove ‘red tape’, reduce lot size requirements and encode design compliance. Urban designers prepared books and presentations illustrating well-designed high-density housing options and suggested that ‘gentle’ or ‘hidden’ density to infill existing neighbourhoods could accommodate the ‘missing middle’ (i.e., the need for housing for middleincome households). Central city neighbourhoods, which had often suffered decades of disinvestment, began to change as developers took advantage of opportunities to increase urban densities. Changing consumer preferences – especially amongst Millennials and empty-nesters – contributed to growing demand for
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Figure 32.2 Allowing higher urban densities can lead to significant neighbourhood change, as this image of Montevideo, Uruguay, reveals
downtown living, a trend that developers captured with glossy high-rise towers. The early decades of the twenty-first century thus generated some increase in dwelling unit densities in urban cores, though the growth in one- and two-person households meant that density gains were sometimes modest. Recent policy changes to encourage suburban retrofitting – to fill open spaces or reconfigure underutilised commercial or residential areas – has yet to have significant impact on suburban densities. The 2020s brought the coronavirus pandemic and renewed debate about the problems and promise of higher urban densities. Sceptics noted the risks of sharing elevators and public transportation while a deadly airborne virus was circulating: in the early months of the pandemic, demand for highrise units plummeted in North America as people sought low-density housing options to
escape the crowds. Advocates of high-density housing noted, however, that dense Asian cities often managed public health effectively: governance and cultural behaviours were the issue in virus spread, rather than the dense urban form (see Figure 32.3).
Concluding For the most part, planners remain faithful to the belief that high-density development is the progressive urban choice, likely to generate efficiency, economy, health, happiness, sociability and affordability. While evidence suggests that high-density housing has significant economic and efficiency benefits for developers and for municipalities, its ability to provide other promised benefits for residents remains uncertain. Contemporary cities generally lack affordable housing – especially for low-income families and jill l. grant
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Figure 32.3 Low-density suburban neighbourhoods (like this one in Airdrie, Alberta, Canada) take large areas out of agricultural or forest production
singles – except where the government provides social housing units. At present, the commitment to high-density cities is producing small apartments for professionals rather than generating more affordable housing for all. The promise of dense, vibrant, mixed neighbourhoods that fuel urban planners’ visions of the desirable city is challenged by events (like the global pandemic), processes (like the growing unaffordability of housing) and practices (like continuing suburban development). Jill L. Grant
Bibliography Churchman, A. (1999). Disentangling the concept of density. Journal of Planning Literature, 13(4), 389–411
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Fader, S., & Scully, V. (2000). Density by design. Urban Land Institute. ISBN: 0874208335. Jacobs, J. (1961). The death and life of great American cities. Vintage. ISBN: 9780679644330. Jenks, M., Burton, E., & Williams, K. (Eds.). (1996). The compact city: A sustainable urban form? E & FN Spon. ISBN: 9786610048823. Unwin, R. (1912). Nothing gained by overcrowding! How the Garden City type of development may benefit both owner and occupier. Garden Cities & Town Planning Association, P.S. King & Son. See also: sprawl, ideology, modernism, infrastructure, garden city, smart growth, creativity, affordable housing, new urbanism
33. Dependencies in planning and governance
ecology, would highlight the importance of material dependencies, i.e., the effect of materiality, both natural and human-made on governance (Van Assche et al., 2022). Infrastructures, flows of water, pollution, weather and climate, ecological shifts can affect communities and their governance and planning systems. Such dependencies can be observed or unobserved, with observation making them more manageable. Planning contributes to the creation of new material dependencies (through nature conservation, location of industries, water management, infrastructure development) and has to manage and reflect upon existing material dependencies. In times of climate change and energy transition, planning can have the double challenge to change physical realities in such a way that social-ecological systems relations become more sustainable, and that at the same time material dependencies (i.e., internal features of the planning system) are transformed. This might be necessary to avoid blind reproduction of actions, ideas and spatial forms and unanticipated planning effects undermining the sustainability goals.
Dependencies describe the factors that influence the way in which governance or planning systems evolve. In co-evolutionary perspectives on planning and governance, the effects of history on what is possible in the present are considered non-trivial. This does not imply a form of determinism, whereby no path creation is possible, but rather that the options for decision-making in governance, and planning as spatial governance, are constrained by sets of relations which developed over time.
Types Path dependencies, as effects of the past on the current reproduction of the planning system, have been recognized most widely as relevant, first in political theory (in the 1970s), later in sociology, policy studies and institutional economics. One can distinguish between cognitive and institutional or organizational path dependencies, as in forms of organization and institutions which have proven useful in coordination and are relatively uncontested, and on the other hand forms of knowledge, narrative and ideology which are encoded in policy and other institutions, and/or widely accepted in the community. Economics, as well as systems theories, recognized interdependencies as relevant for understanding the evolution of systems of policy and planning, resonating with insights from anthropology and history. Plans depend on other policies, laws and informal institutions to find implementation and to come into being first, while actors depend on each other, and actors rely on institutions for their coordination of actions and calculation of futures. In planning, where the coordination task is central and daunting, such interdependencies are abundantly clear, as when planners become reliant on and start thinking in terms of the tools they have, and as influential businesspeople or families controlling much of the land might have to be courted to make any strategy for the future possible. Social-ecological systems theory and ecological anthropology, as well as political
Dependencies in evolutionary governance Evolutionary governance theory (EGT) recognizes path-, inter- and material dependencies but adds on category, i.e., goal dependencies. Goal dependencies are the effects of visions of the future on the current functioning of governance. As planning is forward-looking, understanding goal dependencies is utterly relevant. The concept of goal dependency goes beyond the older concepts of conformity and implementation, as implementation in literal or other form is just one type of goal dependency, with real effects in the community in line with what was intended, and with the governance system itself receiving positive feedback and not changing much. Goal dependencies can also include the internal effects of backlash in the community, the formulation of alternative plans, reshuffling of the planning administration, changing relations in the broader planning system, etc. Even without much external resistance, the effects of a plan can be weak, first to coordinate action in the governance system, second, in the community at large. Looking at the history of planning, its bright and darker sides, its successes and failures, as recounted in the past and as assessed right now, it is clear that 99
100 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design implementation was not always positive, and that the more complex pathways of governance, and the more intricate patterns of goal dependencies observed by EGT, often represented a way out of terrible ideas, or a way to adapt and improve acceptable ones. Kristof Van Assche, Raoul Beunen and Martijn Duineveld, Editors
Bibliography Ingold, T. (2018). Back to the future with the theory of affordances. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 8(1–2), 39–44. Luhmann, N. (1995). Social systems. Stanford University Press. North, D. C. (2010). Understanding the process of economic change. Princeton University Press.
Partelow, S. (2018). A review of the socialecological systems framework. Ecology and Society, 23(4). Van Assche, K., Beunen, R., & Duineveld, M. (2013). Evolutionary governance theory: An introduction. Springer Science & Business Media. Van Assche, K., Duineveld, M., Beunen, R., Valentinov, V., & Gruezmacher, M. (2022). Material dependencies: Hidden underpinnings of sustainability transitions. Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, 24(3), 281–296. See also: institutions, power/knowledge, social-ecological systems, systems thinking, narrative, memory, self-organization, complexity, history, rules, property, ideology, identity
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34. Design: public– private divides in the urban realm Introduction: public and private Designating spaces as public or private is one of the organizing principles of almost all societies, which can be traced back to the earliest human settlements. Through setting this distinction, a map of possibilities and limitations is created, determining how space may be used, where people can or cannot go, thereby shaping social life in its different layers and meanings. The primary determinant of this distinction is access, which creates a pattern of inclusion and exclusion. Access to spaces is controlled through setting boundaries that may be legal, physical or merely symbolic. A public space is an inclusive space that is accessible to everyone, while a private space is controlled by a limited number of people, able to exclude others. Private spaces include private properties and homes, while public spaces include physical, institutional and technological spaces of co-presence, communication and exposure, ranging from parks and streets to libraries, parliaments and print and digital media. Public and private spaces are interdependent, as they only find meaning in relation to one another. Life in society would require both a sphere of privacy and intimacy protected from the intrusion of others, as well as a shared sphere of sociability and interaction with others. However, their relationship is more nuanced than the dichotomy that is inherent in their names. The distinction between public and private is sharply made in legal terms, where the ownership and management of property are concerned, but it is rather blurred in social use, displaying a spectrum of different degrees of privacy and publicness, and different forms and levels of access to space. The private is associated with individuals and households, while the public indicates people as a whole, society as well as the state. The relationship between these two spheres has long been a central theme of social and political concern and the boundary between them, an ideological battleground. For radical critics such as Rousseau, private property was a source of inequality, and Marx advocated
its complete abolition as a remedy for social ills. For the mid-twentieth-century critics, the public sphere suppressed difference, excluded women and minorities from public life, and separated the two spheres through oppressive social conventions. For the liberals, when it came to the affairs of the state, a strict separation was essential for preventing personal gains from public office. For the libertarians, maximizing private space and personal freedom was the goal, while for their critics, such as Dewey, Arendt and Habermas, public space was a space of association and a cornerstone of democracy. For the spatial disciplines like urban planning and design, these tensions came to the fore in the second half of the twentieth century, particularly in the transition from the welfare state to neoliberalism.
The welfare state and design The establishment of a welfare state in the mid-twentieth century provided a series of essential public services in health, education and housing. The large-scale construction of the public housing schemes in the aftermath of World War II was an important part of the expanding role of the state in society. The deep economic crises of the 1970s, however, marked the end of an era, and the start of a new one, in which the role of the state was cut back, to be replaced by the private sector and global corporations. This neoliberal phase was marked by deregulation, privatization, deindustrialization and globalization. A new economic model emerged in which manufacturing was relocated to cheaper, less regulated places, to be replaced by services. The leftover spaces from this structural change were regenerated through consumerism, with associated retail and leisure spaces. These dramatic changes shifted the balance between the public and private sectors and spaces. The city was now being shaped and produced by private investors, who had little interest in public services and spaces. In this period, urban design was widely used as a vehicle for this transition from the welfare state to neoliberalism. Urban regeneration schemes deployed the skills of urban design, which had been abandoned by city planning, to reshape the declining parts of cities and manage the growth of new areas. As municipal budgets dwindled, public spaces were abandoned, becoming the last resort for the homeless, while the boundaries between public and private spaces became harsher and
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102 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design stricter. As new developments relied heavily on private investment, gated neighbourhoods multiplied, while public spaces were privatized, monitored and controlled, losing their character as inclusive and accessible spaces. In response, urban campaigners started to stress the necessity of public spaces for public life in democratic society. The theme of public space became a central concern for urban design.
Public value of design and value of public design The call for the creation and enhancement of public space had first emerged as a social critique, but it gradually became adopted by most stakeholders as an essential ingredient of society. However, in this process, the idea of public space was co-opted in the urban development process as an auxiliary to investment and return. As public authorities metamorphosed to embrace the methods and mindsets of private corporations, and as their ability and willingness to invest in public housing dwindled, they saw public space improvements as a pathway to visible achievements and an infrastructure for the new regeneration schemes. The role of public space was seen in many schemes as an instrument for increasing property values, gentrification and attracting customers to retail and leisure spaces. The deep economic crisis of 2008 signalled the end of the period of neoliberal globalization,
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which undermined the consumerist model of urban development. It also undermined the capacity of public authorities for protecting public spaces. The demand for democratic control over the balance between public and private spaces, and for creating and maintaining inclusive and accessible public spaces continues. Meanwhile, the urgency of responding to climate change has given public spaces a new progressive role. Rather than being dominated by cars, there is an increasing demand for adjusting urban public spaces for the ease of walking and cycling. Public space improvements are seen as a way of making cities healthier and more attractive to live in, as a viable alternative to the spread of carbased suburbs. Ali Madanipour
Bibliography Madanipour, A. (2003). Public and private spaces of the city. Routledge. Madanipour, A. (2021). Beyond placing and distancing: Public space for inclusive cities. Harvard Design Magazine, 49, 74–79. Mitrašinović, M., & Mehta, V. (Eds.). (2021). Public space reader. Routledge. See also: design: tensions, regional design, conservation design, downtown development, smart growth, garden city, ideology, biophilic cities, commons, property, desire
35. Design: tensions and ambiguities Introduction In recent decades, urban design has grown significantly as an area of academic and professional activity, as evidenced by millions of entries on the Internet. As an interdisciplinary subject, however, it is defined and understood in very different ways, depending on the educational and professional perspectives and divisions of labour, as well as the contexts and traditions of the country in which it is practised. In this entry, I introduce some of these differences and their associated tensions and ambiguities, trying to show a way out. One of the ambiguities is about the origins of urban design. In a broad sense, urban design is an ancient field of activity that emerged with the earliest purposeful efforts to shape human settlements. In its current form, however, it arose in the second half of the twentieth century, filling a growing gap between the fields of architecture and city planning. The modernist movement had integrated social and spatial concerns with a holist approach to architecture and city planning, as exemplified by the 1933 Charter of Athens. Architecture and city planning, however, started to grow apart as a result of the growing division of labour, based on a divide between process and product, between social relationships and physical environment, between development and regulation. In a fundamental change, particularly after mid-century, city planning abandoned its interests and skills in design, moved away from its historical links with architecture, adopted the concepts and methods of social sciences and became embedded in the municipal procedures for regulating land use. Architecture, meanwhile, lost its interest in the city and the context of its developments, limiting its focus to buildings and their sites.
Recent evolutions With the decline of the welfare state and the rejection of its modernist approaches to urban development, the 1970s were a turning point. After a period of economic decline, the public sector’s involvement in total urban transformation was replaced by a neoliberal reliance on private sector investment in
particular locations, facilitated by entrepreneurial municipalities that would now adopt private sector methods of management. This triggered a shift from comprehensive city plans, that aimed at determining the future of the city in its totality within a long timeframe, to strategic plans that could only set priorities and be open to new directions, often shaped and materialized through large-scale urban projects funded by the private sector. The welfare state modernism was based on the idea of equal provision and distribution of services, thereby emphasizing quantity, but its universalist vision was criticized as abstract and elitist. Its postmodernist critics focused on quality, identity and differentiation. It is in these structural transformations, and in a return to urban development as a cornerstone of the urban economy, that the new approaches to urban design can be located. Changes in the scale of engagement from comprehensive to local; in agencies of urban development from public to private; in the character of municipalities from managerial to entrepreneurial; in the focus of city planning from spatial to procedural concerns; in the aims of development from quantity to quality, from service to profit, from space to place; and in a cultural shift from universalism to particularism, led to a gap that was filled by urban design. As the neoliberal form of urban development started to play out from the 1980s onward, urban design was employed in large-scale urban projects as well as small-scale urban improvement schemes. As deindustrialization gathered pace in a process of globalization, urban design became an instrument of urban transformation, with its associated changes in the urban economy, from manufacturing to services, and in urban social geography, as displayed in competition for space, displacement and gentrification.
Roles and forms of design However, these changes in the urban condition and the character of city planning, which were initiated in the UK and USA, would not necessarily occur in the same form and intensity in other countries. Therefore, the educational and professional division of labour between architecture, landscape architecture and city planning has found different forms around the world. Furthermore, urban design, like any other activity, is not limited to the context in which it emerges or the conditions of its possibility. It is not merely a by-product
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104 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design of neoliberalism, and its roles are not limited to being a tool of private sector investment, an aid to profit-seeking, or a catalyst for gentrification. In large-scale urban projects, as a complex array of stakeholders replaced the predominance of a single municipal authority, urban design could become an important vehicle of participation and coordination in democratic governance, based on collectively developing a vision for the future of an area. At smaller scales, attention to detail and the quality of life, especially in the context of the rising environmental concerns, has provided a space of action for urban design. In many instances, urban design has helped create new spaces of sociability, and has promoted a move away from car-based urbanism toward more pedestrian spaces and sustainable forms of living. The prominence of these small-scale engagements has been such that for some outside observers, urban design appears to be only interested in the public realm, in spaces between buildings, in placemaking, or in physical environment detached from social and environmental concerns. Others have seen urban design as a tool of beautification, as a visual instrument for aesthetic embellishment, without being aware that spatial experiences are far more complex, meaningful and multidimensional. These attempts at reducing the role of urban design to a single form of activity, a single scale of engagement, a single topic of interest or a single economic
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formation, miss the point about the range and scale of the processes that produce the urban environment and shape the conditions of social life. Urban design is a multidisciplinary process of shaping and managing the built environment at all scales, and with all its political, economic and cultural dimensions. As the social and the spatial are closely intertwined, urban design as a purposeful process of shaping the built environment plays a significant social role, but also carries a significant burden of responsibility, as potentially it can contribute to both deepening the urban problems and social divides, as well as searching for solutions for the major social and environmental challenges that cities face. Ali Madanipour
Bibliography Lang, J. (2017). Urban design: A typology of procedures and products, 2nd ed. Routledge. Larice, M., & Macdonald, E. (Eds.). (2012). The Urban design reader, 2nd ed. Routledge. Madanipour, A. (2014). Urban design, space and society. Palgrave Macmillan. See also: regional design, new urbanism, ideology, modernism, methods, heritage, smart growth, garden city, density, research through design, neighbourhood design, biophilic cities, commons, design: public and private
36. Desire, drive, disavowal Introduction Desire, drive and disavowal are three interrelated Lacanian concepts that can be helpful for the deconstruction of planning policies and strategies and understanding their consequences. Lacan (Evans, 2006[1996]) used these concepts in the clinical practice of psychoanalysis, and also applied them in the analysis of discourses [see the five discourses of Lacan] and the structure of human society. In addition to the Lacanian clinical explanation, this section uses a discursive interpretation of the concepts that is useful for planning. The section specifically benefits from employing the Essex School Discourse analysis approach that was initially developed by Laclau and Mouffe (1985) through reading Marx, Althusser, Gramsci and Lacan. The approach also includes a deep analysis of political discourses using the works of a wide variety of thinkers, including Wittgenstein, Foucault and Žižek, to avoid a reductionist view in the analysis of phenomena. The concepts of desire, drive and disavowal are related to ontological lack – the most important of Lacan’s concepts. According to Lacan, all desires arise from lack. The question here is, ‘What is lack?’ For Lacan, lack means lack of being and ‘the subject’s lack of being [that] is the heart of the analytic experience; . . . Lacan contrasts the lack of being, which relates to desire, with the lack of having (manque à avoir), which relates to demand’ (Evans, 2006[1996], p. 98). Namely, the object that the subject lacks stimulates a desire and consequently a demand to seek the lacked object. Importantly, Lacanian ontological lack designates a missing signifier in the (big) Other [see the entry on Other]. Other refers to a locus in the symbolic order that any dominant agent (for example the mother for a child), hegemonic norms and laws or a constituted discourse (such as capitalism) can fill. According to Lacan (2006), the concept of lack within the symbolic order is at the core of psychoanalysis and all other concepts are meaningful in their relationship to this ‘missing thing’. The symbolic order is one of the
three orders (Symbolic, Real and Imaginary) on which Lacan based his work. For Lacan, the symbolic is the realm of language, discourses, social structures and social bonds, Other, law and regulations, institutions and economic relations, which together constitute culture and society. Everything – subject, structures and discourse – is incomplete and there is always a ‘lack’, a structural incompleteness or ontological deficiency, in the symbolic order. However, the lack is itself a pressure on the symbolic order created by the Real – the thing or discourse that cannot be expressed and symbolised in the symbolic order. The Real refers to things which are outside of language, outside of the structure and elude representation, or as Lacan says: ‘it is that which resists symbolization absolutely’ (Evans, 2006[1996], p. 159). Žižek (2008, p. 184) defines the Real ‘as such a paradoxical, chimerical entity which, although it does not exist, has a series of properties and can produce a series of effects, . . . it is impossible, but it produces a number of traumatic effects’. Yet, there is a logical relationship between the Real and the symbolic order. The Real is not something from outside the hegemonic discourse but a contingency from inside the discourse that makes the structure of the discourse impossible – for example, the relationship between socialism and capitalism, or as Dean (2012) suggests, communism and capitalism. This can be extended to the discourse of colonialism, exploitation, as well as the free-market failures that present the Real to the capitalist economy. The Imaginary represents ‘our attempt through fantasy to conceal the elemental disjuncture between the symbolic and the Real’ (Gunder, 2016, p. 28). While a hegemonic discourse promises completeness, the Real is the contingency or impossibility of the hegemonic discourse. In dislocatory moments, when the hegemonic discourse cannot maintain the promise of completeness, such as an economic crisis or the antagonistic reaction of a minority or an isolated group, the symbolic order ‘is disrupted by an experience that cannot be symbolised within and by the pre-existing means of discursive representation’ (Glynos & Howarth, 2007, p. 14). The focus of the Lacanian School of psychoanalysis is the analysis of subjects’ reactions to and relationship with an ontological (or unsolvable) lack (Glynos & Howarth, 2007). Desire, fantasy, drive and disavowal
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106 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design are related to the different ways a subject confronts and deals with an identified lack in the existing symbolic order. Therefore, a key requirement when analysing economic, social and political plans, as well as policies and practices is understanding how these policies and practices are stimulated by incomplete structures (the ontological lack). Another important focus is the collective acts and responses to policies that sustain or transform those incomplete structures.
Desire and fantasy Facing and dealing with the lack causes feelings of anxiety, insecurity and disharmony or what Lacan described as the enjoyment that is always already lost. The subject desires to (re)gain the lost enjoyment by filling the lack. Inspired by Marx’s concept of surplus-value, Lacan (seminars of 1962–3 and 1964) named this lost enjoyment as object petit a or surplus-enjoyment1 that ‘has no “use-value,” but persists for the mere sake of enjoyment’ (Evans, 2006[1996], p. 129). Specifically, Žižek (2008, p. 51) explains that the homology between Marxist surplusvalue and Lacanian surplus-enjoyment in the continuity of capitalism is the logic of capitalism. In fact, ‘manipulating surplus-enjoyment becomes a source of surplus-value and profit’ (Bahmanteymouri, 2021, p. 238). In a Hegelian interpretation, surplus-enjoyment can be defined as a desire to be desired, loved or recognised. For example, this can include a subject’s desire for prestige or of being popular within a community; or, from a discursive point of view, the desired goal of planning institutions and agents to provide affordable housing or a new bicycle route. Surplus-enjoyment is the cause of both desire and drive. The emergence of a lack in the hegemonic discourse and consequently the lost enjoyment creates a desire of finding a solution. According to Laclau (2005), when the lack appears a fantasy using promising master signifiers emerges to offer a new and alternative discourse to cover over the lack, thus, it provides the subject with surplus-enjoyment. Fantasy ‘is defined as an image set to work’ (Lacan, 2006, p. 532) in the symbolic order; however, the fantasy’s ‘fundamental use is the means by which the subject maintains himself [sic] at the level of his vanishing desire’ to fill the lack. Fantasy acts as a defence ‘against the lack’ (Evans 2006[1996], p. 61) and it is used to veil lack within a hegemonic discourse. elham bahmanteymouri
From the discursive point of view, discourses are incomplete and maintain a lack, at least a deficiency, that makes them vulnerable to criticism and even failure. For example, there are many deficiencies in the capitalist market discourse such as financial bubbles, economic crises and lack of affordable housing to meet demand. This lack creates a desire to find a solution such as a new housing policy or land release strategy as a fantasy of completeness for the hegemonic discourse of the free market operation. Žižek (2008) argues that the constitutive lack in the hegemonic discourse has a contingent entity which creates anxiety over the disharmony in the structure that forces subjects to struggle over recognition of the pressure of the lack on the discourse. Based on the Laclauian approach, the problem of a lack of equality, security, housing and a healthy environment, needs a solution. At this point, Laclau (2005) contends that a promising empty signifier emerges (what Lacan terms a master signifier), which ‘signals the introjection of this signifier as “enigma-plus-promise” that accounts for a common identification (yet) a common identity’ (Glynos & Howarth, 2007, p. 130). This in itself is the cause of another series of struggles between subjects over its meaning. The result of these struggles is a new fantasy, a new discourse involving a series of signifiers and significations, which are constituted around and in relation to an identified lack. Therefore, fantasy is not simply located in the Imaginary order (for example maps and photos in planning) but also presents a series of signifiers or empty signifiers in the symbolic order (such as plans and policies). Namely, the solution to a lack or deficiency frames the necessity for a specific ideological response; hence, an ideology arises based on its promise to fill a ‘lack’ or ‘deficiency’ in the social order. According to Stavrakakis (cited in Gunder, 2010, p. 306), ‘the ideological articulation of the solution provides an emotive and powerful political tool for the implementation and desirous materialization of public planning policy’. In fact, planning and policies operate to provide the desired solution of hegemonic ideology in order to fill the lack and mitigate the anxiety of facing the lack in the discourse. The importance of planners and policymakers’ jobs is offering objectives related to certainty and harmony and overcoming threatening deficiencies,
desire, drive, disavowal 107 market uncertainty, and potential conflict, such as homelessness, economic inefficiency and environmental degradation and climate change. Gunder (2010) [see the entry on Lacanian approaches to planning] applies fantasy and desire as well as surplus-enjoyment when analysing the operation of the planning system and its agents in shaping urban plans and policies under a hegemonic ideology such as neoliberalism and/or as an apparatus of a government. Bahmanteymouri (2021) explains how the homology and the relationship between Lacanian surplusenjoyment and Marxian surplus-value operate as the engine of neoliberal planning and policymaking. She also clarifies the difference between desire and drive in generating surplus-enjoyment through an analysis of the financial and institutional dimensions of urban development policies under neoliberalism. Bahmanteymouri (2021) explains how the desire to find a solution to the lack of affordable housing creates a fantasy: an urban land development policy. This fantasy per se can be a magnificent and productive discourse on prosperity and financial and spatial development for all citizens even if the policy runs on the logic of surplus-value and surplus-enjoyment. However, the fantasy cannot be sustained and consequently it cannot maintain the desire. When the fantasy fades, the desire will be inverted to a drive, and the remainder will be the logic of gaining two surpluses: value and enjoyment. This surplus enjoyment is the cause of the Lacanian mechanism of drive.
Drive Although surplus-enjoyment is the cause of both desire and drive, the subject of drive takes a different path to obtain this mysterious enjoyment. Desire commands the subject to create a fantasy to fill the lack (promising empty signifiers such as a new urban land development) and to maintain this fantasy by creating more (supporting) fantasies, whereas drive commands the subject to attain surplus enjoyment by circling around the lack in the symbolic order. The subject of drive ‘knows that it is easier and often more consistently joyful, though also perversely painful, to attain and maintain a tiny surplus-enjoyment through circulation around the lack’ (Bahmanteymouri, 2021, p. 245). If the cause
of desire is surplus-enjoyment from filling the lack as the objective of fantasy making, the cause of drive is surplus-enjoyment from the lack itself and the circulation around it. ‘If desire is like the path of an arrow, drive is like the course of the boomerang’ (Dean, cited in Bahmanteymouri, 2021, p. 246). Drive provides a closed loop of circular satisfaction, of the repetitive movement that finds satisfaction in its own circular loop, nonetheless relies on the failure to achieve the goal we were aiming at: drive’s self-affection is never fully self-enclosed, it relies on some radically inaccessible X that forever eludes its grasp – the drive’s repetition is the repetition of a failure. (Žižek, 1999, p. 304)
In drive, a subject does not have to reach the goal to find enjoyment. Enjoyment attaches to the process, thereby capturing the subject. The difference between desire and drive also can explain the subjective causes of policy failures in different sectors of the economy, as well as political activities and engagements. The mechanism of drive reduces our engagement in a purposeful activity (for example providing social housing for low-income groups) to the gestures (such as politicians’ speeches, the establishment of institutions, the allocation of government budgets and research funds). Ultimately, these gestures start to function as a goal that brings surplus-enjoyment and of course surplus-value. The mechanism of drive is a helpful concept that clarifies how seeking the two surpluses of enjoyment and value is the reason for planning’s failures in achieving policy objectives. Bahmanteymouri (2021, p. 234) concludes that through the psychoanalytical status of drive, neoliberalism has structured the subjective level of planning actors – agents of planning including planners, planning institutions and organisations, decision makers, as well as planning documents, plans, policies, sub-divisions, land, and infrastructures – to unconsciously deviate from the promise of filling the lack of affordable housing and instead carrying out speculative land activities to obtain surplus-value and surplus-enjoyment.
Specifically, investigation of urban land development policy documents and the financialisation process of urban development elham bahmanteymouri
108 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design policies reveal how the initial goals of urban development and fantasmatic plans and policies have gradually refocused from affordable housing to property trade activities. As a result, despite numerous plans and policies and investment in the housing sector, there remains a long queue of homeless people and highly unaffordable housing prices, a situation which remains an unsolvable problem in our societies.
Disavowal Disavowal is one form of responding to a lack by denying it. From the Lacanian point of view, ‘disavowal is at the root of the perverse structure’ (Evans, 2006[1996], p. 24). This is because disavowal is not simply ignorance of the lack in the hegemonic discourse; rather, the subject recognises the lack but denies it. In other words, disavowal is another defence mechanism that is caused by the presence of lack in the symbolic order. For example, the subject denies deficiency or failure in the capitalist market economy by describing market bubbles or boom and bust situations as either natural or a phenomenon that is easily solvable by the operation of the invisible hand of the market. Gunder (2016) contends that although we may never really trust a specific politician, it is less painful and more pleasurable to believe her/his promises, for example, the promise to provide affordable housing through the establishment of a new organisation or to apply a free-market housing policy scheme, rather than questioning the validity of his/her policies.
Lacanian ethics and lack As explained, lack is at the core of psychoanalysis, reflected in the process of clinically treating the psychoanalysand (patient or the subject of psychoanalysis). The psychoanalyst’s responsibility is to help the psychoanalysand to connect with and/or identify the lack and to recognise the behaviour(s) or responses of the psychoanalysand in the traumatic moment when they face the lack – mainly in their unconscious below the level of surface memory [see the discourse of the analyst in the five discourses of Lacan]. However, Lacanian psychoanalytical concepts have been extended to political studies and analysis of social relations. Žižek developed a Marxian/Hegelian interpretation of elham bahmanteymouri
lack and the Real as well as different ways of dealing with a lack to explain the operation of capitalism. The followers of the Essex school discourse analysis also use lack and other Lacanian concepts in political studies. In planning, Gunder (2016) explains the way that planning’s actors deal with a particular lack or uncertainty within neoliberalism as the dominant ideology. Bahmanteymouri (2016) offers an ethical dimension in planning theory based on the function of the mechanisms of drive, desire and disavowal in relation to lack. She argues that planning ontologically involves contradictory objectives. While these objectives are supposed to fill a lack in the social order that is the function of desire and fantasy(ies), such as the lack of affordable housing, they instead often represent a paradoxical Janus face in filling that lack, which is the effect of the mechanism of drive at the subjective level of planning and policy making. Namely, planning policies often make promises that are not fulfilled, and they facilitate the maximisation of profit rather than providing public goods such as affordable housing. Elham Bahmanteymouri
Note 1.
Object petit a or jouissance is translated as surplusenjoyment in English. I will use surplus-enjoyment in this entry instead of object petit a to maintain consistency when referring to this complicated and confusing Lacanian concept.
References Bahmanteymouri, E. (2016). An ontological investigation of urban growth management policies under neoliberalism. PhD Thesis, The University of Auckland. ResearchSpace@Auckland. Bahmanteymouri, E. (2021). A Lacanian understanding of urban development plans under the neoliberal discourse. Planning Theory, https://doi.org/10.1177 /1473095220981118 Evans, D. (2006 [1996]). An introductory dictionary of Lacanian psychoanalysis. Routledge. Glynos, J., & Howarth, D. (2007). Logics of critical explanation in social and political theory. Routledge. Gunder, M. (2010). Planning as the ideology of (neo-liberal) space. Planning Theory, 9(4), 298–314.
desire, drive, disavowal 109 Gunder, M. (2016). Planning’s “failure” to ensure efficient market delivery. European Planning Studies, 24(1), 21–38. Lacan, J. (2006). Ecrits. Norton. Laclau, E. (2005). On populist reason. Verso. Laclau, E., & Mouffe, C. (1985). Hegemony and socialist strategy. Verso.
Žižek, S. (1999). The ticklish subject. Verso. Žižek, S. (2008). The sublime object of ideology. Verso. See also: big Other, strata, lines of flight, ideology, narrative, identity, memory, fantasy, power, power/knowledge, history, creativity
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37. Digitalization in planning Introduction Like all areas of life, spatial planning has been affected by the structural digital transformation that has a transformative effect on all aspects of societies. Current planning practice shows, for example, that plans are stored in digital format and that communications about and within planning practice usually occur by means of electronic media. While digitalization is often technology-driven, it has the potential to profoundly change the core values of planning. This chapter provides a short overview of ongoing developments in the digitalization of planning practice, and critically examines the relation between digitalization and planning as a political, participatory and creative endeavour.
Digitalization in planning practice: current developments The digitalization of data and workflows in planning is a complex and multi-layered phenomenon. From a technological perspective, the key developments relate to geographic information systems (GIS), platforms and 3D technologies. GIS holds an important position in the digitalization of planning, as these systems provide an integrated, computerized system to store, manage, analyse and visualize spatial data. Digitalization matured in the 1990s with the availability of GIS software with graphical user interfaces. Since then, digital plans have gradually become mainstream in many planning processes. In parallel, one can observe the integration of digital (plan) data in spatial and urban plans with digital data from various sources and domains (e.g., statistical data from census; Fertner et al., 2020; cartographic and geological information on soil, slope and altitude; open-source georeferenced information, such as OpenStreetMap) to facilitate further integration in planning and governance. Geoportals or platforms (e.g., map viewers) are pivotal in enabling digital methods in planning (Anttiroiko, 2021). Geoportals are platforms built on GIS: they provide the spatial visualization of digital and georeferenced data, although they often offer only a
limited set of possibilities for data overlay and analysis. Nowadays, most planning authorities routinely use these platforms to organize their work, as spatial, digitalized data are pervasive in planning practice. On these platforms, a range of planning-related services are often also offered: for instance, georeferenced information is made accessible to private users who can view approved plans and planned changes, analyse planning data over time and create extracts for a certain area. This enhances the transparency of the planning process and can support participatory planning and public engagement. However, there are often differences between publicly accessible online plan data and the data available internally or for restricted user groups, for example in terms of the type of access (e.g., viewing only), format (vectorized or as an image) and the type of information (e.g., draft plans not yet formally approved that are often only accessible to certain users). Technologies that render information in three dimensions, such as 3D GIS, Building Information Modelling (BIM) and City Information Modelling (CIM), expand such platforms to further support planning. They are examples of more recent developments of the digital transformation that is taking place. BIM is the comprehensive process of creating and managing information for a built asset. It integrates structured, diverse data to produce a 3D digital representation of a project, from planning and design to construction and operations. It enables the full built cycle of a project to be viewed and queried within a single system and allows users to dynamically update and recalculate any project aspects due to changes in design or project specifications. CIM, while being at a very early stage, may be especially relevant for planning, as it is the application of the BIM concept to the city level. The 3D city model (i.e., a city’s digital twin) is populated with associated census and socio-demographic data, as well as traffic and environmental geodata (e.g., traffic flows, air and noise pollution) derived from distributed sensors in the city. Analytical tools enhance the data collection and synthesis. CIMs therefore enable the examination of spatial relationships, the simulation of urban processes and regulations under different conditions, to support city management and planning. Planning in a CIM digital environment can support the transformation of work routines by linking strategic
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digitalization in planning 111 planning, land use planning, architectural design, construction and monitoring of the built environment. This also requires a form of standardization of data. When digital process chains can be established, they promote new synergies in the planning and building context and it is expected that may contribute towards more coherence and efficiency in what are often fragmented and disjointed administrative planning processes. However, CIM is still underdeveloped so much of its potential is yet to be exploited. Another development in the digitalization of planning is Geodesign, which integrates design in a GIS environment thus enabling the creation of design proposals that are compliant with current planning regulations and whose impact simulations in a certain geographic context can be examined through simulations (Steinitz, 2012). Geodesign allows involving stakeholders and various other planning professionals in collaboratively shaping built and natural space. It integrates available techniques and data. Geodesign is thus computermediated design and bridges parametric designs and rule-based designs with creative decisions. Another noteworthy development concerns Planning Support Systems (PSSs). These systems are gaining popularity because digitalization facilitates routine planning and management tasks. PSSs usually support internal processes and external communication as part of the formal planning process. They also allow the integration of geodata, big data and open data and can occasionally provide specific scenarios or design tools. As types of digital management systems, PSSs are designed to be adapted to the specific characteristics of local contexts, e.g., to the needs of local planning authorities within a given planning system (state/country). Hence, they are particularly valuable tools to ensure and increase the technical efficiency of the planning process.
Issues with accessibility and participation Digitalization in and of planning is driven by expectations of increased efficiency, expressed e.g., in the concept of smart cities and digital governance, ideas of wider participation and improved public service, like transparency (open government) and open data, and an aspiration for an ensuing higher economic
growth, business opportunities and quality of life (Fertner et al., 2020). While the prospects of creating and mainstreaming a holistic and easy-to-update planning system seem remote due to technical, institutional and political challenges, the trend of digitalization (both in data and in planning tools) is evident. While it may bring benefits, it also calls for a critical examination regarding, inter alia, transparency, accessibility, digital literacy and a range of more practical problems. From a planning practice perspective, the complex and multi-layered phenomenon of digitalization requires paying attention to participation, regulation, design and the use of planning support systems. The increasing experimentation of planning departments with digital tools meant to support citizen participation in planning processes hence is pivotal in ensuring and expanding the political legitimacy of planning. However, the use of digital tools for public participation also comes with challenges. In particular, the availability of these tools does not imply that they are also used by citizens. Accessibility is not a given. Furthermore, although participatory platforms in planning must be easy and clear to use for a wider public, they still require a certain number of digital competencies that only specific groups of citizens might possess, hence a priori excluding those citizens that have a (very) low level of digital literacy. Besides, these tools might be available only in a certain national language, therefore increasing the risk of excluding those citizens without a sufficient proficiency in that specific language (or set of languages). Therefore, the extent to which these tools are participatory and representative is a critical issue that should be empirically investigated. Digital technologies have the potential to involve large numbers of citizens, foster deliberation and crowdsource geo-located information. A particular type of web-based technology adopted by cities and used in urban planning and urban development processes is digital participatory platforms (DPPs) with menu-based graphical user interfaces, a type of social media explicitly built for engagement and collaboration purposes (Kleinhans et al., 2022). DPPs are built to enable user-generated content and include a range of functionalities such as geo-located inputs, map-based analytics, importing/exporting of data, ranking of ideas and forums for discussions. To be
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112 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design successful, these portals must be easy to use, among other things. As planning administrations increasingly make plan data, cadastral data and data regarding the planning process and regulations available and accessible on digital and open platforms, a considerable effort to standardize and harmonize these data is necessary. The formats in which data are made available, and the level of detail made available, must be defined carefully. Documents need to be kept up-to-date according to the classification. Planning authorities may decide on the appropriate strategy to follow depending (among others) on the political context and financial resources. A considerable diversity of approaches is observed at the time of writing. A factor that can heavily influence decisions on how to standardize digital data is the procedural role and the legal status of digital plan data in such registries, which can range from simple digital representations of analogue plans (information purposes only) to fully digital plans (legally binding plans). Although most planning data portals only give public access to plans that are formally approved, digitalization may allow enhanced access to data so that a larger number of actors involved in the planning process can follow the status of the plan preparation and subsequent implementation at any time. Increased planning transparency has been mentioned as a prerequisite for empowering the public. However, improved accessibility to digitalized planning data for citizens and other stakeholders might not (and often does not) translate into changes towards a more equal distribution of political power and representation. Furthermore, while digital methods in planning facilitate the management of increasingly complex planning problems in fast changing environments and enable more comprehensive analyses and facilitate, inter alia, scenario analysis and work on interdisciplinary issues (e.g., smart cities), related calculative practices and underlying algorithms can lead to a loss of transparency and overlook the ones at the margins. Consequently, as in other domains, the automated decisionmaking and hidden algorithms characterizing the modelling techniques at the basis of the technological developments in digital planning (see section above) can produce a (further) shift towards a post-political form of planning. Furthermore, companies developing and delivering the software might become
(even) more important and influential in planning practice. While there is an expectation that geoportals are a good means to support participation by providing access to information and solicitation of user input, the effect in terms of supporting negotiation and conflict resolution is much less clear and digitalization does not necessarily change unfavourable power distributions. Another critical note is needed on barriers to successful digitalization: lack of time and financial resources, lack of necessary technical skills in the planning department but also on the user side often hamper the benefits of digitalization in planning. For example, geoportals require a constant and rigorous updating and maintenance policy. This demands additional resources from planning authorities. The design of user-friendly geoportals for more than standard applications often remains a challenge. This can be compounded with poor data infrastructure and unclear standardization processes. Finally, the technical aspects related to standardization and harmonization of digitalization in planning also confront planning authorities with the need to find a trade-off between efficiency and variety. On one hand, standards are a necessary step to reap the benefits of the many advantages of digitalized planning, as they can make data from different municipalities, states or even countries accessible and comparable, thus increasing planning transparency. On the other hand, standardization is often pragmatically pursued at the level of the least common denominator, which limits the informative value of the data. Standardization also produces a reduction in the variety of contents, forms and processes that spatial and urban planning can take in different contexts and times. In pursuing uniformity, there is hence a risk of losing creativity in planning work (Hersperger et al., 2021). Another risk is to silence alternative and multiple voices characterizing planning practice simply because they do not fit pre-codified (although socially constructed) standards.
Conclusion In sum, technological advancements provide new opportunities for planning and thus tend to drive processes of digital change in planning. While some changes entail the
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digitalization in planning 113 digitalization of existing plans and planning processes, novel avenues for planning are especially expected from the latest technological developments of 3D analytics and modelling that substantially improve the technical efficiency of planning, as well as offering opportunities for enhanced participation. How it will play out is an empirical question. The standardization that is necessary to effectively implement and expand digitalized planning reduces the variety of both technical and political approaches and forms of planning, hence bearing the risk of making digital planning a mere exercise of uniformity instead of being sensitive to context, citizens’ needs and the complexity of social life. In the end, it is necessary for the planning profession to actively define the position that digital technologies should take in planning practice so that planning can maintain its key characteristics while taking advantage of the opportunities to reshape planning processes. Anna M . Hersperger, Sofia Pagliarin and Lasse Gerrits
References Anttiroiko, A.-V. (2021). Digital urban planning platforms: The interplay of digital and local embeddedness in urban planning.
International Journal of E-Planning Research (IJEPR), 10(3), 35–49. Fertner, C., Folvig, S., Aagaard Christensen, A., Grønning, M., Galland, D., Bjørnar, R., Le Diraison, M., Hersperger, A. M., Tobias, S., & Wittenwiler, C. (2020). DIGIPLAN – final report. Evaluating spatial planning practices with digital plan data (p. 68). ESPON. Hersperger, A. M., Thurnheer-Wittenwiler, C., Tobias, S., Folvig, S., & Fertner, C. (2021). Digitalization in land-use planning: Effects of digital plan data on efficiency, transparency and innovation. European Planning Studies, 1–17. Kleinhans, R., Falco, E., & Babelon, I. (2022). Conditions for networked co-production through digital participatory platforms in urban planning. European Planning Studies, 30(4), 769–788. Steinitz, C. (2012). A framework for geodesign: Changing geography by design. esri. See also: citizen science, smart cities, big data, methods, modernism, inclusion/exclusion, expertise, ideology, narrative, participation, innovation, boundary organisation, network governance
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38. Disability and urban planning
zoning, and the design of built environments over time. The nineteenth century saw the rapid growth of institutions like asylums and madhouses in segregated locations, resulting in many disabled people being taken from their families and communities. The first Key definition half of the twentieth century also involved Disability has rarely been considered in policies of eugenics, and the mass disableurban planning since its inception as a pro- ment of ex-service people over two World fession. Even today, contemporary planning Wars. Scientifically disproven, eugenics proand design still view disability narrowly – motes discrimination based on genetic traits, through the lens of access compliance – if positioning any person not fitting a white, at all (Imrie, 1996). Planning’s conceptual able-bodied norm to be defective. Such omission created and maintained restrictions views led to the mass murders of disabled and segregation in housing, streets, towns and people, including those conducted alongcities. At its worst, the work of planning has side the Nazi genocide (Jarrett, 2012). While aided in the exclusion of disabled people from eugenics has been extensively critiqued and lost much traction post-World War Two, public life. Underpinning exclusionary planning is institutionalization and segregated living ableism, a deep prejudice that constructs the endured through the rise of specialized and unrepresentative hetero-normative, young, often harmful planned communities. These masculine as a normal ideal body – deny- included schools for ‘crippled’, blind and ing all other body-minds value and power deaf children along with villages and ‘rural (Chouinard, 1997, p. 380). This false preju- colonies’ designed to contain people based dice persists in planning processes, policy on strict criteria of age, disability type and and systems, despite body-mind diversity gender (Jarrett, 2012). The 1960s civil rights movement spawned being a reality of human existence. Understanding ableism shows how socio- the disability rights movement which, in the environmental factors (such as those present first instance, demanded the deinstitutionaliin the built environment and processes of zation of disabled people and the right to live in planning) promote disablement. Disability a community. The strong and sustained activitself is socially constructed and has been re- ism from the Disability Rights Movement and conceptualized over time and space, based allied activists since the 1960s for inclusive on the ways in which society views body- communities and universal accessibility has mind differences (Oliver, 2009). Reclaiming brought about significant changes in legal systhe term ‘disabled people’ within social and tems, through architecture and design. This critical disability scholarship disrupts false- raft of measures has included barrier-free hoods by recognizing that people are disabled physical and digital accessibility, building by society through the effects of ableist atti- standards and anti-discrimination legislation. tudes, environments and systems rather than Further advocacy brought about the adopthe functioning of people’s minds, bodies and tion of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2006. senses. Despite these protections, disabled people are still widely seen as ‘other’, thus denied dignity, Brief history choice and self-determination. Full participaIn order to attain just cities, neighborhoods tion in civic life and mobility remains continand streets for disabled people, conventional gent upon the degree to which our cities and Western urban and regional planning needs streets and housing are planned for all. Rob to acknowledge the role it has played in the Imrie’s cutting-edge work from 1990 onwards segregation and exclusion of disabled people bought into focus the central role of urban in everyday environments – through both planning in facilitating or denying access and passive and overt actions that permeate plan- inclusion – a responsibility commonly left to ning’s history and present. architecture and building, thereby confined to Historical constructs of disabled people building envelopes. as burden, freak, mischief, deviant and mad Despite decades of change, planning for have been reflected spatially and entrenched body-mind diversity remains an anomaly through planning policies, instruments like rather than core business. We see this in 114
disability and urban planning 115 public planning conversations that fail to incorporate diverse communication needs, token inclusion or worse still not even consider disabled people from the outset. Basic things like going to the toilet or taking public transport to attend an appointment are acts taken for granted by many, yet built environments continue to be shaped in ways that impede simple everyday possibilities for disabled people. Many trips are interrupted or not made due to urban environments being adversarial and hard to navigate (Stafford in Stafford et al., 2022). Injustices and oppressions are also not experienced evenly; deep intersections are at play, as illustrated in the work of Indigenous disabled people, disabled people of color, disabled people in the Global South, queer disabled people and disabled women and girls (Stafford et al., 2022).
Link to theory, to discipline, to method The relationship between disability and planning has been explored through a range of theoretical lenses and disciplinary perspectives. While inclusion has been prominent in contemporary planning discourse, its application has been eroded from the latter twentieth century via the dominance of neoliberal capitalism and techno-rational planning practice (as documented by Jane Jacobs, David Harvey and Henri Lefebvre). The scholarship of spatial justice, led by the late Edward Soja (2010) has been key to understanding how social and economic inequity is reproduced at the urban scale through power differentials and planning processes. Disability Justice conceived by Sins Invalid (2015) is a framework of thinking about disability that recognizes systemic and intersectional oppressions and how injustice and oppression are not experienced evenly. Sins Invalid defined disability justice through ten principles: Intersectionality, Leadership of Those Most Impacted, Anti-Capitalism, Cross-Movement Solidarity, Wholeness, Sustainability, Cross-Disability Solidarity, Interdependence, Collective Access and Collective Liberation (Sins Invalid, 2015). Expecting and valuing difference, self-determination and equity are central to the framework. The Sins Invalid collective’s writings on Disability Justice are foundational to the Disability Justice movement, which continues to evolve through the increasing
recognition of its intersections and common ground with environmental and racial justice (Jampel, 2018). Universal Design (UD) is a principle and approach to planning and design first conceived by disabled architect Rob Mace1 in 1998 who believed UD is ‘designing all products and the built environment to be aesthetic and usable to the greatest extent possible by everyone, regardless of their age, ability, or status in life’. Mace was a devoted advocate for the rights of people with disabilities. The whole premise of UD is equity in design thinking from the onset, to shape environments that work for all by considering access, usage and movement. UD is structured around eight goals2 that seek to maximize participation and is thus different to barrier-free or access standards, which enshrine minimum thresholds regulated through legislation and compliance thinking. UD has been applied to varying degrees in core planning strategies in Norway and some planning and design activities in the US, Europe and Australia. Spatial justice theory, disability justice and UD present important insights that allow theory to be actioned in practice in ways that center equity and justice, as recognized in the UN Sustainable Development Goals and associated discourse like UN Habitat III.
Discussions and critiques The late Barbara Faye Waxman Fidducia, a brilliant disabled activist, and contemporary scholar Rob Imrie are among the luminaries who have illustrated the inseparability of disability from planning. Disabled geography scholar Vera Chouinard (1997, p. 380) explained the ongoing influence of ableism in society as a series of ‘ideas, practices, institutions and social relations that presume able-bodiedness, and by doing so construct persons with disabilities as marginalised . . . and largely invisible “others”’. Ableism remains largely unchallenged in the planning profession, underpinning the continued exclusion and everyday injustices experienced by disabled people (Stafford et al., 2022). There is a critical need for more diverse voices in planning practice, education and research to aid a deeper exploration of how planners see their roles in promoting inclusion. This end would be aided by greater intentional visibility of disability in Planning Research where the absence of disabled lisa stafford and matt novacevski
116 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design people’s voices largely endures (Terashima & Clark, 2021). As it is, the ongoing relegation and reduction of disability in planning to minimum technical standards and legislative compliance continue to constrain possibilities for a more just and inclusive city. Ableism’s relevance to town planning sheds light on thinking, processes and systems. Such understanding is further developed with the lens of intersectionality, which presents an important means of understanding how disabled people are also often oppressed within social systems by multiple axes of disadvantage (Crenshaw, 1991). Developed by Critical Race scholar Kimberlee Crenshaw, intersectionality reveals how ableism is experienced unevenly and is often exacerbated by further factors of burden such as race, class or gender (Sins Invalid, 2015); or exposure to the effects of climate emergency and environmental contamination (Jampel, 2018). These myriad factors are exacerbated by exclusionary planning (Stafford, in Stafford et al., 2022). Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and enduring climate emergency presents opportunities for a renewed turn toward the social and the ecological in planning, with explorations of practice enriched by connections to people, nature and vibrancy that are accessible, provide Earth care and benefit all people and beings. To this end, disability justice discourse is beginning to explore links with ecological and environmental justice (Jampel, 2018), thus opening the way for a greater focus on place. Many societies are also seeking to reduce the degree of injustice faced by citizens as a means of improving general living standards and promoting human dignity and fairness (Jampel, 2018; Stafford et al., 2022). In this potentially transformative moment, it is pertinent to ask whether disabled people will continue to be marginalized and left behind. Key to addressing this question, is a revivified right to the city that opens opportunities for disabled people to participate in everyday life and shape urban environments. The way we think about and plan everyday environments needs a praxis shift driven by disabled planning scholars and activists through justice thinking and approaches founded on planning for all and furthering equity beyond anthropocentrism. Enabling participation in public planning through inclusive practice is crucial to change. As lisa stafford and matt novacevski
Hannah Silver (in Stafford et al., 2022, p. 120) advises: ask disabled people what they need. Provide spatial information up front so they don’t have to ask. . . . In our inclusive future, we get free via collaboration and humility in the way we plan, build, and maintain our shared spaces. Fortunately, it’s easy to start now from right where you are, here on Planet Earth.
Lisa Stafford and Matt Novacevski
Notes 1. https://projects.ncsu.edu/ncsu/design/cud/about_ us/usronmace.htm 2. https://www.buffalo.edu/access/help-and-support/ topic3/GoalsofUniversalDesign.html
References Chouinard, V. (1997). Making space for disabling difference: Challenging ableist geographies. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 15, 379–387. Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1241–1299. Imrie, R. (1996). Disability and the city. International perspectives. Paul Chapman. Jampel, C. (2018). Intersections of disability justice, racial justice and environmental justice. Environmental Sociology, 4(1), 122–135. Jarrett, S. (2012). Disability in time and place. English Heritage. Oliver, M. (2009). Understanding disability: From theory to practice. Palgrave. Sins Invalid. (2015, September 17). 10 principles of disability justice. Sins Invalid. https://www.sinsinvalid.org/ blog/10-principles-of-disability-justice Soja, E. W. (2010). Seeking spatial justice. University of Minnesota Press. Stafford, L., Vanik, L., & Bates, L. K. (2022). Disability justice and urban planning. Planning Theory & Practice, 23(1), 101–142. Terashima, M., & Clark, K. (2021). The precarious absence of disability perspectives in planning research. Urban Planning, 6(1), Innovations and Development in Urban Planning Scholarship and Research. See also: inclusion/exclusion, design: tensions, ideology, modernism, density, expertise and local knowledge, commons, desire, big Other, transversality, identity
39. Dispositif
(nähe) to being. Humansmeet this demand from Geschick, that is, ‘skills’ to uncover the hidden ‘real’ close to being itself. To meet the real Gestell, the ‘en-framing’ of being (Crano, 2020, p. 8), requires Geschick.
Entrance The French word dispositif is disputed within social and human science; its translations and interpretations are contested. The translation to ‘apparatus’ or ‘device’ is debated in part because the French word for apparatus is appareil referring to entity, institutional ‘machines’ (rituals, ceremonies), material devices, or order, which significantly limits the meaning of dispositif. A neologism to the French everyday use of dispositif – form, setting, layout, or set-up – emerged, when Michel Foucault and others wanted to see dispositif as a force, a field of experience, knowledge and recognition, and a force that produces power, affect, imaginaries as well as order, structure or form. We live and act within dispositifs.
Etymology The Latin dispositio relates to the organization of arguments for an effective discourse, ‘the order and organization of oration’ (Panagia, 2019, p. 719), and disponere is to ‘put in order, arrange, distribute’. The Latin disposicioun relates to ‘tendency of mind, aptitude, inclination’ like the old French disposicion referring to ‘arrangement, order, mood; state of mind’. Giorgio Agamben suggests seeing dispositif as similar to Martin Heidegger’s German word Gestell referring to dis-positio, dis-ponere; to set in order, to form, to dispose (Agamben, 2009, p. 12). Gestell (to frame) to Heidegger refers to Gerät (apparatus, device), meaning to dispose over humans by ‘the gathering together of the (in) stallation (Stellen) that (in)stalls man, that is to say, challenges him to expose the real in the mode of ordering (Bestellen)’ (p. 12). To Agamben, ordering has a reference to oikonomia understood as ‘the aim to manage, govern, control and orient – in a way that purports to be useful – the behaviors, gestures, and thoughts of human being’ (p. 12), while Stellen (to place) to Heidegger is to uncover the real in its concealment (Verborgenheit). The act of uncovering; to make visible and bring forth, ‘the real’ of Stellen (Heidegger, 1973, p. 92) demands one to display its installation as ‘Bestand’ (to stand, duration) in its vicinity and vicissitude to the real close
Contingency, unstable coherence To Michel Foucault, a dispositif is ‘a thoroughly heterogeneous ensemble’ of elements ‘consisting of discourses, institutions, architectural forms, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, philosophical, moral and philanthropical propositions – in short, the said as much as the unsaid’ (Foucault, 1980, p. 194). It is a network (reseau) of discursive and nondiscursive elements that establishes an order by working on each other. The net effect may become an institution, a law, a form, a practice. It is an unstable coherence and a dispositional power which always is inscribed in ‘a play of power’ (strategies, tactics) and ‘coordinates of knowledge’ (e.g., statements, decisions, measures) (Foucault, 1980, p. 196). The composition of dispositif relations is ‘in-worden’, because it is a composition of elements that may ‘change in direction’ by deviation, fissures and fractures. Dispositif forces cannot be possessed. It is a contingent formation that gets a form and direction from the conjuncture and articulation of power-knowledge positions. The composition of dispositif relations is dynamic, not linear or aggregated, but a fitting together of forces responding to an urgent need and constitutive of a power-knowledge matrix that marks, invites, incites to act. Dispositif connections dispose forms and modes of dispositions that may subjugate, justify, problematize, displace or emplace meaning and practices. Humans ‘belong to these [dispositifs] and act in them’ (Deleuze, 2006, p. 345) meaning a dispositif is ‘a machine that makes one see and talk’ (p. 339). The multilinearity and multiplicity of dispositif connections make a ‘skein’ composed of lines of visibility, enunciation, force and subjectivitation (Deleuze, 2006, pp. 338 & 342). Deleuze uses the French word agencèment to point at the motility of dispositif forces in part because they are actualized within ‘an interlacing or intertwinement of the visible and the articulable’.
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To know, knowing The point where a dispositif is formed is a situation, a flux of events and relations, giving rise to ‘assertations, negations, experiments, and theories, in short to a game of truth’ (Foucault, 2006, p. 13) played out within the power of the epistème. The epistème is ‘linked to certain coordinates of knowledge which issue from it, but to a certain equal degree, condition it’ (Foucault, 1980, p. 196). An epistème establishes a ‘particular relation between the discourse and its “object”’ (Althusser, 2000, p. 14). As the epistème is conditional to both a knowledge and a space of (re)cognition, the difference between to know (savoir) and knowledge (connaissance) becomes crucial. Untranslatable to English and ambiguous to the French language itself, savoir is ‘a knowledge’ (Foucault, 1998, p. 324) from experience (discourses and practices) and from having ‘a will to knowledge’. Connaissance is ‘the sum of scientific knowledge’ and a ‘set of elements’ constitutive to a discourse formation (Foucault, 1998, p. 324) (archives, texts of the time). The dispositif emerge as ‘an uneven mixture of connection and multiplicity’ (Lambert, 2020, p. 45) of savoir and connaissance. To Jean-Francois Lyotard life is also the force of ‘the ocular dispositif’. ‘The ocular’ makes humans able to distinguish figures, to demarcate spatial figures, and has affective effect (Crano, 2020, pp. 2–3). The figural, the image and aesthetics are constitutive forces to the ocular dispositif that ‘capture, channel, and regulate positive libinal energies’ (p. 4) at a pre-personal and trans-personal level.
Planning, spatial dispositif, improvisation, rationalities A dispositif ensemble with the ‘capacity to arrange spatialities and visibilities’ (Panagia, 2019, p. 718) produces a logos likely from binarities like (ab)normal, (un)reason, (un) truth. Logos disposes micro-physical effects as it is constitutive to the meaning of normality and making truths inviting or inciting humans to a particular mode of thinking and praxis. Planning is entwined with political, aesthetic, knowledge, normative and atmospheric dispositif forces. It seeks to organize a logos, an ocular seeing, a truth and knowledgeable relations between the articulated and john erik pløger
the visible. Planning is a dispositif ensemble connected to ‘strategies of relations of forces supporting, and supported by, knowledge’ (Foucault, 1980, p. 196). Around the sixteenth century, cities were seen as spaces of circulation of trade, economy and migration. Cities were not only seen as loci of markets and production, but polyfunctional places to be governed. Planning became vital to this endeavour. ‘From the eighteenth century on, every discussion of politics as the art of government of men necessarily includes a chapter or a series of chapters on urbanism, on collective facilities, on hygiene, and on private architecture’ (Foucault, 1984, p. 240). This emerging concern with how to organize a city and its social space raised disputes about the need to have a healthy, stable and productive population. A bio-politics of health emerged, where discursive strategies like information and mechanisms like habits, were used as technics to an intervention into living milieus. Security also became a political issue, and general features of a dispositif of security were ‘the treatment of the uncertain’ and ‘the form of normalization’ specific to a security enabling governments ‘to conduct individuals’ (Foucault, 2007, p. 364). The power–knowledge matrix of security included a spatial dispositif to bring order to life. The art of governing humans by a spatial dispositif included urbanism and its forms of ‘apparatus’ like planning law used to build a ‘connection between mechanisms of coercion [e.g. housing design] and contents of knowledge [e.g. on hygiene]’ (Foucault, 2007, p. 59). The dispositif of security used urbanism and spatial planning to form a functional and disciplined mode of behaving as an answer to the need for a normativization of life. Compared to this, a dispositif of improvisation is a key force to planning in refugee camps (Oesch, 2020). Improvisation is necessary. Because camps are politically seen as temporary land use, building plans or decisions on improvement cannot be part of the ordinary political system. Planning in refugee camps has to be ‘invisible’ to governments. Planning needs to come from below and thus depends on what equipment and resources are available. Provisionality as a condition makes planning a strategic elaboration and reutilization of the place here-and-now (Oesch, 2020, p. 353). A dispositif analysis allows focus on
dispositif 119 how such improvisational planning constitutes an informal urbanism of dispositif elements from possibilities and the potential and ability to make an assemblage of (in)formal forces responding to an ‘urgent need’. Such an improvisation is a fragile and tensional interplay between local reason and ‘ignorant’ governing structures and politics. Such a planning indicates that we must see governing and government as ‘an ad hoc assemblage’ of dispositif forces like policies, institutions, regulatives, intentions, tools and mechanisms (Braun, 2014, p. 51). A government is reactive to problematics emerging and formal planning is used to make a disposing and dispositional order of mechanisms to adapt to these problematics (e.g., to tame or be proactive to infrastructural needs on climate change). Planning as part of a governmental dispositif ensemble makes ‘spaces and environments amenable to calculative thought by mobilizing certain “truths” of causal relations in and between spaces, environments, bodies and comportments’ (Huxley, 2006, p. 772).
Unruly, but functional A dispositif regime is constitutive to, but also constituted by, ‘a complex mixture of institutions, mechanism, and logics’ (Hillier, 2015, p. 170). To catch the motility and modality of power-knowledge forces and effects, a neologism of dispositif became necessary for several reasons: (a) to not miss the generative aspect, the agencèment, of dispositif forces and the formation of dispositif ensembles. (b) To acknowledge that a net of dispositif’s is a power-knowledge relation acting functionally and strategically to overdetermine a current condition in resonance with the definition of ‘an urgent need’. (c) A dispositif effect can be ‘machinic’ (e.g., structure, rules) and a ‘mechanism’ (e.g., physical planning) linking articulation and visibility to incite to think and act in particular ways (micro-physic normativation). A dispositif element ‘causes something to begin to happen’ (Lambert, 2020, p. 50) and a dispositif ensemble generates potential dispositions. A dispositif ensemble however stays as an unstable sedimentation of powerknowledge relations being part of a double process of functional overdetermination (readjustment, reworking) and strategic elaboration (reforms or new forms of utilization) (Foucault, 1980, pp. 195–196).
Exit A dispositif force is generative and a dispositif analysis looks for how forces in flux are captured and form a dispositif regime. Dispositif relations establish order, direction, affective effect emerging from the effect of forces on each other. Dispositif forces are relational, interacting elements with an unstable coherence. A mapping of dispositif relations presents what is known, how it is known and what relations, alliances, strategies made a particular powerknowledge ensemble possible. Mapping the inherent rationalization of power-knowledge, to map how dispositif forces act on each other, is to follow a problematization of a planning issue that not only may respond to an urgent need but promotes a form or direction of thinking and doing. John Erik Pløger
References Agamben, G. (2009). What is an apparatus? And other essays. Stanford University Press. Althusser, L. (2000). Machiavelli and us. Verso. Braun, B. (2014). A new urban dispositif? Governing life in the age of climate change. Environment & Planning D: Society & Space, 32, 49–64. Crano, R. (2020). Dispositif. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature, 1–25. doi:1 0.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.013.1026 Deleuze, G. (1992). Foucault. University of Minnesota Press. Deleuze, G. (1997). Desire and pleasure. In Arnold D. Davidson (Ed.), Foucault and his interlocutors (pp. 183–194). The University of Chicago Press. Deleuze, G. (2006). Two regimes of madness. Semiotext(e). Foucault, M. (1980). Power/ knowledge. Selected writings 1972–1977. Pantheon Books. Foucault, M. (1984). The Foucault reader. Perigrine. Foucault, M. (1998). Aesthetics, method, and epistemology. The New Press. Foucault, M. (2006). Psychiatric power. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Foucault, M. (2007). Security, territory, population. Lectures at the collège de France 1977–1978. Palgrave Macmillan. john erik pløger
120 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design Heidegger, M. (1973). Oikos og Techne (Oikos and Techne). Tanum forlag. Hillier, J. (2015). Performances and performativities of resilience. In R. Beunen et al. (Eds.), Evolutionary governance theory (pp. 167–183). Springer International Publishing. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-12274-8_12. Huxley, M. (2006). Spatial rationalities: Order, environment, evolution and Government. Social & Cultural Geography, 7(5), 771– 787, doi:10.1080/14649360600974758. Lambert, G. (2020). The elements of Foucault. Uninersity of Minnesota Press.
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Oesch, L. (2020) An improvised dispositif: Invisible urban planning in the refugee camp. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 349–365. doi:10.1111/1468-2427.12867. Panagia, D. (2019). On the political ontology of the dispositif. Critical Inquery, 45, 714–746. See also: power in planning, power/knowledge, agonism, narrative, ideology, assemblage, rationality, line of flight, critical planning, milieu, institutions, dependencies
40. Downtown development and revitalization Definitions and history Downtown revitalization refers to the physical and economic renewal of a community’s central business district and includes both downtown development and redevelopment. It may include a variety of strategies to encourage commercial development and housing development to increase and retain businesses and residents. Over the course of the twentieth century, US downtowns in both large and small cities have struggled to counteract the decentralization of economic activity to the suburbs. Several types of policies and resulting projects have been implemented to revitalize downtown areas. By the late 1970s and 1980s, many US cities realized that proactive measures were needed to counteract vacancies, and communities began to organize with the goal of revitalizing downtown areas. Many types of organizations advocate the revitalization of downtown. The Main Street Programs developed by the National Trust of Historic Preservation, Downtown Development Associations (DDAs) and Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) are types of organizations that focus on downtown development. These organizations often implement similar types of programs. One of the major differences is their funding sources. Main Street Associations are membership organizations, while BIDs are funded through a special taxing district where downtown business owners and tenants agree to extra taxes for services in the district that the local government could not otherwise afford, and DDAs are commonly funded through tax increment financing (TIF). Community Development Corporations (CDCs), another type of organization, usually focus on the revitalization of urban (residential) neighborhoods. Regardless of the form of organization (Mainstreet, DDAs, BIDs, CDCs), the role of such organizations is to advocate for downtown revitalization and implement related programs.
Critiques While the Main Street Program is widely implemented, several criticisms have
emerged. The program focuses on commercial revitalization ignoring redevelopment of residential and other components; does not provide guidance for organizing landlords whose property is the focus of rehabilitation; and the four points of the program should be pursued in tandem but in many cases are not which limits the effectiveness of the program (Burayidi, 2013, pp. 4–6). Often the presence of large vacant or underutilized buildings such as movie theaters, department stores and warehouses is the impetus for downtown revitalization efforts. While vacant properties, in general, signal a lack of economic activity, large vacant buildings are particularly troublesome due to the externalities associated with them. Because these buildings are large and visible, they may have a substantial negative impact on surrounding property values and lead to a cycle of deterioration. Often these types of buildings have historic or architectural elements that provide the unique sense of place that distinguish traditional downtown areas from newer developments. While studies of downtown revitalization in large US cities exist (see Robertson, 1999, for an extensive list), much of the recent analysis focuses on smaller cities. While large cities are often polycentric with many distinct business districts, smaller cities tend to be monocentric, and the programs, policies and resources available to fund downtown revitalization efforts are different.
Key figures and approaches While many people have written about downtown revitalization in the US, key researchers who are widely cited include Kent Robertson and Michael Burayidi. Robertson wrote a series of articles describing and evaluating downtown development strategies. Robertson (1995), for example, provided an overview and assessment of seven approaches that have been commonly pursued: (1) pedestrianization, (2) indoor shopping centers, (3) historic preservation, (4) waterfront development, (5) office development, (6) special activity generators and (7) transportation enhancements. Robertson (1999) analyzed a survey of 57 free-standing small cities with populations between 25 000 and 50 000 and conducted in-depth case studies of five of these cities to assess the assets, problems and development strategies of these cities over time and compared to large cities. He found the majority of
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122 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design cities surveyed indicated that their downtown had become more viable over the preceding ten years and that building strong private/ public partnerships, identifying and building on their assets and establishing a distinctive sense of place are crucial to improve downtown areas. Michael Burayidi has compiled two key books focusing on downtown revitalization. Burayidi (2001) presented case studies on downtown development in nonsuburban, free-standing small cities with populations of less than 100 000. The results of these case studies provide guidance for implementing programs and policies (many of which are applicable to downtowns in cities of any size): (1) emphasize local funding for downtown programs so that the community feels ownership of the process; (2) promote both physical and economic renewal by creating a sense of place in the downtown; (3) monitor downtown revitalization programs and progress so that the effectiveness of these programs can be evaluated; (4) involve many constituencies – business owners, tenants and landlords, government officials, workers and residents in revitalization efforts; (5) establish a long-term vision for downtown; and (6) find out about programs in other communities. Burayidi (2013) laid out four national trends expected to positively impact downtown revitalization: demographic changes that favor downtown living, particularly the retirement of baby boomers and empty nesters and growth of nontraditional households; changes in the settlement patterns of new immigrants to favor small and medium cities; the growing popularity of heritage and cultural tourism; and the cost advantages that small-city downtowns provide for the locations of civic and cultural activities. He then analyzed these trends through case studies of 14 small US cities.
Synthesis Research interest in downtown revitalization spans several disciplines including public and nonprofit administration, public policy, planning studies and regional science along with subdisciplines such as economic development and historic preservation. Studies of downtown revitalization in the US are primarily descriptive and prescriptive – describing policies and projects that dagney faulk
have worked or not worked in particular cities and prescriptions for how to approach the revitalization process. One result of this approach is that specific policies (or projects) that have been successful in one city are often adopted with little modification in other cities. Many times, such projects are not successful and fail to establish a ‘sense of place’ that makes downtown areas distinctive and attractive. The methods of analysis tend to be descriptive case studies of particular locations and more recently quantitative analysis evaluating the impact of revitalization programs. Van Leuven (2021) performed the most rigorous quantitative analysis to date, analyzing the effectiveness of the Main Street Program on small town business districts in four Midwest states. Of the states examined only Iowa showed statistically significant positive causal benefits from the program leading the author to conclude that impacts of the program are ‘not generalizable across states and that implementation and local context matter.’ The concept of ‘downtown’ evolved first in North America, and the depopulation of central business districts and sprawl that is attributed to car culture has been ongoing for more than 50 years. More recently, cities and towns in other countries are experiencing similar disinvestment in town centers. Perhaps the US experience can offer some context and advice to cities and towns in other countries seeking to revitalize downtown areas. Dagney Faulk
References Burayidi, M. A. (Ed.). (2001). Downtowns: Revitalizing the centers of small urban communities. Routledge. Burayidi, M. A. (2013). Resilient downtowns: A new approach to revitalizing small-and medium-city downtowns. Routledge. Robertson, K. A. (1995). Downtown redevelopment strategies in the United States: An end-of-the-century assessment. Journal of the American Planning Association, 61(4), 429–437. Robertson, K. A. (1999). Can small-city downtowns remain viable? A national study of development issues and strategies. Journal of the American Planning Association, 65(3), 270–283.
downtown development and revitalization 123 Van Leuven, A. J. (2021). The impact of main street revitalization on the economic vitality of small-town business districts. Economic Development Quarterly, 36(3), 193–207.
See also: design: tensions, new urbanism, smart growth, density, heritage, modernism, methods, self-organization, walkability, infrastructure, neighbourhood design, assetbased community development
dagney faulk
41. Earthly attachments in the Anthropocene Introduction This entry deals with two key concepts in tandem in order to inform issues of urban and regional planning and design. The former is the ‘Anthropocene’ which frames the latter of ‘earthly attachments’. The ‘Anthropocene’ derives from a paper thus entitled by Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer (2000). It is simply a recognition of the fact that mankind (the anthropos) is by now transforming the global ecosystem with impacts legible in the geology of the Earth for longer and shorter periods of time. With the label, human dominance over all biophysical processes on the planet is proposed to be seen as a new epoch in geology. Geology defines shifts from one period in geological history to another through so called ‘stratigraphic markers’, i.e., whereby a notable shift or change occurs in the qualities, properties or content of rock layers under our feet stretching back billions of years. The smallest unit of these periods is the ‘-cene’. For instance, as the last period of glaciation ended some 12 000 years ago, where vast polar icecaps dominated biophysical processes on the planet, geology talks of a shift from the Pleistocene to the Holocene. Now the question is if another shift has occurred, whereby we enter the Anthropocene. Geologists have agreed on a stratigraphic marker of such a shift. This is the spike in radioactive isotopes following surface and oceanic nuclear testing in the wake of WWII. This marker prompts geologists to state that the Anthropocene started in 1945 (see Zalasiewicz et al., 2019). This geological marker however coincides with another fundamental socio-economic shift. This is one where an ever more globalising and interconnected world shifted into consumptive overdrive after WWII, fuelled by the enormously productive apparatus put in place during the war effort. This particular shift has been labelled the ‘Great Acceleration’ (Steffen et al., 2015) and needs to be seen in tandem with the onset of the Anthropocene. The proponents of this idea explicitly show how Earth System trends are being decidedly thrown out of kilter at our behest through this
boom in consumption. This shift makes for an ‘Anthropocene’, which beyond representing a move beyond the geologic conditions characteristic of the 10 000 to 12 000 years since the end of the last glacial epoch, also marks a shift into a novel and perilous epoch whose signature is irreversible human impact on the Earth and life processes. The most prominent of these impacts is the rapid and unprecedented increase in atmospheric CO2 resulting in the climate crisis with its altogether uncertain effects on our lives and that of other living beings. All in all, humanity is entering a new climatic regime and simultaneously precipitating an emerging sixth mass extinction of rampant biodiversity loss. This shift profoundly challenges the ways in which we have done things. As explained by Zalasiewicz et al. (2019, p. 36): Throughout recent history, an underlying stable condition of the Earth System has been taken as a given. This is the premise upon which our legal and political structures have been created over the past several centuries. . . . there has been an implicit assumption that current conditions form an objective and unchanging reality that has surrounded us since time immemorial.
In the Anthropocene, our current mode of economy and society is wholly untenable, and the future is profoundly uncertain in the hands of an Earth which can longer be considered a stable backdrop for our undertakings, but a dynamic relational entity at one with our undertakings. As the timescales of geological and human history thereby coalesce in a ‘geostory’ (Latour, 2014), how will urban planning and design find its truth-value and usefulness in negotiating and navigating futures in this context? By now, and in the Anthropocene, the becoming-Earth needs to be incorporated into the power geometries of urban planning and design and for this I propose cultivating earthly attachments.
The imperative of earthly attachments What drives us to the climatic crisis with its profound impacts on all biophysical processes is consumerism which has become a ubiquitous way of life for humanity facilitated through ever tighter globalised mesh of connectivity and digital integration. This mesh is profoundly premised on the logic of capital accumulation with its implicit logic of
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earthly attachments in the anthropocene 125 perpetual growth and expansion (see Harvey, 2017). In the process everything is being commodified. Beyond the property markets of mushrooming cities, studded by starchitects’ showmanship, the very culture and life of the city is being appropriated through commodification. This process is being accelerated by ubiquitous connectivity where smart networks are being introduced as the leitmotifs of urban governance, colonising lifeworlds, providing means of control and dictating how people relate. What matters is that over and above commodification becoming the dominant theme of governance, consumption is emerging as a privileged site for the fabrication of self and society, of culture and identity on an individual level, whereby life itself is becoming a ‘fictitious commodity’. Alongside this is the rapid urbanisation of humanity. Already in 2014 more than half of humanity lived in cities and within the EU by now a full 75 per cent live in urban areas. Global capitalist urbanism manifests in a complex amalgam of demography, economic factors, land-use traditions and infrastructure needs, governance and institutional set-up and shifting cultures and norms, such as those dictated by consumption. Hence, urban space emerges as the frontier where future challenges and contradictions of capitalism will need to be met. Therein multiple spatial claims will collide where ownership boundaries and different utility systems meet. Integrated and innovative management of urban space is required to tackle upcoming challenges and accommodate for instance the energy transition, climate adaptation, circular economies and mobility innovations to name a few. But more profoundly, urban space is also wherein we can develop earthly attachments, fundamentally re-storying the ways in which we relate to space and each other. Developing earthly attachments is premised on a more horizontal way of looking at our relations to each other and our material surroundings. Meaning simply instead of abstracting people and things with a bird’s eye view we pursue things and people in action and the ways in which spaces and places are made for by these actions and activities, imbricated with earthly biophysical processes. This means placing the design question on each of our shoulders as to what assemblages to associate with and/or extricate from. The
problem of life is the problem of design and this problematization averts our attention sideways, seeing causality as emergent and recognizing the alien quality of our own flesh.
This open and emergent sense of the human, as proposed by Bennett and others reflecting to varying degrees to the notion of the ‘post human’, sets the world as neither a subject nor object of representation. Thereby one must enter into a more active ‘sense’ of the world, ultimately revolving around spacing with the Earth. Studies in the urban already give indications of the role of encountering the material in spacing and placing, whereby critical spatial practices are interrogated which often are found in the cracks between, for instance, formal planning, speculative investment and local possibilities. Here inspiration can be drawn from the recent call for developing ‘speculative maps’: To distinguish the contours of this landscape, there is no need for a topographical survey or a background map: you have to make an inquiry, which is to say, patiently follow these beings in their movements. This undertaking requires the tool of walking, taking a journey as a way of grasping the world (sometimes quite literally, and physical contact with the ground as a characteristic of living beings. (Aït-Touati et al., 2022, p. 80)
The authors of Terra Forma are landscape architects and designers who root around in the ruins of industrial and urban France in their search for maps of life, looking to turn the globe inside out and reveal the thickness of the mesh of life within each plot of land or parcel of space. Their focus is thereby squarely on the ‘critical zone’ where life unfolds and persists, ever on-going, weaving maps that act as thick descriptions of the living landscape to inform the politics of the encounter in the vibrant urban frontier. These are maps of earthly attachments, whereby the productive potentialities often hidden within the materialities of the urban are recognised and worked with precipitating a more critical and imaginative mode of being. Following practices, actions and activities and looking at the world sideways is a fun thought exercise and a real design challenge. At the same time though, it is important to employ ‘a strategic distinction’ between people and planet, people and nature. Indeed our edward h. huijbens
126 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design deliberations, the stories we tell, the myths we create and meaning we make have profound impact as debates around the Anthropocene should make clear. This strategic distinction helps us maintain a clearer sense of the climate emergency – yet making sure we see the ‘anthropos’ as the differentiated species it is and also addressing the fundamental question of what and who is ‘human’ in the context of the Anthropocene. Acknowledging certain forms of human exceptionalism is no impediment to recognising more-than/non-human relations. It is precisely because we make for the places which in turn make for us, we need to distinguish between the different elements at play to meaningfully understand the relations that constitute their inter-relation.
Responsibility, reciprocity and conviviality I argue we can recentre the human through naming and spacing animated by responsibility, reciprocity and conviviality. This is a responsibility not only for the more-than/ non-human world, but also to that of others. When it comes to urban planning and design, conviviality harkens to the need to recognise that our ideas of the world, intentions and actions of spacing matter, but they do so resting on the gift and surprise that is the Other, which can only occur when that space is open. Design indeed determines who and what will be made public. Thereby the construction of the built environment is not just about justice or injustice, but also about the greater moral formation of the community. Foreclosing urban spaces as spectacular investment opportunities or experiences to be ticked off the bucket list of visitors is not only an enclosure of space, but that of the mind. Following Wise and Noble (2016) the productive possibilities of conviviality reside in: ●
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The focus on the potential ambivalence at the heart of our interactions under the terms of ever-increasing diversity and diversification, growing mobilities and growing experiences of radical difference. The focus on embodied, affective and sensory togetherness as lived negotiation and belonging as practice, whereby what mediates this ‘with-ness’ plays a role and it is imperative to empirically examine
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the situated practices and performances making for conviviality. The focus on the affordances of conviviality, the role of the material environs.
What I have proposed in exploring earthly attachments are the stories rocks, mud, turf houses, sand, bikes and geothermal steam afford us (Huijbens, 2021). How these can create spaces of conviviality and create stories of other ways of being and doing is the design question placed on each of our shoulders. The stories we tell make matter matter, making for what I term ‘the scrumpled spaces of conviviality’ wherein alternative world views can be forged and gain hold informing all the myriad ways in which life can be reconceived, being together with the places and spaces we hold dear. By giving in to space, the art of paying attention to the possible can be cultivated, precipitating an experimental form of everydayness that relies on creative energies and desires whereby people are not consuming individuals, but individuated parts of the city as it is made and remade every day through varying degrees of intent. We are indeed relational beings spawned of our earthly attachments and we need to allow for that to foster more local, positive, spontaneous, co-creative and emergent processes which make living in the Anthropocene bearable. Edward H. Huijbens
References Aït-Touati, F., Arènes, A., & Grégoire, A. (2022). Terra forma. A book of speculative maps. The MIT Press. Crutzen, P. J., & Stoermer, E. F. (2000). The “Anthropocene”. Global Change Newsletter, 41, 17. Harvey, D. (2017). Marx, capital and the madness of economic reason. Profile Book. Huijbens, E. H. (2021). Developing earthly attachments in the anthropocene. Routledge. Latour, B. (2014). Agency at the time of the Anthropocene. New Literary History, 45, 1–18. Steffen, W., Broadgate, W., Deutsch, L., Gaffney, O., & Ludwig, C. (2015). The trajectory of the Anthropocene: The great acceleration. The Anthropocene, 2(1), 1–18.
earthly attachments in the anthropocene 127 Wise, A., & Noble, G. (2016). Convivialities: An orientation. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 37(5), 423–431. Zalasiewicz, J., Waters, C. N., Williams, M., & Summerhayes, C. P. (2019). The Anthropocene as a geological time unit. Cambridge University Press.
See also: social-ecological systems, selforganization, strata, assemblage, narrative, milieu, biophilic cities, becoming, transversality, ecosystems-based governance
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42. Ecosystems-based governance Key definition Ecosystem-based governance (EBG) is the holistic, integrated and adaptive governance of human activities based on the best available scientific knowledge about the ecosystem and its dynamics, in order to identify and take action on influences that are critical to the health of ecosystems, thereby achieving sustainable use of ecosystem goods and services and maintenance of ecosystem integrity.
Brief history The understanding of the need for a more holistic governance approach started from the 1980s onwards and had been set in motion through the recognition that traditional approaches to resource management, which have been by and large sectorally based, were inadequate to meet the challenges ahead (Platjouw, 2016). Even though plenty of laws exist to protect single natural resources, such as water, air, soils, animals, threatened and endangered species, and particular areas including forests, rangelands, wetlands and wilderness areas, ecological conditions have deteriorated worldwide (IPBES, 2019). This trend of ecosystem degradation has made the need for more holistic governance approaches to our ecosystems inevitable. At the international level, references to the ecosystem approach and/or EBG have appeared in various institutional streams. In the law of the sea regime, through UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and related agreements, in the Food and Agriculture Organization and in the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) where its parties adopted it as the primary framework for implementing the CBD in 1995. More recently, EBG has been strongly encouraged in the global Sustainable Development Goals; the draft legally binding instrument under the UNCLOS on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction; as well as in the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. Also in Europe, increasing emphasis has been placed upon the need for EBG. The 2000 Water Framework Directive, for instance, marks a change in emphasis
adopting a holistic approach to environmental protection and regulation. This Directive calls for a single system of water management based on a river basin, a natural geographical and hydrological unit instead of according to administrative or political boundaries. Another example is the 2008 European Marine Strategy Framework Directive which takes an ecosystem-based perspective for maintaining healthy ecosystems in marine waters. Also, the 2014 Maritime Spatial Planning Directive and the forthcoming Nature Restoration Regulation are important pieces of legislation that contribute to implementing EBG in Europe.
Link to theory, discipline and method Key to EBG is the understanding that ecosystems are complex adaptive systems. In ecosystems, everything is connected with everything else, and these interconnections are complex and rich. Their functioning is non-linear and dynamic and may result in unpredictable and unplanned outcomes. The complexity of ecosystems makes it difficult to know exactly how human behavior affects ecosystem functioning. Certain behavior will not significantly affect the performance of the ecosystem in the short term, and even if there are significant changes, these are not always noticed by society in time. This particular nature of ecosystems as complex adaptive systems has gradually been acknowledged in governance and regulatory approaches to ecosystems. Yet the ecosystem approach or EBG still has no formal, universally agreed upon, definition. Rather, the concept is evolving and has been interpreted differently by the various environmental institutions and in the context of various environmental regimes (Platjouw, 2016). Several initiatives have aimed at concretizing the concept through developing a set of operational principles though. The best known EBG principles include the CBDs Malawi principles, the United Nations General Assembly’s (UNGA’s) list of key principles, and the Arctic Council’s list of EBG principles. They later proposed the following nine pragmatic principles: 1. EBM supports ecosystem resilience in order to maintain ecological functions and services.
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ecosystems-based governance 129 2. EBM recognizes that humans and their activities are an integral part of the ecological system as a whole, and that sustainable use and values are central to establishing management objectives. 3. EBM is place-based, with geographic areas defined by ecological criteria, and may require efforts at a range of spatial and temporal scales (short-, medium- and long-term). 4. EBM balances and integrates the conservation and sustainable use of ecosystems and their components. 5. EBM aims to understand and address the combined, incremental effects (known as ‘cumulative impacts’) that multiple human activities impose upon ecosystems, resources and communities. 6. EBM seeks to incorporate and reflect scientific knowledge as well as expert, traditional and local knowledge. 7. EBM is inclusive and encourages participation at all stages by various levels of government, indigenous peoples, stakeholders (including the private sector) and other residents. 8. Transboundary perspectives and partnerships can contribute significantly to the success of EBM efforts. 9. Successful EBM efforts are flexible and adaptive, and rely on feedback from monitoring and research because ecosystems and human activities are dynamic, some ecosystems undergo rapid changes and our understanding of these systems is constantly evolving.
Discussions and critique Though the development towards EBG in environmental governance is a remarkable shift, it remains unclear, however, how the EBG can be best implemented in practice. The lack of consensus on its precise understanding and specific implications leaves room for quite different interpretations, ranging from an anthropocentric perspective to an ecocentric perspective. The ambiguity within the concept, and its lack of specific legal obligations that might follow from the concept, affects its effectiveness in terms of halting the degradation of ecosystems around the world. Several other challenges have also been stressed. Ecosystems should be governed as a whole, based upon their ecological boundaries. Fragmented structures of environmental
law and governance do not fit well with this need. Ecosystems, especially the marine ecosystems, are often divided into different jurisdictional zones and regulated by various laws, regulations and policies. Different sectors govern different elements of the same ecosystem, complying with different legal instruments through the use of divergent decision-making tools and traditions. To ensure holistic and integrated governance, cooperation and coordination between different governance sectors is highly important, yet also difficult to achieve. This is so because most sectors have different perceptions, values, interests, ambitions and influence over land, water and living resources. Another challenge is related to uncertainty and incomplete scientific knowledge related to the functioning of ecosystems. Despite considerable scientific research and an expanding knowledge base, there are still many complexities and uncertainties related to the multiple interlinkages in the ecosystem and how these will be affected by human interference. These render it difficult to foresee how an ecosystem’s functioning will be impacted by different measures and activities. Currently, the precautionary principle is consistently applied to facilitate decision making and policy making in the face of such uncertainties. Froukje Maria Platjouw
Bibliography Aas, Ø., Indset, M., Prip, C., Platjouw, F. M., & Singsaas, F. T. (2020). Ecosystembased management: Miracle or mirage? Mapping and rapid evidence assessment of international and Nordic research literature on ecosystem-based management. NINA Report 1802. Norwegian Institute for Nature Research. Arctic Council Ecosystem Based Management Expert Group (2012). Definitions and principles for EBM in the Arctic. Doc 3.7a Nov 2012. Convention on Biological Diversity. (2000, June 22). Conference of the parties 5 decision V/6 “Ecosystem Approach”. UNEP/CBD/COP/5/23. De Lucia, V. (2015). Competing narratives and complex genealogies: The ecosystem approach in international environmental law. Journal of Environmental Law, 27(1), 91–117. froukje maria platjouw
130 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design IPBES (2019). Global assessment report of the intergovernmental science-policy platform on biodiversity and ecosystem services (E. S.Brondízio, J. Settele, S. Díaz, & H. T.Ngo, Eds.). IPBES Secretariat, Bonn, Germany. Platjouw, F. M. (2016). Environmental law and the ecosystem approach – Maintaining ecological integrity through consistency in law. Routledge.
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UNGA. (2006, July 17). Report on the work of the United Nations open-ended informal consultative process on oceans and the law of the sea at its seventh meeting. A/61/156, paragraph 6. See also: ecosystems services, conservation subdivision, social-ecological systems, assemblage, strata, infrastructure, smart growth, garden cities, biophilic cities, regional design
43. Ecosystems services Introduction Ecosystems services are the benefits that human populations derive from ecosystems, including goods and resources (e.g., food, fresh water, fuel), regulation of natural processes (e.g., soil conservation, water and climate regulation) and non-material benefits (e.g., aesthetic enjoyment, cultural values). The concept has evolved over the years and is included into the more recent concept of nature’s contributions to people, which comprises the multiple links between the environment and society that underpin human wellbeing. Urban areas largely rely on ecosystems services generated elsewhere, but urban ecosystems play a fundamental role for the health and wellbeing of the people who live therein (Gómez-Baggethun & Barton, 2013). For example, street trees contribute to regulate the local climate through shading and evapotranspiration, thus limiting the impacts of summer heatwaves; permeable surfaces reduce and delay stormwater runoff, thus contributing to prevent flooding; urban parks offer close-to-home opportunities for recreation and relaxation; while community gardens can be at the same time a source of local food and a place for social interaction.
Planning and services Urban planning affects urban ecosystems services in multiple ways (Geneletti et al., 2020). On the one hand, by controlling the availability and spatial distribution of different types of urban ecosystems, it affects their supply. On the other hand, by deciding the location of population and urban functions, it determines the demand for them. Moreover, planning decisions contribute to define the institutional and management framework that allows (or prevents) the enjoyment of certain benefits, for example by restricting the accessibility of some areas. All these aspects depend on decisions made at multiple planning levels: from the strategic level that dictates the main directions for the future urban development, to the comprehensive zoning that defines the relationship between green areas and other land uses, to the detailed development planning that prescribes quantities and qualities of urban ecosystems in a specific area.
Integrating ecosystems services assessments in planning processes is therefore fundamental to ensure that benefits from urban nature are acknowledged, preserved and possibly enhanced by planning decisions. Several methods and approaches from different disciplinary backgrounds exist to assess ecosystems services (Haase et al., 2014). Considering the type of values that they aim to capture, assessment methods are commonly classified in biophysical, socio-cultural and economic methods. Biophysical methods quantify ecosystems services in biophysical units based on the analysis of structural and functional traits of ecosystems, or on biophysical modelling (e.g., models to assess water infiltration or to measure the deposition of air pollutants on vegetation). Sociocultural methods capture individual or social preferences expressed by stakeholders in nonmonetary terms (e.g., by mining social media data to understand the use of different green areas). Economic methods quantify the value of ecosystems services in monetary units (e.g., replacement cost for the water purification service provided by a wetland, or hedonic pricing to capture the higher value of properties closer to parks). Most of these methods have been developed with the specific aim of supporting decision-making, and many can provide spatially explicit results. However, since ecosystems are multifunctional, decisions generally affect more than one ecosystem service. Hence, a sound and effective approach to combine multiple assessments and to reveal synergies and trade-offs among ecosystems services is also needed to effectively integrate considerations on ecosystems services into planning processes.
Integration Ecosystems service assessments can be integrated into different stages of the planning processes and with several purposes (Cortinovis et al., 2021). They can be used to conduct an initial analysis of baseline conditions, in order to reveal important issues and constraints, or to define a benchmark for monitoring. They can also help to identify possible actions, such as selecting priority areas for conservation or restoration. Furthermore, ecosystems service assessments can be used to compare alternative planning options based on their expected performance, for example, the possible locations of a new park based on the distribution of existing green areas and population in the
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132 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design surroundings. Finally, they can serve to measure the impacts of selected decisions, either ex-ante, in-itinere or ex-post. While some urban ecosystems services such as recreation and aesthetic appreciation have been traditionally considered in urban planning processes, some others – especially those related to the regulation of ecosystem processes like microclimate regulation and noise mitigation – are often overlooked. A deeper understanding of ecosystems services could raise awareness of the multiple links between human wellbeing and the state of urban ecosystems, thus revealing the tradeoffs that may arise from land-use decisions, and the important role of ecological knowledge in supporting effective planning actions. Moreover, an ecosystems service perspective can be instrumental to encourage an explicit identification of who benefits from ecosystems services, thus promoting concerns for environmental justice and strengthening planners’ arguments in balancing public and private interests. For these reasons, the integration of ecosystems service knowledge and approach in urban planning is indicated from many sides as a valuable strategy to address some of the ‘wicked’ problems of today’s urban development, from climate change adaptation and the necessary transition to resilience to the need for a socially sustainable and green densification.
Limits and barriers Despite these advantages, documented cases of real-life planning processes integrating an ecosystems service approach also revealed some barriers (Longato et al., 2021). Besides the general lack of data and resources, models to map and assess ecosystems services often do not match the resolution required to make specific decisions or are based on simplified assumptions unable to capture the specificity of the local context. Moreover, conflicts with established spatial planning approaches might arise, as well as a mismatch between the scale of planning and the multiple and overlapping scales of ecosystems service provision and use. Difficulties in communicating and understanding the ecosystems service concept by stakeholders and decision-makers have also been observed. On the opposite side, the involvement of a wide variety of
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stakeholders; a supportive social environment with diffused awareness of ecosystem functions, services and values; and the presence of key promoters among the participants have been identified as enabling factors. Compared to well-established planning instruments, more innovative and flexible instruments such as Marine Spatial Planning and Strategic Environmental Assessment can represent opportunities for integrating ecosystems services knowledge and approaches, especially when the latter is promoted by higher-level policies and regulatory frameworks. Davide Geneletti and Chiara Cortinovis
References Cortinovis, C., Geneletti, D., & Hedlund, K. (2021). Synthesizing multiple ecosystem service assessments for urban planning: A review of approaches, and recommendations. Landscape and Urban Planning, 213, 104129. Geneletti, D., Cortinovis, C., Zardo, L., & Adem Esmail, B. (2020). Planning for ecosystem services in cities. Springer International Publishing. Gómez-Baggethun, E., & Barton, D. N. (2013). Classifying and valuing ecosystem services for urban planning. Ecological Economics, 86, 235–245. Haase, D., Larondelle, N., Andersson, E., Artmann, M., Borgström, S., Breuste, J., Gómez-Baggethun, E., Gren, Å., Hamstead, Z. A., Hansen, R., Kabisch, N., Kremer, P., Langemeyer, J., Rall, E. L., McPhearson, T., Pauleit, S., Qureshi, S., Schwarz, N., Voigt, A., Wurster, D., & Elmqvist, T. (2014). A quantitative review of urban ecosystem service assessments: Concepts, models, and implementation. Ambio, 43, 413–433. Longato, D., Cortinovis, C., Albert, C., & Geneletti, D. (2021). Practical applications of ecosystem services in spatial planning: Lessons learned from a systematic literature review. Environmental Science & Policy, 119, 72–84. See also: ecosystems-based governance, conservation subdivision, narrative, modernism, expertise, social-ecological systems, systems thinking, assemblage
44. Energy and strategic energy planning Definition Since the renewable energy transition fundamentally alters how energy is generated, transported and utilized, it also redefines the role that energy has in space and how space can or should be planned. A changing energy–space nexus as a result of the energy transition therefore calls on planners involved in the production, distribution and consumption of energy and on planners involved in the allocation of space to functions such as housing, transport and industry to more structurally consider how their planning practices relate to and impinge on each other. ‘Strategic energy planning’ is a type of planning that foregrounds this energy–space nexus by systematically analyzing how producing, distributing and consuming energy impinges on using, interpreting, and planning space in a community, and vice versa. Transitioning from a fossil-dominated energy system towards a renewable energy system substantially affects what space means and how it can be used. The renewable energy transition therefore challenges planners to think strategically about how energy and space relate to and build on each other. This encyclopedia entry first summarizes how energy planning has recently undergone a ‘spatial turn’, after which it illustrates how spatial planning currently faces an ‘energy turn’. The entry then draws on recent empirical insights from the Netherlands to show that integrating the planning of energy and space is all but straightforward. To conclude, the entry posits that the strategic planning of renewable energy and space has emerged yet not stabilized as an object for and in planning and, hence, requires further scrutiny across institutional contexts.
A spatial turn in energy planning A fossil fuel-based energy system has a substantially different spatial character than a renewable-based energy system. Whilst fossil fuels can be extracted from point sources isolated from society and with relatively limited claims on space, harvesting renewable forms of energy such as solar and wind power requires larger spaces, including those
close(r) to people’s livelihoods. Hence, fossil fuel-based energy can be produced, distributed and consumed in a rather centralized manner, whilst renewable forms of energy are inherently more decentralized in nature. Moving from a fossil to a renewable energy system thus has major implications for the use of space and the character of landscapes. In fact, ‘prevailing land-use systems and landscape values within fossil-fuel intensive societies are out of phase with, and are currently being disrupted by, the transition to renewable energy resources’ (Calvert et al., 2019, pp. 191–192). The transition towards renewable energy thereby gives rise to ‘new energy spaces’ that can only be understood properly if the spatial characteristics and processes shaping energy systems are acknowledged (Bridge & Gailing, 2020). Recognizing this need, energy planning research has recently undergone a ‘spatial turn’ to explore the spatial character and implications of renewable energy transitions.
An energy turn in spatial planning Since moving towards a renewable-based energy system fundamentally challenges existing relations between energy and space, some scholars have argued that the renewable energy transition also entails an ‘energy turn’ for the professional field and practice of spatial planning. This research has highlighted that spatial planning plays a significant role in the renewable energy transition, especially since spatial planning decisions can directly affect patterns of energy production, distribution and consumption – either consciously or accidentally (Stoeglehner et al., 2011). The term ‘strategic energy planning’ has been used in this context to refer to planning analyzes and approaches aiming to more strategically plan energy systems on various geographical and political levels (cf. Krog & Sperling, 2019). These studies show that the energy turn in spatial planning goes beyond allocating new land-use functions in space to, for example, wind parks or solar fields. Rather, it ‘calls for policy changes, new institutional structures and arrangements, and smart combinations with other land-uses’ (Kempenaar et al., 2021, p. 763). Yet, research that explicitly links the strategic planning of energy to the strategic (comprehensive) planning of space is still relatively sparse and has thus far mostly concentrated on Denmark and Sweden (Sperling et al., 2011; Wretling et al., 2018).
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The complexities of integrating spatial planning and energy planning Another recent attempt to strategically link the planning of energy and space can be found in the Netherlands. Since 2019, the Netherlands has adopted a regional approach to renewable energy transition planning. Thirty so-called ‘energy regions’ have been formed that consist of municipalities, provinces and regional water authorities. These governmental authorities collaborate with societal stakeholders to develop regional energy strategies (RES) that outline where and how on-land wind and solar energy generation capacity will be realized by 2030. Even though the cumulative planning ambitions of energy regions will likely meet the national framework goals for renewable energy generation set by the Dutch government, recent monitoring reports highlight that implementing those strategic energy planning ambitions in practice is challenging (Matthijsen et al., 2022). Bridging the ‘gap’ between the planning of energy and the planning of space (Matthijsen et al., 2022, p. 62) in the Netherlands is complex for a number of reasons of which four are expanded on in the following. First, integrating the two types of planning is not self-evident as energy and space are planned according to fundamentally distinct logics. The planning of energy ‘mainly pertains to the logics of optimization and efficiency’, whilst planning space is grounded on ‘political-administrative and jurisdictional logics’ (Gerritsen et al., 2022, p. 9). Aligning decisions about energy with those about space is therefore not straightforward; preferred planning decisions for energy and space may for instance differ depending on technical and political time horizons and interests. Second, strategic decision-making on the relations between energy planning and spatial planning is complicated because the spatial implications of the renewable energy transition have been (and still are) relatively unknown territory for policymakers and planners. The first studies that explicitly explored the spatial implications of a renewable energy transition in the Netherlands have only been conducted recently (Kempenaar et al., 2021). As a result, Dutch policymakers and planners have been confronted with uncertainty and a range of spatial decision-making dilemmas martijn gerritsen
whilst developing energy transition policy plans (Koelman et al., 2018). Third, the spatial planning of the energy transition has generally been limited to the realm of renewable energy generation, leaving other spatial issues relevant for the planning of a renewable energy system unaddressed (Kempenaar et al., 2021). Most importantly, the transport and storage of energy, as well as the associated infrastructure required for doing so have gained relatively little attention in the first iterations of Dutch RES. Additionally, these strategies have not considered the implications that spatial planning domains such as transport, housing and industry may have for energy planning – and vice versa. Fourth, specialists in the fields of energy planning and spatial planning have only limited knowledge of their respective domains: energy planners generally know little about spatial planning, whilst spatial planners know little about energy planning. A recent report on the strategizing processes in Dutch energy regions stressed how planners in the realms of energy and space have different planning ‘vocabularies’ and, hence, can only limitedly coordinate their decisions so as to translate energy generation ambitions into concrete spatial developments (Janssen et al., 2022, pp. 5–6).
Concluding remarks The renewable energy transition reifies and solidifies the inherently spatial character of energy and its associated infrastructures. It does not only call on the energy system to turn to space, but it also calls on spatial planning to turn to energy. Hence, the energy transition challenges planners of both energy and space to consider the implications that producing, distributing and consuming renewable forms of energy may have for the meaning, use and planning of space, as well as what these spatial implications may mean for the production, distribution and consumption of renewable energy. The emerging scholarship on the links between the planning of energy and space shows that the renewable energy–space nexus is increasingly considered an object of interest for and in spatial planning, especially due to the more local and embedded character of renewable energy compared to fossil energy. However, the complexities that planners of
energy and strategic energy planning 135 energy and space face when bringing their planning disciplines together underline that energy has not yet stabilized as a planning object (cf. Boezeman & Kooij, 2015). What integrating spatial planning and energy planning exactly looks like in practice and along what pathways strategic energy planning practices may evolve is an empirical question that merits further inquiry across institutional contexts. Martijn Gerritsen
References Boezeman, D., & Kooij, H. J. (2015). Heated debates: The transformation of urban warming into an object of governance in the Netherlands. In R. Beunen, K. Van Assche, & M. Duineveld (Eds.), Evolutionary governance theory: Theory and applications (pp. 185–203). Springer International Publishing. Bridge, G., & Gailing, L. (2020). New energy spaces: Towards a geographical political economy of energy transition. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 52(6), 1037–1050. Calvert, K., Greer, K., & MaddisonMacFadyen, M. (2019). Theorizing energy landscapes for energy transition management: Insights from a socioecological history of energy transitions in Bermuda. Geoforum, 102, 191–201. Gerritsen, M., Kooij, H.-J., Groenleer, M., & van der Krabben, E. (2022). To see, or not to see, that is the question: Studying Dutch experimentalist energy transition governance through an evolutionary lens. Sustainability, 14(3), Article 3. Janssen, J., Agterbosch, S., & Koomen, B. (2022). De kracht van de combinatie. Leren op het raakvlak van energie en ruimtelijke ordening (No. 211425–01; p. 45). Het PON & Telos.
Kempenaar, A., Puerari, E., Pleijte, M., & van Buuren, M. (2021). Regional design ateliers on ‘energy and space’: Systemic transition arenas in energy transition processes. European Planning Studies, 29(4), 762–778. Koelman, M., Hartmann, T., & Spit, T. J. M. (2018). Land use conflicts in the energy transition: Dutch Dilemma’s. TeMa Journal of Land Use, Mobility and Environment, 11(3), 273–284. Krog, L., & Sperling, K. (2019). A comprehensive framework for strategic energy planning based on Danish and international insights. Energy Strategy Reviews, 24, 83–93. Matthijsen, J., Chranioti, A., Sorel, N., Eerens, H., van der Veen, R., Nabielek, P., & Evers, D. (2022). Monitor RES 2022. Een voortgangsanalyse van de Regionale Energie Strategieën (Text No. 4985; p. 79). Planbureau voor de Leefomgeving (PBL). Sperling, K., Hvelplund, F., & Mathiesen, B. V. (2011). Centralisation and decentralisation in strategic municipal energy planning in Denmark. Energy Policy, 39(3), 1338–1351. Stoeglehner, G., Niemetz, N., & Kettl, K.-H. (2011). Spatial dimensions of sustainable energy systems: New visions for integrated spatial and energy planning. Energy, Sustainability and Society, 1(1), 2. Wretling, V., Gunnarsson-Östling, U., Hörnberg, C., & Balfors, B. (2018). Strategic municipal energy planning in Sweden – Examining current energy planning practice and its influence on comprehensive planning. Energy Policy, 113, 688–700. See also: dependencies, systems perspectives, transitions, social-ecological systems, assemblage, institutions, complexity, environmental justice
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45. Environmental justice Key definition In general, the idea of environmental justice states that there is a disproportional burden of environmental bads (e.g., health impact pollution, flood risks) and low access to environmental goods (e.g., green space), for the less or least well-off, either individuals, communities or countries. Such environmental injustices are often reinforcing existing states and processes of inequality (e.g., polluting factories moving to zones with low land prices).
Brief history Environmental justice is commonly associated with the Environmental Justice Movement in the United States, which originated around 1980. In its early days, it concerned mainly protest against the health impacts of garbage dumps on local communities. These protests were oriented against the injustice that these predominantly poor and Afro-American communities had to bear the main burden of these environmental problems. Later similar protests broadened to other environmental problems, such as air and water quality, flood risks and lack of green space. Environmental justice is however broader than the American Environmental Justice Movement. First, concerns about environmental health impacts are older than the 1970s. For instance, in the beginning of the twentieth century, the Smoke Prevention Movement focused on the consequences of massive coal burning and a century earlier the Sanitary Movement was concerned about city hygiene (e.g., waste collection, sewage systems) for preventing epidemics. Nonetheless, it is the merit of the contemporary environmental justice movements to focus specifically on poverty and inequality aspects of environmental problems. Second, there are other roots for current environmental justice activism and theories. Most importantly, there is the so-called ‘environmentalism of the poor’ (Martinez-Alier, 2002), introduced by academics and activists in the 1980s, focusing originally on environmental conflicts affecting rural and indigenous populations in India and Latin America. It has a more Global South focus and is often about subsistence and dispossession, such as
conflicts surrounding dams, plantations and mining. These conflicts are also often of a more violent nature: every week, two to four people are killed for defending their environment, often related to conflicts in agribusiness and mining. Third, while contemporary discussions about environmental justice often refer to the two sources above – the 1980s US environmental justice movement and the ‘environmentalism of the poor’ – the connection between a more environmental and a more just society, has always been an important point of discussion since the rise of contemporary environmental awareness in the 1960s. While there also have more techno-optimistic or technocratic approaches without little care for justice, at the same time there were also always discourses oriented on environmental democracy where justice was a central concern (Dobson, 1998). This connection is not always because it is not necessarily discussed under the specific label of ‘justice’; there is a series of other notions, such as equality, fairness and equal access that are used. Moreover, many discussions, especially more theoretical ones, use more intellectual or ideological notions to discuss justice concerns, such as class, egalitarianism, socialism, capitalism, hierarchy and oppression (Murray, 1982). While the current use of ‘environmental justice’ mainly refers to the two movements referred to above – the US and Global South environmental justice movements – there is a much broader, also theoretical, debate on the environment and justice, for instance in political theory, in particular with regard to climate change (Gardiner et al., 2010).
Theory: central distinctions The notion of justice is a broad and normative notion and it covers a wide range of phenomena. For instance, a boy thinking it is unfair his sister gets more cookies; citizens who think a military intervention is justice; students perceiving it as unfair they have little say in university policies; your friend who conceives it unjust that you have not invited him to your party; and activists who argue the historic emissions of the Global North are unjust. Normative questions pop up in all dimensions of life, ranging from very personal to the big questions of our time. The debate on environmental justice is mainly about institutional questions, as in John Rawls’s famous quote: ‘Justice is the first virtue of social institutions,
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environmental justice 137 as truth is of systems of thought’, thus about rules, organizations, polices, markets, norms, conventions, etc. There is also a wide variety of claims. In order to bring some order in this variety, two central sets of distinctions are common and useful. First there is a distinction between descriptive (what is) and normative or prescriptive claims (what should be) – this closely relates to Hume’s is/ought distinction. Underlying the is/ought distinction is the idea that one cannot just infer injustice from factual inequalities (e.g., different levels of flood risk are not necessarily unjust). Along these lines, environmental justice scholar Walker (2012, pp. 40–41) argues that claim-making consists of three parts: evidence (how things are; descriptive), justice (how things ought to be; normative) and process (why things are how they are; explanatory). In debates and studies, these three aspects tend to be conflated, possibly by broad interpretation of the notions of justice or equality (namely as applying to descriptive, normative and explanatory aspects). Stating that it concerns different types of claims, does not necessarily imply they are totally independent of each other – as in a simple fact/value distinction. Our values and frames influence our observations, but this does not take away that descriptive, normative and explanatory claims are of a different kind and thus the potential usability of this threefold distinction. Second, an increasingly common distinction made in the field of justice studies is between three dimensions of justice, which potentially can apply to descriptive, normative claims and explanatory claims. (i) Distributive justice is about how benefits and burdens are distributed. Theoretical discussions about distributive justice are about the basis of the distribution, for instance based on equality, needs, responsibilities or contributions. (ii) Procedural or participatory justice is about the decisions and rules that shape distribution: what are these rules and who is taking decisions in which way? (iii) Recognitive justice is about how to be sensitive to different identities and cultural differences – in environmental justice debates this often concerns how to deal with local knowledge and indigenous groups. This threefold distinction follows from debates in political theory in the 1990s, where the focus on distributive and procedural justice was criticized as not having enough attention for issues of
recognition. This debate also took place in the environmental justice debate itself. The first wave of environmental justice studies was mainly distributive: how are environmental bads distributed, particularly across different income groups? While highly relevant, this distributive focus left out many other concerns, including who has a say in the process. The distributive/procedural/recognitive distinction therefore was also introduced in environmental justice debates (e.g., Schlosberg, 2004) and is now often used in environmental justice literature in general, also in applied environmental justice debates, such as energy justice. Of course, dimensions are closely related to each other. One of the benefits of this threefold justice distinction is that it allows the making of connections across rather diverse studies in environmental justice. Third, with regard to explanatory claims, there are economic and political mechanisms. To begin with, there are several economic mechanisms that make environmental burdens move from high to low-income groups. On the one hand, polluting activities can move to poorer neighborhoods (ex-ante mechanisms). In such neighborhoods land prices are commonly lower and it is subsequently cheaper for locating polluting activities. The mechanism can, on the other hand, also be in the other direction, namely that polluting activities have an impact of the social composition of the area (ex-post mechanisms). Polluting activities can push land prices downwards, thereby making it more attractive for low-income groups to live there (move-in hypothesis). Subsequently, the increase of lower income and ethnic groups could make (white) middle-class groups leave (white flight hypothesis). In addition, if land prices go down, it becomes less evident for lower income groups to move away (lock-in hypothesis). These economic explanations probably play an important role but seem insufficient to explain all disproportionate burdens. In the (American) environmental justice movement, there is a discourse on ‘environmental racism’: different studies showed that race was the best explaining variable, better than poverty or land values, of garbage dump locations. This led to a ‘race versus class’ debate: are polluting activities mainly moving towards either poorer or Afro-American neighborhoods? Research showed that the move-in hypothesis stijn neuteleers
138 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design on its own was not sufficient for explaining the allocation of environmental burdens (Brulle & Pellow, 2006, p. 3.4). Probably class and race (or other group identities) do play a significant role, but the importance of ethnic background reveals that economic mechanisms can only explain part of the process and that there is thus an important political factor. Pollution is moving towards places with little resistance to it, either socio-economically or politically.
Discussion: broadening of the debate The American environmental justice movement led to some successes in the 1990s, such as policy reports (Environmental Equity: Reducing Risk for All Communities (1992)) and a law requiring government agencies to take into account the disproportional health impact on minorities and low-income groups. The main successes were local, such as closures of dumps and industrial installations, or moving communities to new locations (Bullard & Johnson, 2009). Nonetheless, progress was less than was hoped for by many activists, for instance court cases on the basis of discrimination or participation organized by government agencies did often not bring about the desired results (Brulle & Pellow, 2006, pp. 3.11–12). In the three decades after its birth, environmental justice – both movement and theory – has been broadened in at least three ways, namely with regard to topics (and dimensions), governance modes and scale. First, initially the focus was largely on toxics, but this has gradually broadened to a wide range of topics, guided by the phrase ‘where we live, work and play’, thereby including topics such as climate change, resource extraction, green space, food, consumption, intergenerational justice, transport, flooding, etc. Additionally, there was a move from primarily reactive, namely about threats on communities, to more proactive, namely on planning and policy of desirable communities. Some of these topics have become substantial debates on their own, such as on climate justice, energy justice, food justice, indigenous justice and water justice. One trend in more recent discussions has been a focus on the sustainability of everyday life (sometimes called ‘new materialism’), such as in the case of food, water and energy, often stijn neuteleers
related to bodily experiences of vulnerability and reacting against problematic and unjust (industrialized) flow – thereby bringing environmental problems close to people’s daily lives (versus abstract notions of nature and environment). This broadening in topics has been accompanied by including more dimensions of justice (see above), namely rather than focusing solely on the distributive dimension, the participatory and recognitive dimensions of environmental justice are increasingly seen as equally relevant to environmental justice. Second, given that environmental justice successes were less than hoped by some, there have been pleas for social innovations and new governance instruments (Brulle & Pellow, 2006, pp. 3.12–14). To begin with, citizen science and participatory methods are more promoted, such as community-based research, popular epidemiology, in order to increase both data relevance and citizen involvement, by not approaching people as a subject to be studied but rather as carriers of specific local knowledge. Somewhat related, approaches also aim to give a more central role to the local actors themselves, through more autonomy and capacity building. Additionally, there is a plea for more holistic and placebased approaches: taking into account different dimensions (e.g., interdisciplinary) of a specific place. With regard to ethical principles, one points more to the precautionary principle, putting the burden of proof on the polluter, rather than waiting for conclusive proof of negative health impacts. Finally, in order to give more space for justice as recognition, there is also more attention on more cultural methodologies, possibly combining fictional, scientific, testimonial accounts and using different types of cultural media (film, documentary, poetry, plays, novels, placebased tours, public commemoration, graphic novels, etc.). Such cultural methodologies take a more narrative approach and give more space to the lived experience and histories of environmental injustice in particular places. Such narratives allow contesting dominant and mainstream discourses. Third, there has been a broadening related to space and scale. With regard to scale, compared with the initial studies, there has been an increase in the global context. Important environmental problems are global in scale and raise questions of international justice. The impact of climate change will be felt most strongly in countries of the Global South,
environmental justice 139 while Global North countries are responsible for the bulk of current and historic emissions. Some environmental problems are truly global in scale, such as a changing climate, while many other problems are rather reiterated around the globe, for instance biodiversity loss, or sometimes transported across the globe, for instance waste transport. Besides the sheer scale of problems, there is also a shifting understanding of space, namely beyond distribution and proximity. In the first-generation literature, the focus was on distributive issues and in particular the spatially socio-environmental inequalities, such as those generated by waste, landfill and industrial sites. While such distributional and statistical evidence has been hugely influential in establishing the case for environmental justice, it only revealed specific forms of inequality. One important aspect missing is unequal sensitivity: an ‘equal dosis’ is not necessarily equally experienced or coped with by everyone; if one’s methodology is based on the average white male then this might misunderstand risks for women, children, elderly, sick or people of color. More broadly, what is called for is attention for all kinds of vulnerability, both issues of sensitivity and adaptive capacity: pre-existing health problems, access to insurance, social isolation, availability of resources, etc. Just looking at geographical boundaries (e.g., who lives on a floodplain) misses important aspects of inequality. Not only are there the different aspects of vulnerability, but some environmental benefits or risks can also have different meanings to different groups, for instance green space could be seen as dangerous by some groups (e.g., associated with crime or user conflicts). So, the space of environmental justice has to be understood more broadly than the two-dimensional geographical space, within which unequal distributions of impacts and risks are situated. Different types of spaces exist corresponding to the different dimensions of environmental justice. There is a distributive space with varying risks, vulnerabilities and responsibilities. There is the democratic space in which procedural or participatory justice plays, but environmental impact and political boundaries do not necessarily coincide. With regard to recognitive justice, one often talks about place instead of space, referring to the meaning a place has to people. There can be place
stigmatization or misrecognition if environmental risks threaten to replace positive place connotations with associations of danger and degradation (Walker, 2009).
Limits and future There are limits and risks to increasingly broadening the concept of environmental justice. There is a tension between, on the one hand, diffusion and thereby losing focus and power, and on the other hand, revealing the broad relevance and importance of environmental justice. There are now many distinct environmental themes and one can wonder whether the environmental justice frame is not becoming too diffuse, possibly too close to social justice in general. Moreover, not all broadening of the environmental justice debate is uncontroversial. Two examples are multispecies justice and degrowth. While many connections between these two concepts and environmental justice can even be thought of as the logical next steps on the path towards more environmental justice, it also brings forward a very different set of questions, possibly conflicting with some of the primary aims of environmental justice activists. Moreover, one of the challenges of the broad environmental justice debate is fragmentation, thereby possibly losing communicative power. There are several ways ahead. One is to go exactly for more specialization, as for instance is seen in the emergence of different subfields such as energy justice, water justice and climate justice. The other way around is to work with broad, inclusive concepts, such as ‘just sustainabilities’ (Agyeman et al., 2003), namely that sustainability cannot be based on social injustice since an unjust society will probably not be sustainable in the long run, neither in economic nor environmental terms. Often just sustainabilities manifest themselves in local and applied examples such as food security and just transport. The third way is empirical, one of the leading attempts to map environmental justice conflicts is the Global Atlas of Environmental Justice (Temper et al., 2018), which reports on more than 3700 cases (count as of October 2022). This dataset gives insight into a wide variety of cases but also makes analyses based on these data. These different approaches are not mutually exclusive and can reinforce each other, thereby stressing the central focus of stijn neuteleers
140 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design the important and unavoidable justice dimension of environmental issues. Stijn Neuteleers
References Agyeman, J., Bullard, R. D., & Evans, B. (2003). Just sustainabilities: Development in an unequal world. MIT press. Brulle, R. J., & Pellow, D. N. (2006). Environmental justice. Annual Review of Public Health, 27, 103–124. Bullard, R. D., & Johnson, G. S. (2009). Environmental justice grassroots activism and its impact. Environmental Sociology: From Analysis to Action, 63. Dobson, A. (1998). Justice and the environment: Conceptions of environmental sustainability and theories of distributive justice. Clarendon Press. Gardiner, S., Caney, S., Jamieson, D., & Shue, H. (2010). Climate ethics: Essential readings. Oxford University Press. Martinez-Alier, J. (2002). The environmentalism of the poor: A study of ecological conflicts and valuation. Edward Elgar Publishing.
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Murray, B. (1982). The ecology of freedom: The emergence and dissolution of Hierarchy. Cheshire Books. Schlosberg, D. (2004). Reconceiving environmental justice: Global movements and political theories. Environmental Politics, 13(3), 517–540. Temper, L., Demaria, F., Scheidel, A., Del Bene, D., & Martinez-Alier, J. (2018). The Global Environmental Justice Atlas (EJAtlas): Ecological distribution conflicts as forces for sustainability. Sustainability Science, 13(3), 573–584. Walker, G. (2009). Beyond distribution and proximity: Exploring the multiple spatialities of environmental justice. Antipode, 41(4), 614–636. https://doi.org/10 .1111/j.1467-8330.2009.00691.x Walker, G. (2012). Environmental justice: Concepts, evidence and politics. Routledge. See also: inclusion/exclusion, narrative, ideology, social-ecological systems, power in planning, power/knowledge, self-organization, assemblage, rationality, transition, social justice, social innovation, ecosystems-based governance
46. European spatial planning
a select group of members in North West Europe whose planning establishments considered this for their highly urbanised part of the continent. There were also ambitious, but in the end weak initiatives by the Council of Europe, quite separate as it was from the EC Introduction and with no executive power. Eurosclerosis ended with Jacques Delors With Europe often associated with the European Union (EU), ‘European spatial from France becoming President of the planning’ could be taken to mean planning European Commission, the latter as always EU space. But this has never been the case the motor of integration. The first revision other than as a figment of the imagination, nor of the foundational Treaty of Rome, the does the European Commission envisage tak- 1986 Single European Act identified coheing relevant initiatives. It could do so, only if sion as a Community objective. This meant it had what is called a competence under the supporting regions, but with strings attached, EU Treaty. If so, then what would follow are much like French aménagement du territoire, negotiations over rules and regulations con- but adapted to the scale of the Community cerning some form of planning of EU space, of, after Greece, Spain and Portugal had these to be incorporated into the corpus of the joined, 12 member states and as such with ‘Acquis communautaire’ for member states more marked differences in economic perforto follow. This might be conceivable, only if mance. To make all of them fit for the ensuthe EU were something like a federal state or ing competition, like some underperforming areas in the EC of old, the new members were something similar. Assuming this to be the case, a self- deemed to be in need of assistance in facprofessed Euro-federalist, Dick Williams ing the rigours of the Single Market, as the of European Spatial Policy and Planning term went. This Single Market was due to be fame (Williams, 1996) discussed below completed by 1992. Assistance would go to pointed to spatial metaphors, like the one regions defined according to their GDP per the Netherlands had invoked as conducive to capita weighted by the cost of living. In what followed, together with the activist positioning oneself in EU space. Indeed, as he pointed out, the Dutch National Planning Delors Commission, France, the Netherlands Agency had produced a study Perspectives in and later, but from a more defensive position, Europe (RPD, 1991) articulating the Dutch Germany, took initiatives in the matter of joint position in EU space which could have served spatial planning. However, planning meant different things in member states. Already this purpose. used to government grants being given to regions in exchange for the promise to comBrief history mit their own resources, France could expect Coaxed by a US carrying the post-war baby a smooth ride, but a study commissioned by of (West-)European integration, in 1958 the the state planning agency Datar showed the governments of six continental states – the European centre of gravity shifting towards United Kingdom had bowed out – set up the the east: the ‘Blue Banana’ identified by European Economic Community (EEC). Roger Brunet (1989), a trend which German It started working in 1958. Dutch planners reunification could only enforce, was the had hoped for it to take on European spatial idea. The west of France was thus in danger planning, but in this they were to be disap- of becoming even more marginal. The ‘Blue pointed. When at long last, in the early 1970s, Banana’ was to become more or less the only the United Kingdom, alongside Denmark and European planning concept of sorts that fired Ireland, did join, the EEC, eventually becom- the imagination of planners, with Kunzmann ing the European Community (EC), gave and Wegener (1989) positing their (polycensupport to regional development: a smoke- tric) ‘European Bunch of Grapes’ as its polar screen behind which it could give support to opposite. UK industry where other member states, like As a trading nation, the Netherlands enterFrance, got farming subsidies. tained great hopes for enhanced opportuniSoon – no causal link with UK accession ties in a wider, and more integrated, Single – the EC was suffering from ‘Eurosclerosis’. Market. Its concerns were to improve infraWhatever joint planning there was concerned structure and to reduce trade barriers. The 141
142 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design German role and concerns warrant more consideration because of the decisive role of its planners. Otherwise quite keen on European integration, they insisted that in the absence of a relevant clause in the EU treaties, there could be no European spatial planning proper. And it bears emphasis that, presenting – perhaps wrongly (Faludi, 2015) – the ‘Blue Banana’ as standing for a core– periphery model, a polycentric one proposed by Kunzmann and Wegener (1991) was more congenial to German thinking. With nothing to do with the competence issue, polycentrism was the one and only major substantive recommendation for European planning that would flow from the exercise to be described below. It bears emphasis that initiatives were coming from, often lower-echelon experts. They formed a ‘roving band of planners’ (Faludi, 1997). As such, they often saw more eyeto-eye than their political master. European planning is not a matter for ministers but of their staff taking them by the scruffs of their necks to meetings, starting with a tête-à-tête of the Dutch and French planning ministers on the margins of another international gathering. This soon led to the French invitation for an informal meeting – informal because it had no bearing on Community business – of all twelve EC ministers at Nantes in 1989, graced as this low-level event was by the presence of nobody less than Jacques Delors. But there was no clear idea of what European spatial planning was, only that it could bear on the administration of the new Structural Funds – the ‘pot of gold at the end of the rainbow’, as Dick Williams had it. The chief result was the resolution to meet again. Future venues – and to some extent also the topics and conclusions of meetings – were dictated by the concerns of the six-monthly Presidency of the Council of Ministers. There had been no real German input at Nantes, but soon a Germany busy with absorbing the former German Democratic Republic – see above – took much interest in the matter. German planners pointed out that there was no EU competence in the matter, nor would there be one when the Treaty of Maastricht came into operation.
A turning point? Retrospectively, this has been a turning point. Expectations as regards the Maastricht andreas faludi
Treaty had been high, also and in particular amongst the small band of experts at the forefront of European planning. Presented only days before Maastricht gave its name to the ‘Treaty on the European Union’ as it had been, Williams saw the Dutch Perspectives in Europe (RPD, 1991) study therefore as a steppingstone towards promoting truly European spatial planning. In fact, though, rather than signalling acceptance of a true Union, the Maastricht Treaty triggered a process of member states and, importantly, their publics getting cold feet. So, the Dutch presidency of the second half of 1992 was a turning point, dashing ‘federalist’ hopes in general and dampening the aspirations which Dutch planners – at least those on the shop floor level – held for European planning proper. It was a pretext more than the real reason – European spatial planning with teeth would have upset the internal balance of power between ministries and levels of government in the Federal Republic and, anyhow, other than in France, German spatial planning was ultimately about land use, ‘no competence’ would become the bogey man throughout the entire process. Thinking and working more on the lines, as indicated, of French aménagement du territoire, the Commission had little understanding of the German position but, in the absence of a relevant clause in the EU Treaty it could not sweep this argument aside. Instead, it supported the work of the Informal Meeting of Ministers of Spatial Planning, in particular the Committee on Spatial Development ministers had formed which, starting in 1993 worked on the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP). But, no sooner had an informal ministerial held at Potsdam adopted the ‘European Spatial Development Perspective’ and the Commission withdrew its practical support. Member states were left to their own devices. Since then, the Commission’s mantra is that it has no competence! This is also when it started to bank on economic and social cohesion in the future ‘Treaty on establishing a Constitution for Europe’ to be augmented with territorial cohesion, according to Faludi (2006) ‘Old French wine in new bottles’, a reminder that it reflected French policy thinking and practice. The soon 25 member states (after Austria, Finland and Sweden in 1995, ten more states
european spatial planning 143 from Central and Eastern Europe joined on 1 May 2004) scrambled to formulate their joint input into whatever the Commission would make of its future competence in the matter. A glimpse of what they could have expected is to be found in the – virtually unknown – background report to the 2001 ‘White Paper on European Governance’ of the Commission services. The rapporteur of the relevant chapter was the same Deputy Director-General who had accompanied the ESDP process and whom members states making it had profoundly disappointed.
Soldiering on By the time member states presented the results of their efforts, the Territorial Agenda prepared without the assistance of the Commission, through no fault of theirs and in fact having nothing to do with spatial planning, the situation had changed dramatically. In 2005, French and Dutch voters had rejected the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe. Coming into operation in 2009, sixteen years and a month after the Treaty of Maastricht, the Lisbon Treaty confirmed territorial cohesion as an objective and a shared EU competence. But by that time, momentum had not only been lost, the order of the day from then on was promoting Europe’s competitiveness come what may. The remaining handful of planners soldiered on, updating the Territorial Agenda twice. A by-product of the ESDP process but forgetting that it had been created to help prepare the next ESDP, the European Spatial Planning Observation Network (ESPON) went from strength to strength. There were other concerns than European spatial planning requiring ‘territorial evidence’. For administering the necessary research, ESPON has built a well-oiled machine distributing grants. But behold: no European planning and, for all intents and purposes, territorial cohesion is now also forgotten. Under ‘transnational cooperation’ it hangs on, mainly – but not exclusively – in the form of cross-border cooperation. As such, it even goes from strength to strength, due to the broad support in the regions concerned. (It might do so, even if nobody had dreamed up the notion of territorial cohesion!) There is also what is called macroregional cooperation. In either case, EU neighbours participate. So, there is activity, but not under spatial
planning: maybe all what could have been expected.
Conclusion Two souls alas! Are dwelling in my breast; And each is fail to leave its brother. (Goethe, Faust)
The epitaph seems fitting for the state of mind of European planners. As early as 1921, the Dutch pioneer Grandpré Molière (Faludi, 2018, p. 158) had admonished them to look beyond their immediate object and take in the whole area – today one would say: to look at their object as embedded in a set of interrelations. In so doing, planners hit upon limits beyond which they cannot go other than with the agreement of neighbours. Calling on some higher authority, such obstacles can perhaps be overcome. As far as European planning is concerned, the obvious candidate for providing the opportunity to do so would be the EU. But for its members, each sovereign state, to accept impositions concerning the development of their national territories seems one step too far. As the Germans have insisted – and other member states on the whole agree – it has no competence in the matter, but the deeper, and currently more insistent discussion is about where sovereignty in the EU rests. But, even if EU space were somehow the object of joint planning – if it could exercise some kind of sovereignty over the common space – how about relations, spatial or otherwise, with the outside? The insistence on the surface of the Earth being divided into self-contained areas, each the object of some sovereign authority is in itself problematic, whatever the spatial scale on which the principle is being applied; hence ‘The Poverty of Territorialism’ (Faludi, 2018). Andreas Faludi
References Brunet, R. (1989). Les Villes européennes, Rapport pour la DATAR, Délégation à l’Aménagement du Territoire et à l’Action Régionale, under the supervision of Roger Brunet, with the collaboration of JeanClaude Boyer et al., Groupement d’Intérêt Public RECLUS. La Documentation Française. andreas faludi
144 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design Faludi, A. (1997). A roving band of planners. Shaping Europe: The European Spatial Development Perspective (Special Issue, Built Environment), 23(4), 281–287. Faludi, A. (2006). From European spatial development to territorial cohesion policy. Regional Studies, 40(6), 667–678. Faludi, A. (2015). The “Blue Banana” revisited. Journal of European Spatial Development, 56. Retrieved from: http:// www.nordregio.se/Global/ EJSD/ Refereed %20articles/ Refereed_ 56.pdf. Faludi, A. (2018). The poverty of territorialism: A neomedieval view of Europe and European planning (Elgar studies in planning theory, policy and practice). Edgar Elgar Publishing. Kunzmann, K. R., & Wegener, M. (1991). The pattern of urbanisation in Western Europe 1960–1990. Berichte aus dem
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Institut für Raumplaning, 28. Institut für Raumplanung, Universität Dortmund. RPD. (1991). Perspectives in Europe. Rijksplanologische Dienst. Williams, R. H. (1996). European Union spatial policy and planning. Chapman Publishing. Working Group 4c. (2002). Multi-level governance: Linking and networking the various regional and local levels. In European governance: Preparatory work for the white paper (pp. 279–325). Office for Official Publications of the European Communities. See also: international planning, ideology, inclusion/exclusion, rationality, self-organization, institution, power in planning, power/ knowledge, participation, history, experiment
47. Experiment Planning and experimentation Experimentation is a rapidly emerging field of practice and theory. The idea of planning as experimentation questions planning as a formal activity following certain rules and regulations and a detailed script. To a certain extent, this challenge also seems to be reflected in planning practice. Within the last few years, it has become important for cities to be ‘open’ to their multiple ways of living, diverse interests and ethnic difference and to open up the planning process to ‘experiments’ involving public and stakeholders in new ways. Many different definitions of experimentation are at play, and the way in which experiments are designed, mobilized and evaluated differs hugely. Experimentation promises a way to face problems linked to climate change, social inequality and urbanization to mention just a few as a mode of governance to stimulate alternatives and steer change. Where traditional planning tools like land use regulation misses addressing situations of high complexity, deep uncertainty and ambiguity about the future, experimentation embraces such conditions and offers ways to navigate in them. A key topic is how experimentation drives wider transformation. Experimentation offers a short-cut to rapid transformation. The idea is that experimentation can generate more liveable, prosperous and sustainable futures. Experimentation has been used for a diversity of practices. The concept of experimentation feeds on attractive notions of innovation and creativity. In the field of urban transformation, experimentation is a rapidly emerging field of practice and theory (Evans et al., 2016). Through the promise of learning and innovation, experimentation lends considerable rhetorical power as a method through which to scale up from individual examples. The notion of experimentation occupies a central position within the field of sustainability transitions. Studies of experimentation reveal a wide variety of goals and values, theoretical underpinnings and discursive emphasis, actors and places. At least three forms can be identified: 1) Institutional experimentation which relates to exploring and testing alternative ways of doing planning related either
to processes, techniques or governmentality that are more flexible than within regulatory frames, 2) Material experimentation which are direct interventions in urban space in order to improve, repair or test out alternative use of space, and 3) Strategic experimentation understood as experimenting with alternative visions of the future. The method here is speculation and creative approaches that are able to transcend beyond established categories and think alternative futures. Dealing with uncertainties, and open for new imaginary futures. Of these three forms, the second form dominates the field. Urban planning and urban development in particular have become a testing ground for different forms of real-world experiments. Under the umbrella term of ‘urban laboratories’, a wide collection of methods has been developed for organizing urban experiments. Some of these initiatives may be described as ‘democratic innovations’; understood as institutions that have been specifically designed to shift the understanding of citizen participation in the political decision-making process. Democratic design experiments are a method used to form issues and public informed by what-if questions. The possible then becomes tangible, formable and within reach of engaged yet diverse citizens. Temporary spaces could also be used as experiments in visualizing possible futures, or as sites for pop-up events that can serve as arenas for community action.
Theory Visualizing possible futures, led by what-if questions is a key term in theories of planning as experimentation, and could be linked first of all to Jean Hillier and her ‘planning as speculation’ approach. To her, experiments are ‘speculative methods of knowing, working with doubts and uncertainty, without knowledge of where one ends’ (Hillier, 2008). New energies might be mobilized in such transformations, in which there are losers as well as winners, and there may be hegemonic forms of representation. More inclusive, open, creative and democratic planning, where possible future scenarios and collaborative, critical discussion about their potential consequences for different actors are called for.
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146 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design The experimental planning approach challenges the framing of participation both with regard to form (performance) and inclusiveness. This approach to participation also finds resonance in the growing literature on the concepts of ‘co-creation’ and ‘co-production’ that are prominent in the discussion on public innovation. Hillier regards planning and planners as experiments or speculations entangled in a series of contingent, networked relationships in circumstances which are both rigid (e.g. legally constrained) and flexible, where outcomes are volatile, where problems are not ‘solved’ once and for all but which, over the ‘lifetime’ of a strategic plan, are constantly recast by changing actors, situations and preferences, to be reformulated in new perspectives. (Hillier, 2008, p. 26)
Discussions/critique Experiments challenge the existing planning system and the logic of the plan as a legal instrument. In a number of studies there seems to be a tension between the experimental and the regular, the fluid and the fixed. One can always argue that an experiment is never meant to challenge anything that works. There seems to be a conflict between different logics or rationalities, between the institutional logic of the planning system and the experimental logic that needs to be solved if the promise of experimentation is to be met. And experiments may not carry transformative power. Studies of planning experiments relate mostly to single case studies, and
torill nyseth
although they exist in huge numbers, largescale integration of experimentation in established approaches to urban planning has not yet been observed and a complete transformation of urban planning practices is yet to be seen (Scholl & Kraker, 2021). Imagining the future involves risks. Experimentation may shift the balance of power between actors, empowering some while disempowering others. Cities positioning themselves as experimental cities are often highly technocentric and corporatist, and neo-liberal capitalism is framing the conditions within which experimentation takes place. Torill Nyseth
Bibliography Evans, J., Karvonen, A., & Raven, R. (Eds.). (2016). The experimental city. Routledge. Hillier, J. (2007). Stretching beyond the horizon: A multiplanar theory of spatial planning and governance. Ashgate. Hillier, J. (2008). Plan(e) speaking: A multiplanar theory of spatial planning. Planning Theory, 7(1), 24–50. Scholl, C., & Kraker, J. (2021). Urban planning by experiment: Practices, outcomes and impacts. Urban Planning, 6(1), 156–160. See also: transition, institutions, assemblage, line of flight, systems thinking, self-organization, participation, expertise and local knowledge, autopoiesis, creativity, property rights
48. Expertise and local knowledge Introduction Planners are experts, but experts who are rarely alone in their role as experts. The role planners play, the degree to which they are imbued with expertise and the nature of that expertise varies greatly across the landscape of planning theory and practice. The selfimage a planner has, stemming from schooling, ideology, professional culture and other factors, can easily clash with the community in which they find themself working. That often means that a self-understanding as an expert is not recognized, or, conversely, that more or different expertise is expected from the planner (often of a presumed technical nature). In dealing with politicians, citizens, businesspeople and with other experts, the planner is, more often than not, obliged to define their role in ongoing interactions. Even in planning systems of modernist orientation, the planner is unlikely to be the only expert, or the expert allowed to decide on the integration and application of all other forms of expertise. Strategies by planners to reinforce their expert role by naturalizing what is de facto historical and contingent, are often met with counterstrategies by other experts either naturalizing their expertise more successfully, or unmasking the contingent character of planners, e.g., by unmasking them as a social scientist, whereas they provide the ‘hard facts’ that need to underpin hard decisions.
Experts everywhere Experts play a role in all phases of policy formulation and implementation, and, in multi-level governance, the pattern of expertise at each level can differ, just as it is likely to be unique to each administrative entity. Two neighboring provinces with an identical formal governance structure will nevertheless lean on different sets of expertise in decision-making, and the relations between those forms of expertise, just as the relations between administrative departments they associate with, will differ. This means that the patterns of competition and collaboration will differ, and the potential for policy integration in spatial plans. After a while, through
repeated interactions in the co-evolution of organizations in the administration, between administration and politics and between administrative actors and non-governmental actors, the relations between forms of expertise will start to shift. This can be a matter of perceived utility of a sort of knowledge for administration, for politics, for the community at large, and it can be a matter of shifting values, narratives and ideologies. Once a form of expertise is associated with an administrative organization, once it is encoded in institutions (as in policies, plans and laws), it tends to keep itself in place, and it tends to keep the organization and the institution relevant. One can speak of an interdependence between expertise, institution and organization. Engineers can control a public works department which then dominates the planning system (extending beyond the planning department) but without the public works department and without the plans (as institutions) produced in the planning department, the role of engineering expertise and derived perspectives would be drastically reduced.
Uses and abuses of knowledge Expertise can be used to solve problems, but also to silence opponents, alternative understandings and to marginalize citizens in decision-making. Hence, the high expectations for more participatory forms of governance and planning, where local knowledge could counteract and complement expert knowledge, and where such local knowledge could make planning not only more implementable (as closer to the realities of implementation) but also more democratically legitimate and stable in the long run. In such a perspective, local knowledge could also help in the selection and partial integration of expert knowledge, by opening up black boxes, revealing the contingency of supposed hard expert realities, by indicating which forms of expertise are closest to the realities and the wishes of the local community. Experience has borne out that all these positive effects can indeed be observed, but not necessarily. Experts can fight back, politicians and their allies can promote certain forms of expertise, local decisions can be marginalized by higher levels of governance or neighboring policy domains. Not unimportantly, local knowledge, just as ‘the local’ is usually not unified, and when it is unified, this is not always a blessing, as not all problems
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148 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design can be locally solved and as in other cases the unity is a sign of selectivity, i.e., of exclusion of other local voices. None of this amounts to an argument against local knowledge accompanying expertise in participatory processes. It does mean that no form of knowledge and no form of organization can be deemed perfect, or superior as such. Raoul Beunen, Martijn Duineveld and Kristof Van Assche, Editors
Bibliography Fischer, F. (2000). Citizens, experts, and the environment: The politics of local knowledge. Duke University Press. Flyvbjerg, B. (2001). Making social science matter: Why social inquiry fails and how it
can succeed again. Cambridge University Press. Khirfan, L., Momani, B., & Jaffer, Z. (2013). Whose authority? Exporting Canadian urban planning expertise to Jordan and Abu Dhabi. Geoforum, 50, 1–9. Latour, B. (2004). Politics of nature: How to bring the sciences into democracy. Harvard University Press. Pierre, J., & Peters, B. G. (2020). Governance, politics and the state. Bloomsbury Publishing. See also: modernism, agonism, participation, power in planning, power/knowledge, inclusion/exclusion, rationality, complexity, systems perspectives, power/knowledge
raoul beunen, martijn duineveld and kristof van assche
49. Foresight and visioning
at city and city-regional scale. The UK Government Office for Science’s (GOfS) Future of Cities Programme (2013–2016) placed a strong emphasis on ‘city foresight’, or the science of thinking about the future of cities. This programme of work drew on a Key definition variety of foresight methods including creaForesight is the discipline of exploring, antici- tive visioning (using art and design experpating and shaping the future, to build and use tise) and backcasting (looking at a desirable collective intelligence (derived from a range of future(s) and how to achieve them) to examsources and relevant stakeholders) in a struc- ine anticipated and possible future changes tured and systematic way and anticipate and in a variety of UK cities (GOfS, 2016). There plan developments and prepare more effec- have also been wider national and continental tively for change (European Commission, scale programmes relating to foresight and 2020). Visioning, as part of a wider set of city visions in Norway (Cities of the Future), ‘foresight’ methods (for example, scenario- Saudi Arabia (Saudi Future Cities) and Africa planning and horizon scanning), refers to the (Future Cities Africa), for example. Part of the UK GOfS programme also concept of creating shared (and usually desirable) views of the future to serve as goals or included the development of visions for speguides for planning decisions (Shipley, 2002; cific cities (for example, Newcastle Futures 2065 and Reading 2050). The concept of ‘city Dixon & Tewdwr-Jones, 2021). visioning’, however, predates this. For example, generic and ‘ideal’ city visions featured Brief history in the work of Thomas More in the sixteenth Foresight is part of what might be termed century through to planning visionaries such ‘futures studies’ which is the systematic study as Patrick Geddes and Ebenezer Howard in of multiple futures. Although futures studies the late nineteenth and early twentieth cenhave a long history stretching back to early turies. In the context of urban planning, the oral and written traditions (for example, the concept of ‘city visioning’ (or having a clear scholar Sima Qian in the second century and formal sense of where a particular city BCE), the term ‘foresight’ as understood wants to be in the long-term future) emerged today is thought to have first originated in a during the 1980s and 1990s, particularly in BBC broadcast by the famous science fiction the USA, not only as a way of understanding author, H.G. Wells, in 1932. Usually, fore- the future, but also to plan for a desirable, sight is concerned with the study of longer- or preferred, set of sustainable outcomes term futures of more than 20 years (or at (see for example, Atlanta and Portland) and least 10–15 years) away, and with alternative since the early 2000s, we have also seen futures and how to achieve them. Such futures the development of more ‘formal’ visioning may be ‘possible’, ‘preferred’ or ‘prospective’. processes (or ‘city foresight’ methods – see Foresight is usually qualitative and not pre- above) to develop city visions (see, for examdictive, and often explores a range of pos- ple, Phoenix (USA), Johannesburg (Republic sible or desirable futures. The term has also of South Africa) and Vancouver (Canada)). been distinguished from the more predictive Often, but not always, the development of nature of ‘forecasting’ (for example, foresight city visions has been based on a participahas a greater focus on outcomes and imple- tory approach with people, business, governmentation of ‘anticipation’) although the lat- ment and academia directly involved in the ter can also be considered as closely linked visioning process. Recent examples, where to foresight. participatory methods have been pursued in Foresight’s early origins, in the 1940s to a ‘sustainable city’ and or ‘smart city’ con1960s, lie in the government and business text, include Sydney (Australia) and Bristol, sectors (for example, the RAND Corporation Oxford and Edinburgh (UK). In the developin the USA), but has focused more recently ing world we have also seen the emergence on environmental issues and related socio- of ‘city development strategies’ (a frameeconomic impacts through the work of such work to develop a long-term plan for a city), organisations as the World Economic Forum which are strongly supported by the UN and the International Resource Panel. We and other organisations, such as the Cities have also seen an increasing use of foresight Alliance. The city visioning process usually 149
150 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design comprises five stages: (i) setting the baseline; (ii) developing the vision; (iii) identifying the roadmap and pathways to the future; (iv) implementing the vision; and (v) assessing and monitoring of the vision (Dixon & Tewdwr-Jones, 2021).
Link to theory, discipline and method Although it is felt by some that foresight (and hence visioning) lacks a coherent theoretical basis, its theoretical constructs are linked not only to its potential influence on existing systems, processes and functions in wider society but also to its possible use in building new theory from foresight activity (for example, in the context of innovation systems or economic competitiveness) (Piirainen & Gonzalez, 2015). Certainly, there is also a strong link to ‘transitions theory’ and ‘transition management’ which recognises the importance of fundamental structural and systemic shifts in society to move to a sustainable future. This also highlights the importance of a multi-level perspective (MLP) to understand how technological lockin can be overcome, for example, through the emergence of new ‘niche’ innovations (Geels, 2010; Frantzeskaki et al., 2018). Both foresight and visioning are seen as interdisciplinary-based techniques combining and integrating science, social science, engineering and many other disciplines. In an urban and regional planning context the term ‘urban futures’ acts as an overarching concept (bringing foresight, visioning and other futures methods together) to imagine what cities and urban areas will be like in the long term, how they will operate, what infrastructure and governance systems will underpin and coordinate them, and how they are best shaped and influenced by their primary stakeholders (civil society, governments, businesses and investors, and academia or what is sometimes referred to as a ‘quadruple helix’) (Dixon & TewdwrJones, 2021). In terms of methods, foresight can incorporate visioning and other futures-based techniques such as horizon scanning (looking for early warning signs of change), scenarios (stories or narratives of alternative views of the future) and roadmapping (how interventions can combine to shape outcomes). timothy j. dixon
Discussion and critiques Foresight and visioning are still relatively rare in urban and regional planning. Issues of capacity and resource at local government or municipality level have often inhibited the ability to develop a coherent city vision and in some instances the development of a new vision may be seen to be competing with existing plans or strategies. Despite this, there has been a movement away from formal state-led strategic and subregional planning tools towards more flexible and informal alliances for longer-term planning and visioning (Dixon et al., 2022). Foresight and visioning offer key advantages for urban and regional planning, however. For example, the process can lead to new and creative thinking about a city’s (or city region’s) assets; provide insights into policy interrelationships; develop compelling brand narratives; and be used to better identify environmental and socio-economic or other types of risks. Similarly, new partnerships, relationships and trust can be developed with a greater ‘buy in’ for future decisions, and to develop more confidence in decision-making (GOfS, 2016). However, it is important to bear in mind the issues and challenges arising from applying city foresight and city visioning in practice. Firstly, it is essential to ensure all high-level strategies and plans link with each other and provide an integrated approach to climate change and environmental impacts in urban areas. A city vision should be linked to climate change, energy, the economy and to people, and the vision should be participatory and inclusive, analytically sound and politically viable. Secondly, those groups developing and leading such visions must always reflect on the starting point and the inclusivity of their vision, and what this means for all groups of stakeholders in a city. For example, as trusted and independent institutions, universities have a key role to play in helping formulate urban futures thinking, but it is also crucial to involve all stakeholders who are based in the town and city in the development of the strategy or the vision. While it can sometimes be difficult to engage with people and to consult inclusively, new technologies and digital platforms have a role to play here in reaching wider audiences, although digital inclusion is also important to maintain. Thirdly, applying such ‘formal’ techniques,
foresight and visioning 151 however participatory they might be, may not be appropriate in some jurisdictions, particularly in the Global South where informal settlements and an unregulated environment (or ‘shadow cities’) are commonplace. Timothy J. Dixon
References Dixon, T., & Tewdwr-Jones, M. (2021). Urban futures: Planning for city foresight and city visions. Bristol University Press/Policy Press. Dixon, T. J., Karuri-Sebina, G., Ravetz, J., & Tewdwr-Jones, M. (2022). Re-imagining the future: City-region foresight and visioning in an era of fragmented governance. Regional Studies, 57(4), 609–616. European Commission. (2020). 2020 strategic foresight report – charting the course towards a more resilient Europe. European Commission.
Frantzeskaki, N., Holscher, K., Bach, M., & Avelino, F. (Eds.). (2018). Co-creating sustainable urban futures. Springer. Geels, F. (2010). Ontologies, socio-technical transitions (to sustainability), and the multi-level perspective. Research Policy, 39(4), 495–510. Government Office for Science (GOfS). (2016). Future of cities: Foresight for cities. GOfS. Piirainen, K. A., & Gonzalez, R. A. (2015). Theory of and within foresight — “What does a theory of foresight even mean?”. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 96, 191–201. Shipley, R. (2002). Visioning in planning: Is the practice based on sound theory? Environment and Planning A, 34, 7–22. See also: transitions, smart city, strategy, participation, power in planning, power/ knowledge
timothy j. dixon
50. Fragility, resilience and design Introduction Compared to previous decades, the levels of poverty, conflict and poor health are now radically decreasing around the world. More people than ever before are now living above national poverty lines, there are fewer conflicts and conflict-related deaths and thanks to new vaccines and improved nutrition, health standards have improved greatly globally (Pinker, 2018). However, this does not mean that the benefits of social and economic development have been shared evenly either within or between countries. Levels of regional, national and global inequalities still suggest that millions of people still remain without adequate access to medical care, millions more have been displaced by conflict and political oppression and income disparities between the top 1 per cent and bottom 20 per cent of people have grown exponentially. Racial, ethnic and gender discrimination have further exacerbated these inequities while intensifying droughts, hurricanes and floods are intensifying their impacts, and making families, communities and environments more and more fragile. Resilience – building the capacities needed to adapt to risks from fragility and ‘bounce forward’ – is an essential process for responding to such challenges (Manyena et al., 2011). Planning can build the adaptive capacities for resilience (Davidson et al., 2016) and reduce racial, gender and class inequalities (Wu & Liu, 2022) through (March & GonzalezMathiesen, 2020) designing resilient naturebased solutions in landscape architecture (Mertens, 2021). The contributions however of architecture and urban design as disciplinary and spatial tools to overcoming social and ecological fragility are marginal at best and this gap, provides the focus of this chapter.
History The contributions of architecture to reconstruction were significant after World War II and in the growing frequency of urban conflicts since. They have also been significant in addressing ethnic and religious divisions in ‘divided cities’ (Calame & Charlesworth, 2009). However, the crises caused by the
Indian Ocean tsunami (2004) and the Haiti earthquake (2010) catalysed numerous architectural responses to post-disaster reconstruction. Influenced by the multisectoral nature of the humanitarian response to such disasters, humanitarian architecture grew rapidly as a movement to promote not only structural resilience but also social, economic, cultural and political resilience (Ban, 2014; Charlesworth, 2014). Movements such as ‘public-interest architecture’, and ‘architecture for good’ reflect the goal of supporting social and economic resilience through design, as represented in the projects of the national organisations of Architectes sans Frontieres and Habitat for Humanity. The built projects of emerging socially engaged practices including the Mass Design Group (USA), People Oriented Design (Australia), Studio Anna Heringer (Germany, Bangladesh) and Localworks (Uganda) are to name but a very few of this emerging humanitarian architecture cohort. They are also four of the 13 case studies explored in the author’s new book: Design for Fragility: Thirteen Stories of Humanitarian (2023). Significantly as our new book analyses, the traditional conception of ‘humanitarian’ work as only occurring in countries of the Global South, has extended the goal of ‘architecture for good’ to the issues of poverty, gender and racial discrimination in the countries of the North. Examples of both are provided in the next section. These developments in the design and built environment disciplines have not been without debate, e.g., over issues such as the challenges of pro bono work to the commercial bases of a profession, new practice models and sources of income, and possibilities of the design disciplines unwittingly furthering neocolonial practices (e.g., see Keenan, 2018).
Sources of fragility and resilience-based responses Our introduction highlighted the many sources of social and environmental fragility across our planet today. Not all can be addressed through architecture and urban design, but many can. These include fragilities due to poverty, gender and racial discrimination. There is not space to provide detailed examples of design responses to these many sources of fragility although Table 50.1 provides a list of examples.
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fragility, resilience and design 153 Table 50.1 Examples of resilient design responses to various sources of fragility Source of fragility
Resilient design response
Architect/agency
Displaced children
SOS Children’s Village, Djibouti
Urko Sanchez Architects
Lack of early childhood education
Bholu 16, India
The Anganwadi Project
Gender discrimination
Habitat for Orphan Girls, Iran
Zav Architects
Indigenous displacement
Gahinga Batwa Village, Uganda
Localworks
Loss of Indigenous culture
Bilya Koort Boodja, Australia
Iredale Pedersen Hook
Health inequalities of Indigenous
Synapse Supported Accommodation
People Oriented Design
people
Facility (SAIF), Australia
Lack of maternal health care
Maternity Waiting Village, Malawi
Mass Design Group
Lack of suitable education facilities for
Dien Ban Disability Day Care Centre,
Buro, Architects without Frontiers
children with disabilities
Vietnam
(Australia) and RMIT University design students
Shortage of work opportunities for
Anandaloy Centre, Bangladesh
Studio Anna Herringer
Cakaudrove Women’s Resource Centre,
Architects without Frontiers (Australia)
women with disabilities Need for women’s centres
Fiji Urban poverty
Quinta Monroy settlement, Chile
ELEMENTAL
Rural poverty
20K House Project, USA
Rural Studio
Lack of sustainable housing
Zero-Carbon Green Shelter Project,
Yasmeen Lari, Barefoot Social Architecture
Pakistan
Movement
Ethnic and religious violence
The Pilot Shelter Program, Uganda
UNHCR & Catholic Relief Services
Need for safe, disaster-resilient housing
716 Program, Vietnam
Vietnam government and Development Workshop France (DWF)
Typhoon-resistant housing, Vietnam
Da Nang Women’s Committee and
Bushfire: Kinglake Temporary Village,
Department of Human Services (Victoria)
Australia
and multiple architectural firms
Earthquake: Bamboo Housing Project,
Yasmeen Lari, Barefoot Social Architecture
Pakistan
Movement
ISET-Vietnam Need for shelter after a disaster
The examples in Table 50.1 represent critical choices for design collaborations that create long-term social, ecological and economic benefits – or resilience – for fragile communities. They reflect the desire of designers to exercise their ‘spatial agency’ to choose to work with and for communities impacted by war, poverty, fires, floods in order to support the transition from states of fragility to ones of resilience through, generally, modest-scale housing, landscape and civic infrastructure projects.
Issues Focusing architectural practice on resilience has not been without discussion. Several of
these were mentioned in the introduction to this chapter. Two are taken up here.
Ways of working with communities There is the potential for misguided good intentions while working in fragile zones by ‘fly-in fly-out’ architects and engineers. This ‘traumaglam syndrome’ is a reminder of the failings of the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after World War II and the zeal to rebuild cities like Warsaw, even when the bombs were still falling. Similarly, the response of many architects to disasters including the 2011 Haiti earthquake and subsequent crises from Syria and now to Ukraine, has not always been an adequate response to local needs. Indeed, the question of esther charlesworth and john fien
154 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design whether humanitarian design is ‘the new imperialism’ was asked (Nussbaum, 2010): Are designers the new anthropologists or missionaries come to poke into village life, ‘understand’ it, and make it better, their ‘modern’ way? Is the new humanitarian design coming out of the US and Europe being perceived through postcolonial eyes as colonialism? Are the American and European designers presuming too much in their attempt to do good?
While it is deeply admirable to recreate a spatial template of a city’s future beyond war or disaster, working to rebuild resilience brings a need for caution and humility in the ways that designers seek to work with fragile communities. This means that architects seeking to work in disaster zones need to recognise how their designs are addressing the structural foundations of fragility of the communities in which they were entrusted to work. This is a significant point as it shows that the fragility of communities often resides in the social and political contexts in which people live. These contextual conditions also help us realise the limitations of design in ‘changing the world’.
Poverty does not exclude aesthetics Many corporate architects often use the throwaway line, ‘But, that isn’t “real architecture”!’ to question design colleagues who choose to work in the disaster and resilience fields. They question whether working for fragile communities, whether paid or pro bono, is something best left to do ‘after hours’ or as marginal to the mission of capital ‘A’ architecture. This perception is slowly changing through the rise of design practices that deliberately undertake pro bono or philanthropically funded design work as part of their mission. Designing against fragility is not about ‘cutting corners’ because of the nature of the design brief or community involved. Rather, innovative design and beauty are key drivers of the design of all the projects of the architects in Table 50.1. Indeed, many, such as Anna Heringer, Urko Sanchez, Shigeru Ban and MASS Design have won esteemed design awards, including the Aga Khan Award for Architecture and the Pritzker Prize. In addition to these professional accolades, the sheer beauty of these architect-built projects has significantly transformed the lives and livelihoods in the communities where esther charlesworth and john fien
they were built. Indeed, if the aesthetics of architecture can do so much culturally, mentally, and spiritually for the tiny percentage of the population able to afford architects, then it is easy to imagine how the significant impacts of architectural beauty can bring delight and basic dignity to the lives of the poor and displaced. Without the embedding of visceral and spatial delight in our housing, health, and civic buildings, they could be seen to become structures to exist in rather than buildings that exalt us, the art we inhabit.
Conclusion Resilient architecture demonstrates how appropriate design interventions at key crisis points can redirect a community from a state of fragility to one of stability and resilience. This involves identifying the complex drivers of fragility in the social and ecological setting architects are working within, and then developing design projects to address the specific impacts of such risks on people’s lives. To take but one example from Table 50.1: the Gahinga Batwa Village designed by Felix Holland and Localworks. The village was designed as a settlement for 18 Batwa families dispossessed from their culture and livelihoods of shifting cultivation in the mountain forests of Rwanda to make way for a national park and gorilla tourism. The village and houses not only replicate a culturally appropriate shelter typology for the Batwa but also provide the land tenure and economic security needed to help build their own homes and develop skills to live in a sedentary agricultural economy. This is what architecture has the capacity to do for communities and families impacted by disaster, conflict and poverty. Designing for resilience involves viewing at-risk communities with which we work as partners, not clients, and collaborating with them from the initial schematic design phase of a project until long after our architectural work is actually completed. Esther Charlesworth and John Fien
Bibliography Ban, S. (2014). Humanitarian architecture. Aspen Art Press. Calame, J., & Charlesworth, E. (2009). Divided cities. University of Pennsylvania Press.
fragility, resilience and design 155 Charlesworth, E. (2014). Humanitarian architecture. Routledge. Charlesworth, E., & Ahmed, A. (2015). Sustainable housing reconstruction: Designing resilient housing after disaster. Routledge. Charlesworth, E., & Fien, J. (2022). Design for fragility: Thirteen stories of humanitarian architecture. Routledge. Davidson, J. and ten others (2016). Interrogating resilience: Toward a typology to improve its operationalization. Ecology and Society, 21(2), 27. Keenan, J. (2018). Seeking an interoperability of disaster resilience and transformative adaptation in humanitarian design. International Journal of Disaster Resilience in the Built Environment, 9(2), 145–152. Manyena, S.B., O’Brien, G., O’Keefe, P., & Rose, J. (2011). Disaster resilience: A bounce back or bounce forward ability?Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability, 16(5), 417–424. March, A., & Gonzalez-Mathiesen, C. (2020). Land use planning for disaster resilient
communities. Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience. Mertens, E. (2021). Resilient city: Landscape architecture for climate change. Birkhäuser Verlag. Nussbaum, B. (2010). Is humanitarian design the new imperialism? Does our desire to help do more harm than good? Retrieved from: www.fastcodesign.com /1661859/is-humanitarian- design-the-new -imperialism. Pinker, S. (2018). Enlightenment now: The case for reason, science, humanism, and progress. Viking. Wu, P., & Liu, M. A. (2022). Framework for the spatial inequality in urban public facility for urban planning, design and management. Land, 11, 1429. See also: social ecological systems, ecosystems services, environmental justice, social justice, design: tensions, neighbourhood design, conservation subdivision, green activism
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51. Garden city and Garden City ideas Key definition The Garden City idea was invented in late nineteenth-century Britain and led to a method of modern town planning applicable at both metropolitan and suburban scale. In an era of rapid and unimpeded industrialisation, the idea offered an orderly approach to the planning, organisation and growth of cities, and to the transformation of living and workplace environments into comprehensively planned and physically and socially distinctive places for self-contained communities. People and the home were at the heart of the Garden City idea. Aspiring to ‘a healthy, natural and economic combination of town and country life’ (Purdom, 1911, p. 147), the idea proposed an approach to control the rampant overcrowding and unchecked expansion of cities; address the depopulation of rural areas; improve people’s living and working conditions and opportunities for social interaction; ensure their ready access to everyday amenities and to nature through the provision of open space and promote collective land ownership with profits returned to shareholders for the community benefit.
Ebenezer Howard The Garden City idea was the invention of London-born Ebenezer Howard (1859–1928). A stenographer and inventor who tried his hand at frontier farming in Nebraska in the United States Midwest, and lived for a short while in Chicago, Howard was one amongst numerous social reformers of his time who investigated and advocated potential solutions to the array of effects, for example, economic, environmental and social, of industrialisation on cities and their populations. Of primary concern to Howard was the depopulation of rural areas and the subsequent loss of labourers who were drawn to work in city-based industries. However, soon, attendant urban matters – all of which affected people’s physical and emotional health and the quality of their lives – also focused his attention. These included the exponential rise in the urban population and the consequent overcrowding, especially of accommodation for workers and their families; the dearth of
sufficient and appropriately constructed and appointed housing; the paucity of community facilities; poor sanitation and the absence of open green space that was considered not only an antidote to factory-induced air pollution but also essential to the population’s physical and mental health. Recognising that people saw benefits and were attracted to particular aspects of life in the town and in the country, Howard’s idea drew on the best that each location offered. He outlined his proposition in a diagram that he entitled ‘Three Magnets’; it comprised one magnet for the town, one for the country and a third of his own creation that he named ‘town-country’. Howard argued that combining the best aspects of the town and the country in the one place would, amongst other outcomes, improve and transform urban living and working conditions; accommodate people’s social, cultural, physical and aesthetic needs; facilitate opportunities for social interaction to enhance well-being and to foster community building and create healthy, visually harmonious, comfortable and conveniently located residential and workplace environments. ‘Town-country’ was the invented place that Howard named ‘Garden City’. He proposed that the city would take a circular form, be divided by boulevards into six equal ‘wards’ and encircled by an agricultural green belt. Its layout included designated areas for specific uses with a central park at the city’s heart. Industry was allocated to the perimeter where it was set apart from residential and everyday activity areas. Once the city’s population reached approximately 30 000 people Howard proposed that a new one would be established within easy travelling distance by rail. He assigned the name ‘Social City’ to his proposed conurbation of decentralised, fully planned, self-contained and interlinked garden cities set in reserved open space.
The Garden City Association and Unwin Howard introduced his Garden City invention in 1898 in his illustrated book Tomorrow: a peaceful path to real reform published by Swan Sonnenschein (London) and in the revised edition Garden cities of tomorrow (1902, 1946, 1985). Before long, Garden cities was being translated into other languages as the Garden City idea began its international
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garden city and garden city ideas 157 dissemination. The idea’s spread was accelerated by Howard’s supporters who in 1899 formed the London-based Garden City Association (GCA), later the Garden Cities and Town Planning Association, and whose advocacy led to a garden city movement with global reach. The GCA was behind the establishment in 1903 of the development company First Garden City Limited and the construction from that year of its inaugural venture, Letchworth Garden City. Situated in Hertfordshire, on the railway line to Cambridge, Letchworth was about 35 miles from London. British architect-planner Raymond Unwin (1863–1940) and his professional partner Barry Parker (1867–1941) prepared the plan for Letchworth Garden City and oversaw its transformation from two- to three-dimensional form. Letchworth’s development was slow and was hampered by various issues, including its location, slow public appreciation and acceptance of the Garden City idea and financial factors. In Britain, Howard’s idea was not taken up elsewhere at city scale until Welwyn Garden City was built, also in Hertfordshire, from 1919. By then, garden cities were under construction elsewhere in Europe including at Hellerau (from 1909), near Dresden in Germany, and Werkele Estate (from 1908), at Kispest, Budapest. Although Letchworth’s development was protracted, the physical expression of Howard’s idea met with early popular acceptance after it was applied at suburban scale at Hampstead Garden Suburb (1907) adjacent to Hampstead Heath north-west of London. Championed by social reformer Henrietta Barnett (1856–1931) and designed also by Parker and Unwin, Hampstead became the model for the planning and design of garden suburbs around the world. Built examples, or what Howard referred to as ‘object lessons’ in garden city planning, as well as publications including Unwin’s richly illustrated Town planning in practice: An introduction to the art of designing cities and towns (Unwin, 1909), contributed to an internationally accepted set of planning and design principles that emerged to inform the layout and development of garden cities and suburbs. The principles were adapted as necessary to suit the site as well as local cultural preferences. Wherever the geographic location, the underpinning intent was to achieve a self-contained, physically and socially
distinct place, and a visually pleasing and harmonious environment. In addition to his practical contributions to garden city and suburb site planning, Unwin was instrumental also in promoting the ‘larger’ aspects of Howard’s idea – reserved open space, decentralisation and satellite communities – which he had revealed in his ‘Social City’ diagram, and their potential application as devices for city shaping, containment and growth. In his pamphlet Nothing gained by overcrowding: How the garden city type of development may benefit both owner and occupier (1912), Unwin included what would become a widely published diagram of ‘The Garden City Idea Applied to Suburbs’. It showed how as a city expanded its metropolitan area, if land was reserved between suburbs, the suburbs would be self-contained entities set apart and separated from the original city, and from each other, by open space.
Links to other concepts The Garden City idea was influential internationally through the twentieth century and precipitated the design and development of garden cities and suburbs in vastly different geographical and cultural contexts across the globe. In the country of its foundation, the Garden City idea inspired the British Government’s postWorld War 2 New Towns programme which from 1946 realised the staged construction of almost 30 new towns; in turn, they influenced the planning and development of new towns elsewhere in the world. American sociologist and planner Clarence Perry drew on the Garden City idea in formulating the neighbourhood unit concept first applied by architect Clarence Stein and Henry Wright at Radburn (1929), New Jersey. Referencing Howard’s ‘ward’, Perry conceived of the neighbourhood unit as a residential area bounded by major roads. Accommodating 5–10 000 people, it had a school located within walking distance of residents’ homes. Stein and Wright adapted Perry’s idea to cater for the motor vehicle. They devised a scheme that separated pedestrian and vehicular traffic, introduced the cul-de-sac in residential areas, and linked the areas via spines of green space to schools and centrally located community facilities. What became known as the Radburn idea was also influenced by the Garden City idea and was applied in British post-war new towns such as Stevenage. christine garnaut
158 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design In the 1990s New Urbanism emerged in the United States as a planning approach aiming to address the social, economic and environmental problems associated with unchecked urban sprawl. New Urbanism advocates sought, in part, to halt environmental degradation and called for carefully designed developments that integrated natural elements, were walkable and were informed by community consultation to promote social sustainability. New Urbanists promoted the neighbourhood unit as the basic building block of their developments. Howard’s Garden City idea also spawned a legacy that continues to contribute to planning thought in the twenty-first century. Its endurance is evident particularly in efforts to produce quality, financially affordable housing in either new or redesigned settings designed to achieve aesthetically pleasing, safe, and socially and environmentally sustainable environments that offer convenient access to facilities and spaces essential to residents’ everyday life and personal well-being. Christine Garnaut
christine garnaut
Bibliography Howard, E. (2003). Tomorrow: A peaceful path to real reform (Original edition with commentary by Peter Hall, Dennis Hardy & Colin Ward). Routledge. Miller, M. (2002). Garden cities and suburbs: At home and abroad. Journal of Planning History, 1(1), 6–28. Purdom, C. (Ed.). (1911). Town theory and practice. Benn Brothers. Stern, R. A. M., Fishman, D., & Tilove, J. (2013). Paradise planned: The garden suburb and the modern city. The Monacelli Press. Unwin, R. (1909). Town planning in practice: An introduction to the art of designing cities and suburbs. Aldelphi Terrace. Ward, S. V. (2016). The peaceful path: Building garden cities and new towns. Hertfordshire Publications. Ward, S. V. (1992). The garden city: Past, present, future. Routledge. See also: neighbourhood design; new urbanism, conservation subdivision, biophilic cities, regional design, design: tensions, walkability, infrastructure, sprawl
52. Genius loci and design Introduction: origin and definition Since 1575, the Latin term genius loci has, in the same form, been a part of the English language, though it is still frequently italicised as if foreign. Translated literally as ‘spirit of place,’ current English definitions (Oxford and Merriam-Webster, for example) commonly consist of two alternatives, reflecting two senses of ‘spirit’: either (1) the pervading character of a place or (2) the presiding god or tutelary deity of a place. But in disciplines related to environmental design, the contemporary meaning and usage generally combines both notions. This is typified in Oxford’s A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, when it relates genius loci to the ‘unique qualities’ of ‘every place’ and, then, proposes that design professionals have a particular—and often unheeded—responsibility ‘to be sensitive to those unique qualities, to enhance them rather than to destroy them’ (Curl, 2006, s.v. ‘genius loci’). Temptingly simple and straightforward, such a view nonetheless falls short of the term’s history and potential. Coming from the Latin, genius loci may appear as a Roman conception, but similar notions can be found in earlier and distant cultures, including in prehistoric animistic religions such as Korean Shamanism, wherein gasin (household deities)—notably Seongju, the House Guardian God, and Teoju, the Land Tutelary God—have special roles that accord with the space and territory, or place, that they protect. It is ancient Greece, however, that offers the most pertinent antecedents (Cancik et al., 2006), with the Pythagoreans first suggesting the presence of daίmones: divine beings ranked above humans but not as gods. Plato later extended the notion to see these daίmones not only holding positions between humans and gods but also serving as intermediaries, and as lesser deities presiding over parts of the universe and protecting groups or individuals (Plato, 2008, pp. 24c, 42e ). He posited, as well, that a connection of gods and humans is made possible by the fact that one’s deepest self is also a ‘divine element’ (i.e., a daίmon), which, in turn, needs to be attended to and kept ‘in good order’ (Plato,
2008, p. 90c). This topic and related others (e.g., agathòs daίmon) are expounded in the Classical literature, but even in this brief sketch, what clearly emerges is the Greek idea of daίmon as both external and internal—an idea that similarly, though not identically, appears in Roman thinking about genius and genius loci. For the Romans, the internal and external concepts of genius are even more closely integrated (Cancik et al., 2006). Genius is an external divine ‘spirit’ that oversees the ‘life-force’ of persons yet unborn and, so, has responsibility for the promise of humanity as a whole. But at the same time, it also inhabits every person already born, is responsible for the individual’s procreational force and is evident in the inborn character of each. This genius, however, is also associated with groups (e.g., artists, the deceased, the army), with events (e.g., funerals, wars)—and, as genius loci, it is associated with places (e.g., houses, cities, villages and roads). By the third century, Christianity had merged genius with its theology of ‘guardian angel,’ a similar holy entity thought to protect and guide individuals, groups and places; not least, places of assembled worshippers—the churches. Thus, as the century ended, with all cultic worship banned and Christianity legitimised, the idea of genius remained entrenched in the realms of spirituality and morality throughout the Roman Empire. And that, of course, provided the pathway to its appearance and usage in the English language.
Into English When ‘genius’ entered the English language in the late fourteenth century, it conveyed one aspect of the Latin meaning: a person’s lifelong tutelary or moral spirit. Not until two centuries later did it come to describe, as well, a person’s characteristic spirit—and, though less germane to this discussion, it is another 60 years before it additionally describes someone of extraordinary intelligence, talent, or skill (and, eventually, the extraordinary ability itself). By 1535, the word ‘locus’ (and plural ‘loci’) had also entered English, referring to a place or locality, and, within 40 years, it joined its predecessor in the phrase ‘genius loci,’ initially referring to an (external) tutelary deity of a place but, not long after, also used to mean the inherent character of a place. The phrase’s first notable application to environmental design occurred in 1731, when,
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160 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design in his Moral Essays, Alexander Pope declared that, in architecture and gardening, ‘all must be adapted to the Genius and Use of the Place, and the Beauties not forced into it, but resulting from it’ (Pope, 1751, pp. 260–261). With that, Pope expanded the established definition of genius loci to include an admonition for designers that would survive—though not without challenge and reinterpretation—to the present (see Figure 52.1). More than a century after Pope, a similar understanding of genius loci (without use of the term) is evident in Edward Lacy Garbett’s Rudimentary Treatise on the Principles of Design in Architecture, when he asserts that ‘a great building . . . encumbers a portion of the earth’s surface and encloses a portion of the free atmosphere. It has no right to do so without making or attempting what compensation it may for these injuries.’ Much the same is found, still later, in the thinking of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century architect Louis Sullivan, a pioneer of Modernism. In The Autobiography of an Idea, he reflected on the impact of the 1894 Columbian Exposition,
in Chicago, and rebuked the exposition’s architectural conglomerate for turning away from emergent Modernism and falling back on the Neo-Classical, declaring that in so doing, ‘the virus of a culture, snobbish and alien to the land,’ had been allowed to ‘perform its work of disintegration.’ His was a lament of what he saw as the architects’ wilful disregard for the site, the event, their spirit—and, by implication, their potential. Arising, even as Sullivan penned those words, was a strain of Modernism quite contrary to that he had advocated for. What would come to be known as the International Style proved a formidable challenge to the very idea of genius loci, because, of course, a ‘universal’ style had no need to address any peculiarities of place—and for much of the twentieth century, Modernist homogeneity held sway (notwithstanding resistance from Regionalism and Regional Modernism throughout the same period). But as the Style’s anonymity and self-centredness became more apparent, and as the reactionary forces of Postmodernism arose, a concern
Source: Author’s own.
Figure 52.1 A common contemporary interpretation of genius loci
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for the spirit of place again grew. Although that had already been evidenced in the work of those such as Aldo van Eyck, Louis Kahn and Charles Moore, the topic was directly reintroduced in 1980, with publication of the now-seminal book by Norwegian architect and theorist Christian Norberg-Schulz: Genius Loci. There, he returns to an original aspect of genius loci and argues that design should recentre itself on the distinct character that defines a place (the internal sense of ‘spirit’), because ‘the genius . . . denotes what a thing is, or what it “wants to be”’ (quoting Louis Kahn). He also confirms what Pope had only implied—that the guardians of place (the external sense of ‘spirit’) are now human; they are the shapers of the built environment. Norberg-Schulz contends that ‘to protect and conserve the genius loci in fact means to concretize its essence . . . What was there as possibilities, at the outset, is uncovered through human action, illuminated and “kept” in works of architecture . . .’ (Norberg-Schulz, 1980, pp. 6, 18).
Building on the idea Genius Loci served as a springboard for further thought, not least that of architectural critic and historian Kenneth Frampton, who borrowed, expanded upon and popularised a notion that Alexander Tzonis and Lianne Lefaivre had named ‘Critical Regionalism.’ Frampton’s account argues for a design approach that, at once, responds to the possibilities of the region (the genius loci) and makes room for more widespread cultural forces. Notwithstanding its own difficulties, the latter points to a key criticism of NorbergSchulz’s take on genius loci—namely, its almost exclusive focus on the ‘relationships’ and ‘formal properties’ of the things that constitute a place (Norberg-Schulz, 1980, p. 166), which may be revealed to the most astute perceivers. Architectural educators Adrian Snodgrass and Richard Coyne are amongst those who note (in Snodgrass & Coyne, 2006, pp. 75–76) that such a focus tends toward the romantic, sentimental, and nostalgic—if not also the mysterious—inasmuch as it emphasises the discovery and protection of some already existing character (Norberg-Schulz, 1980, p. 18). Indeed, it oddly appears to suggest that every place needs one sort of ‘genius,’ perhaps a regulator, planner or designer, to defend
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against the loss of its other sort of ‘genius,’ its inherent qualities. At the core of the critique is the fact that the meaning of genius— and, so, genius loci—remains ambiguous. Highlighting the ambiguity, philosopher Isis Brook has outlined no less than ten ways in which the term is used in fields as widespread as humanistic geography, architecture, landscape design, planning, conservation, tourism and travel writing (Brook, 2006)—and a survey by philosopher Edward Relph expands the list to include sociology, literature, the arts and Eastern religion (Relph, 2015). While acknowledging that the ambiguity may be unavoidable, Brook nonetheless explicitly calls for—and other critics seem to endorse— a more ‘robust’ view of genius loci. Such robustness may rely on shifting attention from the notion of genius to that of loci. As long as loci, or places, are seen to be mere locations or sites, it will always be difficult to formulate accounts of place that go beyond what Brook calls ‘an inventory of their contents’ and ‘a description of our feelings about them’ (Brook, 2006, pp. 139, 150). If, however, loci is seen in the context of its origins—it is the Greek topos that carries over into Latin as loci—then another, more robust view of place does indeed open up. Especially in its Aristotelian interpretation, the essence of topos (one might say the genius of topos) is not found in the things it contains but, rather, in its very capacity to give place to, or make room for, such things—which it does through bounds, or limits, that act not merely as restrictions but as productive thresholds or beginnings (Casey, 1998, pp. 55–56). With that, place can be viewed in its most fundamental sense, which philosopher Jeff Malpas explicates (first and most comprehensively in Malpas, 2018) as the bounded openness in which all things happen—in which all things appear and all events occur—in other words, as the ground of all potential.
Place revisited Place, then, is not merely what it was (what it once held), or what it is (what it currently holds), or even what it wants to be (what it has been predestined to hold), nor could it therefore be merely the character of those things. Instead, the essence of each place lies in whatever it has the capacity to properly be; that is, in the potential afforded by its (never absolute) bounds. That potential, randall s. lindstrom
162 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design
Source: Author’s own.
Figure 52.2 An alternative interpretation of genius loci
however, is not already there, awaiting discovery. It must be worked out in response to each place at a particular time (even if always imperfectly and incompletely)— which is precisely the work of those who would shape, or design, the built environment: virtually everyone. In this view, genius loci is a call to champion the unique potential of each place, including that influenced by its qualities and character, but to do so always aware that no place has exhausted its potential, that the potential of a place may call for greater or lesser intervention, and that a proper response to the potential of a place may or may not be sympathetic to its obvious attributes (see randall s. lindstrom
Figure 52.2). The spirit of place thus manifests—robustly and practically—both in the designers’ responsibilities to place and in the freedoms that place makes possible for designers. Randall S. Lindstrom
References Brook, I. (2006). Can ‘spirit of place’ be a guide to ethical building? In W. Fox (Ed.), Ethics and the built environment (pp. 139– 151). Routledge. Cancik, H., Schneider, H., & Salazar, C. F. (2006). Brill’s New Pauly. Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World – Antiquity, Vol. 9 (Mini-Obe). English edition. Brill.
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Casey, E. S. (1998). The fate of place: A philosophical history. University of California Press. Curl, J. S. (2006). A dictionary of architecture and landscape architecture. Oxford University Press. Malpas, J. (2018). Place and experience: A philosophical topography (2nd ed.). Routledge. Norberg-Schulz, C. (1980). Genius loci: Towards a phenomenology of architecture. Rizzoli. Plato. (2008). Timaeus and Critias (D. Lee & T. K. Johansen, Trans. Penguin Classics ed.). Penguin Group.
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Pope, A. (1751). Epistle IV to Richard Boyle, Earl of Burlington: Of the use of riches. In Moral Essays. J. and P. Knapton. Relph, E. (2015). Spirit of place/genius loci. Placeness, place, placelessness (website). Snodgrass, A., & Coyne, R. (2006). Interpretation in architecture: Design as a way of thinking. Routledge. See also: asset-based community development, memory, heritage, narrative, identity, autopoiesis, design: tensions, inclusion/ exclusion, modernism, identity, downtown development
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53. Green activism Key definition Green, or environmental activism, is a broad term that encompasses an array of movements, both individual and group based, which aim to protect or enhance the environment. Often grassroots in nature, the practice has expanded as of late, particularly with regard to direct action movements in the form of Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil and similar campaigns.
Brief history Although the level of green activism has increased, particularly due to increased awareness around climate change and the need for urgent action, the concept can be traced back to ancient times. Our intimate connection with nature has been documented for centuries and there are many historical examples of green activism over the years: from grassroots environmental initiatives in Mesopotamia, to the slaughter of Bishnoi villagers who were attempting to protect their forest in the 1700s. In terms of planning, McKay’s (1998) reflections on protest movements demonstrate how direct action was thriving, particularly as a tool to prevent development. Their observations of the construction of the UK’s shortest motorway in the 1990s are particularly relevant here, in which activists disrupted progress through breaking the tarmac to plant saplings. Today, activists such as Greta Thunberg and their School Strike for Climate work, show how the movement is thriving and increasingly using more creative ways to raise awareness around environmental issues. Lubell (2002) notes that history has shown that green activism can succeed more if it is conducted within a group as opposed to on an individual level. However, one could argue that the advent of social media and other tools has changed this landscape. In terms of planning, perhaps one of the most influential global examples can be seen with the informal greening movement, sometimes known as guerrilla gardening. Reynolds (2008, p. 16) describes guerrilla gardening as the ‘illicit cultivation of someone else’s land’. The modern expansion of the practice can be linked to green activists in 1970s New York City, who were incensed
with the lack of progress around environmental quality. Through guerrilla gardening, the activists took action to colonise parts of the city in order to create informal green projects and to raise awareness around environmental inequalities. Parts of the movement eventually formalised and influenced the expansion of the international community garden movement, which has significantly shaped urban environments through schemes such as the Incredible Edible models and beyond. Contemporary guerrillas tend to pursue this form of activism to aesthetically beautify cities, enable food growing in urban environments or for political reasons. Ron Finley, the ‘Gangsta Gardener’ in Los Angeles, is an example here, in which they practise all three to raise awareness around the need for urban greening, food justice and racial inequalities in the megacity.
Links to theory, discipline, methods Green activism transcends disciplinary boundaries, with sociologists, geographers, psychologists, planners, architects and a whole host of other fields studying the area. Within planning particularly, there has been a focus on the purpose and power of such movements, along with how to better involve communities in decision-making processes. This has centred on discussions around more inclusive tools to involve communities in a more explicit fashion. Due to the breadth of the subject, theories vary and often centre on how movements form, disperse or expand, to behavioural science, particularly around models of collective action. Methodologically, the majority of work adopts a qualitative approach, with ethnography, action research and other tools preferred. This enables researchers to be embedded in groups and to build relationships with activists. Unlike other forms of research, it is often difficult to interact with green activists without such methods. Many are confidential in terms of their activities, perhaps due to legal reasons, and so gatekeepers are often needed to access groups; until recently, much of this required extensive face-to-face work. Networking is vital to build trust and to gain an insight into this informal world.
Discussions and critiques Due to the breadth of disciplines and work in the field, discussions and critiques vary, from
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green activism 165 exploring the impact of direct action movements to questions around criminality and environmental activism. Within the context of planning, much of the discussion centres on conflict. An example here can be seen in Scott’s (2001) work on how activists in Wales, wishing to adopt permaculture practices, fell afoul of planning inspectors due to a lack of permission for their camp ‘Brithdir Mawr’. In this case, through protests and an international campaign, the project was eventually saved. The conflict with the authorities raised questions around sustainable development, which resulted in changes to local planning policies. Furthermore, through courses and other ventures, the space now acts as a catalyst for wider environmental change. Critiques from a planning perspective include the lack of formal consultation for some interventions and the disruptive nature of direct action. This ranges from protests without official licenses, to the aforementioned informal growing movement. With the latter, the focus of the movement centres on not seeking permission from authorities; often, this also includes also not consulting with communities which reside within the informal action’s area (Reynolds, 2008). In terms of the direct action, Smiles and Edwards (2021) argue that there has been a meteoric rise in such activity, with Extinction Rebellion one of the most famous in this landscape. They show how media,
government officials and some members of the public were critical of such action, but that there was some appetite amongst the masses for more radical action on climate change. Michael Hardman
References Lubell, M. (2002). Environmental activism as collective action. Environment and Behaviour, 34(4), 431–454. McKay, G. (1998). DiY culture: Party and protest in nineties Britain. Verso. Reynolds, R. (2008). On guerrilla gardening: A handbook for gardening without boundaries. Bloomsbury. Scott, A. J. (2001). Contesting sustainable development: Low-impact development in Pembrokeshire Coast National Park. Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning, 3(4), 273–287. Smiles, T., & Edwards, G. A. S. (2021). How does Extinction Rebellion engage with climate justice? Local Environment, 26(12), 1445–1460. See also: ideology, ecosystems-based governance, environmental justice, critical planning, social-ecological systems, inclusion/exclusion, participation, power in planning, power/ knowledge, social justice, social innovation, rules
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54. Heritage planning Key definition In recent decades, the preservation, conservation, management and development of the historic environment and of heritage assets have been increasingly integrated with spatial planning, making heritage more explicitly part of a dynamic system of future making. Moreover, heritage objects are now more commonly seen as a cultural or economic resource which can be appropriated for contemporary uses. Accordingly, today, heritage planning – understood as the application of heritage in local and regional planning – is concerned with shaping spatial transformations, in which heritage objects and sites play an important contemporary role.
The heritage and planning nexus The concept of heritage, both as tangible materials and intangible cultural practices, has continued to evolve as a result of people’s shifting ideologies pertaining to heritage. In its original sense, the word heritage was used to describe inheritances – valuable physical objects worth preserving from decay. Heritage management approaches based on this object-oriented understanding of heritage operate in the light of threats to heritage, of destruction, loss or decay, with an operational focus on conservation. Over time however, this conceptualization of heritage has been criticized for its difficult rhyming with the more transitional character of heritage, as it is based on fixed values and as it has an overriding emphasis on materiality. The definition of heritage has evolved accordingly within a social, political and cultural context, to be known today as a social and cultural process in which meaning is continuously created, recreated and validated for the present, and as a consumable experience to serve many contemporary uses (Graham et al., 2000). Seeing heritage as a constructed resource, however, makes it that heritage is increasingly induced with various aims such as incorporating a coalition of diverse and multiple stakeholders into the process of defining and managing heritage. We note, for instance, a growing consideration of community-heritage engagement with the role of local (heritage) communities and their understanding
of heritage more and more acknowledged. We note a broadening of the scope of heritage: more holistic notions of heritage that also incorporate immaterial aspects are adopted, and the scope expanded from single objects or sites to historical structures, cultural landscapes or larger areas. And finally, we note that heritage is positioned as a driving force and source of inspiration for development. Indeed, the management of heritage and the historic environment is more and more seen as an integral part of cities, landscapes and spatial planning processes (Janssen et al., 2017). This intersection of spatial planning and heritage management is called heritage planning – literally the application of heritage in local and regional planning (Kalman & Létourneau, 2020). This is where heritage is protected, conserved and transformed in – or sometimes in spite of – the context of plans, rules and regulations (Stegmeijer & Veldpaus, 2021). Ashworth (1991) notes that heritage planning is in itself a kind of development planning, it is concerned with the understanding and management of aspects of change. Accordingly, heritage planning policy is not about preserving what exists as a survival from the past, but shaping a new city in which conserved buildings and sites play an important contemporary role (Ashworth, 1991).
Repositioning for synergies This means a repositioning of heritage, from a so-called ‘culture of loss’, in which limiting damage was the primary goal, towards ‘a culture of profit’ that creates designs for the future from a historically informed perspective (Janssen et al., 2017). Although protection and planning are still very much separate domains in some countries, a number of European countries adopted a broader notion of heritage planning and moved from control-based approaches to conservation towards those based on dynamic management of change. As a result, successful large-scale redevelopment projects, such as waterfront developments, inner city redevelopment, and post-industrial reuse, can be found across Europe and elsewhere. Nevertheless, the further integration of heritage into spatial dynamics has various implications. Inducing heritage with various aims such as incorporating a coalition of stakeholders and empowering communities makes it that complexity in the field of heritage emerges. In fact, working with heritage implies ongoing
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heritage planning 167 engagement in a field of controversy, potentially conflicting values and various beliefs and points of view. Heritage planning can be a tool to abuse the results of participatory processes and provide an agreed upon solution, in which only some (and often dominant) values are incorporated. In addition, instrumentalizing heritage can lead to processes such as gentrification, commodification and economic lock-ins. Moreover, complex transitions – such as climate change and the realization of inclusive and just societies – demand new perspectives in (and on) heritage planning and its role in urban and rural development (Stegmeijer & Veldpaus, 2021). The domain of heritage preservation and management can thus still gain much from incorporating contemporary planning theory, especially with regard to participation and the recognition of a wider, versatile set of values. Adopting heritage approaches that see heritage as a manifestation of continuous processes of valuation and revaluation and as something that is always involved in the process of ‘making’, would be a welcome first step in this regard. Karim van Knippenberg
References Ashworth, G. J. (1991). Heritage planning: Conservation as the management of urban change. Geo Pers. Graham, B., Ashworth, G., & Tunbridge, J. (2000). A geography of heritage: Power, culture and economy. Arnold. Janssen, J., Luiten, E., Renes, H., & Stegmeijer, E. (2017). Heritage as sector, factor and vector: Conceptualizing the shifting relationship between heritage management and spatial planning. European Planning Studies, 25(9), 1654–1672. Kalman, H., & Létourneau, M. R. (2020). Heritage planning: Principles and process. Routledge. Stegmeijer, E., & Veldpaus, L. (2021). A research agenda for heritage planning: Perspectives from Europe. Edward Elgar Publishing. See also: participation, dependencies, strategic planning, power in planning, power/ knowledge, memory, asset-based community development, assemblage, history, expertise and local knowledge, identity
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55. History: learning from urban and environmental history Introduction People have been planning and building cities for thousands of years. The health and longterm success of our settlements depends on finding sustainable strategies for adapting to and with the environment. The past is full of useful lessons about what works in the way of good settlement adaptations, and what ultimately failed. How do scholars explain the ruins of thousands of once-thriving cities in landscapes no longer able to sustain significant populations? As we manage crises of climate change and global pandemics, what lessons can we draw—about success and failure—from our urban past? Through studying urban history—different designs, functions and relationships with the environment—we may reconceptualize options for the future. What do planners need to know to offer appropriate advice? While the history of planning—broadly understood to cover the development of urban systems, relationships between cities and their environments and growth of the modern town-planning movement—has sometimes been included in planning education, many planners come to practice with limited insight into the lessons of history. Given more than 10 000 years of building, occupying and abandoning cities, history offers useful perspectives on what it takes to plan for sustainability. Some planners may study nineteenth-century cities (especially Paris, London or New York), or the development of early design and zoning codes. Until the 1970s, planning students learned about the classical forms of ancient Greece and Rome or examined the planned towns of the industrial era that inspired modern town planning (such as Port Sunlight, UK). Today, the planning curriculum is tightly packed with methods, analytical tools and theory. Hence tomorrow’s planners rarely have the opportunity to draw lessons from the vernacular spaces and technological innovations of countless civilizations lost to history or have the opportunity to explore the complex relationships between urban traditions and natural environments that help to explain why some ancient civilizations collapsed.
Scholarship on urban history accelerated during the 1960s, with the publication of books like Lewis Mumford’s The city in history (1961, Harcourt), John Reps’s The making of urban America (1965, Princeton), Walter Creese’s The search for environment (1966, Johns Hopkins), and Leonardo Benevolo’s The origins of modern town planning (1967, MIT Press). Dedicated urban and planning historians—such as Edith Ennen, Stephen Ward, Donald Krueckeberg and Wu Liangyong—documented the diversity of urban development and town planning experiments and processes in different places and times. By the 1970s, environmental historians—such as Alfred Crosby and I.G. Simmons—identified dynamic processes at work in cultural landscapes over time. Scholars such as J.D. Hughes, William Cronon and Brian Fagan connected the dots between urban and environmental history, generating insights into the ways that urban and environmental change interact, and offering new explanations for the collapse of civilizations. Bringing history, archaeology, geology and climatology together, the latest scholarship increases awareness of the importance of finding sustainable urban adaptations for long-term viability in the face of changing climatic and environmental conditions.
The history of cities The earliest urban centers, or ‘proto-towns’ (Morris, 1994), began growing around 9000 BCE at Jericho oasis in the Judean desert in Israel. Such settlements had some urban functions but not the centralized control and shared services of later traditions. On the Anatolian Plateau (Türkiye), Çatalhöyük thrived from 7500–5000 BCE, before residents abandoned the site. With homes attached to the walls of other structures through urban accretion, Çatalhöyük had no streets or shared spaces other than the rooftops. Although the landscape was initially fertile, over the centuries deforestation intensified, river flow diminished, agricultural conditions declined and population health deteriorated. Long-lived and fully functioning urban settlements began developing in Ancient Mesopotamia along the fertile banks of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers around 7500 years ago. Cities such as Eridu, Ur and Nippur thrived for as many as six millennia before environmental change—flooding, drought and desertification—undermined agricultural
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history 169 adaptations and left hundreds of cities abandoned to the shifting sands. Despite the collapse of the early urban traditions, some settlements—like Erbil and Kirkuk in Iraq— have remained continuously occupied for over 5000 years. Such compact cities relying on local building materials and low-impact agricultural practices have proven sustainable for millennia, though today lingering conflict in the region threatens the communities. All human settlements are ‘planned’ in some way, in that people make choices about where to put buildings, gardens and shared spaces. Planning varies in scale, degree and control. Some urban traditions, such as the Maya of Central America, planned monumental ceremonial centers in places like Tikal (300 BCE–900 CE) but left residents to build low-density housing compounds in agricultural fields for miles around. In settlements with a lesser degree of centralized planning, structures may reflect individual choices about where and how to place structures, while larger patterns may result from the nature of materials or adaptations to climatic conditions. Smith (2007) explains, for example, that the orthogonal grid that characterized the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán resulted not from centralized planning but rather from the decisions of individual farmers to build on the chinampas—raised agricultural fields in marshy Lake Texcoco. Local cosmologies or religious beliefs of individual builders could create identifiable trends that observers of the archaeological record might erroneously interpret as centrally planned. Nonetheless, common design patterns and technologies found in major urban traditions generally reveal the growing importance of larger-scale planning over time. As successful agricultural adaptations generated wealth, political leaders sought to manage urban growth while sustaining the ideological commitment of followers. Citybuilding played a role in that process. Cities had important military, economic, religious, administrative and educational functions. In ancient cities like Ur (Mesopotamia) or Yin Xu (Shang dynasty, China), authorities planned monumental structures, defensive walls, collective water supplies, irrigation networks or drainage systems. Not all imposed particular forms on street patterns or organized spaces in specific geometric arrangements. However, with the growth of expansionary urban systems seeking to spread influence and power
through planting settlements in acquired territory, some traditions turned to the grid as a simple strategy for rapidly laying out towns that would reflect the interests of the political system that created them. Cities with defined forms often became tools of colonization and control.
States and planning and design Authorities in many urban systems planned infrastructure systems, such as water delivery and waste removal, to facilitate growth and safeguard human health. For instance, canal systems for irrigation provided water for agriculture in ancient Mesopotamia. Aqueduct systems to transport water over vast distances appeared in Minoan Greece (3200–1100 BCE); some Roman aqueducts still stand today. Aqueducts brought water from distant sources in Moche, Peru (350–900 CE). Reservoirs and canals allowed the Khmer of Cambodia (ninth to fourteenth century CE) to control flooding and manage water supplies year-round. By the end of the nineteenth century, scientific discoveries and engineering strategies led industrialized nations to significantly improve water and waste systems and encouraged the movement toward professionalized town planning. Transportation networks planned by the state or other powerful agents influenced settlement patterns throughout history. Ports and harbors facilitated seaborne trade by 5000 years ago. In ancient times, major cities developed along the Silk Road connecting China with the Mediterranean. The Romans built a substantial road network to control territories they annexed, planting towns at key nodes, and establishing standards that local officials enforced. The Inca in South America established a similarly impressive road system, as did the Tang in China. In nineteenthcentury North America, railway companies played a significant role in establishing settlement systems. Subway and tram systems influenced growth patterns in industrial cities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. State planning of highway systems, especially choices of where to place exits, shaped suburbanization patterns and commercial development trends in many places in the twentieth century. Between 3200 and 2500 BCE, the Harappan civilization in the Indus Valley (India and Pakistan) developed the first urban jill l. grant
170 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design system that systematically used gridded street layouts to plan towns to control territory. Harappan cities had major roads oriented roughly to the cardinal directions, ports on the river, communal granaries, baked-brick walls and elaborate tiled drainage systems connecting each home. Deforestation, flooding, tectonic activity and drought eventually contributed to the decline of the urban system. The grid layout appeared in Babylon around 2000 BCE and in Egyptian worker villages by 1900 BCE. Around 600 BCE Nebuchadnezzar replanned Babylon in a grid within a massive wall, bringing captive elites from his far-flung empire to reside in the great city. The idea of the orthogonal planning as a tool for building colonial settlements spread in ancient Greece and Türkiye after the seventh century BCE. The Romans continued the pattern of using grid layouts—oriented to the cardinal directions and anchored by major axes—to plan towns from Africa to Britain. Grid layouts, especially for capital cities, became common in China and East Asia after around 500 CE, in Central America (e.g., Olmec, 900–400 BCE; Teotihuacan 50–750 CE) and in South America (e.g., Tiwanaku 200–1000 CE; Inca 1100–1500 CE). In early medieval Europe aspiring rulers built bastide towns with grid layouts, central squares and defensive walls; similar patterns became the template for European colonial expansion in the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries. As a technology to impose and illustrate order, control and sometimes hierarchy, the grid plan proved persuasive: it continues to find advocates in contemporary planning movements such as new urbanism.
Environmental crises and threats to urban traditions Urban traditions depend on healthy environments. Sustaining economic adaptations requires living within the means of what the land can produce and being able to adjust to calamities (such as rapid changes in average temperature or precipitation). Many lost urban traditions declined as the resources on which they depended diminished, or they struggled to rebound from environmental or climate catastrophes. Although warfare or invasion sometimes occurred alongside system collapse, environmental stress and consequent economic decline often precipitated crises and conflicts that undermined urban systems. jill l. grant
Deforestation proves a recurrent problem for urban traditions. People cut trees to clear land for agriculture, gather wood for construction or find fuel for cooking. Over centuries, land around settlements becomes denuded, sometimes with long-lasting environmental impacts leading to landslides, erosion, shifting river courses, downstream sedimentation and aridification. Extensive sedimentation in the Tigris and Euphrates delta since ancient times meant that the coastline prograded 200 km or more, filling in the bay where the early cities of Eridu and Ur once thrived (Figure 55.1): biblical legends of the great flood derived from the experiences of these cities. Deforestation similarly contributed to flooding, erosion and delta sedimentation in Harappan times, and for Greek colonies like Miletus and Troy. Some ports became landlocked and were eventually abandoned, with once lush mountainsides stripped of soil. In some landscapes, removing forest cover contributed to subsequent climatic changes, including drought: for example, the Minoans, Hittites and Old Kingdom Egyptians all fell around 1200–1100 BCE as long-term drought followed deforestation around the Mediterranean. Where rainfall was seasonal, expanding agriculture required extensive irrigation systems. Central planning for water management enabled agricultural expansion that often led to population growth. In some cases, however, irrigation without effective drainage or in the face of lengthy droughts contributed to salinization of the soils, agricultural failure and desertification. A centuries-long drought about 4000 years ago destabilized Mesopotamian cities like Ur, likely contributing to the retreating coastline and leading people to abandon settlements. Salinization of the soil from problematic irrigation systems—and drying up of formerly viable waterways (such as the Aral Sea) because of river diversion—remains problematic in arid climates and illustrates the risks associated with some technologies. Historical and scientific research show that climate change is not new. Climatic change can be rapid: for example, the eruption of a large volcano between 536 and 547 CE caused several degrees of cooling and contributed to the conditions in which plagues devastated European cities and weakened the Roman Empire. Humans influenced climate by inventing agriculture and developing urban
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Figure 55.1 Ancient cities and modern river system
systems (both affecting carbon regimes). By studying the interaction of climate change and urban systems—as scholars like Brian Fagan and Harvey Weiss do—we can gain insights into how to plan more effectively for future climatic disruptions.
Miletus: one city’s history Miletus, on the Ionian coast of Türkiye, has one of the best-known plans of the ancient Mediterranean (Figure 55.2). With its long history (from 3500 BCE to seventeenth century CE), Miletus enjoyed great successes, but also frequent conflict and ultimately environmental disaster. When first settled by Minoans in the fourth millennium BCE, Miletus was an archipelago of small islands in the Bafa Gulf, where the Büyük Menderes (Meander River) drained. Sea level rise after the last glaciation reached its height by 2000 BCE, swamping some early structures. Development on the islands (in the north of the peninsula) showed influences from the Mycenaeans and Hittites until those civilizations collapsed during a long drought around 1100 BCE. Deforestation and agricultural practices, including the raising
of goats and sheep, contributed to sedimentation of the bay. By around 1000 BCE Miletus became a peninsula some 2.5 km long. The L-shaped areas that later formed the agora were swampy, but builders dumped fill to support structures. Despite periodic invasions and warfare, Ionian cities like Miletus thrived in the ninth century BCE and created dozens of colonies, mostly along the Black Sea. Reaching its cultural zenith in the eighth to sixth centuries BCE, the city was a wealthy port, minting some of the earliest coins and known for its famous philosophers. During the sixth century BCE, the city came under control of the Persian Achaemenid Empire. In 499 BCE, during the Ionian Revolt against Persia, the Persians captured and razed Miletus, killing or dispersing its 60 000 inhabitants. The plan for which Miletus is famous began to take shape after 479 BCE when rebuilding began. Aristotle gave credit for the plan to the Milesian architect, Hippodamus, who subsequently designed other Greek cities in grid layouts. The square grid of residential areas in the northern parts of the city was built on the former islands, while public areas were placed on the flatter, recently jill l. grant
172 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design
Figure 55.2 The ‘plan’ of Miletus
sedimented lands. Erosion and sedimentation increased after 500 BCE, providing new areas for cultivation and building. From the fifth to third centuries, the city was variously threatened by the interests of the Athenians, Persians, Spartans and Macedonians: walls reflected the need for defense. In 64 BCE Miletus fell to the Romans, who remained influential until the fourth century CE. The axial grid layout of the southern part of the peninsula appeared in Roman times when the population may have exceeded 100 000. As sedimentation continued in the bay, the harbors became less functional, and malaria became a health issue. During Byzantine times (fourth to seventh centuries CE), prosperity declined, and rebuilding obscured the earlier residential grid forms. Waves of invaders—Arabs, Turks, then Ottomans—took over the city. Agricultural production declined during the cooling of the fourteenth to fifteenth centuries. By 1500 CE the city lost its access to the sea, and by the seventeenth century was abandoned. jill l. grant
Miletus offers historical lessons for planners. First, the frequently reproduced ‘plan’ does not represent the city in 479 BCE but rather a composite of constructs from different times: some Greek, some later Roman. Second, before pointing to the plan to justify advocating contemporary grid layouts we might consider the deficiencies in practice in Miletus: inattention to topography; monotonous blank walls for the districts where women and children spent most of their days. Third, as with many cities of the ancient world, economic success engendered environmental changes that ultimately undermined the urban system: deforestation, erosion and sedimentation left the former port stranded 8 km from the sea.
The relevance of history History is heavily inscribed in contemporary landscapes. The ruins of Roman amphitheaters influence the forms of towns like Lucca
history 173 in Tuscany or Arles in France. Great walls built by the Inca and their precursors stand solid 1000 years later. Meanwhile, subsidence and contamination from ancient and historic mines represent lingering risks in many regions. Long-term environmental problems associated with deforestation, erosion and drought contribute to chronic political instability in places like Afghanistan, Iraq and Sudan. In just 1000 years, the world has gone from about 2 percent to 50 percent urban, with huge implications for environmental change. Planning has traditionally treated growth as natural and desired: today we talk about ‘smart growth’. Yet the historical record shows that decline is as common as growth, and the best technology of the time is no guarantee of long-term sustainability. Cities grow, change and decline not because of any natural process of urban development but because of human choices, both individual and societal. Planners study the past to identify the inflection points that may signal warnings about where our ancestors made problematic choices, where our current strategies may lead
us, and what we need to ensure the sustainability of contemporary urban systems. Jill L. Grant
Bibliography Fagan, B. (2008). The great warming: Climate change and the rise and fall of civilizations. Bloomsbury. Hughes, J. D. (1996). Pan’s travail: Environmental problems of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Johns Hopkins. Morris, A. E. J. (1994). History of urban form before the industrial revolutions (3rd ed.). Longman Scientific and Technical. Owens, E. J. (1991). The city in the Greek and Roman world. Routledge. Smith, M. E. (2007). Form and meaning in the earliest cities: A new approach to ancient urban planning. Journal of Planning History, 6(1), 3–47. See also: new urbanism, smart growth, modernism, heritage, memory, infrastructure, ecosystems services, transition, ideology, power in planning, power/knowledge, identity
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56. Homelessness policy and planning Homelessness: what is it? Homelessness is a global phenomenon. In every society where poverty abounds there are segments of the population that lack permanent, adequate housing. Yet defining homelessness, in a universal sense, is a challenge because the norms we associate with being adequately housed, and ‘homeful,’ are geographically specific. For example, housing norms are very different in Norway compared to India and therefore individuals identified as ‘homeless’ in Norway may not be seen as such in India. From one society to the next, homelessness is culturally constructed in different ways. These cultural constructions give rise to different definitions of homelessness. A variety of policy responses emerge as these cultural understandings and formal definitions are filtered through political institutions. A survey of these definitional issues and broader cultural conventions is therefore helpful for understanding policy responses adopted in a particular setting. In the more developed world, researchers, policymakers and planners have endeavored to develop standardized definitions of homelessness. One example is the ETHOS typology (European Typology on Homelessness and Housing Exclusion) developed by the European Federation of National Organizations Working with the Homeless. The ETHOS typology encompasses four conceptual categories (‘roofless,’ ‘houseless,’ ‘insecure’ and ‘inadequate’) which are further delineated into 13 different conditions of homelessness. There is considerable variation in how researchers, policymakers and planners have utilized these categories and conditions to define homelessness. In some countries, only the concepts of ‘rooflessness’ and ‘houselessness’ along with their associated conditions (‘people living rough,’ ‘people in emergency accommodation,’ and ‘people in accommodation for the homeless’) are routinely drawn upon to define homelessness. In other countries, researchers, policymakers and planners utilize these definitions while also considering concepts such as insecure and inadequate housing and their associated conditions (such as ‘people under threat
of eviction,’ ‘people living in unfit housing,’ ‘people living in overcrowded housing’). These more expansive definitions of homelessness yield a much larger population of homeless people; moreover, they also invite a different, more comprehensive, consideration of homelessness as a social condition and public policy problem. Linked to these definitional issues are longstanding debates regarding the underlying causes of homelessness. Scholarly literature on homelessness goes well beyond counting and describing who is homeless: as important is why people are homeless. In this regard, two competing paradigms have shaped the field of policy and planning over the past four decades. The first is the individualistic view that homelessness is the result of personal factors. This view is deeply rooted in moralistic understandings of poverty that attribute material inequality to individual character flaws and failings. With the ascendance of medicalization this understanding evolved and over time homelessness came to be attributed less to moral failing and more to risk factors such as mental illness and substance use disorder, nevertheless the focus on individual behavior remained. A competing paradigm is the view that homelessness is the result of structural factors such as declining employment opportunities, the retrenchment of welfare states and the unaffordability of housing markets. From this structural perspective, the homeless are not blameworthy or culpable for their circumstances nor is the condition reducible to individual pathology; instead, the unhoused are viewed as victims of structural injustices in areas of employment, social citizenship and housing. Together, definitions and explanations carry profound implications with regard to the types of policy responses that are created to reduce and prevent homelessness. For example, individualistic explanations combined with narrow definitions typically engender policy responses such as emergency shelter and rehabilitation programs. In contrast, structural explanations combined with comprehensive definitions are more likely to engender policy responses such as public housing, rent regulation, rental subsidies or eviction prevention. In practice, homelessness is highly politicized, and the policy field is characterized by competing explanations and definitions of homelessness. In light of this, the local policy landscape in a given place can
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homelessness policy and planning 175 present a mixture of responses ranging from emergency shelter to public housing. The next section surveys these responses using the United States as a case study, a preeminent example given its wealth and level of development, and then highlights some recent critiques of homelessness policy and planning.
Homelessness policy and planning: the US experience Today, homelessness has long been a highly visible fixture of the American landscape (Mitchell, 2011). Street encampments and emergency shelters dot the urban landscape in every major city and hundreds of millions of dollars are spent annually running highly specialized and professionalized local homelessness response systems. Before describing this contemporary scene, it is important to acknowledge that the landscape of homelessness policy and planning looked very different in the early twentieth century. The inter-war years are telling in this regard. During the 1920s housing shortages were common and mass unemployment during the Great Depression left many workingclass households destitute and homeless in America. One response to this crisis was the reform of the nation’s housing finance system which prevented bankruptcy and eviction and expanded access to homeownership. Another response, formulated subsequently as part of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, provided large-scale funding for public and subsidized housing targeted at low-income families (Schwartz, 2015). This funding continued in the early post-war period up until the 1970s. Homelessness policy in these periods was largely synonymous with housing policy. A historical continuity connects this distant past to the present. Separated by almost a century, the homeless of today share one important thing in common with those recognized as such in the past: a lack of affordable housing. However, while mass homelessness in the 1930s was responded to with federally funded housing schemes, today’s landscapes of homelessness policy and planning are very much a palimpsest of local, targeted responses loosely organized around what remains of the public housing edifice established in the post-war era. This specialized and highly professionalized field of homelessness policy encompasses five interconnected responses: emergency shelter, transitional
housing, supportive housing, housing subsidies and homelessness prevention (Evans et al., 2021). The roots of the first response – emergency shelter – reach far back into the past. The provision of temporary, overnight shelter is a vestige of the almshouse, a form of indoor poor relief organized in the nineteenth century. Today’s emergency shelters also share a lineage with the ‘flop houses’ and soup kitchens of the 1960s, many of which were operated by faith-based organizations. As more women, youth and families joined the ranks of the homeless in the 1980s and the 1990s, and operators expanded to meet the need, temporary overnight shelter became the de facto response to homelessness (Hopper, 2003). With the passing of the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act in 1987, federal funds were made available for homelessness services at the local level and the supply of emergency shelter beds grew immensely in the years that followed (O’Flaherty, 1996). These funds also provided the foundation for the specialization and coordination of homeless services. In what came to be called the continuum model, emergency shelter serves as the entry point, and from there unhoused individuals are referred to specialized Transitional Housing programs. Transitional Housing links time-limited subsidized housing with on-site treatment for substance use or mental health problems. Rooted in individual explanations of homelessness, the theory behind transitional housing models is that people experiencing homelessness need to be made ‘housing ready.’ After satisfying behavioral requirements, clients ‘graduate’ into independent housing in the community. As homelessness numbers continued to climb in the 1990s, this continuum of care model came under critique. Observers noted that a small segment of the homeless population was living outdoors and in shelters for months and in some cases years. This ‘chronic homelessness’ was linked to requirements of behavior change in transitional housing which functioned as a barrier to permanent housing. In cities such as New York City and Los Angeles, service providers sought to address these barriers by dropping the requirement for treatment compliance, immediately placing chronically homeless individuals in permanent, affordable housing and simultaneously providing professional clientcentered support on an on-going basis using joshua evans
176 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design a case management model. This Supportive Housing was initially targeted at chronically homeless living with severe mental illness and/or substance use disorders. The theory behind Supportive Housing is that recovery, understood in the broadest sense, is best achieved in the context of stable permanent housing rather than before (Padgett et al., 2016). Supportive housing approaches, most notably the Housing First model, have been extensively evaluated and have been shown to be highly effective, both in terms of client outcomes and minimizing the external costs of homelessness incurred in the justice and health care systems. On this basis, they came to be adopted as the centerpiece of federal policy, most notably in the 10-Year Plan to End Homelessness programs initiated in the early 2000s. Moreover, they have also been extended beyond the chronically homeless and applied to families and the recently displaced (what are generally called Rapid Re-Housing programs). Today, Supportive Housing is administered through standardized intake and assessment processes called ‘coordinated entry systems.’ These systems involve gathering information on people experiencing homelessness in real time so that they can be connected to appropriate housing and supports as efficiently as possible, and communities can best leverage limited resources at the local level. Despite continued innovation in the field of US homelessness policy, homelessness has proven to be intransigent and difficult to solve. A perennial challenge – and arguably the primary cause of homelessness in the United States – is the shortage of housing that is affordable to low-income individuals and families (Colburn & Aldern, 2022). Funding for public housing created in the inter-war and post-war periods in the United States was repeatedly slashed in the 1980s. In the 1990s, this stock of affordable housing was the target of renewal (the HOPE VI program, for example) which reduced the stock of affordable units further. While purpose-built, affordable housing has not disappeared entirely, a major shift towards housing subsidies, in the form of ‘housing vouchers’ for private market housing, occurred in the 2000s (Schwartz, 2015). This fourth response to homelessness has proven to be highly effective at reducing homelessness. Generally speaking, the US evidence suggests that giving housing subsidies to people experiencing homelessness joshua evans
and those at risk of homelessness is the most effective (O’Flaherty, 2019). Not surprisingly, housing subsidies form the bedrock for other responses such as Supportive Housing. They also bear upon a fifth important policy response: prevention. Homeless prevention programs provide short-term assistance to at-risk individuals and families before losing housing. Prevention programs include a wide variety of interventions ranging from landlord dispute resolution services, emergency financial assistance, and legal assistance.
Homelessness policy and planning: a creature of neoliberalism? Homelessness remains a political flashpoint wherever it occurs. In the case of the United States, for example, homelessness policy has been heavily shaped by individualistic understandings of homelessness that focus attention on individual deficits and self-sufficiency. Even where policy has departed from this tendency, as in the case of Housing First, rationalizations such as cost savings, have been necessarily mobilized to justify policy adoption during periods of government austerity. Moreover, policy responses have been characterized by growing levels of professionalization and expertise matched equally by concerns regarding the cooptation of care by a burgeoning ‘homelessness service industry.’ Hence, analyses of US-styled homelessness policy have served as a vehicle for a more general critique of structural forces, most notably, neoliberalism (Willse, 2015). In this case, homelessness policy and planning are seen to play an expedient role, in the United States and in other liberal housing and welfare regimes, as a post-welfarist intervention that functions to ‘manage’ a housing crisis resulting from broader processes of welfare state restructuring. Homelessness is not to be solved in this regard, rather it is contained expeditiously. In spite of its influence, the policy and planning response found in the United States cannot be generalized globally: just as definitions and explanations vary from society to society so do the responses that materialize on the ground. There are two things to bear in mind when considering international comparisons. First, as indicated in the introduction, responses to homelessness are filtered through political institutions and in this regard homelessness policy and planning are
homelessness policy and planning 177 inseparable from a country’s housing regime and its welfare state. The extent to which housing is decommodified is telling when it comes to the type of policies and plans fashioned to address homelessness. In this regard, the United States exhibits what housing scholars call a liberal market housing regime (a majority of the population secures housing through the private market, where most households own) and what welfare scholars call a liberal welfare state (the state provides very minimal welfare protections). This institutional context is very different from that which exists in Nordic countries, for example, where policy responses can be expected to depart from those in the United States. Second, responses to homelessness involve multiple levels and forms of governance. In the United States and other countries (such as Canada and the United Kingdom) higher levels of government have stepped into what has generally been a local field of intervention in an attempt to address homelessness as a national or regional problem. In this capacity, higher levels of government attempt to alleviate homelessness at the local level by incentivizing responses through funding structures. Simultaneously, responses at the local level, particularly in cities, are inflected by urban growth regimes within which homelessness is typically viewed as an impediment to urban development, increasing the appetite for more punitive responses such as antihomeless laws. The resulting scene is often one of contrasting and conflicting imperatives and tension between impulses of care and control. In other governance contexts, such as in the European Union or in an urban context of slow or no-growth, responses might vary significantly. This geographic variability, in terms of institutions and governance, must
be taken into account when making international comparisons of homelessness policy and planning. Joshua Evans
References Colburn, G., & Aldern, C. P. (2022). Homelessness is a housing problem: How structural factors explain U.S. patterns. University of California Press. Evans, W. N., Phillips, D. C., & Ruffini, K. (2021). Policies to reduce and prevent homelessness: What we know and gaps in the research. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 40(3), 914–963. Hopper, K. (2003). Reckoning with homelessness. Cornell University Press. Mitchell, D. (2011). Homelessness, American style. Urban Geography, 32(7), 933–956. O’Flaherty, B. (1996). Making room: The economics of homelessness. Harvard University Press. O’Flaherty, B. (2019). Homelessness research: A guide for economists (and friends). Journal of Housing Economics, 44, 1–25. Padgett, D., Henwood, B. F., & Tsemberis, S. J. (2016). Housing first: Ending homelessness, transforming systems, and changing lives. Oxford University Press. Schwartz, A. (2015). Housing policy in the United States. Routledge. Willse, C. (2015). The value of homelessness: Managing surplus life in the United States. University of Minnesota Press. See also: asset-based community development, affordable housing, social justice, environmental justice, inclusion/exclusion, power in planning, power/knowledge, ideology, property, property rights, zoning, informal institutions, narrative, identity, social capital
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57. Identity Introduction Planning and design can respect or disrespect, recognize or disregard identity. They can also support and build identity. Except for the purest versions of modernism, most versions of planning and design imagine a relationship with identity. The identity prioritized can be a spatial identity, where the concept of genius loci, or spirit of the place, is an important part of the traditions of landscape and garden design. The identity can also be a cultural identity, a religious identity or other group identities. Then, especially since the Baroque period, and even more so since the age of nationalism, there is the use of spatial planning and design to express and create national identity. The different disciplines and traditions of planning and design have their own relation to identity in its different aspects. In a sense, each practical organization of space expresses the identity of a culture or community. It does not always do so intentionally. What is also possible is that a set of reasons shaped the appearance of a city, after which this appearance became a symbol for the culture which built it. Greek cities thus became ‘Greek’, and the result of a Greek recipe, after a long period of experimentation, diversity and of other considerations operating in city planning and design. This could include religious, aesthetic, political and economic reasons, which altogether made for a particular urban form which satisfied the ancient Greeks in their network state, and which allowed for relatively easy reproduction for the establishment of new colonies.
Ascription and exclusion The Greek example also indicates what anthropology knew for a long time, i.e., that the ascription of identity by outsiders differs from internal ascriptions. What looks like a typical French village for a Swede, might look like a mess or like nothing special for the French inhabitants. What looks like a deliberate expression of French values for the Swede, might appear to be just a result of a ‘normal’ practical organization, or a failure of achieving an ideal which is not perceived by the Swede. Our invoking of ‘normal’
indicates the presence of naturalization in many cultures and in many forms of spatial organization: what is contingent, a result of the choices and evolutions, of power relations and economic relations in a community, is presented as natural. This process, too, can be intentional or unintentional. If we, with Benedict Anderson, consider nations as imagined communities, and nation states as enterprises of concentration of power and resources, then it looks rather logical that processes of naturalization of contingent forms of organization, expression are part of nation building. Nation building might have started as a process of self-organization, but the formation of nation states led to attempts to build identities, to create narratives of unity of culture, history, uniformity of spatial organization (or a unity in diversity), of particular values which could be expressed in cities, villages, in administration and many other ways. Model citizens could be created by imposing religion, language, unified legal and taxation systems, infrastructures leading to a capital city, borders which had to be guarded and an outside which had to be constructed as different. This, of course, immediately creates many internal Others, as well as an external Other. State-led planning was, from its inception, sensitive to this double problem of Othering. The modernist drive towards unity, towards a spatial grammar which could happily ignore all sorts of identity, its obsessions with spatial structure representing a supposedly rational organization of the land, did not solve this problem. It might have ignored nationalism in principle, but intensified its patterns of exclusion of alternatives, by not seeing or downgrading all of those alternative spatial identities. For modernism, culture was still a reality, just as nation states were a reality, but they were simply not relevant for the organization of space. A rational city would be legible and usable for all.
Modernist marginalization When economic and political elites take hold of modernist planning systems, their power to exclude others increases, as Jane Jacobs and many other critics of modernist planning observed. If the forces of free markets shape space, the same problems of exclusion can reappear, as the same Jane Jacobs noticed. People lower on the social-economic ladder find it harder to find a place in the city, and
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identity 179 it is even harder for disadvantaged cultural groups who would prefer a different type of place to bring about change, or to create an island expression of their values. Where this did happen, it was usually in the form of slums or underprivileged mono-ethnic neighborhoods, where governments and the elites behind them did not see the value in intervention. Inequality, exclusion, marginalization, assimilation or worse, happened under the aegis of nation states, before, during and after modernism. The way these nation states and their local governments organized space was sometimes a direct expression of such processes, but even where this is not the case, the resulting space does not allow the aspirations of more vulnerable, or simply different groups, to be expressed. This can entail difficulties of choosing a particular style of design, but also difficulties in deviating from established forms of ownership (e.g., difficulties in establishing their forms of commons), of using the land, of making decisions on land use. All this translates into difficulties in participation in planning, even where participatory processes exist. The rhetoric of participation does not signify real participation, and even where this does happen, the scope and scale can be defined by a system which structurally ignores the forms of the spatial organization aspired to. When planning systems try to be contextual, try to create a space more cognizant of the ecological, historical and cultural context, the mechanisms driving inclusion and exclusion in governance do not necessarily stop. A new sort of ecological design can be more insensitive to indigenous histories, while a design celebrating traditions of the nation states is understandably less palatable for those marginalized or simply not observed by that nation state. In other words, sensitivity to context is necessarily selective, and attention to identity in planning and design is selective. This cannot be solved by moving to an allinclusive identity resort idea, a utopian form of multicultural planning where all histories, memories, identities are invoked, celebrated, remembered in the same space. Identities change, not all individuals in a group have the same form of identification with that group, and, relevant for planning and design: spatial
organization is a system where not every combination of elements can work.
Neither tragedy nor farce All this means that choices have to be made, that win–win situations are not always possible, and that not all land uses, nor histories can coexist. This, however, is not a tragic finding; it simply means that planning ought to be embedded firmly in governance, that planning should be envisioned as an ongoing conversation. It should not be understood as a technical domain, where the spatial choices which always create patterns of inclusion and exclusion, are made by experts unaware of the cultural character of their own assumptions, and the potential marginalization effect of their actions. Planning cultures, and the professional identities functioning in them, ought to be keenly aware of their own existence, and their relationship with power/knowledge configurations and hierarchies in the rest of society. Martijn Duineveld, Kristof Van Assche and Raoul Beunen, Editors
Bibliography Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined communities. Verso. Eriksen, T. H. (2002). Ethnicity and nationalism: Anthropological perspectives. Pluto Press. Neill, W. (2003). Urban planning and cultural identity. Routledge. Purcell, M. (2014). Possible worlds: Henri Lefebvre and the right to the city. Journal of Urban Affairs, 36(1), 141–154. Sandercock, L. (Ed.). (1998). Making the invisible visible: A multicultural planning history. University of California Press. Van Assche, K., & Duineveld, M. (2013). The good, the bad and the self-referential: Heritage planning and the productivity of difference. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 19(1), 1–15. See also: genius loci, assemblage, modernism, inclusion/exclusion, culture, history, heritage, memory, self-organization, commons, systems thinking, informal institutions, social capital, narrative, storytelling
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58. Ideology Planning had to deal with accusations of its being ideological since its beginning, and it had to deal with various ideologies in its functioning. In North American discussions, planning is routinely opposed to property rights and labeled as socialist. Elsewhere, notable planning theorists such as Michael Gunder analyze what remains of planning in the West as perpetuating neo-liberal rule. Analysts of early American zoning, such as Raphael Fischler noticed that those early planning tools became acceptable because they enabled both leftist and rightist policies, both protection of property values in upscale neighborhoods (by keeping industry and poor people out), and the possibility for social, later environmental policies (as zoning is conceptually open). We would argue, in line with Foucault, that all tools of governance can be used and abused and will be interpreted and handled differently in each ideology and system of governance. Centralized states deploying a modernist planning system are imbuing such systems with different ideologies than more localized forms of democracy, and even within the centralized version quite different ideological options and orientations remain open. Moreover, and still following Foucault, the power of planning and its association with ideology will shift throughout the history of the planning system. Power/knowledge can be considered a driver of planning evolution, of governance evolution more broadly, and the emergence of new actors, objects and subjects, the entering of new and transformation of old discourses in and on planning, as well as discursive shifts on other topics, can all lead to both a change in ideological self-identification in the planning system and a change in the ideological perception of planning in society. A largely unchanged system can be slowly perceived as leftist, while a system staffed by bureaucratic planners can redefine itself towards a focus on collective goals – rather than e.g., service delivery or enabling rapid development by private actors.
ideological orientation of the system as such (even of planning in general), there are the very practical encounters planners have with ideology on an everyday basis. If planning is balancing interests, if a variety of actors is involved, and a degree of citizen participation is observed, then a diversity of ideological orientations will always be present in a planning system and planning projects. This extends to an ideological diversity stemming from other administrative departments, with their own culture, and ideological shifts which are bound to occur in a democracy with ever changing coalitions in power. If we dismiss the willful blindness of modernism to ideology, and take this diversity seriously, the difficulty of planning in constructing longterm perspectives, becomes clear. Common grounds and win–win situations are not always possible, so some choices to be made will always cause friction with some of the ideologies around the table. Rational deliberation is not always a way out, as not all values are open to discussion, and as the actual appeal of an ideology is not always clear to those identifying with it. For the understanding of the workings of ideology in planning, it is useful to consider democracy in its diversity. One can distinguish different models of democracy, which can be considered ideologies, and each ideology clearly comes with implications for the types of planning becoming possible and desirable. Neoliberalism, socialism, civic republicanism, civil society models and communitarianism can all be considered democratic ideologies, and their different ideas on the relationship between individual and community, on the articulation of common goods, on the role of administration and its experts, the relationship between participation and representation have strong implications for differences between planning systems. In practice, most governance systems operate on a basis of historically evolved combinations of features of these different models. Importing forms of planning incompatible with the reigning ideology is bound to create resistance and will likely be perceived as undemocratic. Emphasizing local participation as a driver for ambitious planning is not likely to work if localism is absent or suspect.
Ideologies in planning
Stories
Planning as ideology?
Ideology of course enters planning in different ways, and beyond a discussion of the
Ideology is also a story, about the good community, the good life, good leadership, and
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ideology 181 in that sense a form of knowledge which will react to and combine with other forms of knowledge. Ideologies can underpin narratives which then select forms of expert and local knowledge which are valued in planning. Ideology in this function will also affect the definition of problems and opportunities in society, in space, their methods of investigation and solution. Sometimes, ideologies attach first of all to methods, in other cases to particular problem definitions or to solutions considered a panacea. Martijn Duineveld, Kristof Van Assche and Raoul Beunen, Editors
Bibliography Gunder, M. (2010). Planning as the ideology of (neoliberal) space. Planning Theory, 9(4), 298–314.
Hillier, J. (2003). Shadows of power: An allegory of prudence in land-use planning. Routledge. Metzger, J., Allmendinger, P., & Kornberger, M. (2021). Ideology in practice: The career of sustainability as an ideological concept in strategic urban planning. International Planning Studies, 26(3), 302–320. Van Assche, K., & Hornidge, A. K. (2015). Rural development: Knowledge and expertise in governance. Wageningen Academic Publishers. Žižek, S. (2019). The sublime object of ideology. Verso Books. See also: zoning, narrative, power/knowledge, storytelling, critical planning, social justice, inclusion/exclusion, expertise and local knowledge, green activism, property, property rights, communicative planning, strategic navigation
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59. Inclusion/exclusion Introduction Planning systems operate on a variety of knowledges and rely on a set of individuals, groups, organizations recognized as actors or stakeholders. They are part of governance systems which operate on a combination of participation and representation. The balance between these two forms of decision-making will differ and will be differently assessed in each community. It also shapes the processes and patterns of inclusion and exclusion. Inclusion in planning can be inclusion through participation or through representation, and this can be at local or higher levels, for particular topics or projects, and it can be directly in planning or indirectly through politics and administration. Just as governance in complex societies cannot be based solely on the local and on participation, planning systems cannot be entirely local, entirely based on direct participation. These planning systems are part of societies marked by patterns of inclusion and exclusion, and they produce their own patterns of inclusion and exclusion. This is a result of the complexity of societies, of governance systems, and of power/knowledge interactions. One relevant form of such interaction is the series of reinterpretations which takes place in processes of representation – voters elect politicians assisted by administrators and their experts – but also in participation – where decisions do not result from a simple addition of wishes and knowledges. This means that what counts as a stakeholder evolves, as an ever unfinished and imperfect product of the governance system, and that the forms of knowledge prioritized in decision-making are a necessarily limited selection of the understandings of the world circulating in the community.
Patterns of inclusion and exclusion Each planning system, in other words, is marked by a pattern of inclusion and exclusion because it is forced to make selections and distinctions in order to function. This applies to the construction, then inclusion of knowledge, and to the recognition, then inclusion of actors, or stakeholders. This aligns with Foucault and the post-structuralists, as
well as with actor network theory and systems theory. For Foucault, each discourse opens up aspects of the world for thinking and communication, but that construction is necessarily a choice, which makes other choices impossible, alternative understandings hard to grasp, and proliferates blind spots and invisible connections. For Luhmann, understanding and organizing starts with basic distinctions which are always contingent, and the building of structures on those basic distinctions makes it impossible to shift to alternative grounding assumptions later on. Heidegger, in more poetic terms, spoke of the lighting up of realities in an always historical Being, always accompanied by new darkness. Thus, practical and epistemological reasons combine to make planning difficult, and to make total inclusion a fiction. Moreover, focusing on inclusion can create new exclusions, as the actual mechanisms behind the pattern of exclusion and inclusion remain unobserved. What can be more productively argued, is that a continuous reflection and dialogue on the pattern are helpful to adjust the planning system to changing realities, narratives and preferences in the community. Such reflection can extend to a systematic consideration of the typologies of stakeholders considered, to the distinctions between groups that are seen as relevant for inclusion in planning and governance: are we to insist on class distinctions, and start our moves towards inclusivity from there? These distinctions are likely to shift, as in society the distinctions which make a difference will change over time, so class difference might become less relevant versus cultural, religious, gender differences, especially if those categories acquire a new politicization. New participation formulas can be helpful, but no participatory process design can generate a pattern of inclusion that will remain relevant in the long term.
Diversity One can argue that a long-term focus on diversity is a necessary complement to inclusionary thinking. Diversity is open to shifting and fluid categories and makes it easy to pay attention to a diversity in both actors and perspectives. A diversity focus can be supported by a highly differentiated society and governance system, where a multitude of perspectives can be represented not only by direct inclusion in arenas where they confront and
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inclusion/exclusion 183 combine, but also in the structure of administration, representing different topics, identities, forms of knowledge, and in the diversity of organizations which can both develop and represent different perspectives. Diversity in actors becomes more valuable then, if it is combined with a diversity in perspectives, and such diversity can only be maintained if there is the aforementioned reflection on distinctions and categories, and if there are mechanisms to maintain difference between perspectives. Heavy-handed central administrations forcing policy integration can undo differentiation, but so can participatory planning processes built around consensus formation. Luhmann would speak here of the dangers of de-differentiation, and planning as an activity which is prone to such dangers. Martijn Duineveld, Raoul Beunen and Kristof Van Assche, Editors
Bibliography Braeckman, A. (2006). Niklas Luhmann’s systems theoretical redescription of the
inclusion/exclusion debate. Philosophy and Social Criticism, 32(1), 65–88. Gunder, M., & Hillier, J. (2016). Planning in ten words or less: A Lacanian entanglement with spatial planning. Routledge. Quick, K. S., & Feldman, M. S. (2011). Distinguishing participation and inclusion. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 31(3), 272–290. Radaelli, C. M. (2002). Democratising expertise? In J. Grote and B. Gbikipi (eds), Participatory governance (pp. 197–212). VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Thorpe, A. (2017). Rethinking participation, rethinking planning. Planning Theory and Practice, 18(4), 566–582. See also: disability and planning, environmental justice, participation, power/ knowledge, public debate dialogue, systems thinking, conflict, modernism, social justice, indigenous planning, post-colonialism, colonial legacies, milieu, big Other
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60. Indigenous planning Identity and worldview Indigenous Planning is a field of practice and scholarship. It is a movement that is established on the belief that Indigenous communities should benefit from the best practices that design and planning have to offer, but in a manner that is informed by their culture and identity (Walker et al., 2013). What distinguishes Indigenous Planning from the mainstream application of Western planning is its reformulation of planning approaches to incorporate traditional knowledge and PlaceKnowing. Concepts to describe the value and meaning of place are taken from the local language and meanings derived from ‘knowing the land.’ PlaceKnowing is the hallmark of tribal resiliency and results in a holistic understanding of how places are evolved through time and space (Mckeown, 2020). Identity, as such, manifests itself in vernacular architecture and other contemporary forms of Indigenous design (Jojola, 2016). Physical structures and landscapes become central to organizing practices that shape settlements and economies. Unlike its Western counterpart, which has its focus primarily upon the regulation of land-use and the protection of private property rights, the Indigenous planning approach is formulated on values associated with land tenure. It is not an individual property right. It is a collective right and is negotiated through custom and consent. In practice, land is communal and is beholden to the commons. A Seven Generations planning model connects the past, present and future through the older generations (great grandparents, grandparents and parents), the mid generation (self) and the younger generations (children, grandchildren and great grandchildren). This assesses how communities sustain patterns of intergenerational interplay through the lifetime of an individual. As the lifecycle of an individual moves from infancy through elderhood, they learn values and mature into their requisite roles and responsibilities. Newborns are ushered into a nurturing culture that accords them associated rights and restraints to land. Community institutions are invested in making sure that this occurs in an orderly and timely fashion.
This structure is the foundation of a worldview which is unique to place-based communities that have evolved their sense of identity through the stewardship of their homelands over time and place. A worldview represents the community’s understanding of itself and its relationship to the natural world that sustains it. It is endowed with values that integrate the past, the present and the future. Storytelling is key to how the language and its cultural meanings are passed onto the generations. The ultimate challenge as seen by Indigenous planners is that simply ‘putting more eggs into the development basket’ does not necessarily resolve the complex cultural, social, political challenges that contemporary tribes continue to address. Rather the impetus for tribal empowerment is the long-term vision of Rematriation. That is, returning the land to Mother Earth. That process entails acknowledging the responsibility of matriarchal principles in governing the community and returning lands to a healthy and productive state.
Background When planning was first introduced in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century, it was a consequence of rapid urban growth and industrialization. When the US population began its rapid rise from rural to urban habitation around the 1880s, tribes had already been subjected to the confines of reservation life. The passage of the Land Ordinance of 1785 had already assured that the vast unsettled acreage from native homelands would be usurped (Warrior, 2014). The Public Land Survey System on Indian reservation land was imposed through the General Allotment (Dawes) Act of 1887. Treaty lands were divided into 160-acre fee-simple properties and allocated to each adult male in the tribe. The remainder of the lands not assigned was opened for homesteading. Euclidean zoning (the grid) became commonplace. Consequently, basic facilities and infrastructure were supplanted onto tribal lands through federal initiatives in tribal governance (Bureau of Indian Affairs [BIA]), education (Bureau of Indian Education) and health (Indian Health Service). Such developments, however, were borne under the guise of assimilation. Rather than strengthen tribal governance, the programs created a dependency wardship relationship. Section 701 of
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indigenous planning 185 the Housing Act of 1954 mandated comprehensive planning to regulate urban and rural development. This was also the case for Indian Country when in 1968, a 601 Tribal Comprehensive Planning regulation required the BIA to comply (Jojola, 2007). A second wave of planning was implemented by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). In 1961, the 1937 Housing Act was amended to allow HUD to establish Tribal Housing Authorities under the provisions of ‘self-help’ and ‘turnkey’ programs. These ‘HUD houses,’ as they are popularly called, ushered in suburbanstyle, cluster subdivisions and fundamentally changed the rural and social character of Indian Country. HUD requirements for individually apportioned land-deeds, zoning for residential areas and the provision of public infrastructure for electricity, roadways, water and sewers created a suburban-style, masterplan approach to housing. Intended to alleviate substandard housing, the shoddy construction practices and culturally mismatched projects tended to introduce as many social and economic problems as they alleviated. The present-day practice of tribal comprehensive planning was ushered in with the issuance of the 1975 Indian Self Determination and Educational Assistance Act (Public Law 93-638). Under the same contractual provisions afforded to the Secretary of Interior and the tribes, major trust responsibility provisions in education, public health, housing, etc., were amended through public laws to empower tribes to take over their own services. Most importantly, this Act allowed tribal governments to assume or delegate planning authority on par with surrounding non-native governments. Within a decade of its passage, infrastructure needs for many tribes mushroomed. As tribes opted to contract their own services in health, government and education, capital intensive programs spurred building construction. New local jobs became available and many native white-collar employees who had worked at centralized urban programs were enticed to return to their communities. Due to the multiplicity of tribal operations that were created as result of building local capacity, tribal government became a burgeoning full-time business. Another wave of local development occurred in the 1980s with the advent of casino gaming (Ong & Loukaitou-Sideris,
2006). The boom economies and consequent net revenues generated by successful Indian gaming enterprises significantly boosted those tribes’ ability to leverage federal trust projects. Many tribal operations used gaming funds to supplement the remodeling or construction of new buildings and utilities. School, health, recreational and elder centers became showcase projects. In contrast, tribes that either chose not to pursue gaming as a tribal enterprise or whose locations were not suitable for successful gaming operations, continued to depend on federal trust allocations and struggled with meeting basic social needs.
Origins of Indigenous planning Planning in Indian Country has been largely driven by a response to inadequate governmental funding. As such, tribal communities, at best, represent a quilted patchwork of projects that may or may not be culturally relevant for them. Until recently, Indigenous voices have been usurped by non-native practitioners. By and large, outsiders have used approaches to community development that are not attuned to tribal environments. This dynamic has been evident throughout much of colonial and postcolonial history. Paternalistic governmental and missionary approaches repressed the ability of tribes to develop the local capacity to assume their own governance. Despite numerous national studies documenting the abysmal living and economic conditions of Indigenous peoples, very little progress was made. This was essentially the context that provoked young, idealistic Indigenous scholars and activists to take over the discussions at the 1961 American Indian Chicago Conference. Organized by anthropologist Sol Tax and his assistant Nancy O. Lurie, the purpose of the conference was to discuss what progress had been had among tribes since the Meriam Report was issued on ‘The Problem of Indian Administration’ (1928). The action of the attendees was noteworthy because they collectively upstaged the agenda by asserting their own voices by consigning its nonnative experts to that of an ‘advisory’ body. The Indigenous attendees drafted their own Declaration of Indian Purpose (1961) which they took back to their tribal communities for further refinement. This culminated in a final report that was presented to President John F. theodore jojola
186 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design Kennedy during a formal White House ceremony (Jojola, 2008). Two leading organizations of that era were the United Indian Planners Association (UIPA) and the American Indian Council of Architects and Engineers (AICAE). There were established in the early 1970s in response to new federal initiatives by the Economic Development Administration and of the Office of Economic Opportunity. Over the ensuing decades there were many discussions in both the United States and Canada at both the community and academic levels. Such discussions were intended to cross-fertilize like-minded scholars and practitioners with alternative approaches to community development and mobilizing. More importantly, the free-wheeling discussions were generally unbridled of any federal agenda. In 1992, a threshold event took hold under the auspices of the Community Fellows Program at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, MIT. Participating students from ‘communities of color’ staged a coup in the studies program that resulted in a ‘postmodernist discourse’ on grassroots activism and culture. Their actions resulted in the formulation of a theory of action that they coined ‘Indigenous Planning.’ Among its pronouncements were ideals that called for a radical reexamination of contemporary planning practice through long-term learning, the empowerment of community voice, and the advocacy of culture and tradition. The effort continued for a few more years at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. It set the impetus for more action within an organization of liberal planning academics and Indigenous practitioners called The Planners Network (Jojola & Baron, 2000). Their organizing resulted in a new tribal planning framework. Influenced by the United Nation’s 1994 Pronouncement on the International Decade of the World’s Indigenous People, the Geographic Land Information Systems (GLIS) Department of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin took the lead role in convening this ‘Indigenous’ initiative. At the annual 1995 conference of the American Planning Association (APA) held in Chicago, the Indigenous Planning Network (IPN) was conceived via the use of a new listserve communications technology. It would take another decade before the organization would formalize as the APA Indigenous Planning (APA IP) Division. The APA IP theodore jojola
Division superseded both the UIPA and IPN. The effort was short-lived, however. It lost its division status due to a lack of a sustaining membership. It was eventually reinstated under a larger mandate in 2022, as the APA Tribal and Indigenous Planning Division.
Conclusion Strategically, the institutionalizing of Indigenous Planning as a professional practice and academic field has gained important inroads. There is still a way to go, but the combined initiatives staged by Indigenous practitioners at various universities and institutes in the United States, Canada and New Zealand have become the springboard for specialized IP degrees. Among the early leaders are the planning programs at the University of British Columbia and University of Manitoba (both in Canada), as well as those at Eastern Washington University and the University of New Mexico (US). Areas related to IP are represented in many of the Indigenous Studies programs in New Zealand (Porter, 2017). In 2012, the Indigenous Design and Planning Institute (iD+Pi) at the University of New Mexico’s School of Architecture and Planning was created specifically to lay the foundation for advancing IP pedagogy and practice. Its activities represent the collective efforts of like-minded organizations which provide planning and design assistance to Indigenous communities in the areas of education, community engagement and capacity building. Efforts employ multidisciplinary approaches to influence tribal leadership, students, planning practitioners and academics. The Indigenous planning process requires that leadership balance the immediacy of action (short term) with a comprehensive vision (long term). By repositioning the conversation to ‘the people are beautiful already,’ they turn away from focusing only on liabilities and shortcomings. Rather, they inspire and work toward improving the quality of life of its constituents. They are obligated to see through a course of action by assisting the community to build local capacity. Ultimately, they heal deep cultural wounds promulgated by centuries of colonial and postcolonial trauma by assisting the community to reclaim its rightful planning heritage (Walker et al., 2013). Theodore Jojola
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References Jojola, T. (2007). Physical infrastructure and economic development, White Paper, National Tribal Economic Development Summit, National Congress of American Indians. Jojola, T. (2008). Indigenous planning: An emerging paradigm, Canadian planning and policy. Canadian Journal of Urban Research, 17(1), Supplement 200. Jojola, T. (2016). The people are beautiful already: Indigenous planning and design, design for the other exhibit monograph, Cooper-Hewitt Contemporary Museum of Design, Smithsonian, NY, September. Jojola, T., & Baron, E. (Eds.). (2000). Special issue on indigenous planning, Planner’s workshop, spring newsletter. Mckeown, A. (Ed.). (2020). Seven generations: A role for artists in Zuni PlaceKnowing, Theodore S. Jojola and Michaela P. Shirley. In C. Courage, T. Borrup, M. Rosario Jackson, K. Legge, A. Mckeown, L. Platt, & J. Schupbach (Eds.), Handbook of placemaking. Routledge Press.
Ong, P., & Loukaitou-Sideris, A. (Eds.). (2006). Indian gaming as community economic development. In T. Jojola & P. Ong (Eds.), Jobs and economic development in minority communities. Temple University Press. Porter, L. (2017, November). Indigenous planning: From principles to practice. Routledge Planning Theory & Practice, 18(4), 639–666. Walker, R., Jojola, T., & Natcher, D. (Eds.). (2013). Reclaiming indigenous planning. McGill-Queen’s University Press. Warrior, R. (Eds.). (2014). Fitting a square peg in a round hole: The history of tribal landuse planning in the United States (T. Jojola & T. Imeokparia, Eds.). Indigenous World of North America Series. Routledge Press. See also: inclusion/exclusion, social-ecological systems, social justice, environmental justice, earthly attachments and the Anthropocene, long-term perspectives, power/knowledge, culture, identity, history
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61. Informal settlements Definitions Informal settlements in planning and related disciplines broadly refer to unplanned settlements and areas where housing is not authorized or in compliance with the formal rules (such as planning and building regulations). In practice, informal settlements are identified based on key dominant characteristics, viz., residential areas with inhabitants having no tenure security; poor basic services and accessibility to formal city infrastructure (such as power supply, drinking water and sanitation); and non-compliant housing located in environmentally sensitive areas (UN Habitat, 2015). The settlements are formed through a combination of speculative decisions by residents as well as strategic planning and development decisions by planning and development institutions in urban areas. They form an essential part of cities, shaping their growth physically as well as socially. Informal settlements are often conflated with slums and squatters, which often results in policies that advocate for wholesale demolitions and displacement. In practice, slums and squatters are almost always illegal occupants of public/private land, while informal settlements may exist with prior permission (including unwritten permissions or local understanding). Within spatial planning and design studies, informal settlements are increasingly being recognized as an alternate form of urban design, with unique and complex logic of production that goes beyond linking them with issues of rural-urban migration and urban poverty. The formation and proliferation of informal settlements worldwide in recent times is influenced by three main trends, viz., inflated land prices leading to decreased housing affordability; rapid and unplanned urbanization and industrialization of city outskirts; and increased demand for lowcost labour which is linked to transnational as well as regional rural-urban migration (Shatkin, 2004).
Brief history and background The concept of informal settlements can be traced to the wider notion of informality,
which was initially used to describe unregulated economic practices in the 1970s, and later travelled to urban planning and design wherein the focus was more on the relationships between the formal (using legal and regulatory tools) and informal (spatial governance, social networks and tacit rules) (Van Assche et al., 2013). Previously within planning, modernist planning approaches in the early 1900s framed informal settlements as unwanted spaces that needed to be cleared out completely and replaced by well-defined geometric urban forms. Various cities based on substantive modernist principles (for example, the Garden Cities in England and Chandigarh in India) did not acknowledge the possibility of informal settlements. Advocates of procedural modernism projected informal settlements as either heroic spaces of resistance or spaces that must be tolerated and acknowledged within the formal planning system. Works by Patrick Geddes and Jane Jacobs have advocated for acknowledgment of the informal spatial structure through alternate land use policies, while other scholars like John Turner have advocated a focus on self-help housing as the main planning intervention to transform informal settlements in the Global South. Recent works have focused more on developing procedures to understand the morphology of informal settlements through measurement and mapping (see Dovey et al., 2020). While the above approaches attempted to understand informal settlements through rigid lenses, they failed to capture the internal complexities and chronic vulnerabilities of informal settlements, and ultimately did not succeed in practice. With the emergence of post-modernist perspectives, especially complexity theory, assemblage theory and institutional economics, the focus shifted towards understanding local institutional context (formal and informal), and the complexity that is responsible for the production of informal settlements in the first place. These new institutional-based approaches advocated for more focus on the processes of housing transformation through self-organization strategies of individuals and groups. In practice, these perspectives materialized in the form of community-based in situ upgradation, which takes the existing context of spatial form and context as the starting point as the framework for permanent development.
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Order/disorder and selforganization: a brief critique The various approaches to understanding as well as planning for informal settlements in cities worldwide can be categorized into two frames – spatial order/disorder and selforganization. Both these approaches are primarily concerned with housing transformation in informal settlements. The spatial order approach tends to focus on understanding the built form uniformity (or non-uniformity), variety of building materials used, style of construction, the relationship between the built form and the street and encroachments into public spaces. The methodological approaches used in this frame are dominated by the use of mapping and measurement tools. Some examples are tools that involve mapping the morphologies, developing accessibility indicators and calculating the percentage of informal built form (Dovey et al., 2020). The order/disorder frame is useful to analyse ways in which informal spaces (including street networks and built form) emerge and transform (morphologically) with time. In doing so, this approach assumes that public intervention and upgrading can help anticipate informal spatial production and possibly check its future expansion. Many plans and policies, especially in the Global South, use this frame to identify various indicators of disorder (such as non-coherent built form, lack of formal infrastructure access, and encroachments), which is often used to legitimize evictions across all informal settlements including those that have greater efficiency compared to others. The intervention approaches range from resettlement through direct public housing or core housing at best (such as in the case of upgradation of Barriadas in the 1970s in Lima, Peru) and complete clearance of these houses through eviction drives at worst (many Asian and African municipalities have continued this practice since the 1950s). Both these interventions do not however provide space for any self-determination and often fail in practice and are at the centre of local conflicts and politics. On the other hand, the self-organization approach is more robust, and begins with the implicit assumption that change in the informal settlements occurs within the existing governance context, which includes existing residents, groups and institutional context that constantly adapts and evolves along with
the formal planning and land use policies (Suhartini & Jones, 2020). This approach is linked with complexity theory (specifically complex adaptive systems), institutional as well as evolutionary planning approaches. Informal settlements are never entirely unplanned (even though they may appear to be spatially fragmented) since the various communities and organizations within these settlements are useful in performing various important functions in urban development that are not captured in formal plans and policies (such as affordable housing for the urban poor, social identity for marginalized groups and so on). The informal settlements are extremely nuanced, unpredictable, dynamic, complex and always emerging and transforming concerning other parts of the city governance systems (such as the emergence of new public or private actors, new plans and political regime change). The methodological approaches look at processes through which various informal rules and spatial order emerge from within the informal system rather than prescribed by formal plans. The formal plans, regulations and rules are limited to providing a stable framework at the city scale, yet change can be expected to arise locally depending upon the relationship and influence of actors (mostly residents and local level organizations), institutions that self-organize and influence local and city level urban form. The self-organization strategies range from human-scaled incremental actions by residents (for e.g., horizontal and vertical expansion of built form to accommodate expanding families), speculative (based on narratives around future land use related decisions by the state), adaptive measures (often in response to changes in formal plans and policies), interactive (based on cooperative efforts of public and private sectors) and evolutionary (flexible actions based on evolved spatial governance internally and externally). Intervention approaches in practice can be categorized in two ways – in situ site upgrading and updating building codes and standards. In situ upgradation approaches use the existing organization pattern as the base and focus on improvement of the physical environment by providing rental or tenure security or giving them legal recognition (through formal regularization), which has implications on social and political identity for the residents. Similarly, changing or updating debadutta parida
190 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design the formal plans and regulations provides a significant shift from prescribed minimum standards of housing and infrastructure, a chronic legal barrier in recognizing the informal settlements. While the self-organization approaches are relatively more successful in practice, they have two main weaknesses. First, most self-organization approaches do not capture the local level complexities and adaptive capacities of residents and organizations in informal settlements. As a result, in practice, they end up being promoted as new forms of modernist planning approaches. Second, these approaches rely on affordability and cooperation of the residents, which may not be always possible in historical contexts of conflict and mistrust between the formal and informal system, or in places where political patronage, land mafia and organized crime are dominant.
Concluding thoughts I conclude the chapter with two main points of observation. First, much of the theorization on informal settlements continues to originate from institutions and organizations in the Global North, while these built forms dominate the urban landscape in the Global South. Within the landscape of scholarly activity, most exploration is based on particular geographical experiences that are limited to large metropolitan cities in South America, Asia and Africa, ignoring different contexts (urbanization, demand for cheap labour and capital) in mid-sized and small-scale urban areas. Second, there remains a wide gap between theory and practice in defining, understanding and planning for informal settlements and their role in the urban. Planning theory continues to advance the notion of selforganization approaches that observe informal settlements as complex adaptive systems that exist in particular organizations and spatial governance contexts. Yet, in practice, the recognition of spatial governance is limited to housing transformation, obscuring the many livelihoods, historical (in many post-colonial countries) and social contexts that may be more relevant in perpetuating vulnerability. Informal settlements are constantly evolving both in form and function. They are not always illegal or problematic, and can counter-intuitively have flexible, yet stable internal functioning, learnings from which may debadutta parida
be generalizable to other contexts (planning ephemeral refugee settlements which pose similar planning problems). In many areas in Southern cities, informal settlements are increasingly adapting and aligning themselves with city level institutional frameworks (for example, Dharavi slum in Mumbai with a population of nearly 1 million, where the residents generate approximately US$1 billion annual turnover through small-scale businesses; or Orangi Town in Karachi, Pakistan where residents have coordinated to create a locally run sewage system). However, in other contexts, the settlements may not be tenable at all, be it physically, environmentally or socially. Emerging risks combined with environmental vulnerabilities due to emerging or persistent climate and disaster risks may be prominent. In such cases, self-organization frames and complexity theories have much to offer. Adaptation and flexibility are of extreme importance here, which can be practised through combinatory governance approaches (for example, allowing incremental change combined with regulatory changes and conflict management) may have a greater chance of successful and sustainable interventions (Suhartini & Jones, 2020). In general, planning theory and practice must strive to establish more links between formal and informal institutions and be more accommodative of informal settlements in plans through adaptive governance rather than promote plans that are oriented towards consciously forgetting them at best and actively evicting them at worst. A more holistic and inclusive understanding of informal settlements that focuses on understanding the institutional and historical context in terms of the formation of the settlements (consequences of key planning decisions in the past), changing social identity and chronic vulnerability (past, present and future) can advance urban planning in adopting place-based interventions for sustainable local development. Debadutta Parida
References Dovey, K., Van Oostrum, M., Chatterjee, I., & Shafique, T. (2020). Towards morphogenesis of informal settlements. Habitat International, 104, 102240. Shatkin, G. (2004). Planning to forget: Informal settlements as ‘forgotten places’
informal settlements 191 in globalising metro manila. Urban Studies, 41(12), 2469–2484. Suhartini, N., & Jones, P. (2020). Better understanding self-organizing cities: A typology of order and rules in informal settlements. Journal of Regional and City Planning, 31(3), 237–263. UN-Habitat. (2015). Habitat III issue paper 22 – Informal settlements. New York. Van Assche, K., Beunen, R., & Duineveld, M. (2014). Formal/informal dialectics and
the self-transformation of spatial planning systems: An exploration. Administration & Society, 46(6), 654–683. See also: institutions, self-organization, adaptation, power in planning, power/knowledge, ideology, rationality, inclusion/exclusion, property, property rights, zoning, rules, nomocracy, informality, autopoiesis
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62. Informality A prevalent concept Much of the work on informality in the context of urbanization and spatial development has been done outside the planning discipline. Development studies, environmental studies, anthropology and political science have all contributed insights into the often seemingly unruly processes of spatial organization and development in the developing world. Transition scholars have shed a light on the actual role of plans and planning in socialist countries. Within planning, several scholars have highlighted the limits of planning and planning ideologies in the non-Western world. Ananya Roy analysed with much acuity the development of cities in India, highlighting informality as a form of urbanization that both enables and disables development (Roy, 2009). Berrisford and others unveiled the potential and limitations of legal reforms to tackle planning issues in Africa, elucidating not only the context-specific limits of formal institutions, but also the cost and instability associated with institutional transformation (Berrisford, 2011; Benjaminsen & Sjaastad, 2008; Watson, 2002). Mapping and preparatory studies for planning reform can already prove destabilizing. Especially where other forms of coordination of land use and development functioned well for most stakeholders, and where the history of planning is interwoven with the history of a controversial regime, making an argument for even basic forms of planning will be hard, and implementation will be even harder. The current conceptualizations and understandings of informality have to be understood in the background of a literature that dates back to the work of Aristotle (Van Assche et al., 2014). Since Aristotle, informality has had a bad name. In the Western philosophical tradition form was opposed to matter, and informality was on the side of matter, of the unstructured, of that what remains beyond the grasp of human cognition. Even long after Aristotle and the Aristotelean revivals were passé, the association between informality and irrationality and chaos lingered on in the collective consciousness. The seventeenth century brought new modes of cognition, and the eighteenth century introduced the models of politics and law we still recognize as the
basis of the modern, democratic and capitalist state. In modern political theory, the rule of law emerged as both a precondition and a result of stable political institutions. Political and legal institutions were understood as tools to structure the community and make it more knowable. They made society more rational in this double sense of structuring and bringing within the purvey of cognition. What was not visible to law and politics could not be restructured in manners considered more rational. Since a rational state also promoted morality, informality became also associated with immorality.
A chain of associations The chain of associations linking informality with invisibility, irrationality, immorality and (fear of) chaos still taints the discussions. Even when informality is celebrated, there is often a silent reference to a negative standard interpretation of informality of the sort just summarized. Fear of dis-association of the social fabric perfuses many discussions. Simultaneously, the broken promises of modernism have inspired a cynicism with formal institutions, with the power of laws, policies and plans to create a better world. In development studies, policy studies, environmental studies, economics and other fields and disciplines, discussions often revolve around the positive and negative sides of formality and informality, with one side arguing for an understanding of informality as the natural way of organizing things and formality as a usually oppressive exception in history, while the other side argues for an evolution towards formality. The latter position embodies the spirit of modernism, and formalization is seen as politically and economically rational, as bringing prosperity and justice to people. The proponents of informality have many reasons to embrace the concept. They can be disappointed with the results of modernist development strategies, they can focus on positive results of alternative coordination mechanisms, or simply believe in plurality as the fundament of society, reality and thus regulation (Innes et al., 2007). Neo-institutional economists offer somewhat different perspectives that focus on how formal institutions emerge out of informal institutions under certain conditions, and that their benefits crucially depend on various contexts. It is therefore not always possible to distinguish between formal and informal institutions. In
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informality 193 some situations, this is because there is only one coordination mechanism observed. In other situations, a simple distinction might be irrelevant because there are many coordination alternatives. What is considered formal in one group might not have that force of expectation in a different one. In decision situations various groups might be around the table or various identifications (and associated expectations) might vie for primacy with individual participants. A formality in a subgroup may be informal in a larger group one is part of; what is formal for a lower-level governmental actor might be informal for a higher-level actor or a different one at the same level.
Labelling informality in complex societies In each case, the labelling of a certain coordination mechanism as appropriate, as the most important expectation is a matter of interpretation of the situation, and these interpretations become performative (Van Assche et al., 2014). In other words: the interpretations of the expectations in a decision situation steer the thoughts and actions of the participants and have real effects. The fight over formality is then a matter of power, and the most powerful actors have the most chance to define the situation and the associated expectations. In other words, power creates formality, and the expectations of powerful actors cannot be ignored by the others. In complex societies marked by functional differentiation, specifically the ones that developed into democracies, the state is supposed to have a monopoly on the use of force, while both the state and citizens are bound by the law in their actions. Laws, policies and plans were thus endowed with the power of the state, since they were the product of governmental actors. In most democratic theories, the formal institutions governing the state are expected to be written down and are supposed to represent a negotiated balance of interests. Thus, a non-state actor does not have the same legitimacy as a state actor in defining a situation and its expectations, and the printed and proclaimed rules of state actors became commonly seen as formal institutions. However, the internal complexity of the state, with many, often competing, state actors, and regulatory systems that require discretion and interpretation, makes this equation of paper (state-backed) rules and
formal institutions untenable. Moreover, many states do not function according to their own stated principles, and free market, democratic representation and rule of law are usually imperfect. That implies, among other things, that there is room for private interests to hide behind the public interest, and that formal institutions backed by the state can be interpreted, used, selected, combined and produced in ways that deviate from the professed procedures or fill in perceived gaps. The complexity and imperfection of democratic government create these spaces of informality, where both private and public goods can be strived for by means of informal institutions that can be described as metarules: rules to apply, select, enforce and break the rules. It also creates places for formal institutions to die, but precisely their former formality creates possibilities to revive them later. Raoul Beunen, Kristof Van Assche and Martijn Duineveld, Editors
References Benjaminsen, T., & Sjaastad, E. (2008). Where to draw the line: Mapping of land rights in a South African commons. Political Geography, 27(3), 263–279. Berrisford, S. (2011). Unravelling apartheid spatial planning legislation in South Africa. A case study. Urban Forum, 22(3), 247–263. Innes, E., Connick, S., & Booher, D. (2007). Informality as a planning strategy. Journal of the American Planning Association, 73(2), 195–210. Roy, A. (2009). Why India cannot plan its cities: Informality, insurgence and the idiom of urbanization. Planning Theory, 8(1), 76–87. Van Assche, K., Beunen, R., & Duineveld, M. (2014). Formal/informal dialectics and the self-transformation of spatial planning systems: An exploration. Administration and Society, 46(6), 654–683. Watson, V. (2002). Change and continuity in spatial planning: Metropolitan planning in Cape Town under political transition. Routledge. See also: complexity, informal settlements, international planning, rationality, institutions, self-organization, power in planning, power/knowledge, expertise and local knowledge, adaptation, social justice, property, rules
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63. Infrastructure and planning Imperatives of infrastructure Ever since people started to live in cities and villages, infrastructure planning has been pursued. Sewage systems were developed to get rid of foul smells and remove the health hazards associated with human waste, flood defense infrastructure was developed to ensure protection against floods, and roads and waterways were built to enable movement of people and goods within and across cities and towns. It is even argued that early spatial planning was limited to infrastructure planning as urban development was shaped by the layout of streets, squares, and the location of monuments, temples and markets (Neuman & Smith, 2010). Nowadays, spatial planning is seen as the practice of systematic and well-founded preparation of spatial policies. However, and this certainly applies to the field of infrastructure planning, planning is not only about preparing policies. It also involves concrete interventions, i.e., where the shovel hits the ground, and something is really constructed. Spatial and infrastructure policies provide the context for specific interventions in space, with a future picture of what is desirable in mind. In other words, planning is goal-oriented, intervention-oriented and future-oriented. From an economic perspective, infrastructure often relates to the more immobile and long-term features of an area that demarcate it from other more mobile factors of production, such as labor, capital and entrepreneurship. The development and improvement of immobile infrastructure is expected to generate higher productivity of mobile production factors. Simply put, capital spending on infrastructure is seen as an important way to stimulate economic growth. From an institutional perspective, infrastructure – or more specifically institutional infrastructure – can be considered as the set of political, legal and cultural institutions (Scott, 2013) that form the backdrop of economic activity and governance, enabling or constraining its smooth operation. Institutional infrastructure includes the cultural, structural and relational elements that shape and reinforce governance, that render (institutional)
logics material and thereby make governance performable. Finally, from a spatial perspective, infrastructure provides access to services; infrastructure networks, for example, enable communication, transport and relationships to take place within and between cities, regions and countries. At the same time, infrastructure networks not only enable, but also give structure to related, spatial developments. The expansion of the rapid transit network in the city of New York between 1910 and 1940, for example, made it that almost all of the population growth in the city was in so-called ‘subway suburbs’ that were opened for development by the new infrastructure. Infrastructure thus shapes urban settlement, directs mobility and focuses technological development. As such, infrastructure has longlasting impacts. Especially in urban regions, infrastructures are therefore seen as important drivers in response to planning issues such as adaptation to climate change, energy transition and sustainable development. Remarkably, while inherently a matter of spatial organization, the planning of infrastructure is currently dominated by the economic and institutional perspective. Nowadays, infrastructure planning revolves around financial, efficiency and regulatory aspects, and is increasingly criticized for a lack of understanding of spatial issues. Infrastructure planning seems to have become the promotion of separate infrastructure projects, and infrastructure is even considered to be estranged from planning (Neuman & Smith, 2010). This chapter demonstrates that the spatial perspective is essential in reconnecting infrastructure to planning. The next sections discuss the traditional approach to infrastructure planning, explain the role of infrastructure planning from a spatial perspective and present conclusions.
Traditional infrastructure planning Existing literature emphasizes that infrastructure planning is linear in nature – both in a literal and figurative sense. First, infrastructure planning is traditionally ‘line-oriented’: the focus is on infrastructure provision, either by enlarging the capacity of existing lines or by developing new lines to expand the existing infrastructure network. In the context of transport infrastructure, Heeres et al. (2012) for example, explain that infrastructure planning focuses on providing infrastructure
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infrastructure and planning 195 solutions to mobility-related issues in an area. While relations between the area and the transport infrastructure exist, the planning process focuses on the infrastructure – i.e., on a line in the landscape itself – and little attention is given to the spatial and environmental quality. Instead, the focus is on mitigating externalities and finding a design that is in line with existing policies, rules and regulations. Second, the planning process is often rational, technocratic and thereby linear in nature. Some attribute this to the fact that infrastructure planning is rooted in ideas of modernity. That is, the application of rational thinking to (urban) resource and distribution problems to produce solutions. Others point to the large influence of engineers on infrastructure planning and design, which has resulted in a monodisciplinary approach to infrastructure planning. The engineering approach revolves around technical variables and defines the problem as well as the solutions in terms of the concepts, methods and models engineers are familiar with. This is supported by the use of institutionalized tools such as multicriteria evaluation and cost-benefit analyses. The result is a reduction of the issue to a technical engineering problem that can be solved with analytical tools. Moreover, based on the idea that planning is a rational activity, the professionals involved are generally convinced that they developed the best plan. As a consequence, traditionally, little attention was paid to implementation as it was assumed that the self-evident correctness of the infrastructure plans was enough to generate support. Implementation of infrastructure was therefore seen as only one step in a series of logical steps. In practice, however, the implementation and realization of infrastructure plans are often problematic and infrastructure planning is not so much about ‘planning-through-plans’, but much more about ‘planning-through-projects’ (Busscher et al., 2015). Infrastructure projects can be regarded as a single intervention in the infrastructure network, characterized by technical details, a fixed time schedule and a dedicated budget. Project management is used to ensure compliance with these aspects and realize the predefined output. This means that possible contextual developments that could affect the project are seen as a risk that should be avoided or managed – that is, reduce the
probability that external developments influence the infrastructure projects. As a result, the project-based approach to infrastructure planning has only reinforced that infrastructure projects operate relatively isolated from their context. Infrastructure planning, to a large extent, has become the promotion of separate infrastructure projects. Something that has become particularly visible in many countries when the global COVID pandemic hit and capital spending on infrastructure projects became a popular way to combat the related economic crisis. While in itself perhaps not necessarily problematic, this also comes with a strong focus on value for money and short-term rates of return. As such, it creates the tendency to invest particularly in the areas that are already economically successful and to disregard the areas or issues that do not deliver imminent economic development.
A spatial perspective Where infrastructure planning is traditionally line-oriented, the spatial perspective introduces the ‘area-oriented’ approach to infrastructure planning. This approach revolves around the relationship between, on the one hand, the demands, qualities and (policy) objectives of an area, city, or region and, on the other hand, the design of existing infrastructure networks, and its possible expansion. In other words, it focuses on the meaning of infrastructure network for relevant actors in the area. Infrastructure development not only provides economic growth and spatial development, but at the same time also fragments and ‘splinters’ urban and regional development (Graham & Marvin, 2022). As explained earlier, from a spatial perspective, infrastructure networks provide access to services. However, at the same time, infrastructure networks also deny access, and not only connect but also segregate users spatially; slums, shanty towns and self-built settlements, for example, tend to be underserved by infrastructure, which makes that infrastructure planning plays a vital role in creating fair and just cities and societies. Moreover, infrastructure can also enable more equitable cities and regions. Renewable energy infrastructure, such as wind farms and solar parks, for example, has become much more pronounced in the landscape and their development typically experiences strong NIMBY-effects: not too many people are tim busscher and marijn van geet
196 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design against renewable energy, as long as it is not produced in their own backyard. At the same time, however, this type of energy infrastructure is also able to produce energy and related (economic) benefits for the local environment, if they are also (to some extent) owned by the local community. Institutionally, however, ownership of infrastructure is traditionally appointed to (semi-)government organizations or large market parties. Thus, while infrastructure can become meaningful for communities in difficult social and economic conditions in a different way, this would require a shift from institutional arrangements that revolve around large central organizations and are top-down in nature towards arrangements that are much more local, decentralized and bottom-up in nature. However, this does not mean that there is no role for central planning – the opposite is true. Especially in the field of infrastructure, more attention for local qualities and opportunities needs to be accompanied by careful planning in order to prevent that powerful cities and regions in the economic core, for example, shift their energy production to cities and regions in the periphery. Similarly, more attention to local circumstances also helps to better understand where production and demand are located. In the case of energy, for example, for a long time energy production was spatially detached from energy use and infrastructure solutions to connect to two together were taken as a given. The same applies more or less to the field of transport planning, where the need for additional road development to cater for increasing transport demand is more or less seen as self-evident. A spatial perspective, however, focuses on the qualities and potential of a specific area and provides alternative solutions, which are often much more decentralized in nature. In the case of energy infrastructure, homeowners can be stimulated to place their own solar panels. In the case of transport, spatial plans can promote densification and diversification and thereby improve accessibility. In other words, almost paradoxically, a spatial perspective to infrastructure planning might prevent the need for additional infrastructure. This is especially important in the light of the large impact infrastructure development has with regard to, among others, material use, energy consumption and environmental degradation. tim busscher and marijn van geet
Systemic risk and infrastructure failures In relation to the above, the spatial perspective not only provides a deeper insight into the relevance of space within separate infrastructure sectors, but it also helps to understand the importance of interdependencies between different infrastructure sectors within one area. Regions in the UK, for example, experience more and more that heavy storms can cause a disruption in the energy infrastructure which subsequently means that some people are also cut off from heat, water and telecommunication infrastructure. In the Netherlands, a disruption of the IT system of the national airport cascaded into the national railway and even highway systems as important connections had to be shut down as the airport could no longer process travelers, while people were still coming to the airport. The infrastructure interdependencies show the vulnerabilities of areas to catastrophic cascade failures of infrastructure, where a failure in one part or sector of the network results in a chain reaction of failures across the wider system. As such, it is particularly important to understand, manage and coordinate infrastructure networks to protect against such failures. This is particularly relevant now that more and more current infrastructure is reaching its end-of-life and needs to be renewed. In Germany, for example, many civil structures in the highway network such as bridges were constructed before the Second World War and need to be replaced. In the US, already one in nine bridges are qualified as structurally deficient and given the country’s tendency to undercapitalize maintenance and avoid renewal, new crises can be expected. In the literature, careful planning is seen as an important means for risk reduction, as this can help to either spread the risk of massive disturbances and extreme events or to protect so-called ‘critical infrastructure’. At the same time, acknowledgment of the interdependencies between infrastructures not only provides insights into risks, but also into opportunities to redesign, repurpose or remove infrastructure. Oftentimes, such initiatives cannot be pursued within one infrastructure alone and need cross-sectoral collaboration. However, given the fact that many existing institutional frameworks are often highly sector-specific in nature, such collaboration is difficult to organize and
infrastructure and planning 197 would be helped by a clear idea, vision and leadership – in other words: infrastructure planning – that supports the integrated development (Neef et al., 2020).
Conclusion This chapter has shown how the dominance of economic and institutional perspectives has caused infrastructure planning to revolve around the promotion of separate infrastructure projects that are expected to provide the best return on investment. In doing so, important issues such as social equality and fairness, environmental effects and infrastructure interrelationships are often overlooked. The spatial perspective acknowledges these aspects and points towards the importance of planning in transforming the social outlook of cities and regions, reducing inequality and enabling integration of different infrastructures. It shows the role of infrastructure and of planning in making places worthwhile. However, it also provides important questions for future infrastructure planning. Which forms and means of infrastructure network integration are most suitable and sustainable? How to seize the opportunities that aging infrastructure networks provide? How to organize systems to prevent infrastructure network expansion, or best integrate networks so that the output of one becomes the input of another, and thus avoid waste or duplication? While this chapter has shown the important role of planning in finding one of the answers to these questions, this is not only a matter of spatial organization. The shift towards area-oriented infrastructure planning also needs to be reflected in institutional frameworks and policy agendas. Currently, many institutional arrangements focus on one specific policy field or sector and are insensitive to the interdependence and integration across different infrastructure sectors and thereby hamper the transformative effect of
infrastructure planning. However, more and more research is performed in this direction, where spatial and infrastructure development is seen as interrelated to institutional development. Some research even argues that physical space for infrastructure is dependent upon institutional space. Drawing on these ideas, enabling infrastructure planning to play its role in spatial transformation again requires institutional transformation. Tim Busscher and Marijn van Geet
References Busscher, T., Tillema, T., & Arts, J. (2015). In search of sustainable road infrastructure planning: How can we build on historical policy shifts? Transport Policy, 42, 42–51. Graham, S., & Marvin, S. (2022). Splintering urbanism at 20 and the “infrastructural turn”. Journal of Urban Technology, 29(1), 169–175. Heeres, N., Tillema, T., & Arts, J. (2012). Integration in Dutch planning of motorways: From “line” towards “areaoriented” approaches. Transport Policy, 24, 148–158. Neef, R., Verweij, S., Busscher, T., & Arts, J. (2020). A common ground? Constructing and exploring scenarios for infrastructure network-of-networks. Futures, 124, 102649. Neuman, M., & Smith, S. (2010). City planning and infrastructure: Once and future partners. Journal of Planning History, 9(1), 21–42. Scott, W. R. (2013). Institutions and organizations: Ideas, interests, and identities. Sage Publications. See also: social justice, dependencies, ideology, modernism, rationality, self-organization, smart growth, autopoiesis, density, energy, history, regional planning and design, polycentrism
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64. Innovation The quest for innovation Innovation is a master signifier of current economic and political systems. It is invested with high hopes and expectations and its use spreads to more and more realms of society, while it is still expected to be amenable to steering and planning. This makes it a productive fiction, as innovation, as that which is not only new but radically new, and not only new in and by itself, but capable of triggering change elsewhere, can rarely be managed. In practice, what is innovative is often only understood as such a posteriori, when other pieces fall in place, either technological, institutional or cultural factors align to amplify the effects of a bit of technology or knowledge which already existed. Also requiring hindsight is the assessment of the lineage of other technologies one innovation led to; that potential can rarely be grasped when something new occurs. For actor network theory (and the science and technology studies it led to) as well as for systems theory, the a posteriori ascription and recognition of something as innovation is entirely logical, just as for historians of science, it is clear that breakthroughs are usually not planned, often not recognized, and almost always the result of incremental change which seemed useless to most contemporary observers. The expectation that a scientific breakthrough leads to a new technology, which then creates jobs and economic growth, is problematic as well, as the logical chain in this reasoning is not very strong. New technologies are not necessarily built on new scientific insights, and tech innovation can replace jobs as easily as it can create them. What can be seen more clearly is that innovation, as a process, requires networks, which can be called innovation networks, including not only research-intensive companies, but also research institutes, universities, supportive governmental actors, infrastructures and media. A broad knowledge base, in society, supported by good schools, and flexible transitions between roles and between governmental, private sector and university jobs, do help. If such innovation networks link in several places to governance networks, a reflection in each network on what the other
one has to offer, becomes more likely, and a recognition of the potential of linking several innovations to maximize impact might be possible. Clayton Christensen’s concept of disruptive innovation drew the attention to the fact that big impacts do not always come from really new or really better technologies.
Planning for innovation? Planning comes into the picture of innovation policy in several ways. It is more easily embraced when innovation is considered amenable to steering, and where strong planning traditions exist. Spatializing innovation is not new, as architects since the 1970s claimed to have found the kind of building which could foster innovation and creativity more generally. Open layouts, shared spaces with less strictly defined functions, several routes through the building, connectivity with green spaces, abundant light, high ceilings, simple forms were presented as contributing to creative thinking, by freeing the mind and the body, by allowing for unexpected encounters and easy movement. At a larger scale, the concept of the innovation park, or innovation campus, with public and private research located close to each other in a park-like setting, possibly accompanied by governmental organizations interested in economic development, became popular with governments across the world. The urge to copy Silicon Valley, fast-tracked through innovation policy, government investment and spatial planning, led to the proliferation of such parks, and to a checkered track record. As innovation discourses spread beyond the high-tech sector, and as counter-discourses of social innovation emerged, sometimes as communal correctives to perceived high-tech selfishness, sometimes as organizational and institutional innovations, it started to affect more activities, more spaces, and came closer to the type of coordination problems encountered in spatial planning. Car sharing requires small modifications to public space, e-bikes likely more, urban agriculture and food systems, including restaurants using local produce could benefit greatly from a rethink of many planning principles. Planning then becomes an integral part of place-based development, as in the American tradition of asset-based community development, often focused on poorer neighborhoods. The actual role of planning, and the
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innovation 199 actual use of space will be different in each case, then, in each strategy for community development.
Concluding While innovation is in principle disconnected from space, in a globalized and virtually connected world, the evolution of innovation discourses and counter-discourses, as well as the ambitions of governments striving for innovation, led to increasing connections with planning, an increasing potential for planning to produce spaces, neighborhoods, cities which could foster both technological and social innovation. The green and alternative roots of Silicon Valley seem to reappear here in a consolidated response against Silicon Valley. Where planning and design come in much more directly, is the related discourse of creative cities, where attracting a creative class, by means of amenities, character, green spaces, architecture and infrastructure was seen as a precondition for success in the global competition between cities. Here, not the environment for innovation, but for the innovators becomes the focus. And innovation becomes creative and entrepreneurial kinds beyond, but open to, technology. Kristof Van Assche, Raoul Beunen and Martijn Duineveld, Editors
Bibliography Christensen, C., Raynor, M. E., & McDonald, R. (2013). Disruptive innovation. Harvard Business Review. Florida, R. (2019). The rise of the creative class. Basic Books. Jones, K. E., Granzow, M., & Shields, R. (2019). Urban virtues and the innovative city: An experiment in placing innovation in Edmonton, Canada. Urban Studies, 56(4), 705–721. Kooij, H. J., Van Assche, K., & Lagendijk, A. (2014). Open concepts as crystallization points and enablers of discursive configurations: The case of the innovation campus in the Netherlands. European Planning Studies, 22(1), 84–100. Moulaert, F., MacCallum, D., Hillier, J., & Vicari, S. (2009). Social innovation and territorial development. In: Moulaert, F., MacCallum, D., Hillier, J., & Vicari, S. (eds), Social innovation and territorial development. Routledge, 11–23. Pratt, A. C. (1997). The emerging shape and form of innovation networks and institutions. In: Simmie, J. (ed.), Innovation, networks and learning regions? Jessica Kingsley, 124–136. See also: asset-based community development, social innovation, institutions, network governance, polycentricity, adaptation, social justice, ideology, modernism, strategy, creativity, social capital
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65. Institutions and institutionalism Definitions and versions Institutions are defined in several ways in different theories and disciplines. A prominent tradition in political science and sociology, also present in management studies, understands institutions as routines and repeated patterns of organization and coordination. Also in political science, and history, one finds the idea of an institution as an old and venerable type of organization, or an organization as part of the infrastructure of the state, the institutional order. In economics, institutions are routinely understood as tools of coordination, with organizations understood as actors using institutions and the political domain as the arena where institutions are produced and endowed with legitimacy. Institutionalism does come in different versions, and those different versions have a presence in planning theory. Institutionalism comes in modernist and postmodernist versions, and its focus on procedures and tools of decision-making made it attractive for many planning theorists wary of the grand claims of substantive modernism. The more modernist versions could still be normative, and focus on institutional design, e.g., in the guise of design of participation and engagement procedures, or of public–private partnership constructions. Early governance theories can similarly be considered part of this tradition of institutionalism as procedural modernism, as the shift from government to governance was presented as a discovery of an objectively superior (democratically, practically) institutional arrangement, and similar observations can be made of advocates for polycentrism, adaptive governance and multi-level governance. From a postmodern, or simply less normative point of view, governance, adaptation, multi-level governance and polycentricity always exist, and are neither good nor bad. Moreover, they can exist in many forms, and are not always susceptible to institutional design.
Institutions and governance In evolutionary governance theory (EGT), a radically constructivist and historicist approach to governance, institutions are, as
for institutional economics, defined as tools of coordination between actors in governance. They range from simple to complex institutions, from a stoplight to a comprehensive plan. Policies, laws and plans are recognized as institutions, while plans, important in spatial governance, can only function in conjunction with other institutions that uphold them, implement them, and can be coordinated by them. EGT further recognizes (as institutional economics and anthropology) informal institutions which are shaped in co-evolution with formal institutions: their evolution cannot be understood without reference to formal institutions and vice versa. This implies, among other things, that plans, in order to function, require an embedding in informality, which also functions as a connection to the values of the broader community. Informal institutions, in line with Helmke, are not assessed a priori as positive or negative, but can perform different roles, in conjunction with formal ones, as part of so-called formal/informal configurations. It is those configurations that have to be assessed: do they maintain differentiation, do they deliver the common goods aimed at, do they maintain the mechanisms of peaceful self-transformation in governance? When formal institutions stop functioning, but are still on the books, they become dead institutions. In public policy, administration and spatial planning, institutionalism has proliferated, sometimes mixing different definitions of institution as starting point, sometimes remaining close to the existing institutional order in analysis, elsewhere advocating for radical institutional redesign, or, for overthrowing the existing order (e.g., when that order is analyzed as neo-liberal). In planning, institutionalism had a special appeal because coordination is the bread and butter of planning, and because the coordination task of planning (as also systems theory had pointed out) is a formidable one.
Plans as institutions Institutionalist approaches to planning can be used to analyze the emergence and implementation of plans, the interplay between plans and other forms of institutions, the embedding of planning in broader governance structures. What is often forgotten, however, is that plans themselves are tools of coordination, that, in other words, not only the functioning of the planning system deserves institutional analysis, but also the forms of coordination
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institutions and institutionalism 201 established (or not) through the plans. Some of these forms are more tenuous than others, with plans assigning rights, but also suggesting or enabling certain combinations of land uses. Here, institutional analysis could link up with design studies, as design can work on several problems at the same time and can foster policy integration in context-sensitive ways. Kristof Van Assche, Raoul Beunen and Martijn Duineveld, Editors
Bibliography Alexander, E. R. (2005). Institutional transformation and planning: From institutionalization theory to institutional design. Planning Theory, 4(3), 209–223. Beunen, R., Van Assche, K., & Duineveld, M. (2016). Evolutionary governance theory. Springer International Publisher.
Helmke, G., & Levitsky, S. (Eds.). (2006). Informal institutions and democracy: Lessons from Latin America. JHU Press. Pierre, J., & Peters, B. G. (2020). Governance, politics and the state. Bloomsbury Publishing. Salet, W. (Ed.). (2018). The Routledge handbook of institutions and planning in action. Routledge. Van Assche, K., Beunen, R., & Duineveld, M. (2014). Formal/informal dialectics and the self-transformation of spatial planning systems: An exploration. Administration & Society, 46(6), 654–683. See also: informality, systems, policy integration, narrative, culture, ideology, complexity, rules, property rights, property, informal institutions, nomocracy, commons, social justice, insurgence
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66. Insurgent planning Key definition Insurgent planning refers to an evolving set of practices located in political society and emerging primarily from the agency and knowledge of marginalized social groups. Premised on collective necessity, insurgent planning practices enact equality, counterhegemony, transgression and imagination through situated contestations that lead to the reconstitution of political subjects. The overarching aim of insurgent planning scholarship since its inception has been to affirm and legitimize the planning practices of socially marginalized groups in order to expand the conception of what constitutes planning.
Brief history Sandercock (1998a, 1998b) built on Holston’s (1996) work on ‘insurgent citizenship’ and developed the theoretical space of ‘insurgent planning histories’ that show narratives of resistance to the modernist liberal planning paradigm. In this early portrayal, insurgent planning practices advance coalitional work, issue-based activism, appropriation of state mechanisms for social justice goals and material changes in day-to-day lives. Insurgent historiography revealed how modernist planning was premised on exclusions and erasures of people’s histories. Sandercock’s contribution was to include political resistance to racism, sexism, colonialism and so on in the domain of planning practices. These were subjects considered to be outside the purview of planning. In two subsequent contributions, Miraftab (2009, 2017) repositioned insurgent planning (IP) practices within a global context where participation is the tool of the master and argued that IP challenges the specifics of neoliberal domination through inclusion, and that IP moves from distribution to structural change, that is, IP is counter-hegemonic. For Miraftab, insurgent planning practices ‘ontologically depart’ from liberal inclusive planning by moving from justice as fairness to justice as recognition of difference and its politics, from representative democracy to participatory democracy and direct action. In the past more than two decades of growing scholarship, the meanings associated with
insurgent planning practices have deepened (Huq, 2020). Oppositional engagement with civil society, deeper appreciation of practices (as opposed to actors) and nuanced understanding of epistemic agency are some critical features of the insurgent planning scholarship.
Discussion Insurgent planning practices take a critical stance toward civil society’s oppressive dynamics and occupy a social space that traverses through and transgresses civil society, the economy and the state – that is, political society. This is particularly significant in a context where inclusionary planning processes co-opted and codified urban politics as a technocratic governance. Participatory processes emerging from the inclusionary planning paradigm were structurally constrained and stumbled to advance social justice. At times, participatory processes instead functioned as legitimizing devices for dominant interests. In such contexts, insurgent planning practices counter the power and legitimacy of the planning status quo through mobilizing in the space of political society. Instead of operating in a civil society with legible associational forms within a stable liberal constitutional order, insurgent planning practices unfold in a political society with hybrid property relations, deep identity conflicts and violence and mutual aid from historically entrenched social inequalities. Insurgent planning practices place collective demands on the state, at times through violating state laws, social customs, the police order and state sovereignty. These demands are often articulated in the idiom of universalizable rights, which makes the particularism of insurgent planning practices globally resonant with discourses of rights and democracy. Within participatory processes, insurgent planning practices simultaneously question the legitimacy of participation. Contrary to civil society where citizens rely on legally recognized rights, insurgent planning practices rely on making claims to provisions for life-making in the language of rights against existing laws, police order and state sovereignty. Insurgent planning practices are characterized by direct action, selforganization, autonomous politics, constant negotiation and contestation. Such fluidity leads to temporary context-specific gains that may be retracted in time. Insurgent planning
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insurgent planning 203 practices are also entangled in the contradictory and messy politics of embedded relations of internalized oppressions and exclusionary politics, such as vigilante violence, xenophobia and sexism.
Agency Insurgent planning practices rely on the agency and epistemic vantage point of oppressed social groups. These practices are based on the everyday level hows and whys of oppositional planning practices that often dismantle, appropriate and/or co-opt the visions of official planning and propose alternative visions. The epistemic vantage point of insurgent planning practices provides grounded insight into the historical workings of oppression and forms the basis of its tools and tactics of appropriations and contestations. Insurgent planning scholarship takes stock of the fact that subordinate groups have experienced an epistemic disorientation in dominant planning traditions. Therefore, insurgent planning scholarship acknowledges that epistemic violence and orients itself to center the knowledge production of subordinate communities. Insurgent planning is about practices and not about actors. This means the same actors can be engaged in insurgent and non-insurgent planning practices as their context changes. In this horizontal view, differently situated people can engage in different planning practices to advance socially just urban futures. A practice lens allows insurgent planning practices to translate totalizing concepts (for example, neoliberalism) into a set of everyday practices that can be open to intervention (while retaining focus on broader contexts). The growing body of insurgent planning scholarship has proposed multiple characteristics associated with these practices. These features are counter-hegemonic, transgressive, imagination, enacting equality, necessity and identity reconstitution. Instead of assuming that oppressed identities (women, gays, natives, etc.) are pre-constituted and negotiate their interests in the political process, insurgent planning practices operate from the understanding that these subjectivities can be reconstructed in political praxis.
Conclusion In summary, insurgent planning practices are located in political society, theorize from
the standpoint of the epistemic privilege of marginalized groups, and take practice as its unit of analysis in order to understand how everyday practices of necessity, equality, counter-hegemony, transgression, imagination and identity reconstitution are contesting and transforming cities. Insurgent planning practices may overlap with informality (Roy, 2005) but are distinguishable from elite and state informality (Roy, 2009). Critics have raised questions about the role of professional planners in relation to insurgent planning. Others say insurgent planning advocates for violence. Perhaps, the term ‘insurgent’ carries a negative connotation for such critics. Although research has been accumulating over the past two decades, there is still not enough empirical cases to answer many questions raised about insurgent planning. Efadul Huq
References Holston, J. (1996). Spaces of insurgent citizenship. Journal of National Historical and Artistic Heritage, 24, 243–253. Huq, E. (2020). Seeing the insurgent in transformative planning practices. Planning Theory, 19(4), 371–391. Miraftab, F. (2009). Insurgent planning: Situating radical planning in the global south. Planning Theory, 8(1), 32–50. Miraftab, F. (2017). Insurgent practices and decolonization of future(s). In M. Gunder, A. Madanipour & V. Watson (Eds.), Routledge handbook of planning theory (pp. 276–288). New York: Routledge. Roy, A. (2005). Urban informality: Toward an epistemology of planning. Journal of the American Planning Association, 71(2), 147–158. Roy, A. (2009). Why India cannot plan its cities: Informality, insurgence and the idiom of urbanization. Planning Theory, 8(1), 76–87. Sandercock, L. (Eds.). (1998a). Making the invisible visible: A multicultural planning history. University of California Press. Sandercock, L. (1998b). Towards cosmopolis: Planning for multicultural cities. John Wiley & Sons. See also: critical planning, self-organization, transversality, ideology, inclusion/exclusion, social justice, post-colonialism, informality, colonial legacies, international planning efadul huq
67. International and transnational planning Traveling forms, ideas, practices Planning can be international in several ways. Modernist planning could be international because it pretended to be universal. It can also be international because practices and ideas travel, sometimes under the guise of ‘best practices’. Planning could also be international because of relations of domination marking the global environment, relations of colonial domination, of dominating ideologies and of market relations spanning the globe. Thus, planning could be criticized as the handmaiden of neoliberalism, or as inaugurating a post-political era, with planners enabling the depoliticization of what should be political. And then there are the stars who travel, maybe less famous than the star architects and urban designers, maybe less inviting than the projection of global ambitions by local elites (aspiring to be a ‘top’ city), but nevertheless inviting a following and a spreading of ideas and practices. This happens in a planning world which is more localized than in the twentieth century, in the sense that regional and national planning ambitions have been scaled back significantly in most of the world, after the rise of neoliberalism, and the problems with Soviet and socialist planning. The loss of belief in a coupling between national-level economic planning and spatial planning contributed to the relegation of spatial planning to a second tier political and administrative domain. Moreover, the trends towards localization, decentralization and participation which converged in the 90s and became gradually supported by the key international organizations (OECD, WB and others) further ensconced planning at the local level. That localism and such emphasis on participation nevertheless took place in a world that was ever more globalized, and, in systems terms, cognitively open.
Easy travel yet transformation That means that ideas travel easily over big distances, to small polities expected to become more self-reliant, a spread aided
by convergence in education models, professional associations, meetings, new and old media and the neoliberal drive for ‘best practices’ and efficiency. The ideas that can travel can be small and practical, too big and ideological, and everything in between. One can speak of discursive migrations underlying policy mobilities, but the movement of ideas is in practice associated often with the movement of people and of goods. Some ideas spread and encourage the spread of certain people and goods, some goods travel and bring smoothly a discursive reconfiguration and a gradual shift in the mobility patterns of people. Big ideas can embed smaller ideas, so the spread of New Public Management can be enabled or in turn enable the spread of the big idea of a small set of functions for a local government, and the smaller ideas of benchmarking, streamlining and it can lead to a proliferation of indicators expected to make the planning and governance systems more transparent to themselves. The spread of ideas, practices and spatial forms one can observe, paradoxically even more after the universalist heydays of modernism, is however never simply a diffusion. As geography, sociology and anthropology pointed out, as well as the more critical versions of management studies, neither forms of knowing nor forms of organization travel without transformation. This is certainly observable in spatial planning, where the actual diversity in practices and ideas is greater than usually acknowledged by those interested in the unity of the field. One can discern a prevalence of open concepts, or empty signifiers, words which seem to mean the same for all involved, say planners from different countries, but which function mostly to keep the communication going and reinforce the imaginary unity of planning. In practice, planners interested in international examples, in learning through comparison, also learn in other ways, and are forced to reinterpret, embed and transform whatever policy, practice or form is seen as desirable in a foreign setting or system.
Competing pressures The pressures towards localization and internationalization coexist in planning, both in theory and in practice. This is not something to deplore, but a reflection of the complex patterns of differentiation which enable administrations to manage complexity, legitimacy
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international and transnational planning 205 and responsibility. Citizens expect more, travel more, experts populate administrations and observe more problems and possibilities, and coming to a synthesis regarding the organization of land, a prime site for policy integration, becomes both more difficult and desirable. The grand challenges of our time, such as climate change, put pressure on this highly differentiated system, requiring new levels of policy integration, and triggering new forms of policy travel and, a new form of internationalization in planning. Raoul Beunen, Martijn Duineveld and Kristof Van Assche, Editors
Bibliography Bal, M. (2002). Travelling concepts in the humanities: A rough guide. University of Toronto Press. Czarniawska, B., & Joerges, B. (1996). Travels of ideas. Translating Organizational Change, 56, 13–47.
Friedmann, J. (2010). Crossing borders: Do planning ideas travel? In P. Healey, & R. Upton (Eds.), Crossing borders (pp. 337– 352). Routledge. Gunder, M., & Hillier, J. (2016). Planning in ten words or less: A Lacanian entanglement with spatial planning. Routledge. McCann, E. (2011). Urban policy mobilities and global circuits of knowledge: Toward a research agenda. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 101(1), 107–130. Van Assche, K., & Djanibekov, N. (2012). Spatial planning as policy integration: The need for an evolutionary perspective. Lessons from Uzbekistan. Land Use Policy, 29(1), 179–186. See also: network governance, policy integration, narrative, institutions, expertise, new public management, innovation, social innovation, line of flight, assemblage, dependencies, post-colonialism, colonial legacies, big Other
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68. Lacan’s four discourses in planning Introduction: discourses and positions Jacques Lacan was a post-Freudian psychoanalyst and one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century. Discourse was at the core of Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, through which Lacan investigated ‘the subject as the subject of discourse’ (Clarke, 2015, p. 72). Lacan used the term ‘discourse’ to ‘stress the transindividual nature of language, the fact that speech always implies another subject, an interlocutor’ (Evans, 2010, p. 44). Lacan’s discourse considers the production of knowledge and knowing as an intersubjective phenomenon within a social context. Lacan used the term ‘discourse’ to investigate four different social relations and ‘the crucial factors through which language exercises power in human affairs’ (Bracher, 1988, p. 32). He formulated four discourses: the university, the master, the hysteric and the analyst. These discourses are as follows: ●
●
●
●
The master discourse refers to ascendancy, dominance, governing and commanding; The university discourse relates to education, training and indoctrinating; The hysteric discourse refers to resistance, protesting and desiring; The analyst discourse refers to analysing, transforming or revolutionising.
Later, Lacan conceptualised capitalist discourse under ‘university discourse’ and then, ‘hysteric discourse’. However, a group of researchers believe that ‘capitalist discourse’ is Lacan’s fifth discourse. Lacan developed five algorithms to present his discourses which provide an understanding of the connections between discourse, subjectivity and social practice such as planning. All algorithms include four algebraic symbols: S1 = master signifier, S2 = knowledge, $ = split subject and a = surplus enjoyment (Evans, 2010). Lacan differentiated these five discourses from one another by changing the positions of these symbols in the algorithm.
The symbols rotate through four positions: the agent is the position of agency or dominance which defines the discourse; the other refers to whom the discourse is addressed; the product represents the by-product as the result of the interchange; and the truth is the position of representing the factors underpinning, yet repressed by, the agency or dominance. Figure 68.1 presents the structure of the discourses. In Figure 68.1, the horizontal upper arrow is crucial to all four discourses as it shows that the desiring agent addresses the other. This movement from one agent to the other reveals the human tendency to create social connections. Nonetheless, for Lacan, ‘the relationship between agent and other is marked by a “disjunction of impossibility”’ because the other never fully receives the agent’s intended message. Since the other cannot respond adequately to the agent’s message, Lacan did not use an arrow to connect the other back to the agent. The hidden function of discourse can be seen in the lower part of the algorithm. The first position on the bottom left is the truth. The arrow pointing upwards connects truth to the agent. This arrow means that truth is a repressed element that informs the agent discourse. This repression generates the possibility of a social bond that is represented at the upper level of the formula. The diagonal arrow shows the effect of truth on the other. The right arrow pointing downwards shows a product that is created when the agent communicates with the other. The product stimulates the agent through ‘a disjunctive position in relation to the truth that set the discourse in motion’.
The master discourse The master discourse is associated with selfassurance and control of others. The absolute ruler, like the domineering parent and planner, must be obeyed because of who they are. Lacan used the master discourse as a base to develop the other discourses (Schroeder, 2000). Based on Hegel’s master–slave dialectic, for Lacan, once the master discourse establishes its hegemony, other existing discourses should follow and operate under the master discourse; otherwise, they should be eliminated. The discourse of the master works through asserting itself ruthlessly in the social field. It represses all knowledge that may reveal the inadequacy
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lacan’s four discourses in planning 207 agent
other
truth
product
Figure 68.1 The structure of the four discourses
and incompleteness of the ‘master’. Baron Haussmann’s reconstruction of the centre of Paris and Robert Moses’s urban and infrastructure developments in New York are good examples of the master discourse in planning practice.
The university discourse ‘Lacan’s diagnosis of modernity involves the displacement of the master by the bureaucrat’ through the discourse of the university. The university discourse is not limited to educational institutions, although they play a crucial role in this mechanism of power. ‘Lacan aligns the discourses of science and technology with the university discourse, and he considers bureaucracy to be the perfect realisation of the university discourse’. The displacement does not necessarily mean that power has been replaced by scientific reasoning. Lacan et al. (2007) argue that ‘what happens between the classical master discourse and that of the modern master, whom we call capitalist, is a modification in the place of knowledge’ (p. 167). According to Boucher, ‘the key to grasping the articulation of the university discourse to that of the master in modernity is to recognise that the speech acts characteristic of bureaucracy are not claims, propositions, and so forth (i.e., assertives), but judgements, evaluations, summaries, and assessments’ (p. 286). In planning, the master signifiers, such as sustainable development, resilience and smart urban growth, have significantly informed planners’ judgements, evaluations and assessments. Under the hegemony of capitalism, planning has become a component of an entrepreneurial apparatus that often deploys scientific evidence to legitimise market-oriented policies and plans to improve the profile of cities in the global market. Schroeder (2000) argues that the university discourse scientises the subject’s desire and has no room for the subject her/himself and
the experience of her/his suffering. By making the subject’s product (desire) into a subject of study, the university discourse splits the subject from her/his desire. Therefore, the science-based plans and policies produce ‘the alienated public, displaced from their desires’ (Gunder, 2005, p. 101) and subsequently generate discontent.
The hysteric discourse In his Milan lecture, Lacan maintains that ‘[t]he discourse of the hysteric represents a half-turn, or 180-degree revolution, from the discourse of the university’ (Clarke, 2015, p. 55). This discourse reveals a certain kind of social bond in which any subject may be inscribed. Freud describes this social bond as the hysterical identification with an unsatisfied desire. ‘The truth of the discourse of the hysteric, represented by dissatisfaction, or lost enjoyment, stems from the non-coincidence of the subject and its favoured master signifiers’ (Clarke, 2015, p. 81). Gunder (2005) suggests that ‘the hysterical discourse is to be valued. It is the discourse from which may arise ethical inquiry, challenge for change, and the potential for creativity’ (p. 308). However, Lacan argues that the hysteric agent is asking for, and will get, a new master. ‘The tendency in this discourse is for the subject to seek a new master, new sources of certainty, whilst demonising the old’ (Clarke, 2015, pp. 55–56). The new master is a subject ‘who knows’ by offering convincing knowledge based on the university discourse. The hysteric remains in solidarity with the master signifier and its hegemonic knowledge because his/her subjectivity ‘depends on there being a symbolic order of language, law and sexuality’ (Schroeder, 2000, p. 200). The quest for a new master who promises certainty also includes planners who continually challenge the dominant master signifiers and the knowledge of planning until new master signifiers emerge. The new master signifiers and knowledge are inherently unable to produce a particular answer about the force of dissatisfaction that drives the hysteric agent or planner. Gunder and Hillier (2009) investigated the rise of sustainable development as a master signifier in planning and how this signifier aims to address increasing concerns with ecological and environmental issues. However, there remains a ‘techno-rational scientific mohsen mohammadzadeh
208 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design approach central to market efficiency and environmental protection’ (Gunder & Hillier, 2009, p. 149). Thus, the other master signifiers such as resilience, wellbeing and climate change are used to address ecological and environmental issues. Yet, these new master signifiers are inherently unable to solve the issues which regenerate dissatisfaction and discontent.
should support the oppositional practices of the grassroots to generate its own terms of engagement and actions to claim rights in the city. The product is a set of master signifiers shaping a new discourse which is different from the dominant discourse – the university discourse.
The analyst discourse
Lacan developed the capitalist discourse as the contemporary modified version of the discourse of the master. The capitalist discourse subjectivity is corrupted because it actively cultivates the semblance of dissatisfaction, as well as a fantasy of self-sufficiency, completeness and vitality. For Lacan, the rejection of lack is the basis of the discourse of the capitalist. Lacan argues that ‘what distinguishes the capitalistic discourse is this: Verwerfung, rejection, rejection’ (p. 7). This lack is largely perceived as an accidental frustration, or occasional discontent, that the market can effectively cure. Therefore, a master signifier and knowledge always exist, or will be generated when required, within the capitalistic discourse. Under the hegemony of capitalism, the subject’s main question is ‘what should I desire?’ instead of ‘what do I desire?’, which is not a question about objects. While ‘[t]he market informs us what we need: the merchandise it provides’, the question concerns those conditions under which the subject might be desired by the market in late capitalism. Lacan believes that the crisis of the former is ‘overt’ within the capitalist discourse. He (Stone’s translation, 1978, p. 11) argues that ‘It is the cleverest discourse that we have made. It is no less headed for a blowout. This is because it is untenable. . . It suffices to the extent that it runs . . . as if on a roulette wheel, but it runs too fast, it consumes, and it consumes so well that it consumes itself’. Capitalist discourse has an anti-social nature because it consists of connecting subjects to objects of enjoyment (Declercq, 2006, p. 81). The capitalist discourse requires that the subjects create social bonds by themselves, which leads subjects to perceive themselves, mistakenly, as individuals, separate from other people and their afflictions. The idea of the autonomous, unitary subject or ‘the free individual’ as the egocentric individual is promoted under different guises in neoliberalism. It becomes the ‘central character
The analyst discourse is the inverse of the master discourse. For Lacan, the discourse of the analyst is the ‘one truly radical or potentially world-changing discourse’ (Schroeder, 2000, p. 25). The discourse of the analyst is only discourse when ‘the subject is in a position to assume its own alienation and desire and, based on that assumption, separate from the given master signifiers and produce its own, new master signifiers’ (Bracher, 1988, p. 45). Žižek argues that, The analyst’s discourse stands for the emergence of revolutionary-emancipatory subjectivity that resolves the split into university and hysteria: in it, the revolutionary agent addresses the subject from the position of knowledge which occupies the place of truth . . . and the goal is to isolate, get rid of, the master-signifier which structured the subject’s (ideologicopolitical) unconscious.
Lacan describes the analyst as the subject who should know (Schroeder, 2000). The goal of the analyst discourse is to produce master signifiers that assist the alienated subject to acquit the irritation of the call to enjoyment. In planning, Gunder (2005) suggests that this is perhaps a role for the critical theorist and hence, perhaps, that the analyst discourse might be metaphorically one discourse for critical academic research that seeks to draw out the hidden structures of ideological illusion and fantasy underlying our social reality. The analyst discourse provides the space for critical scrutiny; potential revolutionary planning, or insurgent planning education and practice, ‘explicitly renounces its own rights to the determination of the structure of speech’ (Clarke, 2015, p. 82). The insurgent planner, as the agent, deploys critical skills to investigate the alienated society in order to reveal its obscure desires and dysfunctional master signifiers. For example, insurgent planning mohsen mohammadzadeh
The capitalist discourse
lacan’s four discourses in planning 209 in policy documents relating to all manner of strategies to discipline and regulate the individual: as consumer, patient, student, citizen, and worker’ (Venn, 2004, p. 149). The capitalist discourse frames neoliberalised society as a society of commanded enjoyment in which one’s primary duty is the maximisation of self-enjoyment. The fundamental thing to recognise about the society of enjoyment is that in it the pursuit of enjoyment has misfired: the society of enjoyment has not provided the enjoyment that it promises (McGowan, 2004, p. 7). The capitalist discourse installs a regime characterised by a lack of enjoyment (Declercq, 2006, p. 81). The deployment of the capitalist discourse helps to explain why the subjects often feel guilty about not enjoying life enough.
Neoliberalism The hegemony of neoliberalism and the pervasive public discontent are ‘forcing the discipline to question its epistemic assumptions, professional values, and educational traditions’. Several planners have challenged planning and its master signifiers as the cause of the lack of the enjoyment that is promised by market-driven planning. Under the capitalist discourse, some planners, as alienated agents, constantly revise planning to regenerate new master signifiers, including new concepts to address the lack of enjoyment. The new master signifiers often do not challenge capitalism as their associated knowledge is inherently unable to tackle the failures of capitalism; instead, they address its symptoms. These new master signifiers and knowledge initially generate a kind of fulfilment for the planners as agents. However, the new master signifiers and knowledge should be replaced because their objectives are unattainable. Planning has been significantly transformed through this circulation of the production and consumption of new master signifiers and knowledge. For example, following the overconsumption of sustainable development, ‘resilience is replacing sustainability in everyday discourses’ of planning. Lacan maintains that the capitalist discourse burns itself out and is finally consumed (Olivier, 2009). Consumption includes market-based planning as a product that has been consumed and should be replaced by other products such as urban automation in late capitalism.
Conclusion The Lacanian discourses are useful to investigate different social interactions and planning practices. However, there are several limitations in using these discourses. First, Lacanian discourses are very complicated, interconnected and interchangeable; thus, utilising them requires an in-depth understanding of Lacan’s concepts as well as other psychoanalytic theories and concepts and philosophical ideas. Second, the Lacanian discourse approach does not provide a scientific and systematic approach to deconstructing social relations and planning practices. The investigations are context-dependent, and the outcomes are unique. Finally, and most importantly, social relations including planning practices are complex phenomena and researchers should use the different Lacan’s discourses when considering them. However, using different Lacan’s discourses makes analysis hard to grasp for the readers who are not familiar with psychoanalysis and its terms. Mohsen Mohammadzadeh
References Bracher, M. (1988). Lacan’s theory of the four discourses. Prose Studies, 11(3), 32–49. Clarke, M. (2015). ‘Knowledge is power’? A Lacanian entanglement with political ideology in education. Critical Studies in Education, 56(1), 71–85. Declercq, F. (2006). Lacan on the capitalist discourse: Its consequences for libidinal enjoyment and social bonds. Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society, 11(1), 74–83. Evans, D. (2010). An introductory dictionary of Lacanian psychoanalysis. Routledge. Gunder, M. (2005). Lacan, planning and urban policy formation. Urban Policy and Research, 23(1), 87–107. Gunder, M., & Hillier, J. (2009). Planning in ten words or less: A Lacanian entanglement with spatial planning. Ashgate. Lacan, J., Miller, J. A., & Grigg, R. (2007). The seminar of Jacques Lacan. Book 17, The other side of psychoanalysis: Norton. McGowan, T. (2004). End of dissatisfaction?, The Jacques Lacan and the emerging society of enjoyment. State University of New York Press. mohsen mohammadzadeh
210 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design Schroeder, J. (2000). The hysterical attorney: The legal advocate within Lacanian discourse theory. International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, 13(2), 181–213. Venn, C. (2004). Post-Lacanian affective economy, being-in-the-word, and the
mohsen mohammadzadeh
critique of the present. Theory, Culture and Society, 21(1), 149–158. See also: Lacan, ideology, power in planning, power/knowledge, narrative, big Other, therapy, social justice, inclusion/exclusion, dependencies, becoming, milieu, power/ knowledge
69. Lacanian approaches to planning Return to Freud? The Lacanian approach to psychoanalysis provides a useful but complex mechanism or system of analysis that seeks to understand the complexity of the world and its social and political relations. Lacanian concepts are integrated and cannot be understood independently and separately. Likewise, different aspects of the planning discipline, such as social, political, economic and spatial cannot be fragmented. Lacanian psychoanalysis, which has been applied in political studies, planning and policy making and social science, operates as a complex system in which all concepts are meaningful in relation to each other. Although Freudian psychoanalysis methods shaped the foundation of Lacan’s perspective of psychoanalysis, he developed the Saussurean formula of linguistics to theorise his own approach. This helped Lacan to use concepts such as master signifier and signifying chain to clarify how dominant norms, values and popular ideologies shape human behaviours. In developing his perspective, he also used Hegelian and Marxian concepts such as Other and surplus [see entries related to master signifier and the Other]. Lacan believed that ‘psychoanalysis is not a branch of psychology . . ., nor of medicine, nor of philosophy . . ., nor of linguistics . . ., and it is certainly not a form of psychotherapy . . ., since its aim is not to “cure” but to articulate truth’ (Evans, p. 155). According to Lacan, the role of psychoanalyst is to reveal the truth about desire and about the fantasy that covers over the impossibility or the lack [see the entry on desire, drive and disavowal].
The three orders Lacan further emphasised the difference he perceived between psychoanalysis and psychology. He argued that psychology is essentially a tool of ‘technocratic exploitation’ (Lacan cited in Evans, 2006 [1996], p. 156), whereby it is dominated by completeness, individuality and self-consciousness. Psychoanalysis disrupts these ideas by revealing the incompleteness of both the subject and discourses and by applying a complex system
involving the Symbolic, Real and Imaginary orders – the concepts on which Lacan based his work. For Lacan, the symbolic is the realm of the unconscious, language, social structures and social bonds, law and regulations, the Other and ideologies constituting culture and society. The symbolic order is a heterogeneous realm, a universe of symbols and relations. According to Lacan (Evans, 2006 [1996], p. 204), ‘it is the symbolic order which is the determinant of subjectivity and the imaginary realms . . . are merely effects of the symbolic. Psychoanalysis must therefore penetrate beyond the imaginary and work in the symbolic order.’ This means that Lacanian psychoanalysis scrutinises the realm of social, economic and political relations and ideologies to provide a more realistic understanding of the subject’s identification. This aids an understanding of the complex dialectic, or more precisely the dialogic relations, beyond the dichotomy of agent and structure. One of the criticisms of the Lacanian approach is that it is not easy to communicate. Moreover, fantasy cannot be a positive or comprehensive term to explain the complexity of social and political issues and it may not be efficient in suggesting a solution or way out of the ideological entanglements of planning theory and practice. However, many planning theorists have benefitted from this intertwined system of concepts and theories to explain the complexity of relations and phenomena in planning.
Planning theorists Kian Tajbakhsh (2000) can be considered the first planning theorist who used some of the Lacanian concepts such as fantasy, desire, lack, the Other and the imaginary in urban studies. Kian Tajbakhsh is an Iranian-American scholar, social scientist and urban planner who was arrested in 2007 in Iran by the Islamic Republic regime and detained with limitations on his teaching, writing and travelling until early 2016. Tajbakhsh uses these concepts to add a post-structuralist layer of explanation to Marxian urban theories. He explains that the Lacanian approach helps to clarify how the subject’s identification is related to the Other, or hegemonic ideologies, norms and values and how the concept of identity can be helpful in providing cities with an opportunity to reflect on individuality and the contingency of different groups and citizens.
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212 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design However, it was Michael Gunder (2003) who initially introduced the Lacanian approach in planning theory to explain the complex function of planning agents in the body of government and in the relationship with ideologies and/or dominant norms, values and doxa (common belief and rhetoric). In his works, Gunder (2010) applies and develops concepts of desire and fantasy as well as Lacanian enjoyment to analyse planning policies and plans. For example, Gunder argues that planning’s legitimacy is rooted in statistics, authorities and hegemonic discourse, and planning is inherently entangled in the values of the hegemonic discourse of neoliberalism. In addition, Gunder and Hillier (2009) use the Laclauian concept of empty signifiers to argue that planning has coalesced its plans and policies around empty signifiers that are often deployed as ideological tools or as capitalism’s fantasies to cover over the failures of the market. Jabareen (2017) uses Lacanian concepts of fantasy, lack and desire to theorise and develop the theoretical framework of ‘hegemonic planning’ in the context of the Palestinian and Israel conflicts. Based on these Lacanian concepts, he elaborates on how politically hegemonic groups in the state apparatuses generate a hegemonic fantasy based on their ethnonationalist or ideological hegemony to exclude and marginalise undesirable ethnic and religious groups as the ‘others.’ Mohammadzadeh (2014) uses Lacanian concepts to investigate the functions of the neoliberal city in late capitalism, a city that promises absolute enjoyment but generates discontent because it often fails to materialise its promises. Using the difference between the Lacanian mechanisms of drive and desire [see the entry on desire, drive and disavowal], Bahmanteymouri (2021) applies political discourse theory to analyse the causes of the failure of urban plans and policies to achieve their objectives. Wang (2022) uses the master signifier and the Lacanian discourses to clarify how planning concepts are passionately introduced, (re)interpreted and implemented and how they may be disappeared.
Value for planning As pointed out, there are critics of the Lacanian approach who focus on whether there is any suggestion of alternatives, changes or improvement that go beyond the hegemonic ideology of capitalism. The elham bahmanteymouri
important point about the Lacanian approach is that it provides a comprehensive and complex mechanism for the analysis and deconstruction of plans and policies. It is helpful to discern fantasies and/or false logics from truths (those contingencies that are missed or cannot be expressed in a dominant system). Whether it is possible to find an alternative to the current system of planning depends on the fantasies and the desire of finding solutions for urban issues. Some planning scholars believe we need fantasies to introduce new concepts and approaches to planning. However, as Gunder and Winkler (2021) argue in their latest work, we may need approaches and theories beyond Western contexts and theories to suggest alternative ideas and theories to the hegemonic system of capitalism in planning and policy making theory and practice. Elham Bahmanteymouri
References Bahmanteymouri, E. (2021). A Lacanian understanding of urban development plans under the neoliberal discourse. Planning Theory, 20(3), 231–254. Evans, D. (2006 [1996]). An introductory dictionary of Lacanian psychoanalysis. Routledge. Gunder, M. (2003). Passionate planning for the others’ desire: An agonistic response to the dark side of planning. Progress in Planning, 60(3), 235–319. Gunder, M. (2010). Planning as the ideology of (neoliberal) space. Planning Theory, 9(4), 298–314. Gunder, M., & Hillier, J. (2009). Planning in ten words or less. Ashgate. Gunder, M., & Winkler, T. (2021). Ontocartography as a flat ontological method for meta-ethical evaluation of situated spatial planning values. disP-The Planning Review, 57(2), 78–89. Jabareen, Y. (2017). Hegemonic planning and marginalizing people. In M. Gunder, A. Madanipour, & V. Watson, (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of planning theory (pp. 289–301). Routledge. Mohammadzadeh, M. (2014). The neoliberalised city fantasy: The place of desire and discontent (Doctoral dissertation, ResearchSpace@ Auckland). Tajbakhsh, K. (2000). The promise of the city: Space, identity, and politics in
lacanian approaches to planning 213 contemporary social thought. University of California Press. Wang, C. (2022). Do planning concepts matter? A Lacanian interpretation of the urban village in a British context. Planning Theory, 21(2), 155–180.
See also: big Lacan’s four gic planning, sion/exclusion, knowledge
Other, desire, assemblage, discourses, power, strateideology, narrative, incluline of flight, strata, power/
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70. Land consolidation
2021) and South Asia (Niroula & Thapa, 2005) and China are most active in addressing land fragmentation with the help of land consolidation projects.
Introduction: land fragmentation When agricultural parcels are divided because of inheritance and traded between farmers, land fragmentation is the result. This causes suboptimalities for agricultural production, leading to disparities in income of urban and rural population, resulting in active government-led facilitation of defragmentation, especially in the decades just after WWII. Land fragmentation has become a confusing term because it can refer to one of the following two things: Def. 1: the land of each farmer lies scattered in many parcels and across a large area (number of parcels per farm problem). Def. 2: the land available in a given area is divided over too many farmers (farm size problem). A farmer who has his land divided into too many parcels (Def. 1) will suffer production suboptimalities. There will be increased travel times between the parcels, more loss of harvest at the edges because fragmentation results in more relative edge length, and more total time needed for cultivation because machines will need to turn more when compared to having the same amount of land in one parcel. The upside of fragmentation is that the risk of all crops being lost by pests or damaged by extreme weather is lower when the fields are spread over a larger area. In areas where individual farmers had dozens of parcels, efforts emerged to redress this problem as early as the thirteenth century. Mechanization and agricultural intensification raised the urgency of rearranging the parcels of farmers into fewer and bigger parcels that are closer to home. Wealth increase of the urban population amplifies urgency. That explains why in the decades after the World Wars government programs across Europe (Vitikainen, 2004) and Japan targeted improvement of agricultural production conditions by land consolidation. The concept has been intensively used across Western Europe from the 1960s to the 1980s. It was adopted in Eastern Europe to redress the consequences of decollectivization in the 1990s (Van Dijk, 2003). At the moment Africa (Asiama et al.,
Land consolidation Land consolidation refers to making the parcel map of every owner in a specified area denser. However, two parcels cannot be in the same place at the same time. So, for each parcel A that is relocated closer to its owner, another person’s parcel B will need to be relocated as well, maybe best being sent to parcel C of a third owner, and so on. Effective consolidation of agricultural parcels therefore requires reshuffling many parcels at the same time, as one big puzzle, in such a way that all benefit. Much research has been published about computer models (for instance, Martínez et al., 2013) that calculate what rearrangement leads to the highest overall improvement of production circumstances, honoring the abundance of objectives of the respective participating landowners. The newly arranged properties often necessitate the adjustment of the drainage canal pattern, addition of new and wider roads to the parcels and even relocation of farm buildings. Investments like these are often part of land consolidation projects, the costs of which be borne by all participating landowners. The complexity of this puzzle demands the integration of many separate interests – interests that are highly interdependent. The need for mutual trust, fair distribution of the benefits as well as the costs and majority rule over unwilling individuals gave rise to complex procedures specified by law. Typically, the division of ownership rights, as well as establishment of the value of the respective properties, needs to be inventoried before the consolidation project with the highest accuracy. Then the individual wishes are collected. Then a plan for the adjusted arrangement of property is made. A vote among all landowners is taken about the plan requiring to pass a certain threshold. The new parcellation is then formalized in the land registry, road and water works are executed and payments are collected.
Beyond agriculture The consolidation plan can even accommodate non-agricultural uses. A road authority
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land consolidation 215 planning to widen a highway may acquire random parcels in an area next to the highway after which a land consolidation project may relocate these parcels within the highway alignment, while moving other properties out of that zone. A similar pursuit of rearrangement of parcels has later been done in cities (urban land consolidation) as well by relocating land held by real estate developers, the city and other property owners. Using land consolidation for more land use functions than agriculture alone (called multifunctional land consolidation) is contested. Rearrangement of private property for the sake of the common good is still a highly intrusive matter, legally speaking. When a limited group of farmers with a joint interest mutually agree on the relocation plan by majority voting, the individual sphere and the collective interest are considered to be in balance. However, introducing road authorities, water boards, provincial governments, energy firms for example in the project will cause power imbalances that have raised the question if coerced interventions in private properties are justified. Most national laws permit this only to a limited extent.
Conclusion The academic literature, apart from the geographical focus indicated above, can be divided in their approaches that are either on: a) the political and economic context of land consolidation programs, b) the procedural workings of projects, c) the computer models enabling designing and ex-ante evaluating projected parcellations and d) the post-project impacts on businesses, people and the natural environment. An example of ex-post impact assessment is found in Crecente et al. (2002). The targeted enlargement of farms, thus addressing Def. 2, requires a process called [Land Banking]. In that case, the land of
small owners is being purchased strategically and titles are held temporarily in a land bank. The land bank can transfer parcels to farms that indicate they want to grow. This way, the intransparencies and transaction costs of the market in agricultural land are overcome. A land consolidation project may include land bank parcels, thus reducing the two forms of land fragmentation in one process. Terry van Dijk
References Asiama, K. O., Voss, W., Bennett, R., & Rubanje, I. (2021). Land consolidation activities in Sub-Saharan Africa towards the agenda 2030: A tale of three countries. Land Use Policy, 101, 105140. Crecente, R., Alvarez, C., & Fra, U. (2002). Economic, social and environmental impact of land consolidation in Galicia. Land Use Policy, 19(2), 135–147. Martínez, R., Solla, M., Arias, P., & Armesto, J. (2013). Semi-automatic land consolidation software based on geographic information systems. Computers and Electronics in Agriculture, 97, 1–5. Niroula, G. S., & Thapa, G. B. (2005). Impacts and causes of land fragmentation, and lessons learned from land consolidation in South Asia. Land Use Policy, 22(4), 358–372. Van Dijk, T. (2003). Dealing with Central European land fragmentation. Eburon. Vitikainen, A. (2004). An overview of land consolidation in Europe. Nordic Journal of Surveying and Real Estate Research, 1(1). See also: policy integration, regional planning, regional design, institutions, strategy, inclusion/exclusion, transition, modernism, expertise and local knowledge, ecosystemsbased governance, blueprint planning, legibility
terry van dijk
71. Legibility Definition We define legibility as the extent to which a landscape shows coherences that enable orientation in time and space. This possibility arises when connections between the landscape system and the landscape image are visible (Hendriks & Stobbelaar, 2003).
Brief history For the description of the concept of ‘legibility’, people often refer to the work of the American geographer Lynch, who introduced it in 1960 in his The image of the city. Lynch stated that paths, edges, districts, nodes and landmarks are the five elements in the urban environment that contribute to legibility. Legibility is also a central concept in the work of Kaplan and Kaplan (1989), prominent figures in environmental psychology. In addition to ‘complexity’, ‘coherence’ and ‘mystery’, they believe it is a predictor of people’s preference for landscapes. Legibility here is the ease with which a situation can be understood and remembered. We characterize this form of legibility as superficial legibility (see Figure 71.2). At the end of the last century, the term legibility was given a new impulse by writer and poet Willem Van Toorn. Van Toorn advocates a layout of the landscape that enables people to meaningfully answer the question ‘where am I’ (Van Toorn, 2000). According to him, it is an enrichment for people’s personal world of experience if the landscape in which they live and work is interesting, layered and rich in elements from different historical periods. ‘Culture, in all its manifestations, helps a person to find his place in place and time, to experience himself in relation to his environment’, according to Van Toorn (2000). We characterize Van Toorn’s legibility, which focuses on the ‘where question’, as geographical legibility. Another school, of which the philosopher Keulartz is a representative, sees a clear connection between the landscape and the personal identity of people (Keulartz, 2000). According to him, the old cultural landscape is pre-eminently a familiar landscape, to which people are attached and in which they feel at home and feel safe: ‘This landscape
therefore owes its appeal not so much to its complexity or secrecy, but rather to its coherence and, above all, to its legibility. The old cultural landscape contains a wealth of stories and it shows who we are and where we come from’. According to Keulartz, the landscape is therefore important for the formation of our personal identity. However, the identityforming significance of the ancient cultural landscape is not limited to individual biography, but extends to collective history. We characterize this form of legibility as existential legibility. We can conclude that legibility is something of the human (what can be read in it) and something of the physical landscape (what can be read in it) and that there are at least three layers in the concept of legibility: ●
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Superficial legibility: the ease with which a situation can be understood and remembered. Geographical legibility: the extent to which a landscape answers the question ‘where am I (in time and space)’. Existential legibility: the extent to which a landscape answers the question ‘who am I?’, which implies that the question ‘where am I?’ is also answered.
Method and legibility Orientation is thus an important function of the legible landscape. In much literature, ‘orientation in space’ and ‘orientation in time’ are treated as two separate concepts. ‘Orientation in space’ has mainly been elaborated with regard to the spatial structure of the landscape. In doing so, they refer back to Lynch’s (1960) concept of ‘legibility’. It mainly concerns horizontal patterns and elements that say something about the place or region, for example in terms of openness or planting patterns. ‘Orientation in time’ is often elaborated in relation to the historical aspect of time. This concerns landscape elements and patterns with the same appearance for a long time. They contribute to the recognizability of the landscape and provide information about the development history of the area. This is important, among other things, for common historical awareness and for educational purposes. In addition, the individual also needs places or elements that played a role in his past. The landscape then takes on the function of a clock that people can read to determine their personal time. In addition to
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Source: Hendriks & Stobbelaar, 2003.
Figure 71.1 Coherence between landscape system and landscape image
Source: Lynch, 1960.
Figure 71.2 The legibility elements of a city
the horizontal and historical aspects, people can also orient themselves by the vertical and cyclical aspects of the landscape. The vertical aspect of landscapes relates to what is told about the abiotic properties of a place by land use, flora and fauna, among other things. The cyclical facet relates to natural rhythms in the landscape: the course of day and night, the tides and the seasons. Rhythms and cycles play an important role in the perception of time. Lynch (1972) says the following about this: ‘To support your internal experience of time you need external
stimuli through light, colours, smells, symbols, sounds in the environment that appear in certain rhythms. Natural rhythms help to harmonize the perception of inner and outer time’. An important cycle is the rhythm of the seasons. Seasons are recognizable and experienceable for everyone and are important in the perception and appreciation of landscapes (Coeterier, 2001). Taken together, there are four aspects to or dimensions of a landscape to which the orientation function is linked, namely the vertical, horizontal, cyclical and historical facets. derk jan stobbelaar
218 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design All four have to do with orientation in time as well as with orientation in space. Spatial and temporal aspects can only be distinguished analytically. In the perception and experience of the landscape, they are inextricably linked. This will become clear with some examples. The geometric pattern of roads and watercourses in the Beemster, the land use and the farms provide clues about being in a polder (perhaps even that you are in the Beemster), as well as reflecting a time frame from the seventeenth century. The characteristics of this landscape thus allow an orientation in time, and at the same time an orientation in space because the area can be distinguished from another area. Or: flowering orchards and large cooling sheds simultaneously tell you that you are in the Betuwe and that it is spring. This means that time aspects also contribute to the orientation in space and spatial aspects also contribute to the orientation in time. In addition to the question ‘where am I?’, the landscape simultaneously answers the question ‘what time is this place’ (Lynch, 1972). The direction of the observer’s gaze determines whether temporal or spatial aspects are observed, not the physical landscape.
Reading the landscape and production of meaning Many authors take it for granted that a readable landscape is also a high quality landscape. But the question is always: what do you want to read in the landscape? It is therefore important to develop a reference image that the region-specific relationships must meet. This reference image is based on scientific knowledge, policy and the wishes of people (residents, visitors) about the region. Charles Sanders Peirce says landscape is land imbued with meaning. In other words, landscape is the sign in which land takes on meaning. A sign can be described as something (a thing, an event) that tells people something. Peirce describes three aspects of signs. ●
First of all, there must be something that can be perceived that bears the sign. A bearer becomes a sign on the basis of rules, agreements or customs that are valid in a culture or a community.
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The second aspect of signs is that it always refers to something (has coherence with, you could say). The reference can be to a concrete object or to objects in general and can be about a likeness, an actual relationship or symbols. Third: it leads to an interpretation and a follow-up action (an act, a statement, or a new thought).
Because every sign is interpreted and every interpretation produces new signs, a chain of signs is created. The set of signs forms a language, so you can say that the landscape speaks a language that you can read. Derk Jan Stobbelaar
Bibliography Coeterier, F. (2001). De beleving van tijd. Alterra rapport 347. De Haas, W. (2022). Het landschap verstaan. Op zoek naar betekenis in het spoor van Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance. Uitgeverij De Graaff. Hendriks, K., & Stobbelaar, D. J. (2003). Landbouw in een leesbaar landschap. Hoe gangbare en biologische landbouwbedrijven bijdragen aan landschapskwaliteit. Uitgeverij Blauwdruk. Wageningen, Proefschrift Wageningen Universiteit. Kaplan, R. en Kaplan, s. (1989). The experience of nature: A psychological perspective. Cambridge University Press. Keulartz, J. (2000). Naar een beschaafde strijd om de natuur. In J. Keulartz (red.), Rustig, ruig en rationeel. Filosofische debatten over de verhouding cultuur – natuur. Kasteel Groeneveld. Lynch, K. (1960). The image of the city. Lynch, K. (1972). What time is this place? The Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT Press. Peirce, C. S. (1955) Philosophical writings of Peirce (J. Buchler, Ed.). Dover Publications. Van Toorn, W. (2000). Waar ben ik? In J. Keulartz (red.), Rustig, ruig en rationeel. Filosofische debatten over de verhouding cultuur – natuur. Kasteel Groeneveld. See also: design, genius loci, heritage, identity, modernism, narrative, object formation, regional design, storytelling, new urbanism, neighbourhood design, creativity, culture
72. Line of flight
B.C.: The Geology of Morals (Who Does the Earth Think It Is?)’. Within this chapter, Deleuze and Guattari form a distinction between two kinds of line of flight. In the first, Deleuze and Guattari note that,
Key definition The function of deterritorialisation (D) is the movement by which ‘one’ leaves the territory. It is the operation of the line of flight. There are very different cases. D may be overlaid by a compensatory reterritorialization obstructing the line of flight (1987, p. 508).
Key people, discussion As Deleuze and Guattari note, the line of flight is operationalised as deterritorialisation within the assemblage (see also 1987, p. 32). Whilst the ‘line of flight’ has attracted very little interest within the spatial disciplines, the connected concept of deterritorialisation has been employed by many theorists working in the fields of urban and economic studies. Within this body of literature, the concept is mostly used to describe processes of globalisation and the impact that globalisation has on local territories (see O’Tuathail, 1999; Hagedorn & Bloom, 2003; Elden, 2005; Behr, 2008). This association between deterritorialisation and globalisation not only overlooks the relationship between deterritorialisation and the line of flight, it mostly overlooks the important role this concept plays in the Deleuzoguattarian assemblage. We can identify attempts to explore this link within geography and urban studies literature. But, as noted in the assemblage entry, such conceptions of deterritorialisation are often framed by ‘assemblage thinking’ and thus belong to a much broader conception. Indeed, Müller (2015) and Dovey et al. (2017) both develop their definitions of the term by linking it to interpretations of the Deleuzoguattarian assemblage and the assemblage as used in Actor Network Theory.
A Deleuzoguattarian definition of the line of flight and deterritorialisation To develop a Deleuzoguattarian conception of these two connected concepts I would like to start by drawing on the third chapter, ‘10,000
Since the associated milieu always confronts a milieu of exteriority with which the animal is engaged and in which it takes necessary risks, a line of flight must be preserved to enable the animal to regain its associated milieu when danger appears. (1987, p. 55)
In this description, the line of flight is described as something integral to the production of the territorial assemblage. Importantly, this is described as effort to ‘preserve’ a line of flight, thus suggesting that the line of flight is purposeful and strategic. Deleuze and Guattari go on to note that, A second kind of line of flight arises when the associated milieu is rocked by blows from the exterior. (1987, p. 55)
Rather than something produced within the territory, here the line of flight refers to a force generated from ‘outside’ the territory i.e., outside the associated milieu from which the territory is formed. The line of flight is here described as a ‘chance’ occurrence (see also (1987, pp. 24–25). Whilst there are important differences in these two kinds of line of flight, Deleuze and Guattari tell us that both kinds of lines of flight trigger a transformation in the territorial assemblage, described as a ‘line of deterritorialisation’. As he notes: The assemblage is also divided along another axis. Its territoriality (content and expression included) is only a first aspect; the other aspect is constituted by lines of deterritorialization that cut across it and carry it away. (1987, p. 504)
This line of deterritorialisation breaks down the assemblage allowing the materials that form it to return to the exterior milieu, leading to the formation of a new territory or, alternative, to transition into an interior milieu (see entry for assemblage). Gareth Abrahams
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References Behr, H. (2008). Deterritorialisation and the transformation of statehood: The paradox of globalisation. Geopolitics, 13(2), 359–382. Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987 [1980]). A Thousand Plateaus. The University of Minnesota Press. Dovey, K., Rao, F., & Pafka, E. (2017). Agglomeration and assemblage: Deterritorialising urban theory. Urban Studies, 55(2), 263–273. Elden, S. (2005). Missing the point: Globalization, deterritorialization and the space of the world. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 30(1), 8–19.
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Hagedorn, K. J., & Bloom, P. J. (2003). Introduction. Emergences: Journal for the Study of Media and Composite Cultures, 13(1–2), 3–8. Müller, M. (2015). Assemblages and actornetworks: Rethinking socio-material power, politics and space. Geography Compass, 9(1), 27–41. Ó Tuathail, G. (1999). Borderless worlds? Problematising discourses of deterritorialisation. Geopolitics, 4(2), 139–154. See also: assemblage, strata, creativity, social-ecological systems, innovation, power in planning, power/knowledge, narrative, self-organization, complexity
73. Livelihoods, planning for
in the 1990s and beyond, proved very influential, and by now the concept has been adopted in a variety of disciplines beyond the field of development studies: anthropology, geography, sociology and economics itself. This success indicates shifts in development studPlanning and development ies, in the economics disciplines, and within Planning, and to a lesser degree design, have the international organizations themselves. been instrumentalized to trigger or support The World Bank, to name an influential one, ‘development’, understood in a literal sense, started to promote decentralized forms of building more, but also often in a broader governance, participatory forms of developsense. Many interventions under the label ment and a sensitivity to local knowledges, ‘development’, in less prosperous countries, in the early 2000s, while influential political have in fact been planning projects, projects scientists and economists started to change or institutional reform attempts focusing on their view on informality. Meanwhile, Latin changing the organization of space or the American theorists and politicians strongly opposed the reduction of quality of life to rules governing that organization. Planning for ‘development’ could then be GDP growth, not surprisingly given the fact seen as focusing on discrete and urgent prob- that already extreme inequality could easily lems (water provision, sanitation, erosion pre- be aggravated by a neoliberal reform focus. Livelihoods thinking forces us to look at vention, agricultural productivity), or more broadly, encouraging economic development. the interface between social and ecological Economic development in turn, was, in the systems, as it takes into account local undertwentieth century and even beyond, usu- standings of resources, value, quality of life ally understood in terms of the Washington and local understandings of the environconsensus, that is, terms promoted by inter- ment, as a landscape of risk and opportunity. national actors such as World Bank, IMF, Communities are understood as uniquely OECD and UN affiliates. This means that coupled to an environment, and their institudevelopment was translated as economic tions both structure themselves and that envidevelopment and that it was narrowed down ronment. Each community is marked by a set to a small set of indicators, including GDP of livelihoods and each livelihood requires growth, debt ratios, export growth, tax rates access to a set of resources, which can be and institutional reform aiming at reducing found in one or many places in or around the community. Internal and external environtrade and investment barriers. Critiques of neoclassical economics, neo- ments thus have to be attuned, and individuals liberal market reform, and modernist devel- making a livelihood need to be able to naviopment principles became widespread as gate both internal and external, social and soon as international organizations started to ecological environments. Livelihoods in this sense become possible promote them. One can add that American aid and policy models did not always dif- when internal structures in the community fer much from Soviet ideas and practices in make it possible to read, understand, appredeveloping countries. Indeed, Soviets are no ciate, navigate, use and possibly transform capitalists, but in developing countries, many ecological environments. Detailed knowledge policies converged with the West, under the of that environment allows locals to observe aegis of modernist development and plan- change, risk, risky change, and to adjust ning ideas. Postcolonial critics in developing behaviour to manage social-ecological risk. countries, and other critics in the West (less That detailed knowledge comes from individin the USSR) were wary of a reduction of ual experience, from the set of roles and rules development to economic growth, while post- evolved in the community, and this happened development theorists questioned the idea of in a co-evolution between community and environment. One cannot reduce this process development itself. to a use of ‘resources’, as overall qualities of the environment might be just as relevant. Livelihoods Van Assche et al. (2017) insist that One of the concepts which emerged as rel- ‘Livelihoods represent ways of constructing evant in the crystallization of alternatives is and navigating social–ecological systems as that of livelihoods. The work of Ian Scoones, they offer ways to survive, ways to identify, 221
222 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design and ways to climb the social ladder’. Again, thriving is not reduced to surviving, nor to resource use. Livelihoods combine aspects of cultural and material worlds and entail aspects of both construction and navigation of social-ecological systems. Something exists in the environment, can be of use, is valued for cultural reasons, roles and forms of exchange develop around it, and later the ecosystems is altered to accommodate these new social structures and economic mechanisms. Sustainable livelihoods are those livelihoods where the particular entangling of social and ecological can stabilize itself, where neither social nor ecological instability ensues. Assessing risk and opportunity needs to happen in a way that assumes the value of such stability.
Planning and critiques Planning for livelihoods therefore needs to be planning cognizant of social-ecological systems. The environment cannot be ignored, nor taken for a natural or ideally natural outside. While what constitutes as valuable for people, and valuable in their environment, cannot be taken for granted, has to be established through careful observation, collaboration, participation. Planning for livelihoods needs to be adaptive planning, and planning carefully aware of the variety of livelihoods, of appreciations and uses of various places and resources. Moreover, it needs to take into account the unique combinations of formal and informal institutions marking the community. It cannot rely on routine application of formal institutions (e.g., types of plans) used elsewhere and seen as standard. Critiques of livelihoods approaches might relegate them to the margin, to less modernized, less prosperous areas where communities are more dependent on their environment. Modernization can then be seen as desirable,
as a breaking away from potentially oppressive rules and traditions, from a dependence on the ecological environment, on a restrictive set of low-income livelihoods. We would argue that these critiques must be taken seriously, but, on the other hand, that they cannot be used as arguments to revert to modernist development and planning approaches blind to cultural and ecological context. Martijn Duineveld, Raoul Beunen and Kristof Van Assche, Editors
Bibliography Escobar, A. (2007). ‘Post-development’ as concept and social practice. In A. Ziai (Ed.), Exploring post-development (pp. 28–42). Routledge. Ferrol-Schulte, D., Wolff, M., Ferse, S., & Glaser, M. (2013). Sustainable livelihoods approach in tropical coastal and marine social–ecological systems: A review. Marine Policy, 42, 253–258. Scoones, I. (1996). Hazards and opportunities: Farming livelihoods in dryland Africa. Lessons from Zimbabwe. Zed Books. Scoones, I. (2009). Livelihoods perspectives and rural development. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 36(1), 171–196. Van Assche, K., Beunen, R., Duineveld, M., & Gruezmacher, M. (2017). Power/knowledge and natural resource management: Foucaultian foundations in the analysis of adaptive governance. Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning, 19(3), 308–322. See also: social-ecological systems, power/ knowledge, participation, risk, post-colonialism, colonial legacies, modernism, informality, informal settlements, commons, assemblage, social justice, environmental justice
martijn duineveld, raoul beunen and kristof van assche
74. Long-term perspectives and futures Key definition Long term is an adjective or adverb emphasizing that planning is a profession that incorporates the needs of future generations and needs of the natural ecosystem – involving both living and non-living entities – when preparing, deciding upon, implementing, and evaluating spatial interventions.
an essay titled ‘Where has the future gone?’ that planning has actually become more like spatial management, focusing on short-term issues rather than long-term considerations. Couclelis’s lament mostly predated the widespread concerns about creeping long-term issues of environmental degradation and the climate crisis, that planning is increasingly engaging with. Our current biophysical predicament corroborates the importance of a type of planning in which the long term is center stage. The long term, however, is a complex and multidimensional concept, which can be conceived through different lenses.
Perspectives on the long term
An ever-present yet increasingly timely concept Planning distinguishes itself from neighboring and partly overlapping disciplines like public administration and policy sciences through its explicit orientation towards the future. In the introduction to the Research Companion to Planning Theory, Jean Hillier helpfully summarizes a set of definitions of planning, which ‘all embrace an orientation towards the future’ (Hillier & Healey, 2010, pp. 12–13). Thus, planning is ‘a forward-looking activity’ (Friedmann), a ‘deliberative forethought’ (Alexander), ‘persuasive storytelling about the future’ (Throgmorton), the ‘selfconscious collective efforts to re-imagine a city’ (Healey) or ‘the investigation of “virtualities” unseen in the present’ (Hillier herself). Connected to this orientation towards the future is a second key characteristic of planning: a focus on spatial interventions. Planning is about neighborhood revitalizations, urban visions or European territorial cohesion schemes. While the belief in physical determinism is not so prominent anymore (though not gone), such issues all have a physical component, they consider for instance soil, the built environment or infrastructures. Accordingly, planning entails interventions that are to an important extent irreversible or at least difficult and costly to adapt. In other words: planning decisions have effects that materialize far into the future. In a way ‘long-term planning’ is a pleonasm, an argument underlined by scholars pointing out that planning should always be about the long term but, in fact, sometimes seems to focus more on the short term. For instance, Helen Couclelis (2005) warned in
While the long term permeates planning, different analytical dimensions can be discerned to discuss what ‘the long term’ implies. Four concepts are applicable to almost any planning situation: (1) (2) (3) (4)
long-term problems, long-term solutions, long-term actors, long-term policy processes.
Long-term problems: organizations shaping spatial interventions are faced with slow-onset phenomena and creeping crises that have no clear beginning or end, have cumulating impacts that build up over a long time period, and that last for at least a human generation and are characterized by deep uncertainty. Many of today’s slow-onset phenomena are linked to environmental problems, and a clear example is adaptation to sea level rise in low-lying countries like Bangladesh or the Netherlands. Long-term solutions: the lifespan of spatial structures spans decades. A windmill will last on average 20 years, a sewerage system 60–70 years, and a sea lock or well-constructed house 100 years or more. When we turn to the natural system, lifespans typically vastly expand: a single oak tree can easily be 300 years and sand dunes forming natural flood defenses, can be 1000 to 5000 years old. While the lifespans of spatial structures developed by humans and natural systems differ, they both tend to have a long-term orientation compared to the systems governing them, like electoral cycles, business models and cost-benefit analyses.
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224 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design Long-term actors: in principle, professional planners and planning bodies (e.g., governments) could be the ‘guardians of the long term’, withstanding the storms of the short term spurred by electoral cycles, shortterm investment schemes, and all kinds of actors who prioritize the short term over the long term. Planning reality, however, is murkier. The broad gamut of involved planning actors (organizations, individuals, entrepreneurs, etc.) has time horizons, which vary not only per actor but also per situation. A time horizon is a temporal perspective that focuses on a fixed endpoint to look back or forward in time. Such time horizons can be connected to the next election, the realization of large-scale infrastructure, the end of the payback period in a business model or the year a spatial vision focuses on, like 2050. Accordingly, in their planning craft, actors adhering to a long-term time horizon need to cross short-term cycles of elections, decision-making and budgeting. Long-term policy processes: planning processes that engage with strategic choices, such as infrastructure and large-scale zoning decisions tend to have a long preparatory phase before implementation. In democracies, because of their impact, the time to debate such issues is much longer and several instruments can be used to explore desirable spatial futures, such as cost-benefit analysis, scenario planning, and environmental impact assessment. Accordingly, planning decisions that are envisioned to have a long-term impact, also have a long lead time. During this lead time, political preferences, and the public mood towards the problems or solutions discussed, may change. The same goes for policy processes about creeping long-term issues, such as climate mitigation and climate adaptation with their slow onset and slow closure (Pot et al., 2022).
Strategy, adaptation and anticipation Within the planning debate, three ideal-typical approaches to engage with the long term can be discerned, which each have a distinct conceptual basis and dominant practice. Strategic planning refers to a publicsector-led process through which a longterm vision and means for implementations and actions are produced that shape what a place is or can become (Albrechts, 2004). peter pelzer and wieke pot
Key activities belonging to strategic planning are the creation of a long-term vision; an analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats; an analysis of external trends and forces, determining actions and means for making decisions and implementation; and developing a plan to incorporate feedback and revisions based on monitoring protocols. The process of strategic planning involves key public and private stakeholders, identifying shared concerns and interests and through collaboration and negotiation reaching particular agreements and consensus. The process is therefore an interaction between top-down dynamics (a vision that is translated into long-term and short-term actions and standard operating procedures) and bottomup dynamics (involving a plurality of actors to interact about trends, forces, strengths, weaknesses and desired futures). Adaptive planning refers to developing plans and strategies which allow for continual reflection and adaptation to cope with uncertainty. Adaptative planning is opposed to developing optimal plans to control uncertainties. Instead, uncertainties should be embraced and exploited for the opportunities they give rise to (Rauws, 2017). Core characteristics of adaptive planning are dealing with uncertainty, responding to changing circumstances, and allowing for flexibility to incorporate changes. Key activities that are part of adaptive planning are: doing experiments and pilot projects to find out which solutions will remain effective under changing circumstances, using monitoring to learn more about the changing circumstances and how spatial interventions respond to these, and establishing a collaborative process that maximizes ‘learning by doing’ between public, private and societal actors. The adaptive planning process is characterized by an iterative process with feedback loops to make sure that lessons learned can be incorporated into future decisions. Anticipatory planning takes as a starting point that an engagement with the long term requires an exploration of possible, plausible and preferable spatial futures. A key assumption of this approach is that images of the future shape decisions in the present and it is accordingly crucial to carefully consider different constructions of the future. Just like adaptive planning, the anticipatory approach embraces rather than reduces uncertainty. A
long-term perspectives and futures 225 well-known example is scenario planning in which different spatial futures are created and compared to set out courses of intervention is a well-rehearsed approach (e.g., Goodspeed, 2019). There is a wealth of models, tools and instruments to practice anticipatory planning, such as scenarios, planning support systems, games and visioning techniques. Importantly, the goal of using foresight techniques is also not limited to developing (sets of) possible, plausible or desirable futures. Equally critical is an inclusive process through which a variety of stakeholders can increase their understanding of the issue and their vocabulary to talk about future uncertainties. Complementarily, some scholars argue that it might prove more fruitful to rather focus on dramaturgy rather than tools, because such ‘techniques of futuring’ shed more light on the actual performance of anticipatory planning (Hajer & Pelzer, 2018).
Critical reflection Conceptually, the long term has always been a defining element of planning, although academic interest has varied and other perspectives have become at least as prominent, such as participation and power. For planning practice, the picture is more congruent: the adverb short term seems apt to characterize the past decades. Our current biophysical predicament (a combined biodiversity and climate crisis), however, necessitates a renewed and revived engagement with the long term in planning. Hereby, it is crucial to acknowledge that an emphasis on the long term is not unproblematic. First of all, a focus on the long term might direct policy attention away from problems and inequalities experienced in the present and may result in a kind of professional escapism animated by scenarios and quantitative models. Planners and especially public officials are also accountable to present-day citizen needs, will need to adapt to changing insights and conditions and will need to respond to abrupt shocks if they occur. The craft of planning is doing exactly that, while simultaneously keeping an eye on the longterm horizon. Furthermore, the engagement with the long term in planning also leads to a dilemma about how to account for future generations’ needs within planning processes: does dealing with and preparing for the long term require
planning actors to leave as many options open as possible for future generations to come so that future human beings have the flexibility to adjust and decide for themselves what they would want? Or is dealing with the long term a matter of conserving and preserving certain existing physical structures and values, such as historical buildings and nature reserves? For planners, these are not merely philosophical questions, as several decisions in the now cannot be undone and thus have consequences for those inhabiting the futures we now plan. Finally, in this entry, we have mostly discussed the long term from a Global North and anthropocentric perspective. This is a limited view and other accounts are possible and needed. Several scholars convincingly argued that planners have something to learn from indigenous cultures, both in their temporal orientation (for instance: circular, rather than linear) and their connection to nature (for instance: relational rather than as a resource). Just like the practice of planning itself, the conceptualization of the long term requires continuous reflection and openness to new perspectives. Peter Pelzer and Wieke Pot
References Albrechts, L. (2004). Strategic (spatial) planning reexamined. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 31(5), 743–758. Couclelis, H. (2005). “Where has the future gone?” Rethinking the role of integrated land-use models in spatial planning. Environment and Planning A, 37(8), 1353–1371. Goodspeed, R. (2019). Scenario planning: Embracing uncertainty to make better decisions. Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. Hajer, M. A., & Pelzer, P. (2018). 2050— An energetic Odyssey: Understanding ‘techniques of futuring’ in the transition towards renewable energy. Energy Research and Social Science, 44, 222–231. Hillier, J., & Healey, P. (Eds.). (2010). The Ashgate research companion to planning theory: Conceptual challenges for spatial planning. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. Pot, W., Scherpenisse, J., & ’t Hart, P. (2023). Robust governance for the long term and the heat of the moment Temporal strategies peter pelzer and wieke pot
226 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design for coping with dual crises. Public Administration, 101(1), 221–235. Rauws, W. (2017). Embracing uncertainty without abandoning planning. disP – The Planning Review, 53(1), 32–45.
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See also: strategic planning, complexity, narrative, institutions, transition, futures and visions, storytelling, strategy, ideology, earthly attachments in the Anthropocene
75. Master signifiers From signifier to master signifier Master signifier is one of the key concepts of Lacanian psychoanalysis and discourse theory. This concept is largely utilised in psychology, philosophy, political studies, sociology and planning, among other disciplines, to investigate the role of discourses in shaping individual and social identities, relations and knowledge. Lacan takes the term ‘signifier’ from the work of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. For Saussure, a signifier is the ‘acoustic image’, the mental image of such a sound, which signifies a signified (Evans, 2006). However, the signifier and the signified are mutually interdependent. Lacan considers the signifier as essential in generating the signified. Lacan (2006) argues that the sign does not represent something for someone; rather, ‘a signifier is what represents the subject to another signifier’ (p. 694). For Lacan, ‘a language is not composed of signs but of signifiers’ (Evans, 2006, p. 186). The Lacanian definition of signifier includes units of language that are smaller than words, such as morphemes and phonemes, larger than words, such as phrases and sentences, and non-linguistic things such as objects, relationships and symptomatic acts. ‘What interests Lacan is not the phenomena (external appearance) of language, but the way language positions the subject in a symbolic structure’ (Evans, 2006, p. 41). Signifiers are subjected to double conditions: being reducible to ultimate differential elements and combining according to the laws of a closed language/ symbolic order. However, a signifier cannot signify the subject. The signifier does not provide a guide to reality but presents myriad relations with other signifiers. The only characteristic of a signifier is its difference from the other elements in the language system. The signifier’s meaning changes based on the imposition that it occupies in the structure. Signification is a process that is unable to generate a stable bond between the signifier and the signified, but temporally produces the illusion of the meaning signified. The inadequacy of the signifier creates ‘the problem of slippage from one term of reference unable in itself to fix a given meaning to another, and then another,
and so on ad infinitum in an indefinite process which fails to arrest the slide of deferred meaning’ (Hook & Vanheule, 2016, p. 2). In other words, meaning is not found in any one signifier, but in the play between signifiers along the signifying chain and is therefore unstable: ‘it is in the chain of the signifier that the meaning insists, but none of its elements consists in the signification of which it is at the moment capable’ (Evans, 2006, p. 188).
Empty masters? In political studies, Laclau presents the ‘empty signifier’ based on Lacan’s master signifier. He ‘draws attention to the fact that master signifiers have no intrinsic or essential meaning, and that they permit for an endless succession of varying applications and extensions’ (Hook & Vanheule, 2016, p. 4). Laclau discusses an empty signifier as ‘meaning everything and nothing – comfort terms – all things to all people’ (Gunder & Hillier, 2009, p. 1). Lacan’s master signifier and Laclau’s empty signifier are often used interchangeably in most cases (Davidson, 2010). For Lacan, there are certain signifiers, ‘master signifiers’, that function as points de capiton, anchoring points, or nodal points, within any system of signs. Master signifiers are empty or lacking in content. However, these point to the fact that ‘signified and signifier are knotted together’ (Evans, 2006, p. 151). Master signifiers facilitate the smooth exchange of signifiers within a language system. Master signifiers are the points in the signifying chain at which ‘the signifier stops the otherwise endless movement of the signification’ (Evans, 2006, p. 151). They are crucial in the identification of human subjects. The subject needs a set of master signifiers as fundamental anchoring points between the signified and the signifier in a sign system. Master signifiers are the positioning which articulated systems need in order to establish a certain ‘identity’ of perception of the subject. A minimum number of these master signifiers is required for a person to be called normal, and when they are not established, or when they give way, the result is psychosis.
Identity and ideology The subject’s identity is constituted in wider society by a range of master signifiers such as planners. The term ‘planner’ is a master signifier that is pervasively used to describe a
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228 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design group of individuals, and subsequently shapes the identifications of the group who believe they are in a discipline based on a set of contested and contestable meanings. Master signifiers are invested in an individual’s identity and ‘constitute a powerful positive or negative value’ (Bracher, 1988, p. 35). Master signifiers shape the subject’s ego-ideal, which reveals their core beliefs, values, and a sense of self-recognition of who they are, or so they believe. Gunder and Hillier (2009) argue that ‘sustainability acts as a highly-valued identify-shaping concept for its adherents, especially spatial planners, even though they still appear to have great difficulty with defining and operationalising the concept concisely and comprehensively’ (p. 140). Master signifiers also articulate who individuals are to others, or at least how they want to be seen by others. Master signifiers are also crucial components of our communications, discourses and knowledge. ‘Everything radiates out from and is organized around this [master] signifier. It’s the point of convergence that enables everything that happens in this discourse too be situated’. ‘Discourses are sets of knowledges and beliefs communicated between individuals in society via language in speech and writing’ (Gunder, 2004, p. 301). The constituents of these communications are words. Convoluted, contradictory or multidimensional discourses are often developed based on master signifiers such as ‘climate change’, ‘sustainable development’, and ‘smart city’. These master signifiers ‘function as anchors of representation in a text through such rhetorical tropes as the insistence that “this is the way things are”, that it is not subject to challenge or dissent’. Master signifiers are also the points of shared ideological worldviews. Žižek argues that master signifiers are not ‘a simple abbreviation that designates a series of markers but the name of the hidden ground of this series of markers that act as so many expressions – effect of this ground’. Master signifiers provide the chain of signs and discourses and supplements knowledge by representing ‘a shared but fuzzy and contested discourse comprising general but not specifically agreed set of meanings and beliefs among a group, such as planners, or members of a political party, and, occasionally, across most of society’ (Gunder, 2004, p. 309). Yet, mohsen mohammadzadeh
master signifiers are inherently empty of specific signification; thus, subjects define and deploy them based on their own system of signs that are developed through their social interactions. This lack of precise meaning generates a set of conflicting discourses of diverse meaning under a master signifier. Gunder and Hillier (2016) argue that the master signifier ‘is in turn comprised of a complex aggregate of ordered words constituting diverse narratives of contestable sets of knowledges and beliefs’ (p. 16). Master signifiers endure fixed and unchanging, but ‘their descriptive features will be fundamentally unstable and open to all kinds of hegemonic rearticulations’ (Laclau, 1989, as cited in Gunder, 2004).
In planning The concept of master signifier has been largely developed in planning, particularly by planning theorists, to investigate how pervasive concepts have generated discourses and knowledge in planning, and have significantly transformed planners’ identities, norms and values over the last decades. Gunder and Hillier (2009) first introduced ‘master signifier’ to planning theory and argue that sustainable development has become spatial planning’s central empty/master signifier and it has reoriented planning from its original discourses such as social justice. Following Gunder and Hillier, Davidson (2010) discusses how sustainability as an empty/master signifier creates an ideological foundation in planning. Bahmanteymouri (2021) uses empty/ master signifiers to deconstruct urban land development policies under the neoliberal discourse. Mohammadzadeh (2021) argues that the decolonisation of planning theory and practice requires an in-depth understanding of the roles of master signifiers such as ‘developed/developing countries’, ‘Third World’ and ‘Global South’ in shaping a hegemonic planning knowledge that is embedded in colonial discourses. More recently, Wang (2022) investigated the UK urban village movement to demonstrate how ‘urban villages’ are understood differently depending on individual social positions that inform planning practice. Lacan’s master signifier is a strong analytical tool for investigating and deconstructing discourses in planning. However, it only shows the functions of these concepts and cannot provide any fixed meaning for
master signifiers 229 concepts and terms that are crucial for planning practice. Mohsen Mohammadzadeh
References Bahmanteymouri, E. (2021). A Lacanian understanding of urban development plans under the neoliberal discourse. Planning Theory, 20(3), 231–254. Bracher, M. (1988). Lacan’s theory of the four discourses. Prose Studies, 11(3), 32–49. Davidson, M. (2010). Sustainability as ideological praxis: The acting out of planning’s master‐signifier. City, 14(4), 390–405. Evans, D. (2006). An introductory dictionary of Lacanian psychoanalysis. Routledge. Gunder, M. (2004). Shaping the planner’s ego-ideal: A Lacanian interpretation of planning education. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 23(3), 299–311. Gunder, M., & Hillier, J. (2016). Planning in ten words or less: A Lacanian entanglement with spatial planning. Routledge.
Hook, D., & Vanheule, S. (2016). Revisiting the master-signifier, or, Mandela and repression. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 2028. Lacan, J. (2006). The subversion of the subject and the dialectic of desire in the Freudian unconscious. Ecrits. Trans. Bruce Fink. New York: WW Norton & Company, 671–702. Mohammadzadeh, M. (2021). A Lacanian understanding of the southern planning theorists’ identification under the hegemony of western philosophy. plaNext– Next Generation Planning, 11, 62–80. Wang, C. (2022). Do planning concepts matter? A Lacanian interpretation of the urban village in a British context. Planning Theory, 21(2), 155–180. See also: Lacan’s four discourses, Lacanian approaches, big Other, ideology, narrative, identity, power in planning, assemblage, history, colonial legacies, power/knowledge, memory
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76. Memory, legacy, history Introduction Memory, as in social memory, is a contested concept in planning history. Memory has to be distinguished from history, as in the recorded series of facts recognized as relevant by those recording history. Those recording history worked historically either close to the political elite or had an ax to grind with them. We further distinguish memory from legacy, as what is remembered collectively, through narratives, through rituals, through other signs and activities, differs from the wider set of legacies of a certain past. A past can be unrecorded, unrecognized as history and not collectively remembered, while still leaving traces, including traces that are relevant for the ways futures are imagined and organized.
Place and memory Places, both urban and rural, can have sites of memory, of remembering, of identity and boundary maintenance, and they have features and structures which can recall memories, some associated with social identities. Some of these features and structures can be recognized as ‘heritage’, others not. As planning can change landscapes, the question is to take stock of, and take into account, those features and sites that carry certain memories, or not. The question is to try to be aware of memories, legacies, histories and their relation, or not. For practical reasons, this is not always possible, yet, on the other hand, such practicality has been abused over and over again by rulers and their planners, intent on erasing or restructuring memories, legacies and histories. Memories, legacies and histories can be contested: actors within governance and within the community can differ in their perspective on history, and hence on identity and desirable futures, while even a history considered shared, and possibly guiding for the future, can be connected differently to social memories and to different understandings of the legacies (hence relevance) of that past for the present. One can think here of different cultural groups, expert groups, age groups, newcomers and old-timers, different professions and ideologies leading to different
selectivity regarding memory, legacy and history. But one can also think of different spatial connections leading to alternative historical interpretations: is a new neighborhood part of the history of the city it just became part of, or rather the village or countryside it used to be part of? Are migrants integrating by adopting new histories, bringing old histories or by bringing their unique ways of hybridizing old and new times and places?
Legacy and future While memories and histories are by definition remembered, conscious, this is only partly true for legacies. One can even say that unconscious legacies partly structure memory and history. Traumatic events, effects of forgotten decisions, unobserved effects of remembered decisions can shape legacies of the past that are not easily observable from within the governance system or the community at large, with the conceptual frames available to that community. Legacies of the past can reside in landscape structures, or ecological balances that result from past human activities and interventions, constraining future use, yet the landscape can be perceived as a simple background, without history, or, for others with a more historical or geographical interest, as structured by other histories. For those interested in the future, such as planners, and those interested in policy for the common good, such as planners, this interplay between histories, memories and legacies thus imposes itself as important. If planners are interested in the future use of a place, they are interested in the interpretation of the place, and this is partly shaped by the memories associated with it, the histories located in it and the legacies in both the interpretation and organization of the place. Unraveling this web of relations is not always possible or necessary but ignoring it a priori can only lead to problems. The modernist insensitivity to memory, history and legacy can only testify to this. Whether in a planning process the emphasis is on preservation or on path creation, understanding the pathways through which the past shaped the present, for the community and in the planning system, remains of a more than intellectual interest. Martijn Duineveld, Kristof Van Assche and Raoul Beunen, Editors
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Bibliography Heynen, H. (1999). Petrifying memories: Architecture and the construction of identity. The Journal of Architecture, 4(4), 369–390. Macfarlane, R. (2012). The old ways: A journey on foot. Penguin. Neill, W. (2003). Urban planning and cultural identity. Routledge. Nora, P. (1989). Between memory and history: Les lieux de mémoire. Representations, 26(1), 7–24. Schama, S. (1996). Landscape and memory. Vintage Books.
Van Assche, K., & Gruezmacher, M. (2022). Remembering Ypres. Post-War reconstruction, land and the legacies of shock and conflict. Land, 12(1), 21. Whelan, Y. (2016). Heritage, memory and the politics of identity: New perspectives on the cultural landscape. Routledge. See also: history, heritage, conflict, new urbanism, identity, ideology, narrative, big Other, dependencies, long term, futures, asset-based community development
martijn duineveld, kristof van assche and raoul beunen
77. Methods Methods open and closed A method is anything that can be helpful to achieve a goal in a deliberate fashion. Methods in planning can be practical methods for planning, and methods for research benefiting or underpinning planning. What is recognized as a method, and as a helpful or legitimate method, depends on the political ideology of the observer, the organization of planning and governance, the identity of the discipline (not just in the case of research methods) and other factors. If planning as such looks suspicious, then good planning methods are methods to minimize planning or methods compatible with the functioning of a minimal planning system. If planning is embraced as a site of policy integration, and a driver of common goals, then a variety of methods is expected and accepted. If modernist planning aided by a large administration is embraced, then a variety of expert knowledges and associated methods would be considered normal. More participatory forms of planning would be more open to a diversity of knowledges and their methods of production, and the emphasis in organizing a planning process would come to be placed on the combination and integration of knowledges, rather than on the production of a specific sort of knowledge. One can speak of methods for inter- and trans-disciplinarity, and on the coproduction of knowledge which can guide policy and planning solutions. Critics have noted that mixing knowledges is not always possible, just as adding them up is not always workable, and that none of the knowledge processes in participation can be considered apolitical, even if they come out of a methodical combination of elements. In semiotic and psychoanalytic terms, this could be stated as the impossibility of a metalanguage which is expected to preserve all values, identities and operations of the participating languages, and in more general epistemological terms, this could be seen as the impossibility to create a superior vantage point from which everything could be observed, and without distortion.
Methods and planning As planning, at least in democratic societies, entails the balancing of interests and knowledges towards common goals, the integration of
knowledges and the hierarchy of knowledges in planning systems and their products is always on the table. This means that simply referring to a method of knowledge production is not enough to create legitimacy. That is, except where administrations and the institutions they use are permeated by a shared epistemic culture, leading to a shared belief in particular methods – say, modeling, statistics, process engineering, forms of mapping. Planning systems can be dominated by engineering methods, architectural methods, by geography, sociology, economy, law and other disciplines. Tools and procedures of planning practice (planning methods) are never disconnected from the competition between disciplines and their ideas of legitimacy, validity and method. Some research methods are closely tied to a discipline, to a theory, an ideology, an administrative practice, others less so. Some methods produce knowledge which is easier to integrate with others. Some planning practices identify closely with one expert group and their expertise, others less so. Because planning is spatial governance and promises power and influence over the use of space and resources, the competition in planning, between actors, between knowledges and their methods is intense. Another reason for this intense and tense competition is the complexity of the planning endeavor, which confronts each knowledge and method with its limitations, with the need to collaborate and combine with others, even if this entails the confrontation with deep (epistemological, ideological) differences.
From planning methods to learning in planning systems We deem it useful to de-emphasize methods in planning, in both senses introduced, and turn towards a perspective on planning systems as learning systems. The main distinctions in knowledge-generating principles are not distinctions between methods, but rather between forms of learning. Some of these forms can then be more or less closely associated with methods. We distinguish between learning through comparison (from other planning systems), learning through self-reflection (on past and present of the system trying to learn), learning through experimentation (trying something new without immediately given consequence) and learning from experts (from different disciplines). Last but not least, and ideally in a central position in decisionmaking, there is dialectical learning, which
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methods 233 is not simply deliberation of pre-existing positions, but the creation of new knowledge through discussion. Each governance system is marked by its own combination of learning mechanisms, and only from there can one grasp which methods can make a difference. Kristof Van Assche, Martijn Duineveld and Raoul Beunen, Editors
Bibliography Cuthbert, A. R. (2007). Urban design: Requiem for an era–review and critique of the last 50 years. Urban Design International, 12(4), 177–223. Fischer, F. (2000). Citizens, experts, and the environment: The politics of local knowledge. Duke University Press. Gunder, M., & Hillier, J. (2016). Planning in ten words or less: A Lacanian entanglement with spatial planning. Routledge. Kiernan, M. J. (1983). Ideology, politics, and planning: Reflections on the theory and
practice of urban planning. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 10(1), 71–87. Van Assche, K., Beunen, R., Verweij, S., Evans, J., & Gruezmacher, M. (2021). Policy learning and adaptation in governance; a co-evolutionary perspective. Administration and Society, 00953997211059165. Van Assche, K., Verschraegen, G., Beunen, R., Gruezmacher, M., & Duineveld, M. (2023). Combining research methods in policy and governance: Taking account of bricolage and discerning limits of modelling and simulation. Futures, 145, 103074. See also: modernism, narrative, storytelling, ideology, design, critical planning, power/ knowledge, inclusion/exclusion, research through design, public–private participation, participation, qualitative comparative analysis, citizen science, big data, innovation, creativity, conservation design, ecosystems services
kristof van assche, martijn duineveld and raoul beunen
78. Milieu What is a milieu? Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari exhort us to proceed from and think through the milieu, where the French term means both middle and also surroundings or environment. This implies that no theoretical or practical approach should be disentangled from its surroundings. Everything is interrelated, interinvolved, affecting and affected by other elements of materialities, desires and events. It is through milieus that we access the world. A milieu is a complex entanglement of economic, environmental, social, political and technological elements. It is less a resource than an agentic assemblage of elements which intertwine and overlap. Contrasting with traditional spatial planning assumptions, a milieu of ‘overlapping perspectives, of communicating distances, divergences and disparities, of heterogeneous potentials and intensities’ (Deleuze, 1994, p. 50) presents multiplicity instead of singularity, unpredictability not predictability, relationality not separation. Spatial planning operates at the nexus of knowledge formation and power tactics in milieus of ‘experience and experiment, connected to futures, presents and histories, in the middle of the psycho, social and ecological materialities that it constructs and is constructed by’ (Brassett & Marenko, 2015, p. 6). Milieus are not given but constructed. They have no centre or boundaries. They are movements and flows in which conjunctions and disjunctions, agreements and conflicts take place with multiple implications. A milieu, therefore, is both a spatial environment and a medium of action, productive and reproductive of a specific ordering of space, time and relations (Hillier, 2017). A milieu approach to spatial planning would recognise a fuller play of forces and their constitutive relationalities and encounters between human and non-human elements and what they might immanently be capable of.
Derivation Michel Foucault (2007, p. 21) describes a milieu as ‘the medium of an action and the element in which it circulates’. He explains that a milieu ‘appears as the intersection between a multiplicity of living individuals
working and coexisting with each other in a set of material elements that act on them and on which they act in turn’ (2007, p. 22). Foucault’s relational approach allows exploration of the interactions between elements, how they are produced and maintained and also recognises that agency may be a property of non-humans as well as humans. Foucault’s understanding of milieu is drawn from several sources: from Canguilhem’s and von Weizsäcker’s work on milieu as Umwelt or environment; from mechanics and the issue of ‘action at a distance of one body on another’ (Foucault, 2007, pp. 20–21), a movement in between and from governance as a medium of action. Foucault is interested in a mode of governance that operates through a milieu rather than by application of laws and regulations directly on individuals. Deleuze and Guattari (1987) also draw on milieu as Umwelt after von Uexküll. Deleuze and Guattari, however, go beyond the reductionism of von Uexküll’s tangible ‘lived’ milieu in the technical sense, in which non-human animals perform predictively in an ‘objective world’ (Hillier, 2017). Deleuze and Guattari’s development relates to a dynamic, variable milieu with multiple perspectives and foci. For Deleuze and Guattari (1987, p. 313) everything is a composition of an exterior milieu of materials (geography, climate, ecosystem and so on), an interior milieu of composing elements and composed substances (such as organs, crystals, atoms), an intermediate milieu of membranes and limits (epidermis, mantle) and an annexed milieu of energy sources and actions-perceptions (e.g., food, air). The authors explain that not only does the thing ‘continually pass from one milieu to another, but the milieus pass into one another, they are essentially communicating’ (1987, p. 313). The milieu of water vapour passes into that of rain, a predator that of its prey, for example, and vice versa. Two basic spatial directions may be identified in the construction of a milieu (Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, 2016, p. 84): one from the external milieu to the interior milieu (such as nourishment) and another from the interior to the external milieu (waste). Milieus are inherently both spatial and temporal. What interests Deleuze and Guattari is less the environmental space and time of an element, but how that element encounters and enters relations with others, human and non-human.
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milieu 235 The concept of the milieu thus recognises that the non-human and their/our milieus are mutually constitutive: ‘an animal, a thing, is never separable from its relations with the world’ (Deleuze, 1988, p. 128). Its inclusivity also resonates with many non-dualistic Indigenous epistemologies which recognise the agency of non-humans in relationships where humans are decentred in an inclusive world of more-than-human.
Planning Thinking through the milieu in relation to spatial planning is a form of field philosophy which seeks to intervene in real-world issues. Field philosophy is a ‘kind of pragmatic experiment that applies philosophical skills as a means of thinking with other practitioners in order to collaboratively remedy practical problems in specific situations’ (Buchanan et al., 2018, p. 384). A milieu approach to planning would place the practitioner not as exogenous, looking down or from an expert-related distance, but in the middle, holding ‘conversations’ with human and non-human stakeholders, enabling all to participate on their own terms, listening to their voices, seeking permission to take up space, co-creating with sensitivity. There is recognition both that practitioners are part of milieus their actions contribute to shaping and also that milieus are inexhaustible, unable to be bounded or represented completely. A milieu approach recognises the complex relationalities between forces and elements. Every milieu is coded, defined by periodic repetition of ‘refrains’. For instance, in the territorial assemblage that is the urban fringe of Perth, Western Australia, we can discern various coded milieus, including a planning milieu of land use zones, Indigenous Aboriginal milieus of Country, milieus associated with settler-colonial occupation, many ecological milieus of non-human habitats and so on. The milieus communicate and pass into one another, affecting and being affected by each other. Spatial plans temporarily organise or territorialise these milieus. A milieu approach recognises the provisionality of such coding. It thinks in terms of modes of movement, ordering without definite end points, and turns attention to non-codified, noninstitutionalised ordering and disordering
relations of power rather than the relations reproduced through classifications, reports and plans. Milieus thus exist by virtue of periodic repetition which opens up spaces in between milieus. This allows creative innovation, maintaining distance with other milieus (such as those associated with other cultures and disciplines, including ecology, environmental health, architecture and so on), but recognising their propinquity and interaffects (see Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, pp. 311–323). Spatial planning assemblages, (such as those associated with urban fringe development) need to be open to permeation by different ways of thinking and acting that come from other milieus. Following its development in relation to issues of environmental management (Hillier, 2017), some researchers have explored the potential of a milieu approach to spatial planning, arguing that a milieu approach offers the opportunity to assess how different economic, social, political and environmental elements have interacted with one another in the past, the present and might do so in the future, and what implications such encounters and interactions might have in terms of capacities and affects. Building on a methodology of strategic navigation Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) pragmatics could be a potential toolbox from which planners might draw relevant questions. Emphasis is on the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of relationalities. ‘Knowledges’ concern economic, social, political and environmental conditions of possibility and driving forces for what has taken place and what might actualise. Those who ‘know’ are not necessarily human, but perhaps an animal, a plant, a fungus, a virus, a waterbody, a rock and so on. Potential leverage points may be identified and responses designed, in processes of continuous reflexion, reperception and revision of information, ideas and aspirations as new knowledges emerge, circumstances alter and decisions change the context and issue focus. At an urban design scale of individual buildings, the last decade has witnessed the development, in France, of an ‘architecture des milieux’ (e.g., Moreau, 2009) which emphasises that architecture is more than simply about building. It questions ways of thinking and acting, the limits and structures of architectural configurations and processes, to stress the importance of working jean hillier
236 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design transversally across material and mental spaces of humans and non-humans. Thinking through the milieu locates relationality and affect at the core of architectural design and development assessment planning. Working through a hypothetical scenario of traditional British roof design, Abrahams (2021) explores the shift from a functional milieu of building materials (such as slate tiles, timber rafters and battens, mineral wool and plasterboard) to the artistic expressiveness of the designed roof. He emphasises that the roof-milieu (and the milieu components that form it) is generally related to an eaves-milieu, a wall-milieu, floor-milieu, foundation-milieu and so on. Each of these milieus is reconfigured to serve the expressive ‘architectural statement’ of the building as a whole. Whilst the milieus are directed almost entirely by the functional utility of the building materials, as assembled, the functions become supportive to the formation and development of expression. Materials are often specifically selected not only for their functional suitability, but for their capacity to form an expressive statement (Abrahams, 2021, pp. 414–415). In addition, the building itself must refer to the exterior milieus of the urban environment, architectural trends and planning legislation. From strategic spatial planning to individual development assessment, a milieu approach emphasises how milieus both affect and are affected by different forms of sensing, thinking and acting. Milieu approaches address the situated nature of knowledges, engaging knowledges of humans and nonhumans relationally in between economic, environmental, social, political and technological elements.
Conclusion A milieu approach to spatial planning offers an opportunity to move away from anthropocentricity debates, with their human-nonhuman binaries and hierarchies, to new, relational, inclusionary styles of thinking and acting. It is a theory and practice in the making, experimental, proposing neither recipes nor ready-made ideas and practices. Because a milieu is constantly in motion, constructing and reconstructing, encountering and folding with other milieus, it is inherently contextual. Spatial planners become creative practitioners, embedded in their milieus, occupying a jean hillier
space between the world perceived as it is, the world as it might be and the world as it was. Displacing their angles of vision facilitates perception of elements and issues differently, from others’ perspectives, opening up multiple possibilities for new assemblages. It means being prepared to leap into the unknown (Brasset & Marenko, 2015, p. 22). Thinking through the milieu offers an invitation to disciplinary and ontological openness. A milieu approach would consider entanglements of elements, their conditions of possibility and potential implications. It would speculate conditions of possibility, for example, of potential actions by agents of the state, of capital and the non-human. Spatial planners would not be concerned with questions of land use per se, but of encounters and intra-actions between different agents, including land uses in a spatial plan, materials in a building complex. Planners would map out a range of circumstances – particularly diagonals across disciplines, cultures, human/non-human and so on – to diagram potentialities: what might happen if . . .? Jean Hillier
References Abrahams, G. (2021). The milieu and the territorial assemblage. In P. de Assis & P. Guidici (Eds.), Machinic assemblages of desire (pp. 403–418). Leuven University Press. Brassett, J., & Marenko, B. (2015). Introduction. In B. Marenko & J. Brassett (Eds.), Deleuze and design (pp. 1–30). Edinburgh University Press. Buchanan, B., Bastian, M., & Chrulew, M. (2018). Introduction: Field philosophy and other experiments. Parallax, 24(4), 383–391. Deleuze, G. (1988 [1970]). Spinoza: Practical philosophy (R. Hurley, Trans.). City Light Books. Deleuze, G. (1994 [1968]). Difference and repetition (P. Patton, Trans.). Athlone Press. Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987 [1980]). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia (B. Massumi, Trans.). Athlone Press. Foucault, M. (2007 [2004]). Security, territory, population. Lectures at the Collège de France 1977–1978 (G. Burchell, Trans.). Palgrave Macmillan.
milieu 237 Hillier, J. (2017). No place to go? Management of non-human animal overflows in Australia. European Management Journal, 35(6), 712–721. Moreau, A. (2009). Qu’est-ce qu’une architecture des milieux? Implications Philosophiques. Retrieved from http:// www . implications - philosophiques .org / Habitat/ Moreau1.html Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, A. (2016). Milieu, territory, atmosphere: New
spaces of knowledge. In A. Cusinato & A. Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos (Eds.), Knowledge-creating milieus in Europe (pp. 79–95). Springer. See also: assemblage, line of flight, complexity, social-ecological systems, self-organization, identity, systems thinking, transversality, earthly attachments in the Anthropocene, ecosystems-based governance
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79. Mixed-use Introduction Mixed-use refers to the spatial integration of different land uses. This integration can be horizontal on the same site or vertical within the same building. The mix can include any combination of residential, entertainment, commercial, retail, institutional, office and/ or industrial uses. The term mixed-use is also applied more broadly to describe a diversity of uses in a development, a block or even a neighbourhood. In other words, mixed-use can be implemented within a single building, block, neighbourhood or across a wider area of a city. The opposite of mixed-use is singleuse or homogeneous land use.
Rationale and tools Mixed-use is used extensively in planning because it is thought to integrate different functions, as well as improve walkability and connectivity. In contemporary North American planning practice, mixed-use is often used as shorthand to refer to the inclusion of retail space on the ground floor of residential apartments or office buildings. Although the most common current application of mixed-use in North America is perhaps in newly developed high-rise buildings, mixed-use is possible in a wide variety of building types and includes a range of uses. Mixed-use projects can involve the brownfield redevelopment of buildings or regeneration of neighbourhoods in the inner city. But it can also include the new construction of mixed-use developments on greenfields in either urban or suburban settings. Mixed-use in North America is often achieved through zoning codes, although mixed-use does emerge in many contexts in more organic ways. In Europe, cities have long had integrated land uses and government policymakers and planners have maintained this mosaic of land uses even in zoning, where more permissive and flexible land use zoning is the norm. Urbanist Jane Jacobs was perhaps the most vocal proponent of mixed-use. Through her assessment of urban neighbourhoods in New York during the 1960s, and later in Toronto, she believed that mixed-use neighbourhoods would necessarily emerge organically. Jacobs ascribed great community,
social and economic benefits to organically derived mixed-use. Although the initial motivations for promoting and celebrating mixed-use were largely about neighbourhood vitality and community building, various planning movements such as New Urbanism and Smart Growth also began to advocate for mixed-use. In these cases, the integration and intensification of land uses are seen to prevent or reduce urban sprawl, as well as being perceived to have environmental benefits. Indeed, mixed-use is a key characteristic of other planning ideas and practices that have been popularized in the past decades. For example, complete communities – inspired in part by the Garden City movement – aim to include all the elements of daily life within a contained area, ideally without reliance on the automobile. Central to achieving complete neighbourhoods or communities is mixed-use development, which allows for more compact, walkable development, with amenities, employment, retail and housing located within a 10- or 15-minute travel radius – now often referred to as the 15-minute city model.
Mixing and separating uses in history However, there is a long history of mixed-use dating back to the earliest human civilizations when it was more common to integrate home and work activities, and travel (including commuting) was more restricted due to the available transportation options. Although land use separation occurred in prior contexts, it was modern planning that especially emphasized single uses for land, delineated through zoning. Indeed, city decision makers even actively demolished mixed-use neighbourhoods, often leading to severe implications, including displacement, for racialized and other vulnerable populations. The rise of automobile use and the growing popularity of car ownership both facilitated and propelled the development of communities (especially suburbs) where land uses were increasingly separated. However, it should be noted that the separation of land uses began even before the automobile became a dominant mode of transport, for instance in the case of streetcar suburbs. The emphasis on the separation of land uses in modern planning was, in part, a reaction to the industrialization of cities. Industrial
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mixed-use 239 cities experienced growing health concerns as residents were exposed to pollutants from factories. Suburbanization, and the associated separation of land uses, was seen in part as a solution to the problems of the industrial city, but also had classist and racist dimensions. Mixed-use was also facilitated by the development of the post-industrial economy. The shift towards a service economy meant that there were fewer industrial activities in the centres of cities of the Global North, as employment shifted towards professional and knowledge-intensive services, such as finance and later – IT, new media and other business services. These shifts in the industrial structure of cities created new types of development pressures on land and spurred the demand for the greater integration of uses. Changing culture and the growing demand for proximate urban amenities among young adults also facilitate mixed-use development, in some cases leading to gentrification that results in affordability concerns and the displacement of lower income, marginalized – and often racialized – communities. Mixed-use is viewed as beneficial from a climate change policy perspective. Promoting a greater mix of land uses has the potential to reduce trip distances, facilitate trip chaining (i.e., making multiple stops on one trip) and increase the share of people walking, cycling or taking public transit. Mixed-use can also help to increase activity in neighbourhoods at different hours of the day, as compared to more homogeneous neighbourhoods that ‘empty out’ with the flow of commuters.
Critiques Mixed-use is not without its problems. Cities with a growing share of mixed-use in their downtowns, particularly the integration of residential uses, restaurants, and night-time entertainment activities, have experienced growing needs to manage noise complaints, negotiate conflicts between residents and business owners, and implement noise by-laws. It can also be difficult to implement mixed-use in practice as different sectors (e.g., residential
versus commercial) are sometimes countercyclical in the development process and demand for other uses can be low in existing, otherwise largely homogeneous, residential areas. Finally, in the absence of proactive provision and protection of affordable housing, mixeduse can also be associated with higher housing costs as the amenity value of mixed-use locations increases. This can contribute to affordability issues, gentrification and widening inequality within the city. Markus Moos and Tara Vinodrai
Bibliography Grant, J. (2002). Mixed use in theory and practice: Canadian experience with implementing a planning principle. Journal of the American Planning Association, 68(1), 71–84. Grant, J., & Perrott, K. (2011). Where is the café? The challenge of making retail uses viable in mixed-use suburban developments. Urban Studies, 48(1), 177–195. Hirt, S. (2007). The mixed-use trend: Planning attitudes and practices in Northeast Ohio. Journal of Architectural and Planning Research, 224–244. Hirt, S. (2012). Mixed use by default: How the Europeans (don’t) zone. Journal of Planning Literature, 27(4), 375–393. Moos, M., Vinodrai, T., Revington, N., & Seasons, M. (2018). Planning for mixed use: Affordable for whom? Journal of the American Planning Association, 84(1), 7–20. Ryckewaert, M., Zaman, J., & De Boeck, S. (2021). Variable arrangements between residential and productive activities: Conceiving mixed-use for urban development in Brussels. Urban Planning, 6(3), 334–349. See also: zoning, affordable housing, inclusion/exclusion, walkability, infrastructure, density, new urbanism, smart growth, downtown development, genius loci, asset-based community development
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80. Modernism and planning
Perfect and optimal space
Planning haunted Modernism has been haunting planning practice and theory for almost a century. Many of the planning practices and theories which developed since at least the 1960s have been in dialogue and debate with modernism, while planning modernism itself, in its early twentieth-century beginnings, felt it had to compete with entrenched historicizing design traditions and scattered administrative practices. Modernism in planning is generally recognized in the early twentieth century, and associated with figures such as Le Corbusier, but modernism, as its grounding principles, can be traced back to the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. The Enlightenment emphasis on rationality as an emancipatory power, on science as the most perfect embodiment of rationality, and on the role of a centralizing state to map, understand and solve societal problems by means of science, was gradually embraced by European elites and by the nineteenth century, many countries had substantial administrations capable of undertaking large scale ‘public works’ programs. Such programs could integrate a variety of policy goals, from reinforcing national identity through heritage preservation and historicizing styles, over public health goals, law enforcement and mercantile expansion to promoting travel and tourism. The Foucaultian ‘mathesis’, or careful and comprehensive mapping of the territory, its features, resources and problems, in order to make the territory amenable to comprehensive policy and development initiatives, had been gradually improved during the eighteenth century and came to fruition in the later nineteenth century. This process led to the growing awareness that cities could be planned and designed scientifically, with the eye on solving policy problems but also with a general thrust towards the future. Planning as a recognized administrative discipline was thus born under the sign of scientific progress, and tended to promote modernist architecture, new technologies and materials and new modes of transportation. Straight lines and separation of land uses were seen as hallmarks of efficiency and rationality.
Modernist planning tended to adopt the idea that an optimal spatial organization of space exists, and that scientifically grounded planning can produce this spatial organization. Furthermore, it tended to ignore cultural, natural and ideological contexts, with le Corbusier and followers eager to work for dictators on the left and the right and humans reduced to a set of functional requirements, irrespective of race, class, gender, culture or religion. Older landscapes and older architectural and planning styles had to give way in a tabula rasa approach to the advent of the rational future. Where these principles were adopted in government and where steering power in the administrations were strong enough, this could lead to demolition of old neighborhoods, imposition of automobile infrastructures on historical urban fabrics, systematic ignoring of landscape features, construction of commercial centers and residential estates in high rises.
Modernist perspectives institutionalized in diverse forms Modernist planning also led in many places to an entrenchment of engineering thinking and engineering departments in planning systems, which made it harder for later generations to expand the intellectual scope of planning and to move to more participatory systems. The once new and promising automobile technology, promoted by planners and private actors, became to be seen as more problematic since the 1970s, but the path dependencies in a spatial organization created through modernist planning became almost insurmountable. New grand challenges such as climate change and the biodiversity crisis often led to a reappearance of modernist thinking, to calls for the dominance of one particular expert group supposedly able to select and integrate the relevant ‘hard’ knowledge in articulating policies able to manage risk. Modernism leaves such diverse traces because it existed in different versions. One can distinguish between substantive and procedural modernism, whereby the substantive versions focused on one form of knowledge which could supposedly produce the optimal spatial organization, and procedural forms expected the best possible space to come out of institutional design and procedures. Habermassian thinking, but also the planning theory championed by Andreas Faludi
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modernism and planning 241 since the 1970s can be recognized as procedural modernism, while modernist planning as design, development through engineering projects, but also planning dominated by ecology or hydrology (or Marxist economy) can be considered substantive modernism.
Enduring attraction Whereas modernist thinking was and remains attractive for ambitious administrations, because of the seeming neutrality of resulting decisions, the appeal of certainty and science and the possibility to evade responsibility. The history of critiques is as long as the history of modernism itself. Its lack of sensitivity to context, history, its overestimation of the power of science, underestimation of local knowledge and of the need for democracies to balance representation and participation made for an always contested career of the perspective and the practice. Martijn Duineveld, Raoul Beunen and Kristof Van Assche, Editors
Bibliography Allmendinger, P. (2017). Planning theory. Bloomsbury Publishing. Flyvbjerg, B. (1998). Rationality and power: Democracy in practice. University of Chicago Press. Hillier, J. (2003). Shadows of power: An allegory of prudence in land-use planning. Routledge. Sandercock, L., & Bridgman, R. (1999). Towards cosmopolis: Planning for multicultural cities. Canadian Journal of Urban Research, 8(1), 108. Scott, J. C. (2008). Seeing like a state. Yale University Press. See also: blueprint planning, central planning, expertise, ideology, inclusion/exclusion, methods, power in planning, power/ knowledge, rhetoric, storytelling, rationality, rules, nomocracy, complexity, creativity
martijn duineveld, raoul beunen and kristof van assche
81. Multiplicity For philosophers, social theorists and planning scholars, the concept of multiplicity provides a way of thinking about immanent order, as opposed to both the transcendent order emanating from one God or nature, and the fragmentation of order by atomism or subjectivism. Departing from various vitalist, dialectical or rationalist traditions and using either more theoretical or empirical approaches, they deploy the concept of multiplicity to deal with the age-old metaphysical problem of ‘the One and the Many’ and how these relate to each other (as general/specific, part/whole etc.). Whether by ethnographic study, discourse analysis or set theory, each bears out the paradoxical formula of ‘neither one nor multiple’ (found in, to name a few of the most prominent voices, Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 21, Mol, 2002: 84, Badiou, 2006: 24). The problem of multiplicity, of the relationship between the One (Idea, universal, type, whole) and the Many (simulacra, particulars, individuals, parts) is about as old as philosophy itself. For example, for Plato, the many things that make up our earthly existence (horses, cities, men) participate more or less perfectly in one universal form or Idea (of the Horse, Republic or Man). It is the task of the Socratic philosopher to bring to light these ideal forms through literal ‘dialectic’ discussion. Similarly, for Aristotle, the plurality of beings shares singular ‘essences’ which guide their becoming. In between Plato and the later nominalist scholastics, this can already be seen as a more dialectic approach in the metaphysical sense, with essences being no longer transcendent universals but neither being mere names in people’s heads. In modern times, these ancient dialectics were taken to their limit by Hegel, whose Geist can be seen as an absolute multiplicity: neither the property of individuals nor, despite many faulty interpretations, some unproblematic social whole, free of all contradiction. In the same Hegelian spirit, quality and quantity can only be properly understood as absolutely intrinsic to each other, to qualify is to quantify and vice versa. They are both equally necessary and insufficient on their own to determine being(s). Equally quantitative and qualitative, this dialectic concept of multiplicity gives no
special speculative access to a nonconceptual reality or infinity beyond it. Multiplicity is part of an endless abstract movement of concepts, including not just the One, but also other affiliated conceptual pairs, of real and ideal, infinite and finite, etcetera. It is against this dialectic approach to multiplicity that other speculative thinkers advance notions of multiplicity that metaphysically emphasize either its qualitative or its quantitative aspect. These two positions are best represented by philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Alain Badiou respectively. In social theory and planning, the concept of multiplicity is mostly associated with the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze. Following Bergson, Deleuze (1991) takes up and generalizes the distinction between continuous and discrete multiplicities, as first proposed by mathematician Bernard Riemann. Discrete or metric multiplicities are divided up into discrete parts and into numerical units, which presuppose their subjection to a transcendent dimension of measurement (spatial, financial, statistic). Concrete (literally ‘grown together’) and qualitative multiplicities are temporal, evental, constituted by differential relations divided by immanent singularities, singular configurations of special intensity (e.g., the breaking point of a building material or the threshold of white flight from a neighborhood). From a Deleuzian point of view, quantitative multiplicities (parts and wholes extended in metric space) represent actualizations of qualitative multiplicity. Ontologically speaking, metric quantity follows dynamic quality: structured differential relations, such as attractors and thresholds of air pressure, genetic disposition or urban energetic demand are the virtual birthground of actual thunder clouds, embryos or metropolises. In Deleuze and Guattari’s most geographical terms, the ‘smooth space’ of material flows, intensities, capacities and practice bring forth territorially and architecturally ‘striated spaces’ defined with metric precision (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987). With architecture being one of Deleuze and Guattari’s central disciplines of reference, many designers have taken up their contrast of continuous and discrete multiplicities and of smooth and striated spaces. Most prominently, Manuel DeLanda (2002) has used it to differentiate practices of architectural design. Against the Platonist ‘hylomorphic’ model of rigidly imposing metric form (architecture,
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multiplicity 243 design) onto an essentially homogeneous, formless and passive matter, DeLanda proposes an artisanal model of design which recognizes and works with, rather than against or around, the implicit potentials and capacities of different materials. In architecture, this means practicing form-finding procedures that can search qualitative multiplicities for their self-organizing singularities, unlocking new capacities through trial and error. Here we could think of Otto Frei’s use of soap film to find tent-like structures with minimum surface tension, or of ‘genetic algorithms’ that allow computer-aided designers to explore and literally evolve new forms through gradual differentiation and selection. Within spatial planning theory, the Deleuzian notion of multiplicity has been taken up most consistently by Jean Hillier. In her seminal exploratory article, Hillier (2005) introduces the breadth of Deleuzian thought to planning theory. Multiplicity is less sharply defined than in DeLanda and mostly features as part of a series of terms connoting what she calls immanence (‘uncertainty, fluidity, transformation’). Broadly speaking multiplicity in planning is the dynamic and open coming together of heterogeneous entities (planners, actors, actants, places; each also a multiplicity) through a conjunctive logic of ‘and… and’ as opposed to the disjunctive ‘either/or’ characterizing hierarchical ontologies. Applications of her theory are still very loose. For instance, the traditional English planning system, as a whole and free of any context, is called ‘transcendent’, because it is centralized, siloed and top-down, and its revision after 2004, espousing more community involvement and flexibility, is deemed much more ‘immanent’. Likewise, another somewhat more concrete example of the redevelopment plans for Melbourne’s Docklands ultimately leaves one with an ambiguous equation of the absence of a master plan (‘Not-Master-Plan’) with smooth capitalist immanence which proves in need of some transcendence after all. More recently, Hillier (2021) has made more elaborate efforts to clarify and substantiate empirically the contrast of smooth and striated, or rather ‘rhizomatic’ and ‘arborescent’, spatial planning practices (another near-synonymous dualism originating from Deleuze and Guattari). Comparing the plans for two Australian developments, she shows how they both relate in starkly distinct ways to mosquito habitats located near the building sites.
Whereas the traditional hierarchical (arborescent) planning system devolves responsibility away from government and developers, leaving new property owners with only reactive and destructive solutions (screens, lighting, insecticide), the rhizomatic assemblage utilizes a more open set of planning laws and ecological expertise, enabling a symbiotic and more ‘flat’ relation to the biting insects and other relevant nonhuman actors. Overall, compared to DeLanda, the empirical attribution of ‘flatness’, associated with rhizomatic planning, remains rather freefloating in Hillier’s work. This may partly be explained by differences of scalar and institutional dimensionality among architectural design and spatial planning practices, with a focus on single structures, allowing for a sharper observation of material qualities and larger assemblages, more easily provoking fallacies of misplaced concreteness. But there is also a difference in style, with DeLanda interpreting multiplicity in rather scientistic terms (dynamical systems theory) and Hillier consciously adopting a freer application of Deleuzian vocabulary. Both styles carry their own risks, of either subjecting multiplicity to an all-too-safe hierarchy of systems (and scientific disciplines), or alternatively becoming an impressionistic stockpiling of near synonyms and antonyms of multiplicity which provide too little empirical traction or precision. What DeLanda’s approach has over Hillier’s is that there is less risk of confusing ontological and ontic distinctions of multiplicity. Too often it is suggested that multiplicity (‘ontological flatness’) is not a general feature of reality but attributed to this or that object (design, plan, epoch). It would be better to say that a design or plan can be more or less recognizant of multiplicity and therefore perhaps more ‘ontically flat’ (cf. Bryant, 2011). However, as noted in the introduction, differential and assemblage thinkers do not have a theoretical monopoly on multiplicity. For one, the traditional, more dialectical approach to multiplicity could very well be complementary to the Deleuzian kind. In particular, from a Luhmannian perspective, planning practice includes a multiplicity of interpretations of personality, roles and system functions that are absolutely decisive in its operations (Lamker and Marjanović, 2022). From this perspective, and with Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) own treatment of regimes of signification in mind, many combinations are thinkable with freek de haan
244 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design other discourse analytic approaches to planning, such as the Lacanian kind which looks at master signifiers of planning (Gunder and Hillier, 2016). But as mentioned and perhaps more notably, the quantitative kind of multiplicity which for Deleuzians is mostly derivative, is of ontological centrality to others such as Alain Badiou. Drawing from a very different mathematical tradition, Badiou uses set theory to argue for his own axiomatic philosophy of multiplicity. Considering Deleuze and followers secretly infatuated with the One (a grown together virtual whole) rather than pure multiplicity, Badiou approaches ‘being qua being’ as a non-totality, an empty set that can only be alluded to as such through set theory. Because any ‘consistent’ multiplicities (counted elements and subsets) ultimately rests on an ‘inconsistent’ multiplicity, the former are forever haunted by the latter, which is the source of revolutionary change and subjectivity. While Badiou’s metaphysical edifice is much richer than can be showcased here, what is more important is the exciting directions it points us in for future research and practice. Within planning studies and social science more generally Badiou’s speculations on multiplicity remain much less explored than Deleuze’s. One important exception is Adrian Mackenzie’s (2012) work on databases, which can be viewed as a possible empirical embodiment of the kind of set theory that is basic to Badiou’s metaphysics. Or at least, the databases that are infrastructural to our modern digital lives, including those set up by Google, Amazon and other tech giants, can be viewed as attempts to include everything (parts, subsets) about everyone (elements). By mathematical implication, that is, Badiou’s ontology, this attempt is bound to only further multiply the (infinite) number of (possible) datasets and thereby opportunities for the emergence of disruptive parts and subjectivities. In sum, in what the Platonist philosopher himself would probably find an abhorrent trivialization of his ontology of quantitative multiplicities, planning and design theorists may find ample empirical resources. The irony here is that we are left with a multiplicity of theories of multiplicity, all of which might be useful to make sense of multiplicity in empirical practice. Indeed, leaving philosophical puritanism aside, we may conclude with a suggestion for combining them. With some effort, we can find in Deleuze and freek de haan
Guattari (1987) a way to do this, taking their distinction between affects, signifiers and axiomatics as a suggestion for empirical elements that represent the above vitalist, interpretive and axiomatic multiplicity. As DeLanda (2004) explicates most clearly, Deleuze and Guattari employ geometric group theory to arrange types of multiplicity in a more refined way than the simple Bergsonian dualism of qualitative versus quantitative. Loosely parallel to the distinction between topological, differential, projective and Euclidean geometry (arranged by their symmetry, defined by what transformations they may undergo unchanged), Deleuze and Guattari distinguish flows of matter-energy, affects of practice, regimes of signs and axiomatics of capitalism, suggesting that the former bring forth the latter both historically and currently. In short, we can think of modern human assemblages of planning and design as historically and currently actualized as/by all three types of multiplicity, respectively: practical (nonrepresentational flows, affects), interpretive (representational signs) and metric (capitalist axiomatics and rule by numbers) (De Haan, 2022). Freek de Haan
References Badiou, A. (2006). Being and event. Continuum. DeLanda, M. (2002). Deleuze and the use of the genetic algorithm in architecture. Architectural Design, 71(7), 9–12. DeLanda, M. (2004). Materiality: Anexact and intense. In L. Spuybroek (ed.) NOX: Machining architecture. Thames & Hudson, 370–377. De Haan, F. (2022). Counter-actualizing gentrification: A study of problems and practices of displacement in Arnhem, Vienna and Istanbul (dissertation). Ridderprint. Deleuze, G. (1991). Bergsonism. Zone Books. Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press. Gunder, M., & Hillier, J. (2016). Planning in ten words or less: A Lacanian entanglement with spatial planning. Routledge. Hillier, J. (2005). Straddling the poststructuralist abyss: Between transcendence and immanence? Planning Theory, 4(3), 271–299.
multiplicity 245 Hillier, J. (2021). The “flatness” of Deleuze and Guattari: Planning the city as a tree or as a rhizome? disP – The Planning Review, 57(2), 16–29. Lamker, C., & Marjanović, M. (2022). Reproduction of spatial planning roles: Navigating the multiplicity of planning. plaNext–Next Generation Planning, 12.
Mackenzie, A. (2012). More parts than elements: How databases multiply. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 30(2), 335–350. Mol, A. (2002). The body multiple: Ontology in medical practice. Duke University Press. See also: assemblage, identity, transversality
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82. Narrative Definition Narratives are stories, and stories have a particular structure. What that structure is depends on the theoretical lens used, on the understanding of the function of narrative. If we see stories as entertainment for children, then the study of narrative does not hold much promise for planning. If we see stories as foundational for our understanding or construction of reality, then planners must take stories seriously. If we, moreover, believe in planning as balancing different understandings of the world, we have additional reasons to pay attention.
Structuralism A first shift in the understanding of narrative came in early structuralism, with Propp’s study of Russian folk tales in the 1920s. For Propp, stories make things understandable by defining characters, episodes and rules of combination. In addition, certain combinations are common in certain cultures. For anthropologist Levi-Strauss, a generation later, such combinations of elements making up a narrative could be universal, under the guise of myths (which can be found across the world). Psychoanalyst Jung spoke of a collective unconscious which would be the source of such universal myths, but one does not need to embrace this idea to recognize the power of narrative to make sense of the world and our lived experience in it, as well as certain common characteristics of stories that spread easily: a temporal structure with beginning, middle and end, a quest, a hero and villain, possibly a comic sidekick (in superhero movies and with Shakespeare), a conflict. Religious writings, epics, myths, the texts that gave meaning to the life of people for centuries, are typically narratives, and even the Enlightenment which was supposed to undermine the value of tradition and ‘superstition’ was persuasive because of its narrative structure (heroes of freedom and humanity fighting the evil of obscurantism) and good storytellers (Voltaire being the most entertaining one). In the heydays of structuralism, Roland Barthes’s mythologies, widely read and
popular among academics of diverse disciplines, showed the mythological (and narrative) structure in and behind many representations in popular culture, from the eating of steak and fries to the world of wrestling, the writer and travel guides. The underlying distinctions in many of the vignettes were interpreted as part of a grander narrative, i.e., capitalist bourgeois ideology. The work of Barthes, LeviStrauss, and of the semiotics of the 60s and 70s led not only to the building of elaborate narrative theories by Greimas, Genette, Todorov and Bal, but also to the dissemination of the basic idea that narrative structures are at work everywhere. Even where structuralism was not in the picture, and where formal narrative theory was not espoused, this basic idea had serious consequences. It led to a narrative turn in the 80s and 90s, which crossed disciplinary boundaries again and finally reached the administrative disciplines, planning, policy, administration. In planning, theorists such as Forester, Sandercock, Campbell, Flyvbjerg and Throgmorton exposed the multiplicity of stories structuring planning and community, while in public policy and administration the seeping in of Foucaultian and other poststructuralist ideas, led to a growing acceptance of the importance of ideological, historical and identity narratives in structuring seemingly technical tools and decisions.
In planning In planning, what deserves attention, according to the aforementioned theorists, are not only the assumptions and silent narratives of various stakeholders in the community, but also of those in the systems of planning and governance. Not examining assumptions and narratives hides the existing patterns and mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion, and the marginalization of certain groups, their understanding of the community and the world, their idea of planning. Analyzing narratives of self and others, digging up stories, listening to stories, observing which narratives dominate in planning and governance, all those activities can help to make planning more inclusive. Speaking of local knowledge as a set of facts, without understanding their narrative connections, and the linkages of
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narrative 247 some of those narratives to bigger ones, to stories of place, identity and history, cannot do justice to the locals whose knowledge is supposed to be included. Indeed, the structuralist finding that ‘knowledge’, including scientific and bureaucratic knowledge, is always shaped by other discourses, and by narrative structures, still deserves our attention. Planning that is more than problem solving or service delivery is also a matter of forging new narratives for the community, new visions which can coordinate future development and achieve collective goals. This brings back into focus the role of the planner: should planners propose new stories, as a synthesis of many stakeholder stories? Should those stories first be mapped and does the mapping allow for a neutral synthesis? Should big new narratives be first hammered out in politics, after which planners take care of the spatial translation and implementation? Should planners be strong storytellers, and should they try to persuade the community of a new story, either of their own making or distilled from local voices? We would argue that narrative theory does not provide answers to these questions, but also that this is not a problem, that these questions, stemming from narrative perspectives, help to structure the self-reflection and ensuing dialogue that ought to be at the core of planning activity. The bigger the divisions in the community, the more traumatic the past, but also the more ambitious planning is,
the more important such self-reflection and dialogue will be. Martijn Duineveld, Kristof Van Assche and Raoul Beunen, Editors
Bibliography Bal, M. (2009). Narratology: Introduction to the theory of narrative. University of Toronto Press. Flyvbjerg, B. (2012). Making social science matter. In Social science and policy challenges: Democracy, values, and capacities (pp. 25–56). Paris: UNESCO Publishing. Huppatz, D. J. (2011). Roland Barthes, mythologies. Design and Culture, 3(1), 85–100. Sandercock, L. (2004). Out of the closet: The importance of stories and storytelling in planning practice. In Dialogues in urban and regional planning (pp. 315–337). Routledge. Throgmorton, J. A. (1996). Planning as persuasive storytelling: The rhetorical construction of Chicago’s electric future. University of Chicago Press. See also: storytelling, power/knowledge, modernism, rhetoric, ideology, power in planning, creativity, strategy, policy integration, master signifiers, identity, genius loci, milieu, communicative planning
martijn duineveld, kristof van assche and raoul beunen
83. Neighbourhood design The idea of envisaging and creating neighbourhood as a distinctive place is a recurring theme in urban design and planning. It is a direct response to the sprawling anonymity of cities and a backlash against some elements of modernist urban planning and design. It is also a reflection of the ways in which urban space is produced, managed and inhabited (Madanipour, 2014). In this entry, first a brief review of a century of neighbourhood design is presented, followed by critically examining some of its main characteristics, which include distinctiveness, centrality, size and density, and the composition of people and activities.
A century of neighbourhood design Neighbourhoods as distinctive socio-spatial units have been an integral feature of cities throughout history. Their continuity and stability were secured through the slow pace of change and low rates of population mobility. However, more than two centuries ago, industrialization and its associated urbanization started to reconfigure towns and cities. New urban populations were cut off from their roots, congregating in growing, crowded cities, and living in poor, alienating and explosive conditions. Revolutionaries and reformers proposed new ways of forming new communities, such as utopian model towns, workers’ villages and garden suburbs. Urban planning and design in its current form is rooted in these nineteenth-century attempts at changing and improving the urban conditions through spatial reordering. By the early twentieth century, these attempts led to the development of two broad approaches that would shape cities ever since: modernism and garden cities, one aiming at reorganizing cities with the aid of technology, and the other at creating small settlements as an alternative to the city. Both approaches, in their own ways, deployed the idea of establishing distinctive neighbourhoods. Neighbourhoods became a basis for both analysing and designing the city. Chicago sociologists analysed the city and its changes through its neighbourhood structure. Architect Raymond Unwin suggested that the feeling of
local unity can be fostered by clearly defining some areas, and urban planner Clarence Perry proposed the idea of neighbourhood unit. The neighbourhood unit was defined by a centre, which was a school that could also be used for community activities; by clear boundaries that were defined by major roads; and by an optimum population size that would facilitate face-to-face communication and community formation. It became a key tool of urban planning and design for a generation around the world, including the British new towns. By the 1960s, however, planning through neighbourhood units came under attack, accused of physical determinism and social engineering, as if social problems could be solved through spatial solutions. Neighbourhood-based social analysis was also criticized for ignoring the political and economic forces at work. The 1980s witnessed the revival of the idea of neighbourhood design, albeit no longer with a claim to solve social problems, but now with an emphasis on environmental challenges. With the rise of sustainable development and quality of life as key concerns for urban planning and design, neighbourhood design has remained on the agenda ever since. In New Urbanism in the United States, the ideas of neighbourhood design drew on its garden city and new town predecessors. At the turn of the twenty-first century, the century-long ideas of neighbourhood design reappeared in the British government’s drive for urban renaissance. It set up an Urban Task Force led by the architect Richard Rogers, that outlined ten principles of creating a ‘compact and wellconnected city’, advocating high-quality public spaces, increased density and mixing land uses and tenures. In 2011, the British government gave neighbourhood planning a legal status. With this legislation, local populations found the power to develop a vision for their neighbourhood and shape the future development of their local area. Preparing neighbourhood plans was not a legal requirement, but a right for local populations to decide the future shape of their area. Such a detailed level of decisionmaking inevitably involved the participation of the local people in a process of planning and design. The government supported this process by issuing the National Design Guide (MHCLG, 2021), in which ten principles of good design are outlined as an overarching framework. This is accompanied by the National Model Design Code, which expands
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neighbourhood design 249 those ten principles, which in turn overlap with the recommendations of the Urban Task Force two decades earlier, all in line with previous neighbourhood design ideas. The neighbourhood as a framework for planning and design is also advocated by the United Nations, seen as a response to the problems of urban sprawl, inefficient use of land, car dependency, low density and high segregation of land use. Sustainable neighbourhoods and cities are recommended to be compact, integrated and connected. These three features were spelled out in five principles: adequate space for streets and an efficient street network, high density, mixed land use, social mix and limited land use specialization (UN Habitat, 2014). The UN Environment Programme goes on to provide detailed guidelines for neighbourhood design (Salat, 2021). Neighbourhoods are seen as ‘windows for immediate action’, ‘the fundamental scale of people-centred urbanism’, with ‘the capacity to deliver carbon-neutrality, resource-efficiency and inclusiveness’.
Neighbourhood design concepts and their limits Several key characteristics may be identified in these different generations of neighbourhood design, including distinctiveness, centrality, size and density, and the composition of people and activities. Over time, these characteristics have somewhat changed, and their justification has moved from a social to an environmental basis. These features are widely advocated and used in urban design, and therefore need to be critically examined (Madanipour, 2001). A relatively constant feature in neighbourhood design has been the emphasis on its distinctiveness, which is to be achieved by clear edges that separate a neighbourhood from its neighbours. The desire for distinction can be interpreted in different ways. Generations of planners and designers have advocated establishing a legible spatial order through distinctive neighbourhoods. But turning complex social orders into visible spatial orders may be a simplification, a managerial view into the many overlapping and ambiguous layers of social reality. The desire for distinction may also have an economic rationale. As cities are built by large development companies, their economies of scale mean a preference for large-scale projects, thereby developing entire
residential neighbourhoods rather than smallscale infill schemes. A distinctive neighbourhood may enable a local area to have its independent identity, rather than being lost in the anonymous sea of a metropolis. However, in the context of rising social inequality and diversity, this desire for distinction can easily feed into social fragmentation and divide. For privileged citizens, distinction becomes a measure of prestige and maintenance of property value, whereas, for the disadvantaged ones, it becomes an instrument of stigmatization and further marginalization. Distinctiveness may also be established through clear centres. The British garden cities and the American neighbourhood unit were both based on the idea of a clear centre, where some public facilities were located. Neighbourhood designs may envisage clear centres, in the image of villages and small towns, but the viability of such centres would depend on the availability of public funds to support them, or the existence of a clientele large enough to support the relevant activities. In the context of high rates of mobility, low levels of public investment, and the decline of in-person retail, however, the viability and sustainability of such centres cannot be secured. Nevertheless, the provision of services in local centres can contribute to social vibrancy, healthy living, energy efficiency and environmental sustainability, facilitating pedestrian movement and easy access, rather than having to travel to town centres, or driving to suburban strip malls or shopping centres. Size and density are other design considerations, responding to questions about the number of people and the amount of space in a neighbourhood. The call for sustainable development has triggered demands for reducing travel distances and more efficient use of land through densification. There are attempts at defining optimum densities that would be applicable everywhere, such as the United Nations recommending 150 persons per hectare. As it was clear from early on, however, density is a relative concept. What is considered as too dense in one context may be regarded as low density in another. In early twentieth-century New York, the size of a neighbourhood unit was proposed to be around 10 000 people, whereas in the mid-century British new towns the figure of 5000 was used. In practice, poverty, topography, property market, public policy and ali madanipour
250 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design urban infrastructure squeeze large numbers of low-income people into very high-density spaces, while prosperity and cheap fuel have encouraged low-density urban sprawl for the better off. Optimum numbers may provide a benchmark, but they often cannot change the availability and price of land, provide the necessary investment or change social attitudes. Densification may lead to fierce competition between groups over space, potentially displacing the weaker groups. Mixing populations and mixing land uses are proposed as two significant social and functional components of neighbourhood design. Economics of land and property, public policies of housing allocation and development, and technologies of transportation, have resulted in a fragmented social geography. Modernist public housing schemes had been developed by the welfare state to improve the quality of life in cities. With the decline of manufacturing industries, transition to neoliberalism, and precarious conditions of an internationalized labour force, these areas declined, stigmatized as disadvantaged neighbourhoods. They were seen as suffering from socio-economic homogeneity, in need of change through social mixing, to bring new investment and energy into the area. However, in the context of rising social inequality and diversity, mixing social groups does not necessarily lead to harmonious coexistence, but competition for space and services. Weaker social groups may be priced out, or pushed out through regeneration schemes, resulting in the gentrification of a neighbourhood, which appears to have improved the area, but at the cost of displacing the poor. Mixing land uses overlaps with this social mixing, but it includes a more explicit environmental dimension. Modernist functionalism had advocated reorganizing the city along four functions, which should be kept apart to achieve a desirable spatial order. This had created single-use urban areas in a car-based urbanism, which appeared wellordered on paper, but sterile in practice, and degrading for the environment. The environmental imperative has demanded a mixture of land uses, so as to cut travel times, encourage economic viability and facilitate walkability. Mixing populations and functions has been a primary feature of ‘unplanned’ cities throughout history, but cities today are characterized by centrifugal forces. The call for mixing is faced by the transfer of retail from ali madanipour
urban areas to online transactions, and the continued trend of suburbanization and lowdensity, single-use developments.
Conclusion For over a century, neighbourhood design has been advocated and implemented as a tool for addressing social and environmental problems. It has reflected the changing processes of making, managing and living in cities. This demonstrates a tension between two trajectories. It promotes distinctiveness in spatial ordering, so that the city is made of neighbourhoods with clear and distinguishable boundaries, centres and identities. Simultaneously, it promotes overlap and ambiguity in its internal arrangement, stimulating the mixture of social groups and land uses. Neighbourhood-based design is a spatial response to the transience and alienation of the city, with its continually changing population. It expresses a desire for familiarity and stability, which seem to be lost in the accelerated pace of the globalized city. It also expresses a desire for environmental sensibility through encouraging walkability and reducing fossil fuel consumption. The idea of neighbourhood design often draws on the spatial arrangements of historic towns and villages, with their integrated life in compact spaces, limited mobility and relatively slow pace of change. As the urban society today is no longer organized in the same way, the applicability of a historical spatial model would inevitably remain limited. To mobilize its social and environmental capacities, the idea needs to be adjusted to the realities and needs of a mobile population with its far more complex social conditions and political and economic frameworks. Ali Madanipour
References Madanipour, A. (2001). How relevant is ‘planning by neighbourhoods’ today? Town Planning Review, 72(2), 171–191. Madanipour, A. (2014). Urban design, space and society. Palgrave Macmillan. MHCLG. (2021). National design guide. Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. Salat, S. (2021). Integrated guidelines for sustainable neighbourhood design. The United Nations Environment Programme.
neighbourhood design 251 Retrieved June 5, 2022, from https://www .neighbourhoodguidelines.org/ UN Habitat. (2014). A new strategy of sustainable neighbourhood planning: 5 principles. Retrieved June 5, 2022, from https://unhabitat.org/sites/default /files/2019 /10/64._ 5_ principles _ of_ neighbourhood _design.pdf
See also: new urbanism, identity, assemblage, creativity, design: tensions, conservation subdivision design, commons, design: public–private, social justice, downtown development, biophilic urbanism, social capital
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84. Network governance Key definition Network governance refers to the governance of networks of autonomous yet interdependent public, private and civil society actors at local, regional, national and/or transnational governmental level that have formed more or less stable patterns of social relations around public problems and/or public programmes (compare Kickert et al., 1997). These relations consist of repeated interactions between these actors at the level both of organisations or parts of organisations and of persons. These networks may have emerged unintentionally without having a formal common objective or may be established either by one actor (e.g., a government) or by the participants jointly to realise a common outcome that no one actor could produce on its own (Rhodes, 1997). Network governance refers to deliberate strategies and arrangements aimed at facilitating and guiding interactions within a network and/or changing the features of a network, with the intention of fostering collaboration to deal with a public problem or achieve collective objectives (compare Klijn & Koppenjan, 2016).
Brief history Many authors have reported on the worldwide shift at the end of the last century from government to governance (e.g., Rhodes, 1997). As a result of the increasingly complex problems faced by governments, the limitations of traditional top-down policymaking, central planning and public service delivery based on the bureaucratic model have been widely acknowledged. On the one hand, inspired by neoliberalism, this brought about the rise of New Public Management: the introduction into the public sector of the private sector’s organisational and management methods. This resulted in practices like subcontracting, hiving off, decentralisation and privatisation aimed at realising a more efficient way of governing. However, this also led to the fragmentation of the governmental apparatus and to the government’s loss of knowledge and steering capacity, while at the same time the challenges confronting government increasingly cut
across existing jurisdictions and boundaries and required coordination and collaboration. On the other hand, and partly as a reaction to the shortcomings of New Public Management, governments turned to more horizontal ways of governing. They increasingly included actors that control important resources in processes of policymaking, planning, implementation and public service delivery, and engaged in partnerships with business and civil society actors, thus contributing to the emergence of networks and network governance. This new governance practice also implied a shift from the use of more formal and legally binding instruments like laws, contracts and plans, to softer and more social forms of steering, relying on informal agreements, covenants, political and social pressures and self-constituted rules and norms (Klijn & Koppenjan, 2016). The study of networks and network governance that has developed parallel to this practice recognises that the idea of networks suggests the presence of self-organising and self-governing mechanisms. Keast et al. (2013, p. 8) state that, in this way, working across organisational boundaries can result in cooperation (information sharing), coordination (sharing resources, which implies alignment of operating procedures) and/or collaboration (which implies the far-reaching adaptation of ways of doing and the adoption of joint objectives). The literature also recognises, however, that self-governing mechanisms often fall short of accomplishing these outcomes. Despite their interdependencies, actors may have diverging perceptions and goals, and their actions and strategies may hinder the sharing of information and other resources and the realisation of joint outcomes. Successful collaborations, therefore, may require network governance by one of the participants (a lead organisation – e.g., a government), by an external network authority, or by the participants collectively. Provan and Kenis (2008) contend that the suitability of the type of governance structure is contingent upon network characteristics: the number of participants, the level of consensus and trust, and the presence of network management skills.
Network governance and complexity Klijn and Koppenjan (2016) state that network governance addresses complexities related to
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network governance 253 1) the substance of policy and planning issues, 2) interaction processes and 3) the institutional context of networks. Governance strategies addressing substantive complexities are based on the assumption that issues are complex not only because of their substantive nature, but also because actors do not agree upon their nature and the values involved. These strategies therefore aim to foster consensus or, when this proves difficult, to create zero-plus situations by seeking innovative solutions that do justice to a variety of objectives. This is often accomplished by widening the scope within which solutions are sought. The network governance strategies that deal with the complexities and dynamics of interaction processes consist of process design and process management. Process design implies entering into negotiations to commit potential participants and stakeholders to boundaries and rules that will guide their interactions. Process management consists of facilitating processes of interaction across boundaries (boundary spanning) and, when needed, providing mediation or arbitration. Institutional network governance strategies are aimed at changing the structure of networks. This can be done by influencing resource distributions, memberships, the institutional rules that govern the network or the institutional context in which the network operates – for instance by pursuing changes in legislation, mobilising external support or resistance or seeking media attention. The shift towards network governance is a generic development, although particularity witnessed in areas such as environmental policies (balancing the economy with sustainability), physical planning, water management and infrastructure development (development planning; area development), public–private partnerships (urban revitalisation, road and water projects; innovation networks), public service delivery (care and healthcare networks), safety and security policies, and public participation and citizen initiatives (collaborative governance).
Link to theory and method The network governance perspective builds upon various theoretical sources. ●
A first source is that of social network theory, which depicts networks as sets of nodes and ties and results in a structuralist
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approach to networks, postulating that the position of actors and their relationships within the network determines outcomes (see Kapucu & Hu, 2020). A second source is organisation theory, more specifically theories on interorganisational relations and resource dependency. These theories focus on (private) organisations’ strategies to deal with resource dependencies by buffering and entering into alliances to secure the exchange of resources (Benson, 1975). A third source stems from political science theories on interest mediation structures of interest groups, politicians and governmental agencies, where pluralist and elitist orientations have resulted in the identification of various forms of policy networks, ranging from loosely organised issue networks to tight and closed iron triangles and policy communities (Rhodes, 1997). A fourth source concerns theories on interorganisational policymaking, implementation structures and intergovernmental management (e.g., Hanf & Scharpf, 1978). These theories emphasise the existence of horizontal networks, in which top-down policies, plans and services need to be coordinated and integrated in order to realise outcomes. A fifth source is the policy analysis and planning literature, and more specifically the argumentative turn within this literature (Fischer & Forester, 1993), linking cognitive aspects of problem solving and policymaking to network theory. This literature emphasises the role of perceptions, frames, narratives and argumentation structures in dealing with public problems. It introduces discourse analysis and interpretative approaches in network governance theory. The term ‘wicked problem’ also stems from this source, indicating that substantive complexities cannot be reduced to the technical nature of issues, but also include conflicts over values. These insights imply that joint problem solving requires dialogue, frame reflection and dealing with value conflicts and ambiguity.
Building on these sources over the last decades, many studies applying the ideas of networks and network governance have been published. It can be argued that the network joop koppenjan
254 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design governance approach has developed into a fully fledged theoretical perspective, mirroring an organisational and managerial practice that has gained a foothold in many sectors and many countries. Besides a well-developed body of common concepts and assumptions, the network governance perspective displays a growing array of research approaches and methods. The initial qualitative approach dominated by in-depth single case studies has been supplemented by the use of comparative case studies with small and midrange cases (e.g., Comparative Qualitative Analysis) and quantitatively derived studies (surveys, Q-sorts). Furthermore, in addition to traditional designs, ethnographic methods, simulations and forms of action research are applied (Voets et al., 2019).
Discussion and critiques Both networks and network governance have been subjected to critical reflections. A first critique is that network governance studies lack consensus on the empirical object that they study and the concepts they use. Studies address different kinds of networks and use a variety of concepts that do not sit easily together under a common denominator (see Keast et al., 2013). Although to a certain extent this criticism is justified, it can also be argued that the network governance perspective is applicable to a variety of networks that share common characteristics and that, despite conceptual variety, agreement exists on core concepts and assumptions, such as multi-actor settings, interdependency, complexity and the need for cross-organisational and cross-sectoral collaboration and governance. A second point of criticism concerns the weak evidence regarding the performance of network governance. Despite the development of evaluation frameworks, the effects of network governance are difficult to isolate, and occur only over time, making it difficult to link substantive outcomes to network governance strategies. Therefore, performance is commonly assessed by measuring perceptions. The challenge of future network governance research is to develop methods to better assess the performance of network governance. Thirdly, criticism focuses on the weaknesses and drawbacks of networks and network governance, such as the occurrence joop koppenjan
of prolonged and burdensome interaction processes with high transaction costs and the lack of innovation, transparency and democratic accountability. These topics have recently gained more prominence in network governance studies, for instance in the work of Sørensen and Torfing (2006) on democratic network governance and collaborative innovation. Finally, it should be acknowledged that we do not know exactly how widespread the practice of network governance is. Despite the prominence of network literature and the lip service of many governments and government officials, in reality, it may well be that traditional government and New Public Management prevail. In the current public debate, the criticism of neoliberal policies and New Public Management has resulted in a widely heard call for government to play a more prominent role. Given the complexities and interdependencies that characterise current societies and the challenges that they face, the network governance perspective suggests that this call should not imply a return to traditional government, but rather that governments should play a more deliberate and assertive role in governing networks.
Alternative conceptualisations: collaborative governance The most obvious strand of literature that provides alternative conceptualisations to the network governance perspective is that on collaborative governance. Although distinguishable, both approaches have co-evolved and influenced each other. Collaborative governance frameworks as developed by, for instance, Ansell and Gash (2008) or Emerson et al. (2012), share concepts and core assumptions with network governance. Scholars often contribute to both perspectives, and the professional communities of both perspectives overlap. Some may think of both perspectives as interchangeable, but it can also be argued that collaborative governance is part of the wider network governance perspective literature, differentiating itself by its focus on collaborations that are often (but not always) government led, consciously designed to accomplish a common goal, and in which citizens are the central – if not the exclusive – target of collaboration. The collaborative governance perspective also builds more strongly
network governance 255 than network governance on deliberative democratic ideas. Joop Koppenjan
References Ansell, C., & Gash, A. (2008). Collaborative governance in theory and practice. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 18(4), 543–571. Benson, J. K. (1975). The interorganizational network as a political economy. Administrative Science Quarterly, 20(2), 229–240. Emerson, K., Nabatchi, T., & Balogh, S. (2012). An integrative framework for collaborative governance. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 22(1), 1–29. Fischer, F., & Forester, J. (Eds.) (1993). The argumentative turn in policy analysis and planning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Hanf, K. I., & Scharpf, F. W. (Eds.) (1978). Interorganizational policy making: Limits to coordination and central control. London: Sage. Kapucu, N., & Hu, Q. (2020). Network governance: Concepts, theories, and applications. Abington/New York: Routledge. Keast, R., Mandell, M. P., & Agranoff, R. (Eds.) (2013). Network theory in the public sector: Building new theoretical
frameworks. Abington/New York: Routledge. Kickert, W. J., Klijn, E. H., & Koppenjan, J. F. M. (Eds.) (1997). Managing complex networks: Strategies for the public sector. London/Thousand Oaks/New Delhi: Sage. Klijn, E. H., & Koppenjan, J. (2016). Governance networks in the public sector. Abington/New York: Routledge. Provan, K. G., & Kenis, P. (2008). Modes of network governance: Structure, management, and effectiveness. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 18(2), 229–252. Rhodes, R. A. (1997). Understanding governance: Policy networks, governance, reflexivity and accountability. Buckingham: Open University. Sørensen, E., & Torfing, J. (Eds.) (2006). Theories of democratic network governance. Basingstoke/New York: Palgrave. Voets, J., Keast, R., & Koliba, C. (Eds.) (2019). Networks and collaboration in the public sector: Essential research approaches, methodologies and analytic tools. Abington/New York: Routledge. See also: complexity and planning, participation, new public management, self-organization, institutions and institutionalism, ideology, strategy, policy integration, dependencies, social capital, mixed use, smart growth
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85. New public management
The promotion of the ‘good governance’ narrative enjoyed substantial institutional backing in the post-WWII ‘Bretton Woods’ era. In the fallout of the war, wealthy Western countries and their allies were eager to establish a global economic system that would ensure Definition interdependence and thereby forestall further New Public Management (NPM) is an analyt- instability. While some principles on which ical paradigm for understanding operational the Bretton Woods system was based, includstrategies in public organizations that prior- ing the backing of the United States dollar itize private sector management principles. with gold, have since been abandoned, the NPM’s clearest practical manifestation lies ideas and institutions (including the World principally in neoliberal governance reform Bank and International Monetary Fund) paradigms and structural adjustment pro- emerging from the system endure today and grams promoted by global aid organizations remain highly influential. In the wake of WWII, fiscal commitments and development banks. While ideas about operational efficiency in the public sector and development aid were mobilized to assist predate references to NPM, the concept con- in post-war rebuilding, while in the United gealed in the 1980s as a way to understand States wartime production was reconfigured governance reform movements spreading for peacetime. The 1950s and 1960s were a period of high economic growth, prompting around the world. The values of NPM vary but are generally substantial investment in government projects consistent with the values of neoliberalism (e.g., poverty alleviation, infrastructure and and allied principles like governance mini- research and university capacity). However, malism and fiscal efficiency. Into this value the well-funded public sector and its symsystem fits the technique of performance biotic relationship with the private sector measurement, which is deemed essential for encountered turbulence under a confluence of understanding systemic weaknesses and vul- factors beginning in the late 1960s: economic nerabilities that compromise efficiency. At the (e.g., oil price fluctuations) and, in the United internal organizational level, NPM-inspired States (where many ideas about governance governance reforms seek to quantify tasks were originating), socio-political contention for the purpose of identifying and reducing arising from unresolved racial tensions and resource wastage and operational constraints. economic hardships resulting from globaliAt the external organizational label, NPM zation, mechanization and restructuring. The often emphasizes a ‘customer service’ ori- interventionist governance model faced subentation on which reform narratives are stantial pushback as fiscal and social crises based. This value reduces the state–society arose and the legitimacy of government prorelationship to an aggregation of atomized grams was challenged. Out of this backlash and accompanying transactions between public service providers and individuals variously labeled ‘cus- crisis of trust in institutions emerged ideas critomers,’ ‘taxpayers’ or ‘clients.’ If managed tiquing the size and role of government, culefficiently, this system of transactions points minating in discourses like the Washington ideally towards the notion of an equilibrium Consensus. The Consensus included a set price for public services. In turn, the market- of ten principles relating to fiscal discipline, fundamentalist perspective supports compe- trade policy, privatization of public sector tition-based models for public procurement activities and deregulation (among others) and service delivery, including contracting- that largely embraced a pro-market strategy. out and privatization. Within the realm of These proposals were accompanied by seisresearch, public choice theory, rational choice mic shifts in normative views about the public theory, principal-agent theory and transaction sector, with the concept of NPM emerging as cost theory have been used to provide concep- a prescriptive device for reform. The NPM era saw substantial governance tual support for NPM. reforms undertaken in countries around the world. These reforms were enabled in part by History a global institutional architecture that proNPM has roots in governance reform para- moted the principles of NPM in the same digms emerging in the mid-twentieth century. way that the principles of systemic economic 256
new public management 257 interconnectedness arising from the Bretton Woods agreements had been promoted decades earlier. Gaining pace first in the United Kingdom and New Zealand, and ultimately in the United States and elsewhere, NPM reforms had the advertised effect of fiscally disciplining the public sector.
Critique Despite the advertised virtues of NPM, critics of the concept argued that the adoption of NPM reforms had the effect of ‘gutting’ or ‘hollowing out’ state capacity. This trend bore substantial implications for government programs including social services and infrastructure. As these reforms in their various manifestations continued to be promoted decades later by political movements trading in narratives about government wastefulness, scholars and practitioners in turn raised concerns and pushed for the reassertion of the state in public affairs. Furthermore, NPM was critiqued for failing to recognize distinctions in management and organizational needs between the public and private sectors; what may be appropriate for running a business may not be appropriate for running a government or public organization. These distinctions include the profit mandate (unique to the private sector) and the political accountability mandate (unique to the public sector). Extending these critiques, the scholarship proposed so-called ‘post-NPM’ models including ‘new public governance’ and ‘new public service.’ These alternative models underscored the role of the state while also recognizing the role of multisectoral models for public sector delivery. If the ideological pendulum had swung towards government intervention in the post-WWII era, and significantly towards a pro-market model in the NPM era, the post-NPM pendulum appeared to settle somewhere in the middle – recognizing capacities not only in the public and private sectors but also in the ‘third sector’ (e.g., community groups and non-government organizations).
Prospects Taking stock of the state of NPM and postNPM in the third decade of the twenty-first century, it is evident that ideas about government are shaped increasingly by the manifold
systemic crises arising since the 1990s and converging more recently to justify global policy movements like the UN Sustainable Development Goals and multilateral agreements. These crises include climate change (gaining mainstream policy recognition only in the past two decades), threats to national and personal safety and security, the fragility of the global economic system (as illustrated in the 2008 global financial crisis), socioeconomic inequality, and most recently the COVID-19 pandemic – which highlighted global economic, political and social interconnectedness and the salience of geopolitics in crisis management. In the midst of these and other convergent crises, there was little resolution to the debate about the efficacy of NPM versus that of post-NPM, and neither ‘side’ conclusively captured the political or policy discourse in its own favor. Indeed, the discursive dynamics of NPM and other reform paradigms varied from one country to another, while many liberal democracies appeared to shift between more and less interventionist roles over the course of political cycles. A rivalry between two political systems (resembling the Cold War era) also emerged: liberal democracy versus authoritarianism. The implications of this debate for public policy and management are clear when considering how political interests impact public sector reform, bureaucratic functionality, and constitutional change. Concerning present governance practices, the democratization of public service advocated by post-NPM paradigms like new public governance and new public service arguably runs afoul of the current illiberal wave in some countries. Debates about the scope of government intervention and state– society relations remain rooted in discourses mainstreamed during the height of the NPM era in the 1980s and 1990s. When seen more broadly as a frame for discourse, NPM continues to offer politically useful critiques of public sector operations. Kris Hartley
Bibliography Barzelay, M. (2001). The new public management: Improving research and policy dialogue. University of California Press. Christensen, T., & Lægreid, P. (Eds.). (2007). Transcending new public management: kris hartley
258 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design The transformation of public sector reforms. Ashgate. Dunleavy, P., Margetts, H., Bastow, S., & Tinkler, J. (2006). New public management is dead—Long live digital-era governance. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 16(3), 467–494. Hood, C. (1995). The “new public management” in the 1980s: Variations on
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a theme. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 20(2–3), 93–109. See also: network governance, ideology, modernism, narrative, critical planning, master signifiers, expertise and local knowledge, methods, power/knowledge, international and transnational planning, creativity, colonial legacies
86. New urbanism Definition New Urbanism is an anti-sprawl movement at the intersection of planning, urban design and architecture. It promotes built environments that mix land uses, provide a range of housing types, centre the pedestrian experience, prioritize transit and contain well-defined, accessible public realms that celebrate the local context. New Urbanism emerged in American developments in the 1980s and was formally established with the initial convening of the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) in 1993. It gained prominence in planning theory and practice around the world throughout the 1990s and 2000s. Over time, the principles that New Urbanism helped to champion have become embedded in mainstream contemporary planning (Moore & Trudeau, 2020). New Urbanism pulls threads from across planning and architectural theory, tying together two central concepts that grew influential leading up to the turn of the millennium: traditional neighbourhood design and transit-oriented development.
Origins and versions Traditional neighbourhood design (TND) has in large part been developed by Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, founders of DPZ planning and architecture firm in Miami, Florida. European urbanist Leon Krier inspired them to reject modernist planning and architecture in favour of historical models represented by European cities and American towns built before the ascendance of the car and its infrastructure. Extending an architectural lens from the home outward to the broader urban realm, proponents of this approach assert that outdoor spaces should feel like living rooms. Straight rows of trees along streets laid out in a grid pattern, and flat building facades with small setbacks from sidewalks function to enclose urban space. TND celebrates the town square as central for civic life and social gathering. Incongruent with the historical aesthetic, cars are moved off main streets onto secondary laneways connected to rear-loaded garages and driveways. Proponents argue that the general public dislikes and mistrusts modern styles; New Urbanist developments apply vernacular
architectural syntax to emulate a traditional style and claim authenticity (Duany et al., 2000). TND reaches into the past for design futures. Transit-oriented development (TOD) is a term introduced by Peter Calthorpe, an urban design consultant based in California. TOD targets automobile infrastructure’s influence on the built form and people’s daily mobility patterns, and aims to reorient urban structure around public transportation. Informed by Garden City and regional planning theory, Calthorpe proposes transit-centred nodes linked within a broader urban network. TOD nodes elaborate on Calthorpe’s earlier concept of the ‘pedestrian pocket,’ emphasizing the importance of walkability and pedestrianscaled urban design. He argues that nodes should have a mix of land uses and a range of housing developed compactly with the highest densities along edges of transit-served boulevards converging at clearly defined centres (Calthorpe, 1993). Motivations for TOD include environmental sustainability, health, enabling a diverse population and revitalizing urban areas through the catalyst of public transportation investment. TOD emphasizes the structuring effect that transportation has on urban form, economic development and lived experience. Apart from its role in shaping the New Urbanism movement, TOD has become a focus in and of itself for planning research, policy and practice, intertwining with concepts such as the compact city, smart growth and densification. Their overlapping goals and commonalities in design consulting work brought TND and TOD practitioners together with politicians in 1991 to write the Ahwahnee Principles, which were progenitors to principles later adopted by the New Urbanism and Smart Growth movements. To further advocate the New Urbanist vision, the CNU was founded in 1993 by Duany, Plater-Zyberk, Calthorpe and others including Daniel Solomon, Elizabeth Moule and Stefanos Polyzoides who is credited with coining the term ‘New Urbanism.’ At their annual congress in 1996, they established the Charter of the New Urbanism, which remains an important document outlining the core tenets of the movement (Congress for the New Urbanism, 1996; Garde, 2020). New Urbanism has been selective in what it takes and leaves from theorists such as Jane Jacobs, Kevin Lynch, Christopher Alexander, Camillo Sitte and Ebenezer Howard. In a
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260 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design similar fashion, practitioners implementing New Urbanism pick and choose convenient elements, which are implemented piecemeal and contingent on local contexts and conditions. Analysts speak of multiple new urbanisms, or new urban approaches (Moore & Trudeau, 2020).
Critiques Four decades of scholarly research on New Urbanism’s goals, methods, implementation and influence has generated ample critiques, with some advocates pushing the movement towards improvement (e.g., Talen, 2000, 2019), and others rejecting New Urbanism based on its limitations for challenging the status quo (e.g., Lehrer & Milgrom, 1996). Case study research assesses the implementation of principles and compares various metrics of New Urbanist design, such as density and mix, to conventional built forms. Other research examines the key actors and practices producing New Urbanism in different contexts. Methodologically, New Urbanism privileges the visual over the verbal. Proponents argue that the general public relates better to visual representations of place, such as drawings and scale models (Duany et al., 2000). New Urbanists popularized the ‘design charrette’ as a creative process and consultation format. The term ‘charette’ has its origins in French history, when architecture students would submit designs for review onto a cart or ‘chariot’ after a period of intense creativity. The format varies, but generally, design charrettes invite stakeholders, local officials and members of the public to interact with expert designers who illustrate the New Urbanist vision through plans, elevations and streetscapes. Demonstrating their deliberate, traditional design, many New Urbanist illustrations in the early years were characterized by a hand-drawn aesthetic, with a nostalgic warm-hued watercolour wash. With urban design experts mainly holding the pens and educating participants about the principles of good design, critics probe whether design charrettes are truly democratic processes capable of engaging a diverse citizenry (Grant, 2006). New Urbanists identify urban planning’s functional separation of land uses as a root cause of sprawl. They created the ‘form-based code,’ as an implementation tool to control built form katherine perrott
over and above land use function, which is the primary role of conventional zoning. A formbased code focuses on the interface between buildings and the public realm, and emphasizes building typology, form and mass. They are vision-driven, highly visual documents that include diagrams, plans and elevations annotated with measurements and detailed standards. New Urbanists turn the modernist dictum: form follows function on its head, and views the built form as the determinant of land use function and community interactions. The shift in focus is a departure from modernism; and yet, critics point out that form-based codes remain as heavily prescriptive and expert-led as the modernist zoning codes they aim to replace (Hirt, 2009). While New Urbanists preach against mono-functional zoning, critics point to new kinds of conformity emerging in form, aesthetics and spatial patterning (Grant, 2020). New Urbanism is critiqued for having a narrow scope and simplistically shallow approach. For New Urbanists, the problem is sprawl with bad or absent design, which leads to the solution of compact built form and good design following the principles articulated in the Charter. Critics argue that New Urbanism’s narrow focus on design problems and solutions limits its potential to reform broader social, cultural, political and economic processes driving urban development and human behaviour (Grant, 2006). New Urbanism’s attempts to address social issues, like isolation and lack of diversity are filtered through a physical design lens; complex processes that build community are solved reductively through interventions like building front porches and mixing housing. These types of solutions and bold statements about how good design leads to particular social outcomes are critiqued as representing spatially deterministic assumptions about universal values and behaviours at the expense of pluralism, human agency and democratic process. New Urbanism is frequently applied to suburban greenfield master plans, but it is also employed as a framework for urban revitalization and infill projects like the HOPE VI public housing regeneration program in the USA. Reacting to these cases, scholars and anti-poverty activists have questioned who benefits from New Urbanism, when the principles have little to say about preventing displacement through gentrification. For critics, New Urbanism
new urbanism 261 lacks depth and breadth in its theorization and practice.
A broad appeal despite everything In spite of New Urbanism’s limitations, it remains widely popular and its influence is global in reach. Seaside, in the Florida panhandle is recognized as the first New Urbanist development designed by DPZ. Seaside’s design process was foundational in establishing the movement’s principles and served as the setting for the 1998 film The Truman Show. Other notable early New Urbanist communities in the USA include Celebration in Florida, which was initially developed by the Disney Corporation, The Kentlands and King Farm in Maryland, Orenco Station in Oregon and Middleton Hills in Wisconsin. In Canada, DPZ and Calthorpe were influential in designing master plans for Cornell and Markham Centre, on the edge of Toronto, Ontario. In Calgary, Alberta, New Urbanism is typified by Garrison Woods’s traditionally styled infill, and McKenzie Towne’s suburban site plan. In the UK, New Urbanist principles are represented in the ‘urban villages’ movement, especially in Poundbury, Dorset, which was designed by Leon Krier at Prince Charles’s behest. These influential prototypes led to spin-offs and trends as the principles of New Urbanism diffused globally. New Urbanism is a movement created by and embraced by practitioners. Its broad appeal is repeated in journalistic accounts of success stories. The CNU remains active, adapting the movement to align with parallel interests in energy efficiency, urban design and real estate development. At its inception, it was an umbrella concept spanning traditional neighbourhood design and transit-oriented development. It continues to capture a wide range of values and practices. Its legacy is evident in mainstream theory and practice that calls for suburban sprawl repair, retrofit and development that is attractive, compact, transit-oriented, mixed use, walkable, dense and diverse in housing types. Katherine Perrott
References Calthorpe, P. (1993). The next American metropolis: Ecology, community, and the American dream. Princeton Architectural Press. Congress for the New Urbanism. (1996). The charter of the new urbanism. Congress for the New Urbanism. Retrieved from https:// www. cnu .org / who -we - are /charter - new -urbanism Duany, A., Plater-Zyberk, E., & Speck, J. (2000). Suburban nation: The rise of sprawl and the decline of the American dream. North Point Press. Garde, A. (2020). New urbanism: Past, present, and future. Urban Planning, 5(4), 453–463. Grant, J. L. (2006). Planning the good community: New urbanism in theory and practice. Routledge. Grant, J. L. (2020). The creeping conformity— And potential risks—Of contemporary urbanism. Urban Planning, 5(4), 464–467. Hirt, S. A. (2009). Premodern, modern, postmodern? Placing new urbanism into a historical perspective. Journal of Planning History, 8(3), 248–273. Lehrer, U. A., & Milgrom, R. (1996). New (sub) urbanism: Countersprawl or repackaging the product. Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, 7(2), 49–64. Moore, S., & Trudeau, D. (Eds.). (2020). New urbanism: From exception to norm-the evolution of a global movement. Urban Planning, 4(5). Talen, E. (2000). New urbanism and the culture of criticism. Urban Geography, 21(4), 318–341. Talen, E. (Ed.). (2019). A research agenda for new urbanism. Edward Elgar Publishing. See also: density, garden city, smart growth, sprawl, walkability, neighbourhood design, conservation subdivision design, history, heritage, identity, culture, social justice, inclusion/exclusion, genius loci
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87. Noise and city design Definition Noise is a concept that, necessarily, implies a negative effect. There are no physical differences between sound and noise. It can be said that sound becomes noise if a reference value for a specific sound pressure level is exceeded. This depends on the effect under consideration. For example, restful sleep is impossible with ambient bedroom noise levels above 30 A-weighted decibels (dB(A)). Other effects of noise are cardiovascular and metabolic effects, cognitive impairment, adverse birth outcomes, hearing impairment and tinnitus, annoyance responses, mental health, etc. (WHO, 2018). The European Environment Agency estimates that noise is responsible for 12 000 premature deaths every year in Europe alone (EEA, 2020, EEA Report No. 22/2019).
Living amidst noise According to the United Nations, the urban population in 2018 exceeded 55 per cent of the world’s total population and is expected to increase to more than two-thirds by 2050 (WUP, 2018). Cities provide better living conditions for people. This means easier access to employment with higher wages and better basic services such as healthcare and education. Cities have many advantages for humans and the environment in general. Thanks to cities, more than half of humanity occupies only 4 per cent of the arable land. Naturally, this leaves land free for food production and wildlife development. In addition, for higher population densities, roads, sewerage and power lines are shorter and therefore use fewer resources. However, this concentration of people also has negative effects. The need for mobility of people and goods to and from cities, as well as the need to move within cities, leads to a higher concentration of pollutant emissions in the urban environment and, logically, with an increasing number of people affected. One of these pollutants is noise, which is considered as one of the most important environmental risks to human health (WHO, 2018). Urban planning, essential to facilitate the movement of people and goods, is also essential to minimise the adverse impact of
transport infrastructures. Among the different means of transport (road, rail and air transport), it is well known that, under both temporal and spatial consideration, the most important source of noise in cities is road traffic. For example, according to the European Environment Agency, it is estimated that 113 million people (82 million inside urban areas and 31 million outside) are affected by long-term day-evening-night traffic noise levels of at least 55 dB(A). In comparison, 22 million are exposed to high levels of railway noise, 4 million to high levels of aircraft noise and less than 1 million to high levels of industrial noise (EEA, 2020, EEA Report No 22/2019).
Methodological considerations For the development of urban noise studies, strategies based on measurements or calculation methods can be considered. The use of software, which implements models of the sound field behaviour, enables prediction of the noise levels, taking into account the characteristics of the source of the noise, the terrain, urban planning and buildings. This is a useful tool to study future scenarios in urban development. In fact, it is recommended by the European Noise Directive for strategic noise mapping (END, 2002). But the use of in situ measurements of noise is essential to validate the results derived from software simulation and the only way to know the actual effects of action plans for noise control. Brown and Lam (1987) analysed different methods of sampling for conducting urban environmental noise studies through measurements. They conclude that ‘The design of urban noise surveys should take into account that the underlying structure of urban noise is largely determined by the disposition of transportation, and in particular, road traffic, noise sources’. Similar conclusions had already been reached in the scientific literature decades earlier by Purkis (1964) and Attenborough et al. (1976). The latter also proved that sampling by land-use category is an inefficient predictor of noise levels. These ideas began to be considered in the international scientific literature through the Categorisation Method (Barrigón et al., 2002), which, within the framework of urban design, uses the concept of functionality to classify urban roads according to their use as communication routes. One of the most important results of this method is that it has
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noise and city design 263 made it possible to verify the existence of a stratification of urban noise, with differentiated mean noise values between the defined strata. Subsequently, these papers have been used as a reference by other authors, with different approaches or fields of application.
Noise and urban design All of the above leads one to think that there may be some relation between noise pollution and the variables that define the size of urban areas. Usually, population is the variable used for this purpose. Surface area is another variable that can be taken to measure the size of cities and, from both of these, comes the density variable, which allows the concentration of people to be measured. Density was the variable chosen by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1974 to carry out a study on the relation between urban variables and noise in cities. This work was reviewed in 1999 (Stewart et al., 1999). In both studies, statistically significant relations were found between these two variables, with explanations of the variability of 52 and 55 per cent respectively. This line of work was continued with the inclusion in 2010 of the variables population and surface area in the study of these relations and extended in 2021 by the same working group to more cities and including new variables, such as the total length of the city’s streets or a new concept of population density, the linear density or number of inhabitants in the urban area divided by the total length of its streets (Barrigón et al., 2021). This study showed that the variables population, surface area and street length are variables of interest to analyse the relation between the size of an urban area and the noise level in its streets. It also revealed that linear density was found to have the best behaviour, with explanations of variability of more than 55 per cent. Furthermore, this study also showed that if the categorisation method was used, the coefficient of determination increased significantly, reaching explanations of variability between 75 and 87 per cent for all street typologies in the city, except for neighbourhood streets, for the variables population, surface and total street length. There are other approaches to studying the relations between urban planning and noise levels in urban areas. One that is currently
very attractive is the design of regression models for the estimation of noise levels using only urban variables (inhabitants, urban morphology, land use, urban road features, street environment, green spaces, etc.) or in combination with road traffic variables (flow, type of vehicle, etc.). Although only the variables associated with traffic explain a large variability in noise levels, progress is being made in obtaining models that, using only urban variables, make it possible to obtain good relations with sound levels. A good knowledge of these relations would allow an effective design of urban environments. In this way, the goal of finding a sustainable city could be closer, at least with respect to noise pollution.
Noise pollution and sound quality Currently, there is a trend that aims not only to reduce noise pollution, but also to improve the sound quality of urban spaces. And urban design is an important tool for noise control and the development of action plans to improve the acoustic situation in an urban area. Action plans for the mitigation of noise pollution are essential, especially in urban areas where there is a high exposure of the population to noise (EEA, 2020, EEA Report No 22/2019). Some measures in this sense can be the creation of areas of restricted access to road traffic, the reduction of the number of traffic lanes or vehicle speed, the type of road asphalt, the development of ring roads away from residential areas where heavy traffic can be routed and the introduction of bicycle lanes and pedestrian zones. Restricting road traffic and pedestrianising central urban areas is one of the measures currently being developed in different cities to reduce road traffic pollution and improve the acoustic quality of the urban environment, but their effectiveness is linked to the implementation of efficient public transport. A further type of measure that can be applied in urban planning to reduce the impact of environmental noise on the population in cities is the creation of quiet green areas with high acoustic quality. Scientific literature shows that urban green spaces are associated with improvements in mental and physical health and wellbeing and are becoming recognised as a mitigation measure to reduce the adverse effects of urban living on health (Dadvand & Nieuwenhuijsen, 2018).
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264 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design
Conclusion In summary, the concentration of people involved in urban areas has important benefits for people and the environment. But even if the emission of pollutants per inhabitant is reduced, pollutants may be concentrated in relatively small areas. This logically leads to more people being affected by the potential increase. Noise is one of the most important of these pollutants. This leads to the fact that noise pollution levels have to be known and research into strategies for conducting such studies becomes important. Furthermore, at least in those cases where pollution levels can be harmful to human health, they must be reduced to acceptable values, which leads to the importance of properly designed action plans. Urban design can be a very useful tool for the development of these action plans, as can be deduced from the results shown in all those studies in which significant relations are found between different variables, either related to the size of the urban areas or related to their design. Each of the aspects analysed in this chapter represents a promising field of work. Research is needed to improve urban noise sampling and analysis strategies, such as studies on the relations between city size variables and noise pollution, and studies on the relations between urban variables and noise levels. There is much research to be carried out and much new knowledge to be discovered and to be put at the service of improving the health and quality of life of the population. Juan Miguel Barrigón Morillas, Guillermo Rey Gozalo and David Montes González
References Attenborough, K., Clark, S., & Utley, W. A. (1976). Background noise levels in the United Kingdom. Journal of Sound and Vibration, 48(3), 359–375. Barrigon Morillas, J. M., Gomez Escobar, V., Mendez Sierra, J. A., Vilchez Gomez, R., & Trujillo Carmona, J. (2002). An environmental noise study in the city of
Cáceres, Spain. Applied Acoustics, 63(10), 1061–1070. Barrigon Morillas, J. M., Rey Gozalo, G., Montes González, D., Vílchez-Gómez, R., & Gomez Escobar, V. (2021). Variability of traffic noise pollution levels as a function of city size variables. Environmental Research, 199, 111303. Brown, A. L., & Lam, K. C. (1987). Urban noise surveys. Applied Acoustics, 20(1), 23–39. Dadvand, P., & Nieuwenhuijsen, M. (2018). Green space and health. In M. Nieuwenhuijsen & H. Khreis (eds.), Integrating human health into urban and transport planning: A framework. Springer. EEA. (2020). EEA Report No 22/2019. Environmental noise in Europe – 2020. European Environment Agency. Publications Office of the European Union. END. (2002). Directive 2002/49/EC of the European Parliament and of the council of 25 June 2002 relating to the assessment and management of environmental noise (END). Official Journal L, 189. The European Parliament and the Council of the European Union, 0012–0026. Purkis, H. J. (1964). Transport noise and town planning. Journal of Sound and Vibration, 1(3), 323–334. Stewart, C. M., Russel, W. A., & Luz, G. A. (1999). Can population density be used to determine ambient noise levels? 137th Meeting ASA, Forum Acusticum. WHO. (2018). Environmental noise guidelines for the European region. WHO Regional Office for Europe. WUP. (2018). World urbanization prospects: The 2018 revision. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) Population Division – Population Estimates and Projections Section. 2019. See also: milieu, narrative, infrastructure, walkability, neighbourhood design, smart growth, assemblage, line of flight, modernism, complexity, systems thinking, genius loci, earthly attachments, design: tensions
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88. Nomocracy
and continuously changing goals and desires. The law is consequently recognised as having specific intrinsic characteristics that cannot be bent to any use or aim. In this case, the complexity of social-spatial systems is fully acknowledged (Moroni, 2015).
Definitions and theoretical background The term ‘nomocracy’ and its opposite ‘teleocracy’ were coined by Michael Oakeshott, presented in his 1960s lectures and discussed in subsequent publications (Oakeshott, 1975a, pp. 203–206, 1975b). The terms ‘teleocracy’ and ‘nomocracy’ were then adopted by Hayek (1982). He employed them to emphasise the difference between teleocratic forms of government, appropriate to a taxis (i.e., a made order, an organisation) and nomocratic forms of government, appropriate to a cosmos (i.e., a dynamic social order). Moroni (2010, 2012) introduced these terms into the planning debate. In this regard, two distinctions are considered important: a distinction between approaches (teleocracy vs nomocracy) and a distinction between instruments (patterning-instruments vs framework-instruments). In this perspective, teleocracy is defined as a form of (local) government in which ‘patterning-instruments’ are the main means used by the public authority to regulate (not only its own actions but also, and in particular) the actions of private subjects (especially how they use and transform private plots of land or buildings). This teleocratic view explicitly or implicitly adopts an entirely instrumental idea of law. In this instrumental perspective, the law is considered a means to achieve any desired objective; it can be shaped in any way necessary to reach an end. The supply of possible ends is conceived as totally open and unlimited (Tamanaha, 2006). In this case, the complexity of social-spatial systems is undervalued (Moroni, 2015). By contrast, nomocracy is defined as a form of (local) government in which mainly ‘framework-instruments’ are used by the public authority to regulate private actions (concerning plots of land and buildings), whereas patterning-instruments are employed especially as means to discipline and guide public actions (for example, to provide public infrastructures on public land using public funds). In this perspective, the law is interpreted, not as an instrument to achieve any specific outcome but rather as an abstract and stable meta-framework for the peaceful coexistence of many different urban agents with diverse
Types of instruments Let us clarify the distinction between the two above-mentioned types of instrument: ‘patterning-instruments’ and ‘frameworkinstruments’. First, we can mention the patterninginstruments. In the case of land use, ‘patterning’ refers to a particular configuration or arrangement of the urban system. A typical tool is a comprehensive set of prevalently ‘map-dependent rules’ – that is, rules which differ for different tracts of land within the same city – which can be called ‘directional’. Patterning-instruments seek to define the role of the diverse parts or components of the urban structure. They look for a form of ‘substantive coordination’. They try to generate a social order directly: their aim is to obtain a certain correspondence between the rules introduced and the emerging socio-spatial order. They are ‘shaping devices’, and they are ‘futureoriented’ (Moroni, 2015). Prototypical examples of patterning-instruments are traditional (but still widely used) land-use plans focused on orthodox zoning. Now we can discuss framework-instruments. In this case, the typical tool is a set of prevalently ‘non-map-dependent rules’ which can be termed ‘relational’ (by ‘nonmap-dependent rules’ is meant non-mapdependent within the pertinent territory of the relative public authority; each municipality will therefore have its own non-map-dependent rules). Framework-instruments, therefore, do not define the specific role of the various parts and components of the urban structure. Instead, they merely exclude certain interrelationships among them (e.g., nuisances). They simply introduce a form of ‘abstract coordination’ (i.e., a pattern-coordination). They try only to generate a social order indirectly: in other words, the rules they introduce and the emerging socio-spatial order do not coincide. Framework-instruments are not futureoriented but ‘present-oriented’; and they are not shaping devices but ‘filter devices’. Filter devices involve avoidance of certain negative effects, leaving all other possible outcomes free (Moroni, 2015). Paradigmatic examples
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266 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design of framework-instruments are the so-called urban codes (Alfasi & Portugali, 2007; Moroni, 2010; Alfasi, 2018). Taking into account a crucial aspect highlighted by Slaev (2016), an important specification can be added. Patterninginstruments are preferable and useful when those who use them are also the owners of the land or buildings to which they apply; as happens, for example, when a private subject draws up a real property development plan on an area that he/she owns, or when a local government authority uses a traditional type of plan to conceive and provide public infrastructures using public funds on public land. Framework-instruments are by contrast preferable and useful when they concern land or buildings (for example, private land or private buildings) that those with the power to introduce these instruments do not own; this happens, for instance, in cases where a local public authority introduces an urban code to control the use of all the private land and buildings within its administrative territory. Stefano Moroni
References Alfasi, N. (2018). The coding turn in urban planning: Could it remedy the essential drawbacks of planning? Planning Theory, 17(3), 375–395.
stefano moroni
Alfasi, N., & Portugali, J. (2007). Planning rules for a self-planned city. Planning Theory, 6(2), 164–182. Hayek, F. A. (1982). Law, legislation and liberty. Routledge. Moroni, S. (2010). Rethinking the theory and practice of land-use regulation. Towards nomocracy. Planning Theory, 9(2), 137–155. Moroni, S. (2012). Why nomocracy: Structural ignorance, radical pluralism and the role of relational rules. Progress in Planning, 77(2), 46–59. Moroni, S. (2015). Complexity and the inherent limits of explanation and prediction: Urban codes for self-organizing cities. Planning Theory, 14(3), 248–267. Oakeshott, M. (1975a). On human conduct. Clarendon. Oakeshott, M. (1975b). The vocabulary of a modern European state. Political Studies, 23(2–3), 319–341. Slaev, A. D. (2016). Types of planning and property rights. Planning Theory, 15(1), 23–41. Tamanaha, B. Z. (2006). Law as a mean to an end. Cambridge University Press. See also: institutions, ideology, rules, complexity, rationality, systems thinking, property, commons, methods, creativity, property rights, informality, object formation, conflict and shock
89. Object formation
phenomena, certainly because these problems could have been otherwise, yielding different intended and non-intended effects. Studying the formation of objects gives important clues to understand the dominant power–knowlDefinition edge structures of society. Object formation and object stabilization In his earlier work, Foucault explicitly are phases of an evolution in which objects elaborated on object formation, and in his are produced within discourse. The ana- later work, he more implicitly expanded on lytical approach to object formation distin- this in combination with subject formation guishes between techniques of production of and its modes of governing. In his later work objects and techniques of object stabilization. on ‘governmentality’ and ‘technologies of the Reification, solidification and codification are self’, Foucault focused on the ways in which techniques to understand the production of ‘subjects qua subjects’ become an object of objects, whereas objectification, institution- knowledge. This work highlighted the shapalization and naturalization are techniques ing of routines through which subjects analyze for the stabilization of objects (see Duineveld themselves as objects of a certain knowledge. & Van Assche, 2011; Duineveld et al., 2013). As knowledge, planning, governance and Within planning discourses, new objects public policy can also be regarded as modes such as ‘urban heat islands’, ‘smart cities’ or of objectivation of the subject. These domains ‘nature-inclusive agriculture’ etc. emerge con- of knowledge are embedded within concrete stantly. Some remain part of the planning dis- practices, which are able to constitute the course, whereas others are forgotten easily or subject and the object of knowledge through do not gain foothold. But how do these concepts ‘acting and thinking at once’. This concepemerge? And why do some solidify where oth- tion of discourse as practice emphasizes the ers fail to become part of planning discourse? role of power in relation to knowledge, which Analyzing object and subject formation offers Foucault conceptualized in his earlier works a fruitful way to understand the emergence of as discursive formations or discourses, and in these objects within broader power structures. his later work as power/knowledge structures and regimes of truth. By entwining power and knowledge, discourses produce certain Michel Foucault on object ‘truths’ while silencing, disqualifying or formation obscuring others (Foucault, 1972). In his writings, Foucault wanted to underIn essence, objects and subjects are produced as part of governance during discursive evo- stand how ‘truth games’ were set up and how lutions. This contribution argues that Michel they were connected to power. However, Foucault’s insights provide a powerful set of Foucault nuanced his conceptualization of tools to understand the formation of objects power over the years, and in his later work, and subjects in a genealogical manner. Within Foucault argued that power exists everywhere, governance and planning, objects and sub- with resistance inscribed in power relations jects are in an endless process of formation (Foucault, 1976). He further developed this because the nature of governance and spatial view in the themes of ‘conduct’ and ‘counplanning is to solve both actual and possible ter-conduct’ as a way of governing humans, problems and to decide on an appropriate which could be seen as a way to structure the solution to these problems. In this process, field of possible actions of others (Foucault, objects are formed not only as epistemologi- 2009). One mode of governing, ‘governmencal mechanisms but also as technologies of tality’, attracted considerable attention in the power. As such, governance and spatial plan- social sciences. Within geography and planning are entwined with power–knowledge and ning theory, the focus was on Foucault’s given the frequent emergence of new objects conceptualization of space, knowledge and and subject positions within problem areas power and the relations between them, for of climate change, sustainability, innovation, example, ‘panoptical power’. The relations competitiveness, risk and depopulation, gov- between space, knowledge or power are hisernance and planning are rich grounds to ana- torical and every era could be characterized lyze object and subject formation. Both the by another dominant way of governing, rangrealistic and the contingent nature of objects ing from ‘pastoral power’, ‘bio-politics’, to and subjects make it important to study these ‘advanced liberal government’ (Dean, 2010). 267
268 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design These ways of governing construct different subjects and objects, all mirroring a different dominant mode of governing and a different constellation of institutions, such as the state and the market (Foucault, 2008).
Techniques of object formation and stabilization in planning Duineveld and Van Assche (2011), Duineveld et al. (2013), Kooij (2015) and Boezeman and Kooij (2015) have developed an analytical framework for understanding the formation and stabilization of objects, which was further developed within Evolutionary Governance Theory (EGT). Within this framework, there is a distinction between pathways, sites and techniques of object formation (Duineveld & Van Assche, 2011, p. 81). Pathways can be considered as a not-directed series of decisions and events where an object is formed or solidified. These pathways are shaped by path-dependencies that make some options more likely than others. The sites of object formation constitute unique instants of power–knowledge structures in which relations to the object are actualized. These sites can be both formal and informal, and some sites will be more authoritative than others. Techniques of object formation can be divided into those that play a role in the formation and those that play a role in the stabilization of objects. Reification is the emergence of an object, a process in which a distinction is drawn between an object and its environment, and which simultaneously enables an object to surface within a discourse. Solidification can be conceived as Foucault’s grid of specification, the differentiation and articulation of elements within an object, and is focused upon the internal world of the object. Codification is directed towards the external environment of the object. It refers to the articulation of the object’s boundaries and consequently excludes or includes certain elements of the environment. Drawing boundaries, the decision of what is ‘within’ and what is ‘outside’ the object, is strongly related to Foucault’s authorities of delineation, the commanding institutions that are able to draw these distinctions. Spatialization can be seen as a specific form of codification, through which objects are embedded in spatial representations, such as maps, images or spatial models. henk-jan kooij
Objectification is the establishment of an object as scientific fact. Institutionalization is the articulation of an object within organizations, policies and plans. Naturalization involves the increased naturalness of an object within daily life, within the normal order of things. The formation of an object within several different discourses increases that object’s stabilization, even if the object is disputed. Disputes around an object increase the solidification or codification of an object, while they also gradually embed the object within a discourse. Consequently, the increased stabilization of an object hinges on the ‘life’ of an object within different discourses.
Discussion We have discussed object formation from a Foucaultian perspective, From the perspective of Actor-Network-Theory (ANT), ‘objects are an effect of stable arrays or networks of relations’ (Law, 2002, p. 91). This conception is in line with a Foucaultian perspective on object formation. However, ANT differs in its view and importance concerning the conditions of possibility and its limits that are set by modernity. Following Foucault, every historical era constitutes a different relation between space, knowledge and power, and the way that objects are formed within these forces will be limited by their conditions of possibility. For ANT, there are more possibilities or ‘modes of ordering’ in modernity (Law, 2002). Another critique from the perspective of ANT could be the agency of objects, that has a central role within ANT. However, from the Foucaultian and EGT perspectives on object formation, once stabilized, objects will influence pathways of governance and planning, albeit always in relation to sites and discourse. Henk-Jan Kooij
References Boezeman, D., & Kooij, H. J. (2015). Heated debates: The transformation of urban warming into an object of governance in the Netherlands. In K. van Assche, R. Beunen, M. Duineveld (Eds.), Evolutionary governance theory: Theory and applications (pp. 185–203). Springer. Dean, M. (2010). Governmentality: Power and rule in modern society. SAGE.
object formation 269 Duineveld, M., & Van Assche, K. A. M. (2011). The power of tulips: Constructing nature and heritage in a contested landscape. Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning, 13(2), 79–98. Duineveld, M., Van Assche, K. A. M., & Beunen, R. (2013). Making things irreversible. Object stabilization in urban planning and design. Geoforum, 46, 16–24. Foucault, M. (1972). The archaeology of knowledge. Routledge. Foucault, M. (1976). The history of sexuality: The will to knowledge, vol. 1. Penguin Books. Foucault, M. (2008). The birth of biopolitcs: Lectures at Collège de France 1978–1979. Palgrave Macmillan.
Foucault, M. (2009). Security, territory, population: Lectures at the Collège de France 1977–1978. Palgrave Macmillan. Kooij, H. J. (2015). Object formation and subject formation: The innovation campus in the Netherlands. Planning Theory, 14(4), 339–359. Law, J. (2002). Objects and spaces. Theory, Culture and Society, 19(5–6), 91–105. See also: dependencies, assemblage, power in planning, power/knowledge, expertise and local knowledge, dispositif, agonism, creativity, conflict and shock, boundary organisation, biopolitics, power/knowledge, line of flight
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90. Organization theory, lessons for the relation between planning and politics
Petersburg represented an ‘unnatural’ creation (it was against nature, both in the sense of the inhospitable temperature and violent waters), crowded buildings and commercialism. Rome, in contrast, represented beauty of form and movement, proportions and harmony. Ugliness and alienation were typical characteristics of the modern Northern City. This theme was developed even further by Dostoyevsky. In his eyes, Petersburg was Urban planning Economic planning and urban planning share ‘the most abstract and intentional city in the at least two traits: both are always related world’ (Fanger, 1965, p. 105), which produced to politics, and their connection to actual the ‘quintessential urban life’ with forms economic performance is always complex. ‘liable to be sordid’ (p. 192). It was a city However, while the political and economic ‘crowded, stifling, and parched’ (p. 194), a expectations faced by urban planners may be city of unrelieved poverty, where the magnificoherent, a great many units must then inter- cence of the scene served only to emphasize pret the plans. Thus, the important difference human misery. The real city, the live city, is is the heterogeneity of contractors that imple- the city of the sidewalk (the eulogy of which is to be found again in the writings of Jane ment the plans. How does urban planning look from an Jacobs, 1961), but Petersburg is the city of disorganization theory perspective? This issue is ease, isolation and fear. The next generation analyzed with the help of two extreme exam- of modernists saw the city’s improvement as ples: total urban planning and a plan-less city their central task. When England passed the Town Planning (Czarniawska, 2012). Act in 1909, the French social reformers, and especially the liberal socialists who gathTotal urban planning ered around Musée Social, felt left behind The usual examples of total urban planning (Rabinow, 1989). Indeed, the first such laws are taken from post-World War II Europe, were not passed in France until 1919, and even especially the parts of Europe that became then without enforcing sanctions. It was thus forced allies of the USSR. However, the idea in the colonies of Madagascar and Morocco of total urban planning can be said to be as old that French modernization ideas could be put (or as new) as modernity itself, and the best to work, in Morocco by Resident-General examples are St Petersburg, Haussmanian Hubert Lyautey with the aid of architect Henri Prost between 1912 and 1925. Paris and the French colonies. Petersburg was constructed and regulated In 1703, Peter the Great conquered a city that belonged to the Swedes, gave it his own through its streets and buildings, but the name and decided to make it his ‘window French reformers aimed at the social fabric. on Europe’. It became the Russian capital They built twin cities – modern European citin 1712, and the best specialists of Italian ies next to the Moroccan medinas – enriching baroque were employed to give it a modern the cities with the elements of local ornament and Western look. A regular street pattern and modernizing the medinas. Social planwas interspersed with impressive squares and ning was employed at an unprecedented scale. When urban reformism ‘returned’ to broad avenues radiating from the Admiralty Shipyard, one of Peter’s first investments. France, it was forced to discard its organic At the end of the century, Petersburg hosted and culturalist elements. Rabinow (1989) 220 200 inhabitants, more than one-third of selected Henri Sellier, a leading urbanist and whom were employed by the administration Mayor of the Paris suburb of Suresnes, as an example of a transitional figure. Fond of the or the military. It was not until the nineteenth century that older socialist symbols of history and locale, the results of Peter’s urban design could be Sellier was prompted by his younger assistruly appreciated – he created a truly modern tants to abandon these symbols in the name city. But for such critics as Gogol, there was of efficiency, science, progress and welfare. no greater contrast between cities than that The city could be completely manufactured: between the Northern City of Petersburg and its streets, its buildings, its social relations the Southern City of Rome (Fanger, 1965). and its citizens. 270
organization theory 271 Similar ambitions were shared by the city planners of Warsaw twice in recent history: first from 1945 onward; and then from 1990 to 1995 (Czarniawska, 2002). Both periods were associated with ‘the construction of a new Warsaw’. In both periods, two planning processes were central: urban planning, and legal-administrative planning. Both processes had a close but complicated interaction and were subordinated to politics. The economic and technical problems were, in turn, subordinated to urban planning and legal changes. State control was introduced in 1950, and all public property was turned over to the state treasury. In the case of Warsaw, this was peculiar property, as 85 percent of the value of the city’s real estate had been demolished (Wyganowski, 1993). The territory of Warsaw was therefore treated as an area open to all types of urbanistic projects. Each such project created a wave of emotions, sometimes positive, sometimes negative; but over time and as contacts with foreign countries intensified, they were increasingly negative. After the pivotal year of 1989, the first government, and the two that followed, focused a great deal of attention on a bill for the reprivatization of land in Warsaw. The idea of city selfgovernment was also obvious but the form that it would take was highly problematic. The special treatment of Warsaw in 1945 compelled equally special treatment in 1990. The act provided for a uniform conception of the municipality as a sovereign administrative entity, irrespective of its size or location. The question of the municipal economy did not seem to be difficult at first, but later a discussion began over which services it should include, and which were better left to district management or purchased from private companies. In practice, the municipal economy came to comprise waterworks and the sewage system, public transportation, garbage collection and district heating and gas, although the utility that produces them serves not merely the city, but the whole county. A few years later, the city government took over responsibility for the state of Warsaw’s streets from the county governor. The general feeling was that a new structure and new management rules had to be developed. This necessity became increasingly clear while the new administration gained experience and new problems accumulated. Regardless of the councilors’ political stripes, planning was not an activity to be cherished.
Warsaw was again to become a ‘modern city’, but along the lines sketched from 1919 to 1939, not along any total planning. It may appear, therefore, that the idea of ‘total city planning’ belongs to the history of modernity, which itself is becoming ancient. Postmodernity, as it is known, returned to pre-modern values, especially in architecture. It is therefore appropriate to examine Gogol’s ideal city of the South: Rome.
A plan-less city During my study of city management in Rome (Czarniawska, 2002), my interlocutors told me – with what I read as a mixture of shame and pride – that the city did not have a traffic system. There was no urban transportation plan, and neither the tariffs nor the networks were integrated. The problem was not only spatial; attempts at city planning in Rome reveal a temporal aspect that was not present in previous examples in which the political regime remained stable – at least during a typical planning period. In 2008, I studied plans for urban renewal directed at the Roman district of Magliana, which extends along the Tiber between Fiumicino Airport and the center, thus representing a potentially attractive part of the city. However, then as now, it is a mixture of industrial landscapes, dilapidated plots of unknown ownership, haphazard camping places and various sport activities. My account of the project (Czarniawska, 2010) has been tinted by my Swedish perspective on such things as city planning. I imagined that, like at home in Gothenburg, I would know exactly what is and is not being done, and I would be able to follow the realization of the project from beginning to end. If something did not go according to plan, my local newspaper would explain it to me the next day or at least two days later. The analogy did not hold. Yet I often had to correct the locals in Magliana, who claimed that ‘nothing was being done’. Some things were being done, but the choice of projects, their locations, their timing and why they were incomplete was not clear. The pedestrian bridge had been built; although, according to the skeptical locals, it did not lead from the Basilica of San Paolo to the Roma Tre University, but ‘from nowhere to nowhere’ (here the locals were correct). It was also difficult to see any connections between the projects. barbara czarniawska
272 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design In 2008, the opposition won both the national elections and the local elections in Rome. Taking office in June 2008, Mayor Alemanno and his allies announced that there was an ‘enormous hole’ in the city’s finances. Apparently, the debt was huge, severe cuts were necessary, and only urban plans of ‘absolute priority’ were to be continued. Judging from the state of Magliana in 2021, this Urban Recovery Project was not of absolute priority. From the perspective of an organization theoretician, the gap between plans and declarations and their visible results may have been larger than the hole in the city of Rome’s budget. On the one hand, the time between plans and their alleged realization was so long that even the best plans could become obsolete. On the other hand, plans were rendered unstable by the swift pace of political change.
Urban planning and politics: a loosely coupled system? Both historical and contemporary examples show that planning is always entangled with politics; that nothing goes as planned; that the implementers devise a whole array of tactics to convert the plans to their own liking or at least to minimize harm to themselves. But planning is also a powerful tranquilizer (‘we know what must be done’), and an unplanned city is as much a disaster as a totally planned city – or even more so. Planning is therefore unavoidable, and so are some of its disadvantages. People will protect themselves from losses and punishments by devising tactics to defeat strategies and reverse plans. This may not be bad, as the pressure of total planning has heavy costs, and sometimes procrastination saves cities and companies from hasty innovations. The way to minimize the possible problems of these tactics is to make the planning process participatory. Again, some commentators note that such participatory urban planning follows the pattern observed in participatory software design, in which participation is an occasion for the designers to teach the users what they can reasonably expect. Still, this is better than plans that will only evoke resistance or subversion. These various examples of planning suggest another valuable lesson: when reality changes, plans must also be changed. Unchanged plans can become heavy tools that weigh their carriers down (Weick, 1996). barbara czarniawska
Regarding the connection between urban planning and politics, another of Weick’s (1979) suggestions applies: loosely coupled systems, well known in architecture in earthquake-threatened areas, are more likely to survive even political earthquakes. Despite the ideological arguments to the contrary, there are many similarities between planning and managing across public and private sector organizations, ideological divides, and times and places. This is due to a commonly shared and deeply integrated conviction that planning and management are basically neutral. So perhaps it is time to admit that while management models are sometimes transferred from the public to the private sector, and sometimes in the opposite direction, one thing remains unchanged: planning’s connection to politics. Still, they must be kept loosely coupled. Barbara Czarniawska
References Czarniawska, B. (2002). A tale of three cities, or the glocalization of city management. Oxford University Press. Czarniawska, B. (2010). Translation impossible? Accounting for a city project. Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, 23(3), 420–437. Czarniawska, B. (2012). Does planning belong to the politics of the past? Contemporary Economics, 6(4), 36–48. Fanger, D. (1965). Dostoevsky and romantic realism. Harvard University Press. Jacobs, J. (1961). The death and life of great American cities. Random House. Rabinow, P. (1989). French modern: Norms and forms of the social environment. The MIT Press. Weick, K. E. (1979). The social psychology of organizing. Addison-Wesley. Weick, K. E. (1996). Drop your tools: An allegory for organization studies. Administrative Science Quarterly, 41(2), 301–313. Wyganowski, S. (1993). Jutro Wielka Warszawa. Związek Dzielnic-Gmin Warszawy. See also: self-organization, complexity, ideology, institutions, systems thinking, modernism, expertise and local knowledge, rules, corruption, participation, property, object formation
91. Participation Definition Participation in planning is usually understood as a form of direct participation where anyone can participate. It is often valued as a good in and of itself that citizens participate in public affairs such as planning and participation is seen as a cornerstone of democracy. It is noticed as an individual right, and particularly in Western democracies some form of public participation is therefore legally mandatory as a part of the planning process before a plan is adopted by the political authorities. Participatory practices refer to the methods planning authorities have for involving, listening to, and negotiating with people from outside of the planning institutions. One of the key scholars in the field, Sherry Arnstein, defines participation as a categorical term for citizen power (Arnstein, 1969, p. 216). The forms participation takes and the influence inputs from the participation process have on the final plans does however vary a great deal. Citizen power is therefore an ideal that is far from reality. Several purposes of participation can be identified, beyond informing the process of plan making. One is to identify the public’s preferences; second, to improve decisions by incorporating citizens local knowledge; third, advancing fairness and justice; fourth, to increase legitimacy for public decisions and fifth, because it is legally required. In addition, one can also say that the sixth and seventh purposes are to build civil society and to create an adaptive, self-organising polity capable of addressing wicked problems in an informed and effective way (Innes & Booher, 2004). Much of the literature on public participation tends to concentrate on the how, who, where and when of public involvement, rather than the why. There is ambiguity associated with the concept, for instance between democracy and efficiency, between deliberation and preference aggregation, between expert knowledge and lay knowledge.
Theory Participation in planning is inspired by different, but related, strands of theory, first of all, democratic theories. From Carole Pateman and Jane Mansbridge and their
participatory democracy approach (Pateman, 1970; Mansbridge, 1980), to more instrumental approaches to participation in aggregative theories of democracy (Dahl, 1989) to deliberative theories addressing participation and its importance for dialogue and consensus building, have all in different ways influenced the understanding and practice of public participation in planning. The communicative turn motivating the development of the collaborative planning theory emphasised, in particular, more inclusive forms of participation, also inspired by Iris Marion Young (Young, 1996). Inclusiveness is also seen as an essential ‘democratic good’ and as an evaluation criterion of participatory democracy. Inclusiveness can, however manifest in different ways, for instance, by how open the invitation to participate is, when and how the participation will take place and what activity it is organised around. Inclusiveness is also about to what degree the views and impulses from the participation are being channelled into the decision process. Inclusiveness could be related to the planning authorities’ abilities to (1) mobilise new groups that otherwise are difficult to reach, (2) their ability to create new arenas for communication and collaboration and (3) how the experiences from the participation are fed into the formal and decision-making part of the planning process (Fung, 2015). As already mentioned, citizen power is also a central concept, first addressed by Sherry Arnstein in ‘The ladder of citizen participation’ in 1969. She argues that participation is valuable to the extent that it ‘is the redistribution of power that enables the havenot citizens . . . to be deliberately included in the future’. Her eight ladders illustrate different levels of power, from citizen control on the top, to manipulation and therapy at the bottom. Some citizens may be hard to identify and reach out to, but still should be included. New ways to identify and include these groups are a pressing challenge to organisers of public democratic participation. People do not always have clear preferences or identities, as the instrumental theories of participation presuppose, and they may also regard party politics with cynicism. There is no such thing as one coherent public that is waiting to be heard, the public is constantly being formed by the situation at hand. One challenge is therefore to deal with the heterogenous public
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274 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design view and to create genuine interaction in a form relevant to the context, planning problem and interests affected. The ‘who’ question is also important. Citizens are often treated as a unified category when in fact they are far from that. There are no ‘ordinary citizens’ (Agger, 2012). Diversity is not only characterising the public as such, but also citizens who participate in planning processes. Some citizens could be seen as political activists on ‘standby’ who need to be ignited to become involved (Hajer, 2003). Then we have the expert activists who take control through DIY (do-it-yourself) urbanism or tactical urbanism. This is a form of activism that has increased particularly in cities, and related to the green transition, and may come in the forms of urban gardening and other more spontaneous, unplanned and experimental and sometimes temporary uses of the public realm. Another form of activism is more reactive, aiming at disrupting the order of a development through different forms for protests or rupture. The latter form that takes the form of protest is often miscategorised as NIMBY-activism (not in my backyard), when the activities rather could be understood as a response to a feeling of loss of place qualities, or of not being included at an earlier stage in the process. Renewing and urban transformation often bring along gentrification and displacement of the people who lived there before, without being given the opportunity to resettle in the neighbourhood.
time and profession knowledge, and these groups often share similar demographic characteristics. Participation in planning usually occurs in fixed stages of the planning procedure, and first of all at the end stage, typically the hearing when the possibility for influencing the plan is low. Participatory planning processes are often used in tokenistic ways to create public support or to mask or reinforce power inequalities. Certain voices, interest or perspectives are being excluded, and ends up in what Sherry Arnstein (1969) labelled ‘therapy’. Arnstein’s critique of public participation for being tokenistic has been an important one. However, the ladder is not very useful as an analytical tool. It inappropriately mixes an empirical scale that describes the level of influence individuals have over some collective decision with normative approval. Full citizen control is not always possible and not even desirable. Another form of critique is the conservativeness of the design of planning processes, where public hearings or traditional public meetings still dominate the forms of public participation giving very little room for deliberation and exchanging views. Most of the speaking is done by officials or invited guests, the public is considered as listeners and spectators, not participants. The results of these events seldom have any more than advisory power on authorised decision makers. These forms of participation therefore lack legitimacy.
Critique
New trends
Citizen participation in planning is a fundamentally contested concept (Day, 1997). Day characterises citizen participation as the ‘Achilles heel of planning’, as planning cannot succeed without some participation, but it cannot afford to be dominated by participatory processes. This is linked to the tension between planning as a rationally organised bureaucratic activity and a democratic activity on the other. Who participates in planning processes? Critique of who participates in planning processes has to do with representation. Are those who participate appropriately representative of the relevant population or the general public? Who is eligible to participate, and how do individuals become participants? It is common knowledge that in processes open to all who wish to engage, there will be a dominance of those with political knowhow,
A dominant trend in contemporary planning is the need to open planning processes to new voices and perspectives. A more inclusive, open, creative and democratic planning, where possible future scenarios and collaborative, critical discussion about their potential consequences for different actors are called for. Several new and more participatory forms of interactions between citizens and local authorities are being introduced. Some of these participatory practices are being exercised on the periphery of, or only loosely linked with, the formalities of the planning processes. Digital platforms and social media have provided new opportunities for participation and engagement also at the early phases of a planning process and is seen as a game-changer in this respect. Studies of digital participation are however not conclusive
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participation 275 on the question of resulting in more inclusive participation. Also, local authorities experiment with new forms of participation. One motivation behind the more innovative forms of citizen participation is the difficulties that traditional and more formal arenas for participation have with reaching a broad scope of citizens and other stakeholders (Nyseth et al., 2019). Another motivation is the need for cities to signify their openness to diversity, in ways of living, interests and ethnicity. Designing planning processes that can facilitate deliberative democratic discourse in multicultural or diverse settings represents a set of challenges, for instance of epistemology, arising from multiple worldviews rooted in history and culture. Particularly in larger cities, policies targeting social cohesion and branding the cities as being open and inclusive is a new trend, partly as a critique of the entrepreneurial focus dominating urban strategies of the 1990s. ‘Social innovation’ which in urban development focuses on processes aimed at countering social exclusion, has gained importance because of this trend. More innovative forms of participation also resonate with the growing literature on the concepts of ‘co-creation’ and ‘co-production’. Increasingly citizens are seen as responsible co-producers of public governance by involving them in the design, implementation and enforcement of public policies. The aim is to involve citizens/users in policymaking and to produce good policies that lead to different aspects of public value. Some of these new forms of participation are not necessarily designed according to democratic principles such as inclusion, transparency and accountability. Resourceful citizens are still the most active. Often these participatory venues are motivated in a context of uncertainty and the need to mobilise new resources into transformative actions (Healey, 2007). For these reasons, the innovative forms of citizen participation also represent a risk to democracy, and we have both sides of risk in mind; the possibility of strengthening as well as weakening democratic standards. Torill Nyseth
References Agger, A. (2012). Towards tailor-made participation: How to involve different types of citizens in participatory governance. Town Planning Review, 83(1), 29–45. Arnstein, S. (1969). The ladder of citizen participation. Journal of the American Planning Association, 35(4), 216–224. Dahl, R. (1989). Democracy and its critics. Yale University Press. Day, D. (1997). Citizen participation in the planning process: An essentially contested concept? Journal of Planning Literature, 11(3). Fung, A. (2015). Putting the public back into governance: The challenges of citizen participation and its future. Public Administration Review, 75(4), 513–522. Hajer, M. (2003). A frame in the field: Policy making and the reinvention of politics. In M. Hajer & H. Wagenaar (Eds.), Deliberative policy analyses; understanding governance in the network society (pp. 88–111). Cambridge University Press. Healey, P. (2007). Urban complexity and spatial strategies. Towards a relational planning for our times. Routledge. Innes, J., & Booher, D. E. (2004). Reframing public participation: Strategies for the 21st century. Planning Theory and Practice, 5(4), 419–436. Mansbridge, J. (1980). Beyond adversary democracy. Basic Books. Nyseth, T., Ringholm, T., & Agger, A. (2019). Innovative forms of citizen participation at the fringe of the formal planning system. Urban Planning, 4(1), 7–18. Pateman, C. (1970). Participation and democratic theory. Cambridge University Press. Young, I. M. (1996). Communication and the Other: Beyond deliberative democracy. In S. Benhabib (Ed.), Democracy and difference (pp. 120–135). Princeton University Press. See also: ideology, self-organization, power in planning, power/knowledge, complexity, institutions, participatory planning and design, asset-based community development, social innovation, informality
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92. Participatory planning and design Key definition Participatory planning-design is the idea of directly engaging users in a planning-design process. It is a way of doing planning-design that puts residents at the center of the decision-making process in their community. This process prioritizes the integration of technical expertise with the preferences and knowledge of community members. It also requires direct involvement of different social groups at every step of the process from planning to implementation. The input of community residents, leaders and stakeholders is critical in the process. It is also essential that all the stakeholders are involved and is often the most efficient and inclusive way to envision a community’s desired future and of planning for that future. There are different methods and tools for participatory planningdesign, but the result should always be that the community feels ownership over the process and the results. By centering the community at the heart of the design process, participatory planning-design can foster community ownership and pride.
Brief history Participatory planning-design grew out of the Western social, political and civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s, which saw much of society demanding an increased say in decision-making regarding different spheres of their lives. There was also preparedness by people to participate and contribute to collective action around shared interests and values (Simonsen & Robertson, 2013). Over the past few decades, there has been increasing emphasis on planning and design approaches based in the belief that collaboration and communication are ways to bring about consensus in our communities (Forester, 1989, 1999b; Friedmann, 1987; Healey, 1992; Innes, 1995). Concepts such as transactive planning, communicative planning (Forester, 1989; Healey, 1992), peoplecentered planning and collaborative planning (Healey, 1997; Innes & Booher, 1999) gained prominence during the 1980s and early 1990s. All these terms emphasize interactive approaches to planning-design practice and
community participation. Other authors saw that network power could be used to develop ideas within collaborative frameworks of collations of actors if three conditions are met: (1) diversity of agents/ stakeholders, (2) recognition of interdependence between agents and (3) authentic dialogue (Booher & Innes, 2002).
Approaches and methods Participatory processes can be used in many types of communities and organizations— a whole village, an urban neighborhood, a school or any other group. This process emphasizes consensus-building and collective community decision-making and prioritizes the participation of traditionally marginalized groups. It also helps build skills and enables people to transform their communities for the future in key areas including: 1) solving specific problems to make planningdesign relevant; 2) building a sense of investment through involvement and 3) fostering the sense of public ownership over the local planning-design processes. Participatory methods and tools can be used to encourage community members’ contributions to program activities. They can also be used to collect and share information in key areas of the participatory process: 1) identifying resources, 2) envisioning a common future, 3) analyzing the needs, 4) building action and implementation plans. Community mapping exercises can be used as a method for exploring the spatial dimension of people’s reality. The focus of these exercises is to concentrate on how people perceive and relate to space rather than just the physical aspects as they exist (Kumar, 2011). Another strength of community mapping is that the gathered data provides rich information that planners and designers can use to gain a better understanding of the needs, interests and priorities of residents. Community mapping allows one to gain an understanding if there is consensus around themes. Community mapping is a simple exercise which provides the tools to create a community vision/plan. Maps generated as part of participatory planning-design exercises include but are not limited to: ●
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Social maps: the main contribution of social maps is that they help in developing a broad understanding of a community’s
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social characteristics such as economic well-being, living arrangements, education, health, access to food and water and religious or social class characteristics. Resource maps: the resource maps tend to focus more on the natural resources of the locality and document land, hills, rivers and vegetation in general. Resource maps are useful because they provide a focused spatial structure during discussion and analysis. Resource maps drawn by local people tend to be more accurate and detailed. Mobility maps: these maps are used to explore the movement patterns of individuals, or a group in the community. A mobility map provides insights into where people go, for what reason, how frequent, how far the travel is and why they visit those places. When developing such maps, gender awareness and sensitivity can be improved by identifying the differences in mobility patterns between the genders as well as the perception of safety. Assets and opportunity maps: these maps are used to explore and document the social realities of local individuals and they emphasize the local people’s perceptions of services and opportunities available in their communities. Participatory modeling: these models are commonly used in participatory planning-design activities. A participatory model is different from the architectural scale models. These models are not to scale, they are made by local community residents. The main objective of participatory models is to represent people’s perceptions of their environment, and not the exact physical aspects.
Other methods and tools often used in participatory planning-design processes include brainstorming, focus groups interviews, advisory groups, concept mapping, community visioning exercises, online surveys and questionnaires.
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Critique Participatory planning-design approaches have strengths, but as with other research methods, those strengths come with tradeoffs. It is essential to understand and anticipate these considerations, and to decide when and how participatory planning-design approaches are beneficial to specific situations. Some of the most common critiques include but are not limited to: ●
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Benefits There are many benefits to participatory planning-design processes and strategies including:
Strengthened voice: participatory planning-design processes can give people, particularly the poor and marginalized sectors of the population, more voice and influence over development decisions. Better informed plans: by consulting those whose needs the plans are meant to fulfill, the resultant development interventions are more likely to be relevant and appropriate to those needs. Better understanding: by working together, different stakeholder groups can develop mutual understanding and trust among themselves and can learn how to collaborate. Strengthened democracy: participatory development planning-design can create processes that are more democratic and equitable, enabling community residents and stakeholders to share decision-making power with their locally elected representatives and other external agencies.
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A participatory process might take longer than anticipated. For instance, in cases that involve diverse groups, it always takes longer to make decisions and come to conclusions than it does working with an individual or small homogenous group of participants. A participatory planning-design process takes patience and commitment from all involved in the process. Participants must maintain their commitment over time, remain civil while discussing issues about which they may have strong feelings and be willing to compromise. If there is a small number of key disenfranchised people, losing interest can upset the whole process. It may be difficult to ensure that all the right people get to the discussion table. Some key people may simply not want to participate. Divisions in the community, jesus j. lara
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a history of failed attempts at communication or at dealing with problems, lack of knowledge of which groups or individuals are important or just basic mistrust may complicate the task of creating a participatory planning-design process. Too many plans and outreach engagement activities over the years in the community can lead to fatigue in terms of the planning process and community engagement. This affects the levels of participation and trust from community members and stakeholders. In some cases, education may be needed for both community members and the organization. For instance, members of the target population may not have the technical knowledge or experience needed to understand some theory or past practice to see what the organization is trying to do. The organization, on the other hand, may need to learn more about local culture, political issues, and community history to customize the intervention to the community’s needs and avoid past errors. Jesus J. Lara
Bibliography Booher, D., & Innes, J. (2002). Network power in collaborative planning. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 21(3), 221–236.
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Carroll, J. M., & Rosson, M. B. (May 01, 2007). Participatory design in community informatics. Design Studies, 28(3), 243–261. Forester, J. (1989). Planning in the face of Power. University of California Press. Friedmann, J. (1987). Planning in the public domain: From knowledge to action. Princeton University Press. Healey, P. (1992). Planning through debate: The communicative turn in planning theory. Town Planning Review, 63(2), 143–162. Healey, P. (1997). Collaborative planning. University of British Columbia Press. Innes, J. E. (1995). Planning theory’s emerging paradigm: Communicative action and interactive practice. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 14(3), 183–189. Innes, J. E., & Booher, D. E. (1999). Consensus building as role playing and bricolage: Toward a theory of collaborative planning. Journal of the American Planning Association, 65(1), 9–26. Kumar, S. (2011). Methods for community participation: A complete guide for practitioners. Practical Action Publ. Simonsen, J., & Robertson, T. (2013). Routledge international handbook of participatory design. Routledge. See also: participation, asset-based community development, neighbourhood design, self-organization, foresight and visioning, public debate and dialogue, place-based development, milieu, creativity
93. Place-based development Key definition and question Place-based development builds from the people and the land base of individual localities. It calls for an imaginative rethinking of local assets and opportunities, and then seeks a creative re-bundling of those assets and opportunities to create new competitive advantage within the global economy – advantages that fit with the values and aspirations of the community itself. The goal is a more sustainable local economy and a more resilient community. The key question in place-based development is how to equip communities with the various capacities and infrastructures needed to exercise their place-based advantages and assets to meet social and economic development opportunities and challenges on their own terms.
Brief history In the immediate post-World War II era, development policies in most Western states followed a similar trajectory. Industrial investment and growth were the pathways to prosperity, and that industrial growth required a massive increase in natural resource production (Halseth & Ryser, 2018). Across many states, the expansion of natural resource exploitation entailed the expansion of transportation and extraction/processing infrastructure into more rural and remote regions that were at a distance from the urban ecumene of the state and were similarly far from the foci of economic and political decision making. This development pathway has been called ‘space-based development’ in that universalist development policies focused upon addressing the challenges of space or distance by connecting more remote resource producing regions with export or industrial processing centers (Markey et al., 2012). While supported by two key theoretical applications, space-based development also has at least three critical problem areas. The first of the supporting theoretical applications was the translation of Keynesian economic theory into Keynesian public policy. Implying direct state leadership in economic planning and massive state infrastructure and direct
investment to stimulate economic growth, this public policy framework supported a universal approach to the space-based imperative of overcoming distance. This public policy approach nested well with the second key theoretical application, namely the industrial theories supporting the application of a Fordist-style regime of production (otherwise known as Fordism). The Fordist model was premised on the large-scale production of standardized products (in resource production this included ore, dimension lumber, pulp, etc.). Combined, these public policy and industrial theoretical frameworks guided the creation of entire regions of like economic activity – agricultural regions, manufacturing regions, forestry regions, etc. The first critical, and until recently not reconciled, problem with the post-war model was that economic expansion into rural and remote regions was driven by the core without the involvement of those people, communities and economies already in place within those regions. Particularly egregious were the many violations of Indigenous rights, and oftentimes existing treaties. Indigenous communities were displaced, traditional economies were threatened or eliminated, participation in the new economy was often limited, and general access to land for cultural and community renewal was truncated (Harris, 2002). The second critical, and widely recognized, problem with the post-war development model was that it remade many rural and remote communities into natural resource production regions, and it made those regions fully dependent upon global market demands and industrial decision makers. The robust ‘Staples Theory’ literature on resource development highlights the dual issues of ‘dependency’ (on markets and international investment capital) and ‘truncated development’ (as capital limits regional investments only to the extraction and mobilization of raw resources). Together these issues acted to entrench singular social/economic development ‘pathways’ for rural and remote resource production regions (Innis, 1933). Entrenched development paths not only leave rural and remote communities vulnerable to economic change but also limits the local/regional supports needed for coping with change and for forging new or alternative development pathways – in other words, places become ‘trapped’ in these older development pathways. The Staples Theory literature described
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280 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design many of the current problems facing resource communities long before they manifested.
Recent evolutions The Fordist-Keynesian model began to break down in the early 1980s as the first of what would become a repetitive series of global economic recessions disrupted its economic and public policy foundations. Economic transition through a process now labeled as ‘restructuring’ broke down older industrial regions via slow processes of decline punctuated by regular crises and catastrophic closures. Instead of Fordism, an industrial production regime now known as ‘flexible accumulation’ took over premised on the notion that capital needed enhanced responsiveness, or flexibility, to remain profitable in an increasingly complex and changeable global economy. This economic restructuring was facilitated in turn by a public policy shift towards neoliberalism that granted greater flexibility and freedom of movement to capital and placed more economic and community development tools within a market-oriented framework. Economic restructuring and neoliberal public policy help to accelerate change. But this acceleration was not new. Harvey (2005) describes this longer-term acceleration as a process of time-space compression. As the tools of communication and transportation evolved to enhance the speed of (and reduce the costs of) transactions, capital is more able to relocate to points of advantage (read ‘profit’) to capital. This time-space compression highlighted that as the transaction costs of space became less important, the opportunity costs of places became more important in economic investment decision making.
Emergence of ‘place’ Attention to place-based development is grounded in the time-space compression arguments about the shifting importance of space and place in both industrial and public policy theory. Economic restructuring’s drive towards more flexible and nimble economic investment and production aims to be more responsive to global market shifts. In turn, neoliberal public policy supports this flexibility by reducing tax and regulatory costs on economic investments and interregional/ international investment flows. The result is that former economic regions broke up or
disappeared altogether. Without the state interventions and investments of the previous Keynesian public policy era, places found themselves increasingly on their own as they sought new economic and community development pathways (Tonts et al., 2014). Rising from the economic and public policy theory transitions, place-based development has recentered the importance of places and localities. After all, places are the meeting points of global and local institutions and interconnections. This creates embedded social, economic and political systems – systems that were built layer upon layer over time within the unique context and history of individual places (Massey, 1984). It is the matrix of local assets, populations, histories, locational circumstances and influences from global economic forces that underscore the need for place-based development approaches. In place-based development, the economic focus remains but there is now much greater attention to cultural, environmental and community social development contexts. Place-based development thus also supports a greater diversity of values, and different perceptions of the concept of ‘value’ within local development decision making. It also builds from a more comprehensive appreciation and understanding of the ‘whole’ local economy, and this includes consideration of the breadth of impacts that development has on the locality and its surrounding region. In other words, place-based development highlights local conditions, identifies roles for local actors and brings agency back to the locality. The pressures of industrial restructuring on places, and the consequences of neoliberal public policy, have not only raised the importance of place in the development equation, but they also highlighted that it is critical for public policy investments and tools to be appropriate to the needs of localities and regions. Thus, within public policy theorizing and debate has been a drive to adopt placebased public policies – a drive that rejects the universal and the ‘one size fits all’ approach of the post-war policy era and instead introduces a goals-driven agenda to provide individual localities with needed assistance that makes sense within the local context. Place-based public policies that target specific communities for integrated investments and interventions that respond to the unique circumstances and challenges have long been recommended
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place-based development 281 by the OECD (2019). Successful examples include the mainstreaming of the European Union’s LEADER approach. More recent debates around ‘just transition’ for communities that are shifting to a low-carbon economy further highlight the need for place-based renewal to be oriented to the assets and aspirations of rural communities – places which have all too often been impacted by the inequalities created from market-driven transition processes. Place-based development also brings with it demands and expectations on the local social and economic system (Markey et al., 2012; Daigle, 2016). Included among these is the need for local capacity to understand the changes that are happening, to marshal the information needed to support planning and decision making to address these changes, and the capacity to drive forward implementation of strategic plans or actions. As such, more reflective debates are emerging about how municipal reforms and related fiscal and jurisdictional arrangements and regulatory structures are either reinforcing path dependency within resource hinterlands or supporting the development of place-based assets (Korsgaard et al., 2015). Also important is the need to build regional alliances as critical investments in communication and transportation infrastructure, for example, require a regional approach and voice. Central to place-based development is recognition that the ‘economic’ and ‘social’ are intimately interwoven and must move together as complementary and reinforcing investments.
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Second, the demands place-based development puts on the capacities of localities links to sets of theoretical debates as well. These include: ●
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Conceptual connections Place-based development ideas and theory link to an array of theoretical debates and traditions. First, the foundations of place-based development link to: ●
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Staples Theory as its description of path dependency challenges serves as the basis for place-based development theory’s call to consider new ways to leverage place-based assets to foster greater economic diversification and reduced resource (staples) dependency. Industrial development theories describing the transition from Fordism to a flexible accumulation model via economic restructuring.
Economic theories describing the transition from Keynesianism to neoliberalism relative to the role of the state in leading market economic planning. Public policy theories describing the transition of economic models into either Keynesian public policy or neoliberal public policy; and more recent theoretical debates about the implications of neoliberalism via new public management and the like.
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Theories around new regionalism and the importance of localities recognizing the critical role of regional collaboration for addressing collective topics and needs. In addition to new regionalism, there has also been alignment with the reimagining of older core–periphery and heartland–hinterland models of regional relationships. Theories embedded within different forms of local economic investments, including local economic development (growing local business opportunities from within the locality) and community economic development (growing local business opportunities to address specific community social needs). Assessments of, and relationships between, elements of local capacity to engage in place-based development link to theoretical debates within the community capitals literature. Processes of economic path transition away from older (often Fordist-style economies) are pursued within the theoretical debates of evolutionary economic geography. Theories local government reform that address the need to replace the outdated fiscal and regulatory contexts of rural and small town local governments so that these governments have the types of capacity required to lead place-based development planning and to implement economic path diversification.
Even within academic research, the rise of place-based development has presented
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The various methodological theories around action research and participatory action research focused on local involvement in, and support for, the implementation of research findings to support localities. The various methodological theories around community-engaged research that are premised upon a more equal participation in, and leadership of, research projects for the mutual benefit of communities and researchers. As part of a surfacing in the settler academic institutions of the harms past spacebased development models imposed, there are directions towards reconciliation via mythological initiatives around post-colonial methodologies, decolonizing methodologies, Indigenous methodologies and community-based insurgent methodologies. Greg Halseth, Laura Ryser and Sean Markey
References Daigle, M. (2016). Awawanenitakik: The spatial politics of recognition and relational geographies of indigenous selfdetermination. The Canadian Geographer, 60(2), 259–269.
Halseth, G., & Ryser, L. (2018). Towards a political economy of resource dependent regions. Routledge. Harris, C. (2002). Making native space: Colonialism, resistance, and reserves in British Columbia. UBC Press. Harvey, D. (2005). A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford University Press. Innis, H. A. (1933). Problems of staple production in Canada. Ryerson Press. Korsgaard, S., Müller, S., & Tanvig, H. W. (2015). Rural entrepreneurship or entrepreneurship in the rural–between place and space. International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior and Research, 21(1), 5–26. Markey, S., Halseth, G., & Manson, D. (2012). Investing in Place: Economic renewal in Northern British Columbia. UBC Press. Massey, D. (1984). Introduction: Geography matters. In D. Massey & J. Allen (Eds.), Geography matters! A reader. Cambridge University Press. OECD. (2019). Principles on urban policy and on rural policy. OECD. Tonts, M., Plummer, P., & Argent, N. (2014). Path dependence, resilience and the evolution of new rural economies: Perspectives from rural Western Australia. Journal of Rural Studies, 36, 362–375. See also: asset-based community development, participation, participatory planning, ideology, modernism, post-colonialism, public debate and dialogue, genius loci, earthly attachments, futures, long term, resource towns, strategy, place branding
greg halseth, laura ryser and sean markey
94. Place branding in strategic spatial planning Key definition The application of branding techniques and principles to cities, metropolitan regions and countries, that is place branding, has proven to be an increasingly appealing topic for several disciplines, including urban planning. This is because cities, metropolitan regions and countries worldwide compete for business ventures, sporting and cultural event hosting, and new residents and workforce. Strategic spatial planning has been gaining in popularity across metropolitan regions of high-income countries. It has been applied as a means of leveraging place-specific qualities and assets and setting the path of a coherent spatial development strategy involving public and private actors as well as the citizens. This entry contributes to the theory and practice of place branding in strategic spatial planning by discussing its precursors, theoretical background and critique. It also shows the potential advantages of how these domains can be applied together in support of spatial governance.
Common uses Place branding is commonly employed for the promotion of environmental and nonenvironmental assets of cities and metropolitan regions or the creation of value in space. To give an example of such assets, these are urban features and landscape amenities. These urban features are described in several studies as the quality of transport infrastructure, housing availability and affordability, existing creative, tech or other industries, and the quality of health, educational and cultural facilities, such as opera houses, theatres and museums. Landscape amenities are agricultural and forest land, wildlife habitats, nature conservation areas, wetlands, recreational open areas, urban green parks and culturally significant amenities such as old trees. For example, Minneapolis (Minnesota, US) has availed its landscapes’ amenities to channel the image of ‘City by Nature’. Singapore’s authorities promote this city-state in Southeast Asia as a business location through
the branding strategies ‘Singapore the Garden City’ aligned with the brand ‘Enterprise Singapore’. Metropolitan regions are some of the most dynamic territories worldwide and play a major role in promoting the development of local and regional economies and in ensuring a sustainable future. The main objective of governments and economic development agencies in their branding of urban and/or regional assets is to attract investments, new residents and highly qualified, skilled personnel. To this end, place branding is thought to provide the general framework under which actions of the various place actors can complement and reinforce each other; and to support economic restructuring, community participation, political engagement and an overall strategic change through reimagining, repositioning, restructuring and rescaling processes. In this context, many possible relations are imaginable and practicable between place branding and strategic spatial planning. When considering those possible synergies, one can think of place branding as an instrument of the strategic planning approach. There are several explanations as to why some city and regional governments have decided to engage and experiment with or reflect upon the processes of strategic spatial planning. One of the reasons relates to the growing need for cities and regions to reposition themselves in a globally competitive arena, to address changes in key social, economic and environmental domains, including the necessity to cope with the progressive reduction in the availability of central funding and a scarcity of natural resources. Strategic spatial plans, therefore, articulate a more coherent and coordinated long-term spatial logic for land use regulation along with flexible frameworks for socially and ecologically sustainable development. Place branding in strategic spatial planning, as an instrument, mirrors strategic spatial planning as a value creator and ruler of place branding strategies. A spatial, strategic dimension in place branding attempts to take a more realistic view over spatial realities, where identities, assets, qualities and landscape are paramount for spatial development.
Brief history Although place branding in spatial planning brings into focus urban priorities, provides the motivations for preserving urban features
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284 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design and landscape amenities and requests the engagement of civil society and key place actors, they have diverse theoretical roots and precursors. The interlinkage between place marketing and later place branding with place management and spatial planning can be traced back to the works of Ashworth and Voogd (1990). These scholars, 30 years ago, stressed that place branding links well with spatial policy and governance systems involving spatial-functional, organizational and financial measures that are meant to improve places and facilitate place management interventions. In their seminal work, Ashworth and Voogd (1990) argue that a place branding process is inseparably linked with spatial policy, especially with the physical structure plan. In this context, place branding emerges not as having investment attraction, or an increase in tourism revenues, as their final goal or purpose, but as contributing to achieving the economic and development objectives of spatial planning on the city and regional scales. The contributions from Ashworth and Voogd (1990) inspired the theoretical model developed by Kavaratzis (2004). This model includes the components of what he calls ‘primary communication’. Deepening Ashworth and Voogd’s (1990) rationale of understanding place branding as far more than promotional activities, Kavaratzis’s approach to place branding emerges as an inclusive and integrative model, one in which place branding includes interventions in the spatial structure and the improvement of spatial qualities of places. Van Assche et al. (2020) discuss a typology of the linkage between spatial planning and place branding through the lenses of evolving governance systems. Bringing planning and branding closer together in theory and practice means seeing their relationship in the context of governance, the processes of taking and implementing collectively binding decisions.
Link to theory Although the theoretical frameworks developed by Ashworth and Voogd (1990) and Kavaratzis (2004) can be discussed as the precursors of the cross-fertilization between planning and branding, the idea of place branding in strategic spatial planning goes beyond their conceptualizations. Is an idea that aligns better with the findings of a eduardo da silva oliveira
special issue bringing different disciplinary backgrounds together. In the special issue titled Spatial planning and place branding: rethinking relations and synergies (Van Assche et al., 2020), examples from both theory and practice help to illustrate the linkage between branding and planning and the embedded of both in overall spatial governance configurations. Grenni et al. (2020), for instance, through a case study in Finland, contend that place branding is not just what a place is about in the present time, but also about joint efforts to make it better and adapt to evolving challenges. They conclude that in a scenario of spatial development, place branding is the co-creation of cultural narratives that support sustainable perspectives for the future. Porter (2020) reflects on place branding in support of landscape planning in the English Lake District National Park, UK. More recently, Ginesta et al. (2020) debated the implications that place branding has for regional public management, through their case study of the city of Vic in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. The city promoted itself as ‘Vic, a city with a human dimension’ through a place-based branding project commissioned by the city council and carried out by a local university. Dealing with these challenges requires a combination of vision, intuition, organization and determination across disciplines.
Critique Critics of place branding have argued that it is largely a neoliberal activity, with a possible democratic deficit, that reduces everything, everyone or every place to economic value (Van Assche et al., 2020). From this critical stance, place branding is seen as an advanced discourse of commodification, making everything circulate as material things with a value attached, in a globalized culture and economy (Vanolo, 2017). Place branding through strategic spatial planning may lead to a more harmonized place brand steeped in community narratives, assets and values. Adding a spatial dimension for place branding strategies may counterbalance this criticism assigned to place branding as a mode of neoliberal governance where local politics is procuring corporate interests and profit making. Furthermore, as place branding is rooted in community participation and the overall engagement of place-based actors, can indeed
place branding in strategic spatial planning 285 contribute to a revival of the strategic spatial planning approach because it counters hegemonic politics by challenging the neoliberalization of spatial development, in which some groups are systematically advantaged by decision making. Planning and branding can only effectively contribute to spatial development if they are not isolated from the broader realms of decision making and each other. In this context, the idea of place branding in strategic spatial planning could partly disrupt the corporate branding and the interregional competitiveness narratives that still dominate the place branding discourse.
Alternative definition and conceptual resonances Here we explore the interlinkage between place branding and strategic spatial planning by taking the former as an instrument for the attainment of strategic spatial planning goals. An alternative strand of reasoning can and eventually should also be considered or acknowledged. This alternative strand of reasoning takes place branding to be dominant over strategic spatial planning – that is, place branding ‘dictates’ the rules for strategic spatial planning. One can argue that spatial planning alone is not strong enough to attract businesses, investors, tourists or new residents or to create a sense of place and civic pride in its existing residents. At the same time, place branding cannot be a substitute for spatial planning. This alternative definition could be applied in cases where cities or metropolitan regions possess a strong brand, and a strong image, which would allow for effective planning interventions. In this alternative definition, place branding dictates the guidelines for the practice of strategic spatial planning (for example, through strategic urban development projects). However, if places without a place branding strategy adopt this alternative strand, the place branding exercise is highly risky. It could just start and finish as a place promotional exercise and is unlikely to contribute to spatial development. A place brand will also dictate the rules and the financial means in a less sustainable way. Therefore, it is necessary to discover synergies between planning and branding and for the embedding of both in evolving spatial governance settings.
The idea of place branding in strategic spatial planning links well with ‘spatial cognition’ for regional competitiveness, which demands that regions think about their identity, image and brand, as well as the reputation they desire. The ‘spatial associations’ of brands and branding suggest that their geographical entanglements may be relational and territorial, bounded and unbounded, fluid and fixed, territorializing and de-territorializing, which also renders value to an understanding of the linkage between place branding and spatial contexts. In this line of reasoning, place branding in a spatial planning strategy streamlines the emergence of new place identities based on existing ones. These other concepts aid in strengthening the idea discussed in this entry – that is branding cities, metropolitan regions and countries are more than just catchy slogans, colourful logos, starchitects, bidding for ‘The City of Talent’ or ‘The Region of Innovation’ status – that are applied as solution regardless of place-specific amenities and governance settings. I have argued that place branding, as a strategic spatial planning instrument, lends itself to a spatial consciousness of branding places making it more environmentally responsible and effective in supporting economic and social development. Eduardo da Silva Oliveira
References Ashworth, G. J., & Voogd, H. (1990). Selling the city: Marketing approaches in public sector urban planning. Belhaven Press. Ginesta, X., Vela, S. E. J., Corral-Marfil, J.A., & Montaña, J. (2020). The role of a city council in a place branding campaign: The case of Vic in Catalonia. Sustainability, 12(11), 4420. Grenni, S., Horlings, L. G., & Soini, K. (2020). Linking spatial planning and place branding strategies through cultural narratives in places. European Planning Studies, 28(7), 1355–1374. Kavaratzis, M. (2004). From city marketing to city branding: Towards a theoretical framework for developing city brands. Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, 1(1), 58–73. Porter, N. (2020). Strategic planning and place branding in a world heritage cultural eduardo da silva oliveira
286 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design landscape: A case study of the English lake district, UK. European Planning Studies, 28(7), 1291–1314. Van Assche, K., Beunen, R., & Oliveira, E. (2020). Spatial planning and place branding: Rethinking relations and synergies. European Planning Studies, 28(7), 1274–1290.
eduardo da silva oliveira
Vanolo, A. (2017). City branding. The ghostly politics of representation in globalizing cities. Routledge. See also: asset-based community development, participation, narrative, storytelling, place-based development, strategy, foresight, policy integration, heritage, memory, history
95. Policy integration Key definition Policy integration refers to a governance system’s ability to address a particular crosscutting policy problem in a more or less holistic manner, by fostering coherence between the goals and instruments of its constituent subsystems (cf. Candel & Biesbroek, 2016).
(subsystem involvement, policy frame, policy goals and policy instruments) and degrees of policy integration, allowing for comparative analyses across governance systems as well as over time. Similarly, a group of Swiss political scientists around Philipp Trein and Martino Maggetti have connected studies of policy integration with those of administrative reform, explaining driving processes and motivations shaping policy integration outcomes.
Link to theory and method
Brief history Many of today’s most pressing societal problems, such as climate change, food insecurity or financial instability, crosscut the boundaries of traditional policy domains, governance levels and jurisdictions. Ensuing mismatches between policy goals and governance interventions seriously constrain governance systems’ potential to mitigate these challenges. For that reason, policymakers and scholars alike have grown an interest in strengthening policy integration within these increasingly polycentric governance systems. The underlying assumption is that better integrated policy designs, which reduce incoherencies or even promote synergies between governance efforts, will be more effective in producing politically desired outcomes. For a long time, studies of policy integration were restricted to and fragmented across communities of scholars studying specific policy issues. Much of the early thinking on the theme emerged from scholarly work on environmental policy integration, in which scholars such as Andrew Jordan and Andrea Lenschow, considered how environmental objectives could be ‘mainstreamed’ across non-environmental policy domains, such as industrial and agricultural policy. In the late 2000s, scholars like Claire Dupont and Hens Runhaar complemented this work by similar analyses of climate policy integration. Epistemic communities dealing with similar types of questions include those on ‘gender mainstreaming’ and ‘health-in-all policies’. Only more recently, more general theorization on policy integration has emerged in the political sciences, seeking to connect and advance insights from earlier contributions. For example, Candel and Biesbroek (2016) proposed a framework that distinguished between different dimensions
Whereas general theorization on policy integration is largely concentrated within the political sciences, most notably the subfields of public administration and public policy, more applied research communities exist across a range of disciplines, such as planning studies, gender studies and public health. There is still considerable fragmentation between these communities, limiting cross-fertilizations and causing differences in the terminology that is used. Methodologically, given the absence of objective indicators and measures of policy coherence, assessments of policy integration are dominated by data collection methods that largely rely on perceptions of coherence of either policy stakeholders (e.g., using surveys, interviews and focus group techniques) or policy analysts themselves (e.g., using qualitative content analyses). In terms of data analysis, rapid advancements have been made in recent years, both in the use of interpretivist approaches (e.g., through process-tracing designs) and positivist analyses, using statistical models or qualitative comparative analysis (QCA).
Discussions and critiques In spite of the high hopes surrounding investments in policy integration, the latter have not remained unchallenged. Policy scholars have consistently shown that political commitments to strengthening policy integration very seldom proceed beyond paper realities, as trade-offs between conflicting objectives are evaded or supportive instrument mixes remain lagging. Moreover, scholars have pointed at the considerable costs involved in policy integration and coordination, requiring more careful consideration of when investing in policy integration may be considered expedient. For these reasons, the quest for policy
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288 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design integration has also come to be referred to as the ‘Holy Grail’ or ‘Philosopher’s Stone’ within the policy sciences. An alternative point of critique concentrates on the study of policy integration determinants and scholars’ tendency to come up with long ‘shopping lists’ of static factors and variables, such as (lack of) leadership or institutional capacity, that may either impede or enable policy integration. Even though instructive, many of these variables have been shown to be able to explain both strengthened integration and disintegration, depending on specific contexts and intervening agencydriven processes, as such providing ‘blackboxed’ causal interpretations. More recent studies have therefore started to explore the precise causal ‘mechanisms’ that, within a particular context, shape policy integration outcomes. Biesbroek and Candel (2019), for example, showed how scientific lobbying, turf war and policy-seeking mechanisms affected levels of policy integration in Dutch climate change adaptation policy over time. The question of how certain contextual conditions trigger such mechanisms very much remains virgin territory. Lastly, to date, most policy integration studies have adopted a top-down perspective, studying changes in policy output variables over time. Much less is known about how more or less integrated policy mixes play out in the everyday practice of public service delivery, or how they are being experienced by ultimate target groups. Huttunen (2015), for example, found that perceived lack of coherence in agri-environmental policy made Finnish farmers reluctant to adopt more sustainable farming practices, as such undermining the policy’s objectives. She argues that these types of bottom-up studies of the
jeroen j.l. candel
interactions between policies and everyday practices may allow for better-targeted policy designs, contributing to more effective governance approaches Jeroen J.L. Candel
Bibliography Biesbroek, R., & Candel, J. J. L. (2019). Mechanisms for policy (dis)integration: Explaining food policy and climate change adaptation policy in the Netherlands. Policy Sciences, 53, 61–84. Candel, J. J. L., & Biesbroek, G. R. (2016). Toward a processual understanding of policy integration. Policy Sciences, 49(3), 211–231. Huttunen, S. (2015). Farming practices and experienced policy coherence in agri-environmental policies: The case of land clearing in Finland. Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, 17(5), 573–592. Jordan, A., & Lenschow, A. (2010). Policy paper environmental policy integration: A state of the art review. Environmental Policy and Governance, 20(3), 147–158. Peters, B. G. (2015). Pursuing horizontal management: The politics of public sector coordination. University Press of Kansas. Trein, P., Biesbroek, R., Bolognesi, T., Cejudo, G. M., Duffy, R., Hustedt, T., & Meyer, I. (2020). Policy coordination and integration: A research agenda. Public Administration Review, 81(5), 973–977. See also: strategy, transition, institutions, public–private partnerships, expertise and local knowledge, modernism, foresight, land consolidation, regional planning, regional design
96. Polycentricity Definitions Widely used in urban and regional planning, polycentricity is multi-interpretable. One reason is that there are many alternatives and synonyms, often not very consistently used in literature and planning documents. Another reason is that polycentricity can be used in analytical (‘is’ or ‘will become’) as well as political-normative reasoning (‘should’). The most important reason for confusion is that there are basically two polycentricity concepts at different spatial scales, which may be simply called Polycentricity 1 and Polycentricity 2. Polycentricity 1 deals with the (desired) spatial structure of individual urban regions and focuses on the location and relationships between centres, patterns of dominance and hierarchy as well as the perimeters of a region and the criteria to such define perimeters (or the impossibility to do so). From a planning point of view, two issues are particularly relevant and often the focus of profound discourse: 1) how a polycentric urban region is or should be governed; 2) whether the policy theories under planning strategies are in line with analytical and academic insights into polycentric structures and whether such structures exist. Polycentricity 2 deals with the urban (often: urban-economic) structure of much wider areas: entire countries or substantial parts, transnational areas or even an entire continent. More than under Polycentricity 1 the discussion under this heading is political and normative and therefor often highly contentious and geopolitical. Discussion tends to focus on the competitiveness of cities and urban regions, levels of equity – for instance: is the urban structure of a country genuinely polycentric or dominated by a single city or urban region and therefor monocentric as this option is often called – and how and which policy tools can be of influence? The various perceptions of polycentricity and the levels of scale involved may look like a Russian doll (nested): a city or contiguous urban agglomeration having a polycentric structure; a non-contiguous urban region having a polycentric structure etc. right up to the level of a continent. In planning discussions, the governance of polycentric area is often a key issue as there
is usually no strong match with the layout of a (national) administrative system and there are often tensions between the central, main city and other cities in the region, which may go back decades into history. One particular response is to take the capital region out of the administrative system to create a separate metropolitan administrative entity which includes an elected council. Such entity may be dismantled by national government in case it is considered as politically too powerful. This happened in the London and Copenhagen regions for instance.
History Polycentric urban regions: against monocentricity. The historic origin of Polycentricity 1 as an analytical construct can be traced back to a 1945 short but influential article by the urban geographers Chauncy Harris and Edward Ullman: ‘The Nature of Cities’. In this article, the authors unfolded their ‘multiple-nuclei’ concept as an alternative for two other models of the internal structure of the city: the concentric-zone theory advocated by Ernest Burgess and the theory on axial development from Homer Hoyt. Harris and Ullman rejected the claim that there is but one single urban core around which land use is arranged symmetrically in either concentric or radial patterns. Obviously, Harris and Ullman focus on urban agglomerations: contiguous urban areas which may be (very) large but do not form regions characterised by multiple centres (cities) separated from each other by relatively unbuilt areas. Set in its historical context the multiple-nuclei concept is a theory which aims to understand urban structures and guide empirical research. In planning and regional design the history of Polycentricity 1 as a spatial structure to be created through strategies and interventions is much older and goes back to the nineteenth century, so predating the multiple-nuclei concept. In industrialising countries, this was an era of massive urbanisation often leading to large, sometimes massive urban agglomerates with poor living and housing conditions. Not only was it regarded by early planning activists as necessary to improve these conditions but also to look for other urbanisation models other than (massive) concentration or in more modern terms: monocentricity. Ebenezer Howard’s 1898 model of a ring of satellite cities around a metropolis proposes nothing else
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290 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design than a (hierarchical) polycentric urban region and thus deconcentration. So does Patrick Abercrombie’s 1944 Greater London Plan and the proposal to develop New Towns around the capital. The development of new towns around (major) cities, in various patterns, is spatially the most recognisable implication of immediate post-war polycentric planning models. Although market forces often played a key role in the production of houses in these new towns, the making of polycentric regions through the creation of new towns became a government-led project, at least in Europe. Next to several generations of new towns in the United Kingdom, major examples include: the villes nouvelles in the Paris region, based on the 1965 Schéma d’aménagement et d’urbanisme de la région parisienne (SDAURP); the making of growth centres (groeikernen, also initially called New Towns or Nieuwe Steden) in the Netherlands, following an authoritative 1958 planning report about the desired structure of the Randstad; new urban centres in a distinct star-shaped pattern in the Copenhagen region, following the 1947 Finger Plan. All these polycentric models had a rather similar overriding objective: to avoid massive urban concentration in ever-growing agglomerations by transferring growth to selected areas and centres while maintaining large open spaces in between. Often it was expected that new towns would eventually develop as distinct centres in the urban hierarchy while in reality, many new towns became dormitory towns, strongly dependent on the donor city for employment and high-quality urban services. As government-led projects, these European polycentric models can be regarded as the territorial component of the post-war build-up of the welfare state as massive budgets, as well as extensive regulatory and organisational frameworks, had to be put in place. Although in the Copenhagen region, the finger model – basically a transit-oriented new town model – is still in place while the Netherlands changed to a compact city model during the 1990s and 2000s, in quite a few (European) countries a novel interpretation of polycentricity came up. This new interpretation of polycentricity was (and still is) quintessential neoliberal as it evolves around the spatial-economic position and competitiveness of individual cities, (polycentric) urban regions as well as large urban networks in wil zonneveld
wider settings: particularly international and global. This is the domain of Polycentricity 2.
Polycentricity at country and continental levels: competitiveness and cohesion A key example of Polycentricity 2 is the Flemish Diamond (Vlaamse Ruit) concept, a spatial imagery (i.e., a combination of metaphors and images) developed by the planning team preparing what became the 1997 (very first) Flemish Structure Plan. It is defined as a network of cities, having Ghent, Antwerp, Leuven and Brussels as cornerstones. The key issue is not urban morphology nor the (desired) structure of the region surrounding these individual cities but international competition, and how the competitive position of Flanders could be improved, not at the level of individual cities which are far too small, but through a network of cities which together have critical mass. As Brussels is an administrative entity of its own and officially bi-lingual, the Walloon government reacted swiftly by proposing another urban network, its name also highly metaphorical: the Walloon Triangle (Triangle Wallonie), having Brussels, Mons, Charleroi and Namur as cornerstones. Both Belgian concepts, with Brussels as a sort of hinge between the two, show that Polycentricity 2 concepts are the object of geopolitical discussions. In general, political clashes are much more profound compared with Polycentricity 1 concepts while empirical territorial evidence plays a different role, often moulded in such a way that it fits political objectives. In Europe, this was and still is particularly the case. In 1989 ferocious debates both within and outside the domain of spatial planners started when the French research group RECLUS published the report Les Villes Européennes (The European Cities), commissioned by the French spatial-economic planning agency DATAR. A key map showed what was called the urban-economic backbone (dorsale) of Europe, stretching out roughly from the Midlands of England to the northwest of Italy, an image nicknamed as the Blue Banana. In an authoritative analysis (selected as best 1995 paper by the Association of European Schools of Planning, AESOP) the French regional-economist Alain Liepitz showed the report had a lot to do with geopolitical debates in France:
polycentricity 291 the Paris region was deliberately imaged as situated outside the European backbone. As the impression was made that this conclusion was evidence-based it was used in political debates about the need to strengthen the position of the Paris region so it would become part of the European backbone. In a heavily quoted journal paper, Klaus Kunzmann opposed the Banana scheme as massively outdated: Europe is characterised by a superposition of various sorts of networks spanning the entire continent. If a metaphor needs to be used it should be a Bunch of Grapes. The very same year that the RECLUS/ DATAR study was published, the spatial planning ministers of the then 15 European Community members together with the Commission decided to start a process which eventually led to the 1999 European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP). The politically most sensitive discussion focused on centre–periphery relations: economically strong versus weak(er) regions. In short: equity versus competitiveness. The outcome of this discussion was the concept of balanced competitiveness (basically an oxymoron) and in spatial terms: polycentric development. The ESDP concluded that while the USA has several outstanding economic integration zones on a global scale Europe has only one: the pentagon (the English version of the ESDP uses this concept other language versions do not, in particular the French one). This pentagon is defined by the metropolises of London, Paris, Milan, Munich and Hamburg; basically, a more condensed dorsale compared with the Blue Banana, but with Paris included. This shows that in planning the same spatial structure can be imagined in very different ways. To avoid pentagon domination the ESDP claimed that a more polycentric European settlement structure with a graduated city-ranking is needed. Visualising the structure of the European Union, including the pentagon, proved to be far too contentious. Even more so what a future, more polycentric Europe could look like. Instead, the ESDP uses a diagram showing polycentricity at different spatial scales: polycentricity at the European scale can only be reached by polycentricity at the regional scale, largely through (administrative) cooperation at this latter level. Although some (including Klaus Kunzmann) regard the ESDP as a paper tiger, the ESDP was nevertheless quite influential
over a period of roughly a decade. A number of European countries applied (or at least discussed) the concept of polycentricity at the national scale (examples: Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Poland). In some of these countries, national polycentricity included urban centres at various levels of scale to keep regional and municipal administrations on board (Poland for instance). In Germany, the first proposal for the selection of Metropolregionen (Metropolitan Regions) raised political outcry which led to the inclusion of three additional regions. Polycentricity became also included in a range of transnational visions made in the aftermath of the ESDP, most notably the Spatial Vision for North West Europe published in 2000. As the ESDP concept of polycentricity is highly political albeit with empirical claims, evidence was expected to come from the very first research programme of the European Observation Network for Territorial Development and Cohesion (ESPON), financed by the European Commission as well as EU Member States plus some nonEU countries. Several large projects tried to unravel the urban structure of Europe to provide the required level of spatial evidence. Countries plus the Commission could use the results in their planning policies. Right up to the present polycentricity is still being used in European post-ESDP policy documents: the Territorial Agenda 2020 as well as the Territorial Agenda 2030, finalised in 2011 and 2021 respectively (these are EU member state documents as the Commission no longer participates due to legal reasons). Again, the concept is used at different spatial scales: EU, transnational, national, cross-border and regional. Polycentricity crossed the Atlantic which led to the concept of megaregions developed by the Regional Plan Association (RPA) as part of the America 2050 project. The prospectus, published in 2005, clearly took inspiration from the ESDP: ten so-called megaregions were identified each forming the ‘proper scale at which to make the investments that will maximize America’s competitiveness and broaden opportunities for all members of our society’. These investments should be put in two systems: 1) a multimodal transportation system of new smart highways, high-speed rail, airports and seaports, all of these linked to concentrated developments at central hubs; 2) protected environmental wil zonneveld
292 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design landscapes and coastal estuaries. As the concept of polycentricity is applied by the RPA at the megaregion level only, it is far less ubiquitous compared with European planning documents. The ESDP and the European Territorial Agendas are highly political documents while America 2050 is developed by an organisation of planning professionals albeit clearly with the aim that its content will trickle down in policymaking.
Discussions and critiques Polycentricity is obviously a highly normative and politicised concept. Studies to evaluate and (possibly) criticise polycentricity and related concepts may take inspiration from various discourse analysis methods and related approaches such as storytelling: planning as persuasive storytelling about the future as proposed by James Throgmorton. The emphasis in approaches like this is on the explicit and implicit assumptions and objectives as well as supporting and opposing actors, their interests as well as (power) position (central, peripheral or marginalised). Particular emphasis needs to be placed on language and metaphors and key visualisations and maps. In short, the imaginaries: verbal as well as visual languages are in general highly connected and chosen for specific reasons, although the actual effects may be quite different compared with what was anticipated. Any critical analysis should also pay ample attention to knowledge claims and underlying policy theories. This may be rather challenging though as policy theories often remain quite implicit. Finally: as polycentricity concepts and claims are often rather ubiquitous it is critical to identify which spatial scales are addressed in policy documents and for what reason.
A family of concepts There are many concepts which include polycentricity in their definition, if there is an explicit definition (which is often not the case in policy documents). Examples include megalopolis as originally defined by Jean Gottmann in 1957 and used, for example, in the very first (1960) Dutch national planning report. The RPA megaregion concept somewhat resembles this concept although the scale is somewhat smaller. There are many other concepts at the regional level which depart from the assumption of a bound space wil zonneveld
– i.e., demarcation on the basis of data – in which various urban centres are connected to each other (disconnected in terms of builtup areas). Examples include city region, functional urban area (FUA) or polycentric urban area (PUR). Available data may dictate perimeters while other data – in case these were also available – may lead to alternative perimeters. Cut-off points and thresholds may also be rather questionable in defining PURs, FUAs and similar regional entities (in the context of spatial policymaking). There is an abundance of concepts connected to a specific region which include polycentricity claims, so regional place names. The Dutch Randstad is probably the most well-known example, although in politics as well as research there have been fierce debates over the course of decades whether levels of spatial integration justify a planning concept on the scale of an 80 × 80 km area, let alone whether governance capacity can be organised on such a level. The same counts for instance for the German Rhine-Ruhr (metropolitan) region. Polycentricity in linear form may also be found in policy documents. The dominant term is corridor in this case, mostly in combination with the name of the cities at both ends of the corridor in question. The corridor is probably one of the most maltreated concepts in planning as urban centres may be found easily on any sort of map while the presumed relations are non-existent or cannot be proven. Nevertheless, political claims for new infrastructure may be very strong. Besides spatial polycentricity there is a polycentricity concept focusing exclusively on governance. Michael Polanyi can be regarded as the founding father (the 1951 book The Logic of Liberty). Probably the most influential interpretation today comes from Elinor and Vincent Ostrom. Although they defined polycentricity in many different ways, together these definitions can be brought down to: ‘a complex form of governance with a distributed form of leadership and citizenship that protects the integrity of the system and multiple centers of decision making, where each center has a certain degree of autonomy’. Wil Zonneveld
Bibliography Albrechts, L. (1998). The Flemish diamond: Precious gem and virgin area. European Planning Studies, 6(4), 411–424.
polycentricity 293 Brunet, R. (1989). Les Villes Européennes; Rapport pour la DATAR: Délégation l’Aménagement du Territoire et l’Action Régionale. La Documentation Française. Davoudi, S. (2003). Polycentricity in European spatial planning: From an analytical tool to a normative agenda? European Planning Studies, 11(8), 979–999. Faludi, A., & Waterhout, B. (2002). The making of the European spatial development perspective: No masterplan. Routledge. Kunzmann, K. R. (1996). Euro-megalopolis or themepark Europe? Scenarios for European
spatial development. International Planning Studies, 1(2), 143–163. Lipietz, A. (1995). Avoiding megapolization: The Battle of Ile-de-France. European Planning Studies, 3(2), 143–154. See also: adaptive planning, innovation, institutions, strategy, regional planning, regional design, European spatial planning, place-based development, assemblage, socialecological systems, international planning, complexity, self-organization
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97. Post-colonialism – and beyond When R. Devisch and F. Nyamnjoh published The Post-Colonial Turn: Re-imagining Anthropology and Africa in 2011, it provided attempts for critiquing the universality of Western science and dominance, and explored the possibility of endogenization, the possibility for anthropology to be decentered and for Africa to exist and to know beyond the Western lens, and the possibility of intercultural exchange that would not prioritize either the West or the non-West. The contribution says little of planning and design as practices as these were probably too much considered as an intellectual perspective that could interest anthropologists who had spent their careers in Africa, whether they were rooted in European or African societies. The question of the postcolonial eventually shifted from a question of ‘the real’ towards ‘the imaginary’, thus leading to both re-imagining the West and Africa as imaginaries produced by a dominant West. Scott (1989) marks the West as the imagined West but does not undermine its role in structuring the relationship of the researcher. And Appadurai indicates that ‘global ethnoscapes’ as that which anthropologists can understand of a world in movement, i.e., across ethnic or national boundaries. But even more important, the post-colonial became reframed into the de-colonial, as an active practice of undoing colonization, and its derivatives, such as imperialism, capitalism and liberalism. For example, de-linking as a practical and political process of decolonizing, that emerged in the Latin American context and spread quickly to other parts of the world. The transmodernists such as Mignolo position beyond post-colonialism (understood as post-modern) as they understand modernity as squarely the starting position and claim that modernity is actively produced without Western references. However, it is only with the post-humanists that not only the West and the modern but the human itself becomes decentered. This has enormous influences on the understanding of planning and design. In the post-colonial, planning and design are the result of colonialism that introduced a modern and rational logic to human living, moving, and making. These processes are framed in a dichotomy of
modern versus primitive, and result from different cognitions, the primitive being that of the bricoleur versus the modern as that of the engineer, as shown by Levi-Strauss (1962). In the post-human endeavor, however, living is extended, and making, living and moving beyond the context of human-centered decolonized planning and design. In the nexus of post-human and design anthropology, space is extended to allow for human diversity, and ecological balance between human and other living and non-living entities. This makes for research that leads to other educational, health, employment and infrastructural inputs to proactively safeguard and stimulate future perspectives and developments. The anthropologist finds himself/herself suddenly not only among indigenous people but among indigenous engineers, planners and designers who open space and time in which creative endeavors emerge. Watson (2009, 2014) thus points out the urban emerges from the South, beyond a simple (colonial) dismissal that countries in the South cannot plan or design (Roy, 2009). Rather, Southern Urban practices emerge from changes and involve design and within the possible, not within the normative (Bhan, 2019). Patrick Devlieger
Bibliography Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at large. University of Minnesota Press. Bhan, G. (2019). Notes on a Southern urban practice. Environment and Urbanization, 1, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1177/09562478188 15792. Lévi-Strauss, C. (1962). La Pensée Sauvage [The Savage Mind]. Plon. Miraftab, F. (2009). Insurgent planning: Situating radical planning in the global south. Planning Theory, 8(1), 32–50. Porter, L. (2006) Planning in (post)colonial settings: Challenges for theory and practice, 7(4), 383–396. Roy, A. (2009). Why India cannot plan its cities: Informality, insurgence and the idiom of urbanization. Planning Theory, 8(1), 76–87. Scott, D. (1989). Locating the anthropological subject. Inscriptions, 5, 75–84. Watson, V. (2009). Seeing from the South: Refocusing urban planning on the globe’s
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post-colonialism – and beyond 295 central urban issues. Urban Studies, 46(11), 2259–2275. Watson, V. (2014). Learning planning from the south: Ideas from the new urban frontiers. In S. Parnell & S. Oldfield (Eds.), The Routledge handbook on cities of the global south (pp. 120–130). Routledge.
See also: history, inclusion/exclusion, power in planning, power/knowledge, memory, social-ecological systems, insurgent planning, informality, informal settlements, modernism, colonial legacies, ideology, international planning, earthly attachments in the Anthropocene, transversality
patrick devlieger
98. Post-disaster planning Building back better than the past The mantra to ‘build back better’—a strategy aimed at reducing the risk to the people of nations and communities in the wake of future disasters and shocks—prominently appeared in the Sendai Framework of the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015–2030), aptly captures two central challenges of post-disaster planning. First, disaster response and recovery, while usually operating in a chaotic time and space, can’t afford not to plan with vulnerability mitigation and effective preparedness in mind, to reduce or remove the chance of a repeat event. It requires putting a plan in place to avoid future disaster at the outset. Second, build back better (BBB) denotes that what came before in the urban environment—planned or otherwise—is substantially answerable for the gravity of disaster in the present and should be addressed to avoid the mistakes of the past. Disasters instigate blueprints for a radical departure to remedy earlier mistakes. They appear to present a blank slate (tabula rasa) and political momentum to do things wholly differently. It is unlikely that the European ‘Seveso’ Guidelines regulating industrial hazard would have been implemented without a headline-making industrial disaster event in Lombardy near Milan in July 1976 (de Marchi, 1997). Following Crane and Weber’s (2012) understanding that urban planning as a discipline and practice is dedicated precisely to responding to interdependent urban problems and change, post-disaster planning then represents a central disciplinary call to arms. Path dependency, nonetheless, tends to catch up with the boldest plans for transformation. Practices of insurance and permitting have often encouraged building back the same rather than better, reproducing the same vulnerabilities. But large (re)insurers such as Munich Re and Swiss Re embracing ‘resilience’ indicates there’s movement there, too. Like urban sustainability, resilience apprehends the necessity to tackle the intertwinement of urban environmental problems with the vulnerabilities of people, economic assets,
and organisations, in the context of a changing climate. Yet beyond this, resilience also calls forth a desire for the persistence of these social and ecological systems in the face of unpredictable perturbations (Bosher & Chmutina, 2017). While holding out the promise of safer, healthier and climate-smart urban living, urban greening and nature-based solutions (NBS) present the significant problem of what exactly post-disaster planning is supposed to be making resilient. We conclude by asserting the critical role of urban planning’s drive to BBB in debating—and correcting— the social and political drivers of disaster risk and vulnerability.
Constructing effective planning At the policy level, government agencies present an applied view of planning post-disaster as focusing on long-term resilience, to guide integrated decisions that either entirely avoid or offer flexibility in response to all types of urban hazard, whether hydrometeorological, geophysical or directly anthropogenic (chemical leaks, terrorism, etc.). Post-disaster planning cannot then simply be undertaken at the same time as emergency response, as (for example), while the needs of disaster victims should be paramount, rehousing or rebuilding infrastructures in the same location or style should not reproduce exposure to similar hazards in the future. For Bosher and Chmutina (2017), deep political will is required to institutionalise disaster risk reduction (DRR) within planning policy, design and built environment maintenance, with regular revisions to building codes and compliance mechanisms. US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) agrees with this integrated view of post-disaster spatial planning, in the sense that it must not only understand the social and economic drivers of (re)exposure in urban redevelopment, but also address ‘their existing dependencies and vulnerabilities’ (FEMA, 2020). We might question, nonetheless, the gap between on-paper policy and its actual ability to work across different social, economic, and institutional sectors in the post-disaster space. Hartmann (2010) refers to flood management planning as ‘polyrational’, given that over time floodplains tend to appear as sequentially profitable, dangerous, controllable and inconspicuous according to the rationalities of the different actor groups that take centre stage in different disaster phases: before, during and immediately
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post-disaster planning 297 after a flood event. Clearly, factors other than risk feed into decisions over floodplain development—be they job or housing provision or straightforward economic growth and competitiveness—and these translate into predictable ups and downs in investments and risk-taking vs risk-averse behaviour. Post-disaster planning should then employ effective risk mapping and modelling to act on hazard-aware zoning and land-use regulations for housing, industry and recreation, as well as to guide decisions on transport infrastructure to enable better evacuation. Nonetheless, the memory of floods fades surprisingly fast, with authorities often encouraging erasure by entirely removing debris to claim disaster spaces for urban renewal. An approach more attuned to cultural drivers in flood risk would then seek to actively memorialise disaster through plaques and a committed use of wreckage in redevelopment, to provide impetus and balance to the seemingly irrational land-use decisions that might come later (Warner, 2021). Organisational and institutional aspects have also come under significant scrutiny. Ideal-typically, post-disaster planning should produce an effective inventory of the roles and responsibilities of the different government agencies and other key actors involved in emergency response and recovery, with composite trainings undertaken with key personnel to offer a coordinated, collaborative and flexible approach, to avoid ‘chaos’ when under the pressure of an emergency situation. For instance, the mapping used for hazard-aware redevelopment can also be used by response personnel to better understand how a hazard—and indeed a disaster—could unfold across terrains and land uses, as well as to guide the placement of temporary housing. The problematic aspects of a disaster ‘command and control’ system have occupied a significant space in the literature, with intelligent writing asserting precisely the limits of organisational control: systems frequently fail, and resilience should moreover target flexibility in the face of unpredictability, with cooperation and improvisation encouraged between key agencies and personnel (Dynes, 1994). While more interactive, communityfocused recovery planning brings scope for culturally, socioeconomically and environmentally appropriate housing schemes, in practice it tends to rely on imported technologies and top-down planning as the money
needs to be spent quickly and the challenge to rehabilitate destitute communities may be overwhelming (Sadiqi et al., 2017).
Commanding urban nature ‘Command and control’ can nonetheless be perceived in different ways. Emergency management agencies alongside spatial planning authorities increasingly look to safeguard or restore open/biodiverse spaces within or at the periphery of urban environments to provide better water drainage and retention and/or to act as a buffer against hazard encroachment on more populated or economically valuable areas (e.g., FEMA, 2020). Through much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, modernist planning has often sought to dominate and control nature and its hazards by grafting grid-like, apparently orderly, urban designs onto diffuse landscapes, largely ignorant of patterns of watercourse runoff. Similarly, canalisation schemes removed riverine meanders to allow developmental space on valley floors and encourage the rapid removal of stormwater from the built environment (Karvonen, 2011). Under increasing pressure to respond to climate change—from scientists and activists alike—policymakers and planners now turn to NBS and green infrastructure (e.g., linear parks, ‘room for the river’; urban biodiversity accounting; tree planting, public and private gardens) to mitigate or moderate disaster risks, from floods to urban heat islands (Davoudi et al., 2009). City planning authorities are plainly keen to position themselves as active in climate change mitigation and adaptation. For example, tree cover, green roofs and parkland offer hydro-hazard reduction by lowering runoff, at the same time as increasing biodiversity and reducing emissions. Similarly, while urban ‘heat islands’ are a growing disaster phenomenon, eco-conscious or ‘smart’ building practices actively utilise sources of heat to reduce energy demand. As such, even if viewed as a ‘good’, it can be argued that NBS represent a reprisal of efforts to control and manage nature. Scholarly optimists focus on the potential of bridging mitigation and adaptation to reshape spatial planning in its entirety—post-disaster or otherwise—in its course expanding exactly what is to be considered in terms of quality of human life, to allow greater consideration of relationships robert coates and jeroen warner
298 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design between society, water, climate, and nature more broadly (Davoudi et al., 2009). Those more suspicious of an embedded command and control approach to disaster governance nonetheless fear that planners’ attention to making ‘the urban environment’ resilient comes at the expense of attention to the urbanisation of the environment, something occurring apace globally. Urbanisation processes in fact continue to reduce natural buffers to hazards rather than provide solutions to them, putting (especially) poorer people, alongside all kinds of other assets, directly in harm’s way. Planning for urban climate ‘resilience’ might actually authorise further globalised economic development and growth over genuine risk reduction when built-up areas are viewed in sum at any given time (Bender, 2021). Any number of cases come to mind, from the loss of New Orleans’s wetlands to industrial development in the US, which increased exposure of the urban poor to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, to sprawling metropolises in Brazil, where favelas provide the workforce for urban growth just as their settlement provokes catastrophic floods and mudslides in the least desirable and most exposed locations along river margins and on steep slopes.
A wider role for post-disaster planning In an age when adaptation to climate change calls forth the urgency of acting on a growing threat from natural hazards out there, a more vulnerability-centred planning approach focuses on the centrality of risk reduction here, within social, economic and especially urban development and design. Such assertions seek to expand spatial planning beyond a narrow domain, to highlight the intertwinement of disaster vulnerability with issues of poverty and inequality in development processes. To effectively ‘build back better’ would mean addressing the social, financial and political resources marginalised groups draw on for their recovery—not least their access to education and public healthcare, in and outside of the immediate disaster space—but also their unequal access to decision makers to advocate for their improvement. DRR scholar-practitioners are dubious of a climate adaptation field that refashions a highly developed domain of research and practice—and that, at worst, focuses robert coates and jeroen warner
planning on a hazardous climate rather than the hazardous social and economic drivers of vulnerability. Such discussion alerts us to the wide scales and multiple actors involved in development as it overlaps with planning for both the creation and reduction of urban disaster risk. If planning practices have been negligent in producing disaster risk, post-disaster reforms based on reflection over urban space, nature, climate and social inclusion must be welcomed. Building back better, however, must not be instrumentalised as a done deal for economic development, but moreover a critical space for working on the social and political drivers of disaster risk, urbanisation and vulnerability. Post-disaster planning represents a key opportunity to reflect on and reconstruct development across space and society. Robert Coates and Jeroen Warner
References Bender, S. O. (2021). Constructing risk: Disaster, development, and the built environment. Berghahn. Bosher, L., & Chmutina, K. (Eds.) (2017). Disaster risk reduction for the built environment. Wiley. Crane, R., & Weber, R. (Eds.) (2012). The Oxford handbook of urban planning, Oxford handbooks. Oxford University Press. Davoudi, S., Crawford, J., & Mehmood, A. (Eds.) (2009). Planning for climate change: Strategies for mitigation and adaptation for spatial planners. Earthscan. Dynes, R. (1994). Community emergency planning: False assumptions and Inappropriate analogies. International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters, 12(2), 141–158. FEMA. (2020). Retrieved from https://www .fema.gov/sites/default /files/2020 - 07/post -disaster-redevelopment-planning.pdf Hartmann, T. (2010). Reframing polyrational floodplains: Land policy for large areas for temporary emergency retention. Nature and Culture, 5(1), 15–30. Karvonen, A. (2011). Politics of urban runoff: Nature, technology, and the sustainable city. The MIT Press. Marchi, B. de (1997). Seveso: From pollution to regulation. International Journal of Environment and Pollution, 7(4), 526–537.
post-disaster planning 299 Sadiqi, Z., Trigunarsyah, B., & Coffey, V. (2017). A framework for community participation in post-disaster housing reconstruction projects: A case of Afghanistan. International Journal of Project Management, 35(5), 900–912. Warner, J. (2021). Enschede cries–Restoring ontological security after a fireworks
disaster. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 59, 102171. See also: conflict and shock, social-ecological systems, earthly attachments and the Anthropocene, transition, institutions, policy integration, strategy, strategic navigation, adaptive planning, polycentricity
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99. Power and planning
Sites and forms of power The boxes in the matrix present the following four domains of study of the exercise of power in planning:
Planners have power? A typical question we ask about power in planning is: what powers do planners have? As Michel Foucault would suggest, a better, more fruitful question is: how is power exercised in the realm of planning? This question is a vexing one, both because of the complex and conflictual nature of planning processes and because the terms ‘power’ and ‘planning’ are themselves ill-defined. The multiplicity of incarnations of power gives the concept a somewhat elusive definition. The same can be said of planning, which is taken to mean different things by different people. Planning involves the spatial and social distribution of resources, both public and private, and the design of processes as well as of environments. Hence planning necessarily involves collaboration and conflict among many actors in a myriad of institutions and settings. Their interactions take many forms which provide opportunities for the exercise of power in many forms as well, from economic domination to political cooptation, from statutory constraint to miscommunication. For the sake of simplicity and clarity, we can analyze the exercise of power in planning according to a two-by-two matrix in which the columns represent two basic definitions of planning, a generic one and a focused one, and the rows represent two basic definitions of power, a formal one and an informal one. A generic definition of planning could be something like: planning is the process of deliberation, decision-making and implementation through which people in a given locale steer change in their living environment in accordance with their values and interests. A specific definition of planning might read as follows: planning is the professional domain and field of expertise whose focus is the design of processes, plans and other instruments to guide urban change. With respect to power, simplification is probably even more dangerous, but a formal definition might evoke the notion of authority and refer to the statutory ability to act, while an informal definition might center on the concept of influence, the ability to shape one’s own behavior and that of others.
1.
The formal relations of power among actors involved in collective decisionmaking on the future of the city or region. This is the realm of the state and private property and of the laws that shape their interaction. Here, ‘power’ is primarily defined by legal statutes, most notably those pertaining to the police power (the power to limit individual freedom to ensure the health, safety, morals and welfare of the population) and the power of eminent domain (the power to expropriate private property in the public interest), powers that have often been abused to dominate or segregate certain groups. In the wholesale renovation of Paris by Haussmann, state power was applied to modernize the city and in the process to push the working class out of older neighborhoods in favor of the bourgeoisie. 2. The informal relations of power among actors involved in collective decisionmaking on the future of the city or region. This is the domain of the political economy and politics of planning, in which actors exercise power in direct and indirect manners, by spending money, building social relations, disseminating information, shaping culture, etc. In the governance of metropolitan regions, economic players, political actors, experts, activists and others collaborate and fight to design forums of deliberation, set the agenda for decision-making, chart a course of future development, promote the adoption of governmental and nongovernmental programs, etc. They work in a wider ideological framework in which certain values are prioritized, the public interest is circumscribed, and policy options are limited. Thus, metropolitan housing opportunities are shaped by visions of the good city, budget priorities, the structure of the real-estate industry, the strength of local coalitions, etc. 3. The formal relations of power between planning professionals and other actors. This is the area of planning institutions and expertise, in which planners are given a variable degree of authority
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4.
in the collective management of urban change. Planning laws, municipal codes, professional codes of conduct and other statutes define the mandates of planning professionals and other actors involved in the planning process (officials, citizens, fellow professionals). What planning documents municipalities must prepare and what their contents must be, where in government planning agencies are located and what mandates and budgets they have, what level of discretionary decision-making planners have in the application of bylaws, what requirements exist for citizen participation or consultation: the manner in which these and similar questions are answered in a given jurisdiction shapes the contents of planners’ work and sets boundaries to their ability to intervene in agenda-setting, decision-making and implementation. The informal relations of power between planners and others. Within existing institutional structures, planners can be subject to influence and exercise influence on others in a variety of ways: by creating coalitions with people inside and outside their organization, by defining their own mandates to serve certain ends, by sharing (and not sharing) information with others, by shaping their own communications and the interactions they facilitate. Thus, planners have latitude in how they implement statutory requirements for citizen participation: they can create new opportunities for collective deliberation, they can build informal networks in the community, they can run meetings to be as free of distorted communication as possible.
History as power unfolding The history of planning can be read as a set of four stories unfolding in time, stories pertaining to the way in which the management
of urban development is organized in statutes (e.g., edicts imposed by a sovereign authority, participatory processes enshrined in law), the manner in which different forces in society interact in the shaping of living environments (e.g., land developers selling suburbia to officials and households, grassroots organizations stopping highway construction), the measures that give planners standing as professional players in the larger planning game (e.g., states passing land-use and credentialing laws, municipalities creating planning agencies and offices of citizen participation) and the strategies planners use as advisors to the Prince, as designers and analysts, as shapers of public attention. Likewise, the development of planning theory can be followed along four lines. What political-economic structures shape planning, what political and ideological systems of influence frame decision-making on planning issues, what substantive and procedural principles are encoded in planning laws and institutions and what practical behaviors planners engage in to frame problems, set goals and interact with others: these are key questions that planning theorists ask to assess how power is exercised in planning. Raphaël Fischler
Bibliography Forester, J. (1988). Planning in the face of Power. University of California Press. Lukes, S. (1974). Power: A radical view. Macmillan. Yiftachel, O. (1998). Planning and social control: Exploring the dark side. Journal of Planning Literature, 12(4), 395–406. See also: participation, institutions, narrative, inclusion/exclusion, modernism, ideology, strategy, informality, power in planning literature, rhetoric, storytelling, strategic navigation, systems thinking
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100. Power in planning literature Power is a topic that has gained a fair amount of traction in planning literature, with a focus on the political character of planning practices, on conflicting interests and perspectives and on the possibilities and limits for planners to make a difference. Power is conceptualized and analyzed in many different ways.
Early appearance Early on, in the 70s, Friedmann (1973) discussed in detail power relations and their importance for local and regional economic development, as well as the restrictions they impose on planning as a practice of policy integration. Earlier already, studies focusing on specific planning practices had already shown that power, its use and abuse, plays an important role in the delineation of preferable scenarios for future development and their implementation. It was also acknowledged that planners themselves, supposedly representing the people in a quest for the common good, availed themselves of various power tactics and strategies that would appear questionable now. The critiques on planning, for example, focused on the questionable accumulation of power in the hands of planners and networks around them that escape democratic control. Also, the steering power of planning was questioned. In the 60s and 70s, a neo-Marxist wave of critique could be noticed in the literature of mostly neighboring disciplines, a perspective that often analyzed the planning enterprise as de facto reproducing the socioeconomic status quo. In the 70s, policy analysts in the line of Wildavsky added to the choir of planning skeptics, doubting not only the realism of many planning expectations but also the democratic quality of both policy formation and implementation. One could observe a parallel movement more clearly located within the planning discipline, where planners were seen as the ones that had to deal with power (negatively defined) in their quest to further the common good (most famously Forester, 1989). Sometimes inspired by more localized ideas of democracy and grassroots movements of various emancipatory inspirations, sometimes
not, many planners were aware early on that even democratically agreed upon plans were not ‘left alone’ in detailing and implementation by the powers that be. They were well aware that the plan-making process itself could be captured by various interest groups, and that plans could be routinely ignored, reinterpreted, selectively enforced, misrepresented after adoption. In other words, from the early days, planners in the US and in Europe were forced to think about power on a daily basis and had to devise strategies to maneuver in the minefields of a practice that was always politicized. Many planners were aware that their power could not be taken for granted. They were aware that it was not limitless, and that their work required a continuous reflection on the balance of power.
Intro Foucault The work of Michel Foucault, who explicitly focused on power relations in government and society and on the functions of expertise in governance, figured most prominently in the thinking of the power theorists in planning since the 90s (Hillier, 2002; Flyvbjerg, 1998; Richardson, 1996). Foucault’s conceptualization of power differs from more traditional approaches because of the underlying idea of a social, discursive, construction of reality. The Foucauldian angle differs from approaches that attribute power to specific actors and understand it as something that is or can be possessed. Rather it stresses the relational nature of power, the entanglement with knowledge (in configurations of power/ knowledge or for Foucault: discourse) and it stresses that power should not be seen a priori in a negative light, as for Foucault it’s a productive force that shapes social structures, discourses, knowledge, subjects and so on. Planning in the Foucault-inspired perspective is inherently political, implying that planning could no longer present itself as a value-neutral and/or scientific endeavor. Planning operates in an evolving governance context, with contested and shifting forms of state power, shifting expectations about how planning should be organized and what it can contribute. All these aspects are influenced by power dynamics within a society and itself constitutive of the power of planning. When Michel Foucault’s work seeped into planning academia, it stirred an intensive academic debate about the role and understanding
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power in planning literature 303 of power in planning. A combination of factors helps to understand both the irritation and the fascination the ‘power theorists’ of the 90s evoked (Van Assche et al., 2014). First of all, this understanding of power conflicted with the dominant perspective in communicative planning theories, often inspired by Habermas, that portrayed power as something negative, as oppressive. Good planning was the search for power-free deliberations.
Power and politics Also, outside that communicative paradigm, the topic of power had been lingering in the shadows of the discipline. The spur of neoMarxist interest in the 60s and 70s mostly took place in geography, sociology, political science and philosophy. Many planners had gone back easily to a silent identification with the powers that be. Simultaneously, both in politics and in academia, many voices questioned both the steering power and the legitimacy of steering ambitions of the state. Both neo-liberal critiques and leftist critiques seemed to argue for a smaller state, and for a shift from government to governance. This had to be fertile ground for a renewed reflection on the position of planning. Finally, the new wave of power theorists usually placed themselves firmly in a post-structuralist tradition, starting from the idea of a social, discursive, construction of reality. Science lost its privileged access to truth and science-based planning had to be scrutinized carefully in its claims. This was felt more as shocking in planning than in most other disciplines, again because of usually tacit assumptions regarding the possibility of direct access to truth, either through (rational) science or (rational)
discussions, an access seen as a precondition for intervention. Within the literature, it has now become commonplace that planning is inherently political and ought not to present itself as a value-neutral and/or scientific endeavor, that it operates in a field of contested and shifting forms and expectations of state power and within that, planning power, and on a mix of formal and informal institutions to exert influence. Martijn Duineveld, Raoul Beunen and Kristof Van Assche, Editors
References Flyvbjerg, B. (1998). Rationality and power. University of Chicago Press. Forester, J. (1989). Planning in the face of Power. University of California Press. Friedmann, J. (1973). The spatial organization of power in the development of urban systems. Development and Change, 4(3), 12–50. Hillier, J. (2002). Shadows of power. Sage. Richardson, T. (1996). Foucauldian discourse: Power and truth in urban and regional policy making. European Planning Studies, 4(3), 279–292. Van Assche, K., Duineveld, M., & Beunen, R. (2014). Power and contingency in planning. Environment and Planning. Part A, 46(10), 2385–2400. See also: agonism, communicative planning, conflict and shock, dispositif, power and planning, rationality and planning, power/knowledge, expertise and local knowledge, critical planning, ideology, object formation, strata, milieu
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101. Power/knowledge Introduction Power/knowledge is one of the key concepts that stem from the extensive body of work produced by Michael Foucault (Foucault, 1980). It is a concept that stresses the entanglement of power and knowledge as a joint configuration. Foucault argues that power is inextricably connected with the structures through which people understand, create and organize the world as they know it. These understandings, often conceptualized as discourses, shape people’s understanding of the world, their view on problems, challenges and solutions, the identity of actors, communities and places, and the meaning of all kinds of plans and policies. These understandings and all the different forms of knowledge influence decision-making procedures, are reflected in formal and informal institutions, and hence shape planning and design policies and practices (Van Assche et al., 2014). Hence Foucault’s inversion of the famous dictum ‘knowledge is power’ and hence his insistence on the unity-in-difference of power/ knowledge. Power/knowledge for Foucault is at the most elementary level the essence of discourse, while other forms of exercising power are necessarily rooted in discourse.
Discourse Following Foucault, the interplay between power and knowledge is reflected in discourses, in structures of interconnected concepts which make parts and aspects of reality accessible, while hiding or veiling others. A discourse always leans on a particular set of concepts. A discourse highlights certain relations between those concepts and ignores others. What people recognize as useful in their environment, the stories about places, land use activities and the organization of planning and design policies and practices are all driven by discourse (Feindt & Oels, 2005). Each discourse constructs an image of an external environment that is by definition a simplification of that environment. This image implies a particular selection and a reduction of the complexity of the environment. Discourses can start reasoning from small worlds or large worlds, from worlds where specific social or material elements
are related to a wider environment, or from larger worlds that are reduced to specific situations, short-term issues or particular groups or places. Images of a larger world, present in discourses, can have consequences for the recognition and valuation of a particular place or of an array of different elements within that place. Each actor then, always drawing on several discourses, will likely recognize different things as relevant elements, value them differently, and entertain further reasoning and deliberation in the context of partial images of socio-ecological systems. Planning is a context in which actors are confronted with other worldviews. In such context, action is required, something has to be planned, designed, decided on, implemented or acted upon. The discussions and decisions will be shaped and constrained by the presence of other actors, the associated discourses, by the design of the decisionsituation, and the tools one has to work with, such as policies, plans, laws and informal institutions.
Power/knowledge as a driver of change The interplay between knowledge and action plays an important role in planning and design practices, and more particularly, in changes within these practices (Flyvbjerg, 1998; Sharp & Richardson, 2001). It brings attention to the ways in which forms of understanding and forms of organizing are co-evolving, how certain forms of knowledge get institutionalized, marginalize and replace other forms of knowledge, and consequently drive the further evolution of planning and governance (Van Assche et al., 2017). Discourses and the discursive repertoires of the actors will shift over time. Such shifts stem from the emergence of new discourses, alternative stories or novel concepts. The shifts can be described as aspects of the productivity of planning and governance. The discursive environment can change because new actors enter the planning arena or because existing ones start seeing things in a different way. Over time discursive shifts will influence actors and institutional structures. ‘Knowledge’ in this dynamic context is all that is discursively constructed and plays a role in planning and governance. This conceptualization stretches beyond what is explicitly recognized as knowledge.
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power/knowledge 305 It includes all of the images, concepts, stories and all understandings of the socialecological environment that are constructed and communicated in planning. Such broad conceptualization and understanding of knowledge is important since everything that is discursively constructed can play a role in planning, regardless of the fact if it is explicitly labelled knowledge or expertise, or not. Knowledge in the Foucaultian understanding is thus broader than expertise. Expertise is always controversially delineated in power relations, and expertise is not entirely tied to the expert roles in planning. Even the recognized expert clearly present at the decisionmaking table, brings more to that table than what is formally playing a role as expert knowledge. Raoul Beunen, Martijn Duineveld and Kristof Van Assche, Editors
References Feindt, P. H., & Oels, A. (2005). Does discourse matter? Discourse analysis in environmental policy making. Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning, 7(3), 161–173.
Flyvbjerg, B. (1998). Rationality and power: Democracy in practice. University of Chicago press. Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings, 1972–1977. Pantheon Books. Sharp, L., & Richardson, T. (2001). Reflections on Foucauldian discourse analysis in planning and environmental policy research. Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning, 3(3), 193–209. Van Assche, K., Beunen, R., Duineveld, M., & Gruezmacher, M. (2017). Power/knowledge and natural resource management: Foucaultian foundations in the analysis of adaptive governance. Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning, 19(3), 308–322. Van Assche, K., Duineveld, M., & Beunen, R. (2014). Power and contingency in planning. Environment and Planning. Part A, 46(10), 2385–2400. See also: biopolitics, dispositif, object formation, storytelling, systems perspectives, conflict and shock, inclusion/exclusion, expertise and local knowledge, assemblage, nomocracy, institutions, property
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102. Property Introduction: private and common property relations Urban and rural planners rarely have the power to assign property rights to individual proprietors or the members of use communities. Also, planners hardly define property, but have to work with whatever types of property relations exist in their jurisdiction. What is the meaning of property? With respect to urban and rural planning, property is a network of relations controlling the allocation and distribution of land uses and other spatial goods (such as sunlight, ambient air, groundwater). The proprietors (the owners of private property) or the members of a use community (the users of common property) have a right or privilege to use land and other spatial goods. Everybody else is excluded from using the spatial goods in question (Davy, 2016; Needham et al., 2019). In the legal sphere, property refers to individual rights created by human rights law, constitutional law, private law and regulatory instruments. The meaning of property depends heavily on the details. Only on an abstract level, the ‘fee simple absolute’ under English common law or Eigentum under codified German private law can be generalized as ‘property.’ Moreover, property is discussed by many non-legal disciplines. For political economists, property is an accumulation of assets and wealth, often considered the foundation of capitalism (Marx; de Soto, 2000). For political philosophers or critical geographers, property is a power relation that establishes control over unevenly distributed resources. A sociologist or anthropologist considers property as a social relation that ascertains inclusion and exclusion. In economics and law, property is a mechanism for efficient resource management. In light of inhomogeneous usage, property theory can define its subject only tentatively and with caution. Private property relations establish the restricted use of undeveloped or developed land. Only proprietors may use their parcels of land and—under the protection of the law—receive the income stream produced from the land, may take out a mortgage, may sell or bequeath the land (Clarke & Kohler, 2005; Singer et al., 2021). Typical examples of
land uses restricted to use by their proprietors are homesteads, single-family houses, condominium apartments, offices, shops or factories. The proprietors of apartment buildings or commercial space (as landlords) can rent their private properties to third parties (as tenants) for use as homes or business premises. In some legal systems, resources such as the space below and above the property’s surface, groundwater, shorelines or lakes are subject to private property. Common property relations establish the shared use of undeveloped or developed land and other spatial goods. The members of the use community (e.g., members of a community garden association, the general public) jointly use the common property according to specific use rules. The design of the use rules must account for particular characteristics of the common property as well as of the regular users (Ostrom, 1990). An important purpose of the use rules is to avoid the ‘tragedy of the commons’ (Hardin) or use congestion. Examples of common property in an urban context are streets, roads and squares, public parks, urban trees, public pools, water and sanitation, free Wi-Fi, the skyline and environmental resources (e.g., sunlight, ambient air). In some places, spatial goods that are usually considered private property are managed under shared use rules (e.g., community farms like the ejido in Mexico or the moshav in Israel; community gardens in Western cities). In the Global South, restricted and shared uses of land are often subject to informal relations (occasionally bordering on illegality). Proprietors may use a plot of land, but lacking a formal title, they cannot put up their property as security for a loan from the bank (de Soto, 2000). The residents of informal housing ‘own’ spaces as a result of a complex everyday social contract of informality. It is controversial whether formalizing property relations benefits or harms informal dwellers. Regulatory planning finds it difficult to deal with informality.
Property relations and urban design Libertarian and neoliberal property scholars only consider private property as property (e.g., Hayek, Coase). In their view, private property rights are manifestations of individual liberty in the sphere of wealth. On the other side of the discussion are architects and
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property 307 sociologists, who only wish to discuss public spaces as a particularly significant urban element. Both limitations are not helpful, however, in explaining how private and common property relations jointly establish the institutional foundation of urban design. In fact, successful urban design combines restricted and shared uses of land and other spatial goods and mixes private and common property relations (Davy, 2016). Plots of private land are useful only if they are connected to a network of streets that allow the proprietors access to the rest of the city. But a network of streets would look grotesque unless there also exist residences and office buildings which the network serves. Although property often is believed mainly to define what is yours and what is mine, property is even more important as a tool to enable land uses to fulfill their purposes. Plural property relations are not merely about yours and mine, but about social function (L. Duguit). A street or a sewage system cannot be used under the same rules as a single-family house or a supermarket. The rules for private and common property relations—the definition of their social function—are often widely distributed over statutory law, municipal bylaws, common law, codified private law, terms of service and contracts. In-depth knowledge of the property framework allows planners to coordinate a variety of uses of land and other spatial goods. In many jurisdictions, planners are limited to the coordination of land uses. Land uses are what land users do, not necessarily what planners want. Planners as a rule only have the power to inform and inspire land users. Information and inspiration are valuable, but weak instruments to avoid conflicts over restricted and shared uses of land and other spatial goods. One exception to this limitation is the designation of permitted land uses in regulatory planning systems that give planners the power of zoning or binding land use planning. By designating open space or farmland as private building land or by allowing a more intense use, the planner bestows enhanced use rights on the proprietor. In mature land markets, assigning higher use classes results in an increase of the exchange value of the property. In some jurisdictions, municipalities may capture such surplus value as planning gain. The modification of property rights through planning also works in the other
direction. If a planner designates urban land as a public park or for affordable housing, the exchange value of the property decreases. In some jurisdictions, proprietors have to be compensated for the damage they suffer from planning (Davy, 2016; Needham et al., 2019). The use value of land depends on public services and investments. If a restricted or shared land use is approved by a plan, the users may benefit from conforming with the approved use. They can expect public services, investments, and subsidies as rewards. In such cases, the plan directs the ‘golden rein’ of public spending.
Planning and property In many countries, urban and rural planners are ‘planning on stolen land’ (Roy, 2021). Ironically, planning is often perceived as an encroachment on private property (but rarely does this refer to traditional and indigenous owners from which the land was stolen by colonizers and settlers). Writing for the US Supreme Court, Justice Holmes introduced the concept of the regulatory taking of property by saying: ‘The general rule at least is, that while property may be regulated to a certain extent, if regulation goes too far it will be recognized as a taking’ (Pennsylvania Coal v. Mahon, 260 U.S. 393 [1922] [415]). Planning is often suspected of regulatory taking. The European Court of Human Rights, in its first ruling on urban planning, also considered planning as possible infringement upon private property. The court blamed a development freeze in Stockholm for presenting ‘a situation which upset the fair balance which should be struck between the protection of the right of property and the requirements of the general interest’ (Sporrong and Lönnroth v. Sweden, 23. 9. 1982, 7151/75 and 7152/75, para. 73). Although proprietors of private land may feel that the use of their properties is limited through planning, the relationship between planning and property is more complex than curbing the liberty of private landowners. One purpose of land use plans is the coordination of the use of adjacent properties. In many planning systems, planners—often only unwittingly—follow Bentham’s happiness calculus which demands from governments to pursue ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number.’ It stands to reason that owners, who do not belong to the ‘greatest number,’ benjamin david davy
308 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design feel disadvantaged. Frequently, however, regulatory planning curbs not innocuous, but harmful uses of private land. The emission of toxic fumes from a commercial facility or the causation of hazards from exaggerated uses of private land are nuisances that private landowners have no right to cause in the first place. Planners, who prevent nuisances, add to the enforcement of common or codified private law (Singer et al., 2021). Another purpose of land use planning is the supply of land for shared uses. By designating land as reserved for public streets, public parks, sports facilities, recreational spaces or infrastructure, planners facilitate the production of common property. Planners also need to account for space for rivers, urban wildlife and trees, and the protection of the local climate. Surely, planners themselves do not build roads, maintain public gardens or operate infrastructure. But no common property can exist unless sufficient space is preserved or provided. Famous city plans—London (Wren), Washington, DC (L’Enfant), Berlin (Hobrecht), Paris (Haussmann), Brasilia (Niemeyer), Canberra (Griffin)—all started with the reservation of land for shared uses, namely the network of public streets and land for other public uses. Also important for the relationship between planning and property are the decisions and actions of proprietors and the members of use communities. A land use plan may designate front-yard gardens (the strip of land between the building line and the street). But only if the owners use their front yards as space for vegetation, the sum of front yards produces an ecological surplus (for insects, heat control and rainwater management) and a pleasant view (for everybody else). If the proprietors find gardening tiresome and put rock lawns in their front yards, the land in front of single-family houses remains barren. The same is true for common property and the members of a use community. A land use plan may demand garage boxes be put on private land. Yet, if the proprietors prefer to use their garage as storage space and park their cars on
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the street, they are congesting the available parking space.
Property reform As a result of enclosing the commons—ranging from the battle between Charles I and Oliver Cromwell to the spread of gated communities—private property is considered the dominant institution to allocate and distribute the uses of land and other spatial goods. The climate crisis, COVID-19 pandemic and depletion of energy sources put into question the usefulness of private property relations. No region or city can thrive without shared uses based on common property (Ostrom, 1990). Many countries could do more to employ commons more often in urban and regional design. The New Property (Singer et al., 2021) or polyrational property (Davy, 2016) recognize the need for a reform of property relations that strengthen inter-temporal and ecological responsibilities. Benjamin David Davy
References Clarke, A., & Kohler, P. (2005). Property law. Cambridge University Press. Davy, B. (2016). Land policy. Routledge. de Soto, H. (2000). The mystery of capital. Basic Books. Needham, B., Buitelaar, E., & Hartmann, T. (2019). Planning, law and economics (2nd ed.). Routledge. Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the commons. Cambridge University Press. Roy, A. (2021). Planning on stolen land. Planning Theory and Practice, 22(1), 116–121. Singer, J. W., Berger, B. R., Davidson, N. M., & Penalver, E. (2021). Property law (8th ed.). Aspen. See also: property rights, power in planning, power/knowledge, nomocracy, institutions, commons, ideology, inclusion/exclusion, social justice, rules, informality, informal settlements, public interest
103. Property rights and planning General Property rights are sharply contested in the literature as well as in the political arena. Fundamental disagreements persist among legal scholars and philosophers as to the nature, origin and scope of property rights. In context, property rights may be usefully understood as the power of private owners or occupiers of land to resist or claim compensation for takings by the state or for public measures that curtail the use and enjoyment of land. Even before the advent of modern planning, no legal system has conferred on property owners’ absolute and unfettered power to use their land as they please. Both the common law and civil law restrict private uses and activities that are deemed injurious to the interests of neighbouring landowners or the public, for example. Nevertheless, property, and home ownership especially, continues to create powerful expectations and sentiments regarding exclusivity, use and development, and amenity and economic value. Planning decisions and environmental regulations that upset such private expectations are often met with resentment. In some cases, property owners mount legal challenges claiming that their ‘property rights’ have been infringed.
Constitutional and legal protection of property rights Modern legal systems differ in the way they define and protect property rights. While the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides in Article 17 that ‘No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property’, the constitutional status of property and property rights varies from country to country. The United States Constitution, for example, provides that ‘no person shall be deprived of . . . property without due process of law, nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation’, whereas the Constitution of Brazil ensures all residents of the ‘inviolability’ of the right to property so long as ‘property shall observe its social function’. The Constitution of Canada does not explicitly protect the right to property. Within the constitutional framework of each
jurisdiction, the power of the state over private property is governed by statutory law, including any expropriation and regulatory authority vested in various planning agencies, the processes by which rights in private land can be abridged, and any rights to appeal or to compensation. In addition to the different constitutional and legislative arrangements, the courts in each jurisdiction may play different roles in interpreting the constitutional and legislative provisions and in shaping and protecting property rights. Comparative research on planning law and property rights is challenging due to the detailed and dynamic nature of the area and the extent of divergence across jurisdictions and legal systems. Some of the most important works remain Gregory Alexander’s study (2006) of the debate over constitutionalizing property rights in the US, Canada, South Africa and Germany; and Rachelle Alterman’s comparative analysis (2010) of the right to compensation for land use regulations in 13 participating countries. Kim et al. (2017) analysed the law and economics of expropriation law in the US, Germany, EU, Korea and Taiwan. One scholarly group, the International Academic Association on Planning Law and Property Rights (PLPR), promotes research in this area.
Land use planning and property rights Legal disputes over property rights between owners and planning authorities involve one or both of the following questions. First, is the impugned action or decision of the planning authority a valid exercise of regulatory power? Second, is the owner entitled to financial or other compensation in consequence of the impugned action? The resolution of each of these questions depends on the characterization of the action and the applicable law. The most drastic interference with property rights is expropriation: the forcible acquisition of title to private land by the state. Expropriation powers (also known as eminent domain or compulsory purchase) are found in every legal system. Such powers are, generally speaking, conferred on specific agencies for enumerated public purposes and are subject to procedural requirements, appeal rights, and compensation. These constraints vary significantly depending on the country. For example, in the US, but not in Canada, the
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310 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design requirements of just compensation and public purpose are constitutional. Just as drastic from the owner’s perspective are regulations that prohibit virtually all private uses – or at least all economic uses – of the land but that do not result in formal acquisition by the state. In many legal systems, such regulations are regarded as compensable taking of property. In some countries, no compensation is available for regulations that prohibit development and all but existing uses, or for regulations that allow the owner some private, albeit non-economic, uses. Partial or less stringent restrictions on use and development are ordinarily not compensable, although Alterman’s 2010 survey found the greatest variation among countries in this regard. Failure to designate land for more valuable uses, and even the removal of some existing development rights (‘down-zoning’) does not entitle the affected landowner to compensation in most cases.
Discussion As can be seen, property rights are neither absolute nor immutable. Nevertheless, the protection of private property has been identified as one of the ideologies of planning law, rooted in the political philosophy of John Locke (McAuslan, 1980). Private party not only ensures a reward for useful labour, but also demarcates a protected space in which the owner’s agenda is privileged and advances individual autonomy, liberty and dignity. But disputes over property rights are not merely quarrels between individual owners and planning authorities, but often implicate important broader policy questions of fairness and allocative efficiency. Constitutional and legal constraints on the state’s power over private property (particularly the requirement of a valid purpose) can curtail abuses of power and predation of political minorities, or the favouring of powerful special interests. The requirement of compensation ensures that the burden of public projects is fairly spread, or the US Supreme Court famously put it in Armstrong v. US (1960) is ‘designed to bar Government from forcing some people alone to bear public burdens which, in all fairness and justice, should be borne by the public as
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a whole’. Moreover, the requirement of compensation forces public agencies to confront the true cost of their actions, thereby, increasing the likelihood that public measures create a net social benefit. Finally, the prospects of compensation can serve to diffuse political (or not-in-my-back-yard) opposition to planning initiatives. This is particularly important in markets where homes constitute the single most important household asset. Eran S. Kaplinsky
Bibliography Alexander, G. S. (2006). The global debate over constitutional property: Lessons for American takings jurisprudence. University of Chicago Press. Alterman, R. (2010). Takings international: A comparative perspective on land use regulations and compensation rights. American Bar Association. Dagan, H. (2018). Eminent domain and regulatory takings: Towards a unified theory. In B. Hoops (Ed.), Rethinking expropriation law III: Compensation for expropriation (Vol. 9, p. 21). (Vastgoed, omgeving & recht). Eleven International Publishing. Fischel, W. A. (2015). Zoning rules!: The economics of land use regulation. Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. Katz, L. (2008). Exclusion and exclusivity in property law. The University of Toronto Law Journal, 58(3), 275–315. Kim, I., Lee, H., & Somin, I. (2017). Eminent domain: A comparative perspective. Cambridge University Press. McAuslan, P. (1980). The ideologies of planning law (1st ed.). Pergamon Press. Michelman, F. I. (1967). Property, utility, and fairness: Comments on the ethical foundations of “just compensation” law. Harvard Law Review, 80(6), 1165–1258. Waldron, J. (1988). The right to private property. Clarendon Press. See also: property, institutions, policy integration, rules, nomocracy, zoning, power, commons, advocacy planning, critical planning, ideology, self-organization, public debate
104. Public debate, discussion and dialogue Key definition Public debate concerns communication and deliberation by the public and with the public. It is a method of public engagement and multi-stakeholder consultation often used by governments to discuss proposals for large public works. Public debate takes place in the public sphere and consists of both formal and informal deliberations (Kim & Kim, 2008). Such deliberations take form in conversations. A dialogue is a special form of conversation, defined by quantum physicist and dialogue practitioner David Bohm as ‘a stream of meaning flowing among, through and between us’ (Bohm, 1990, p. 1). The main characteristic of a dialogue compared to a discussion, is that nobody is trying to convince others or to strive for individual win. A dialogue invites collective thinking and inquiry, summarised by Isaacs (1999) as ‘the art of thinking together’.
Brief history of public debate, discussion and dialogue in urban and regional planning The development of urban and regional policies involves aligning different, often conflicting, interests. Different functions have to be coordinated (e.g., living, working, transport, recreation) while taking into account various histories and contexts: the moment national policy is operationalised at the regional level, new actors come into the picture with partly different problem perceptions, interests and steering possibilities. Policies ultimately emerge in complex interaction processes between a large number of actors who are mutually dependent. Over the past decades, this has led to renewed notions of governance that take the complexity of society into account, also referred to as the shift from government to governance. To make dependencies visible and shape them to everyone’s satisfaction, deliberation and communication are required. The terms public debate, discussion and dialogue acquire meaning here. Kim and Kim (2008) distinguish between instrumental
deliberation, a procedural tool, through which people formally negotiate and make decisions, and dialogic deliberation – or dialogue: everyday conversations through which people construct their identities, achieve mutual understanding, produce public reason, form considered opinions and develop rules and resources for deliberative democracy. These two forms of deliberation intermingle and blend. For instance, at a formal meeting on urban planning organised by the government, people may develop personal relationships while everyday conversations between friends may result in arguments that come into play in formal instrumental deliberations. What both approaches have in common is that much depends on the quality of the conversations through which deliberations take form.
The relevance of conversations In conversations, people create the future; social structures, formal and informal ground rules, thinking and behaviour around desired changes are developed, reproduced, negotiated and contested. It is therefore important to have a good understanding of what happens in conversations, why conversations happen the way they do, how conversations are interrelated, bring about structural order and reordering and why many conversations fail in reaching the ends of the participants. Research into real-life conversations about environment-related issues, ranging from formal deliberation about spatial interventions in urban neighbourhoods to the remodelling of river courses in rural areas indeed shows that these conversations by no means always result in what those involved had wanted or expected (Aarts, 2018). Particularly when interlocutors take a different view, conversations quickly end in deadlock, in increased distance between the interlocutors and in an intensification of disagreement. The same happens in informal public debates on, e.g., social media. The interlocutors are mainly focused on either building a conclusive logic for their own point of view or overthrowing the logic of the opponent. The ultimate aim is to convince the other of one’s own right. It should be realised that conversations do not take place in isolation. Conversations are related to each other through what we call discursive recirculation, the circulation of arguments through chains of interactions between people who share beliefs. Patterns emerge in this way in the
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312 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design form of mutually exclusive reasoning around fault lines that are further sharpened with each conversation. This process of increasing polarisation is reinforced by linking social groups to what individuals put forward in discussion, which is then spoken about in stigmatising terms: governments cannot be trusted, and citizens are only after their own gain. People then have other individuals influenced by this reasoning in a subsequent conversation. After all, when forming an opinion, people constantly take in information from other sources including newspapers, television, social media, the internet and of course the conversations they have with each other. Research also shows that people mainly have conversations with people with whom they agree, people who select the same information from the endless stream offered to them on a daily basis. We recognise here the strong tendency towards self-referentiality (Luhmann, 1990): the inclination to select and construct narratives that make the outside world comprehensible, reduce perceived threat and confirm our identities, based on our experiences, expectations and ambitions. All in all, the conversations themselves often contribute significantly to the intensification of conflict. The key, therefore, is to improve the quality of the conversations we have with each other, contributing to the development of effective and socially acceptable policies. Conversations should then be organised according to the guidelines for a true dialogue.
Linking dialogue to negotiation and collaboration In a true dialogue, differences are the starting point (Mouffe, 2000). Participants acknowledge differences and pose questions until the other person feels listened to and understood. In a dialogue, we do not need to look for consensus and do not apply persuasion strategies to convince each other. Instead, the essence is to explore differences: what norms, assumptions and fears underlie a particular point of
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view? After all, dialogue is about developing constructive relationships as a basis for integrative negotiations characterised by openness about interests and backgrounds, concern for the other and a joint agreement on what information is important to achieve problem resolution. It is not about sharing the cake, as is the case in distributive negotiations: what one gets more of, the other gets less. In an integrative negotiation, those involved decide together what cake should be baked, what the key ingredients are, how the baking process will be set up and who does what. In this way, dialogue lays the foundation for cooperation with the recognition and appreciation of differences. It is clear that it is not easy to have a dialogical conversation with people who think differently. However, as dialogical conversations are prerequisites for developing policies and solving social problems, it is worth investing in research and innovation to improve their quality. Noelle Aarts
References Aarts, N. (2018). Dynamics and dependences in socio-ecological interactions [Dynamiek en dependentie in socio-ecologische interacties]. Nijmegen, Radboud University, inaugural lecture. Bohm, D. (1990). On dialogue. Routledge. Isaacs, W. (1999). Dialogue and the art of thinking together. Doubleday. Kim, J., & Kim, E. J. (2008). Theorizing dialogic deliberation: Everyday political talk as communicative action and dialogue. Communication Theory, 18(1), 51–70. Luhmann, N. (1990). Essays on self-reference. Colombia University Press. Mouffe, C. (2000). The democratic paradox. Verso Books. See also: public interest, ideology, participation, participatory planning and design, narrative, rhetoric, nomocracy, power in planning, power/knowledge, foresight, social justice, commons, environmental justice, milieu
105. Public interest Introduction The notion of the public interest has traditionally been considered the principal criterion with which to justify planning. The situation has changed in recent decades (Moroni, 2004). The idea of the public interest has come under attack, and it is often dismissed as devoid of content. Today, it is commonplace to say that the public interest does not exist. However, many alleged criticisms against the public interest are critical, not of the concept of the public interest itself, but of particular conceptions of public interest. The distinction between a ‘concept’ and its many ‘conceptions’, was drawn by Rawls (1971). A general concept (e.g., the general concept of the public interest) refers to the unitary idea represented by it, while specific conceptions (in our case, of the public interest) are different ways in which the general concept can be specified. Therefore, the concept poses and names the problem, while the conceptions propose and specify a solution (Korsgaard, 1996).
Key perspectives There are two perspectives critical of certain conceptions of the public interest, but not of the general concept of the public interest in itself: communicative approaches and liberal approaches. Communicative approaches (e.g., communicative/collaborative planning approaches) stress that the idea of the public interest does not exist as an a priori standard. From this perspective, those who claim that it is possible to define the public interest in abstract terms and in advance ignore the interactive and dialogical process through which meaningful criteria are actively constructed. In this view, the idea of the public interest is therefore not dismissed but reformulated. Adequate planning is here joint sense-making in practical collective conversation (Forester, 1989). Communicative approaches focus on removing barriers of various types (structural, organisational and political) which may distort communication. While the public interest cannot be determined a priori, it can emerge a posteriori in a process of undistorted collective dialogue. As Healey (1997, pp. 296–297)
observes: ‘The “public interest” has to reflect the diversity of our interests and be established discursively’. For liberal thinkers (from libertarianliberals like Nozick, 1974 to egalitarianliberals like Rawls, 1971), the main idea is that the public interest does not exist as an extra-individual or supra-individual value because one must dismiss any value of this kind. The presupposition, in this case, is that individuals constitute the only appropriate moral entity that public decisions have to take into account. Individuals are the only source of legitimate moral claims. Therefore, there are no legitimate distinct moral claims deriving from cultures, structures, communities, etc.
Critiques The liberal criticisms of the idea of the public interest or the common good as an extra-individual or supra-individual value are primarily directed against those holistic conceptions that disregard the above-mentioned moral individualism. A first example is provided by the holistic transcendental conceptions of the public interest focused on some overall idea such as ‘the spirit of progress’, ‘the spirit of history’, ‘the essence of the state’. (These transcendental conceptions have had a significant impact on planning: see Taylor, 1994.) A second example is provided by the holistic communitarian conceptions of the public interest, focused on the community as the primary ethical subject – and, consequently, on a shared conception and criterion of the good life. (These communitarian conceptions of the public interest or the common good have also had a considerable impact in the planning field.) Moreover, the liberal argument is an argument against aggregationist conceptions of the public interest. A fundamental example is utilitarianism, according to which those decisions that maximise collective utility are always preferable. (The utilitarian approach to the public interest has strongly influenced planning as well: Taylor, 1994.) Utilitarian thinkers generally start with an apparently individualistic claim: ‘Real individual preferences (desires, interests . . .) are what matter in public choices’. However, their basic principle of collective decision (the maximisation of total utility as a sum of individual utilities, interpreted as the satisfaction of individual
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314 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design preferences) is inconsistent with the initial individualist stance. The utilitarian aggregative criterion of public decision, in fact, neglects the ‘separateness of persons’ in an impersonal global calculus (Rawls, 1971). The point is that the utilitarian aggregative principle takes into account utility measures and not individuals. In short, utilitarianism seems criticisable, not because it is excessively individualistic (as many, also in planning theory, believe), but because it is not individualistic enough. This obviously does not imply that liberalism rejects any idea of the public interest. A liberal idea of the state simply presupposes a particular conception of the public interest. In fact, the actions of a liberal state aim to safeguard certain (individual) rights. To sum up, and despite the predominant narratives, no liberal thinker has ever considered self-interest as an alternative to the public interest (Holmes, 1989). Also in this case, therefore, the concept of the public interest is not dismissed but reformulated in a particular way.
Conclusion In conclusion: regardless of the reformulation of the idea of the public interest that may be deemed more appropriate today, this idea is indispensable in planning theory and practice (Moroni, 2018). It is obviously possible to abandon the term ‘public interest’ if it is disliked; but, in this case, it will simply be necessary to deal with the same problem under some other label: determining justifiable public intervention amid the plurality of preferences, desires and lifestyles of citizens
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is actually fundamental for any political order (Flathman, 1966). Stefano Moroni
References Flathman, R. B. (1966). The public interest. Wiley. Forester, J. (1989). Planning in the face of Power. California University Press. Healey, P. (1997). Collaborative planning. McMillan. Holmes, S. (1989). The permanent structure of antiliberal thought. In N. L. Rosenblum (Ed.), Liberalism and the moral life (pp. 227–253). Harvard University Press. Korsgaard, C. M. (1996). The sources of normativity. Cambridge University Press. Moroni, S. (2004). Towards a reconstruction of the public interest criterion. Planning Theory, 3(2), 151–171. Moroni, S. (2018). Public interest. In M. Gunder, A. Madanipour & V. Watson (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of planning theory (pp. 69–80). Routledge. Nozick, R. (1974). Anarchy, state and utopia. Basic Books. Rawls, J. (1971). A theory of justice. Harvard University Press. Taylor, N. (1994). Environmental issues and the public interest. In H. Thomas (Ed.), Values and planning (pp. 87–115). Avebury. See also: commons, ideology, property, participation, rules, corruption, public debate and dialogue, power in planning, power/ knowledge, inclusion/exclusion, social justice, environmental justice, public–private partnerships, property rights
106. Public–private partnerships Introduction Public–Private Partnerships (PPPs) come in many shapes and sizes, but they also share a number of characteristics (Grimsey & Lewis, 2004). First, PPPs involve two or more participants of which at least one is a public body. Second, the relationship between the participants is enduring and relational (e.g., a continuous flow of transactions alone is not a PPP). Third, the participants all bring some kind of value to the partnership and therefore transfer resources to the PPP. Public partners typically transfer temporary ownership of property (infrastructure) to the PPP and private partners often finance the design, construction and maintenance and/or operational activities in projects. This is for instance the case in Long-Term Infrastructure Contracts (LTICs), which are now the most prominent form of PPP (Hodge & Greve, 2017). One typical LTIC model is the DesignBuild-Finance-Maintain-Operate (DBFMO) contract. In DBFMO, the private partner finances the design and construction activities and—if it meets the performance requirements detailed in the PPP contract—is paid for the maintenance and/or operation of the infrastructure over an extended period of time (e.g., 20–30 years), either by collecting tolls from the users (i.e., usage-based payments) or by receiving payments for infrastructure availability and maintenance and/or operation (i.e., availability payments). The idea is that this model incentivizes the private partner to deliver high-quality infrastructure because that will increase its revenues: better infrastructure means more usage and more availability, hence increased payments. At the same time, because the private partner finances the design and construction activities, the public agency’s budget and borrowing constraints are reduced. A fourth general characteristic of PPPs is the sharing of risks (Grimsey & Lewis, 2004). This is arranged differently in different PPP forms. In many LTIC models, certain risks are allocated to the private partner and other risks to the public partner. In other forms of PPP, such as joint ventures, risks are shared (e.g., the public and private partners jointly
financing certain activities) (Grimsey & Lewis, 2004). Fifth, PPPs are characterized by continuity: a contract between the partners provides a framework for the PPP and ‘sets out the “rules of the game” and provides the partners with some certainty’ (Grimsey & Lewis, 2004, p. 13). These five characteristics very broadly describe PPPs, but many different forms exist that all have their particular features. PPP has become a container concept and there are different levels at which the phenomenon is discussed (Hodge & Greve, 2017). One level is as projects or as a specific organizational form or infrastructure delivery arrangement (see e.g., Verweij et al., 2022), as done above. In different disciplines, policy sectors and countries, different definitions are used, that are also sometimes conflicting. For instance, Design and Construct (D&C) contracts are regarded as a type of PPP by some but— because they do not involve private financing or the bundling of design and construction with maintenance and/or operation—not by others (Verweij et al., 2022). Other levels at which PPPs are discussed are as policy instruments, governance tools or styles or as part of a national context or culture (Hodge & Greve, 2017).
Brief history PPP is not a new phenomenon. It has for instance been traced back to the existence of toll roads in the times of the Roman Empire and the Middle Ages and to the turnpikes in the United States and the United Kingdom of the eighteenth century (Grimsey & Lewis, 2004). It was in the 1990s, with the launch of the Private Finance Initiative in the United Kingdom, that the PPP term as broadly discussed above became commonplace (Hodge et al., 2010). From the 1990s onwards, as systematic bibliometric analyses of the PPP literature have shown (De Castro e Silva Neto et al., 2016; Shi et al., 2020), articles about PPPs started to appear in the academic journals, and the number of yearly PPP publications started to increase quickly from the mid2000s onwards. These bibliometric analyses also show that PPPs are studied in many disciplines and that the PPP literature is multidisciplinary. The two main disciplines in which PPPs are studied are, first, Construction Engineering and Management and, second, Public Administration (De Castro e Silva Neto et al., 2016; Shi et al., 2020).
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316 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design As systematic literature reviews of the Construction Engineering and Management discipline indicate (see Tang et al., 2010; Cui et al., 2018) most PPP research is published in (and cited from) journals such as the Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, International Journal of Project Management, Journal of Management in Engineering and Construction Management and Economics. Key authors by citations are Robert L. K. Tiong, Shou Qing Wang and Xueqing Zhang. In the Public Administration discipline (see Wang et al., 2018), the journals Public Money & Management, Public Performance & Management Review and Public Management Review are dominant. Key authors by citations are Graeme Hodge, Carsten Greve and Erik-Hans Klijn (Wang et al., 2018).
Main themes, countries and policy sectors Research in Construction Engineering and Management has focused on risk allocation and management, the public–private relationships and governance in PPPs, on financing in PPP projects and on critical success factors and best practices (Tang et al., 2010). More recently, performance and procurement and contract management have become focus themes as well (Cui et al., 2018). Risk allocation and management and performance are also key themes in the Public Administration discipline (Wang et al., 2018). PPP cases are mostly studied in the United Kingdom, China, the United States and Australia, with the most productive PPP scholars mostly coming from the same four countries (De Castro e Silva Neto et al., 2016; Shi et al., 2020). A difference between the two disciplines is that Chinese cases and authors are more in the Construction Engineering and Management discipline, whereas cases and authors from the Netherlands also are very visible in the Public Administration discipline (cf. Cui et al., 2018; Wang et al., 2018; Shi et al., 2020). PPP projects are mostly studied in the transportation policy sector, followed by healthcare (De Castro e Silva Neto et al., 2016; Cui et al., 2018).
Performance of PPPs In the Public Administration literature, the key themes in PPP research are risk stefan verweij
allocation and management and performance, and many factors for successful risk management and high performance are studied. For instance, appropriate risk allocation is considered crucial for successful risk management, and important factors for PPP performance are different sorts of management activities (e.g., contract management and process management) and organizational forms and structures (Wang et al., 2018). Public Administration scholars draw from a variety of theories to study PPPs. The dominant theories are transaction cost theory, principal–agent theory and network governance theories (Wang et al., 2018). Transaction cost theory is concerned with ‘the optimal governance structure of transactions’ (Wang et al., 2018, p. 299). Because PPPs often involve significant transactions, both in terms of size and frequency, the effective and efficient organization of the transactions is important to achieve good value-for-money (VfM)—which is a key performance indicator in PPPs (Petersen, 2019). Many PPPs, especially those that take the form of an LTIC, involve principal–agent relationships for three reasons: the private partner in a PPP (the agent) has an information advantage over the public partner (the principal) because of its increased involvement in the design, construction and management of the infrastructure, the ownership of the infrastructure is separated from the right to (temporarily) maintain and/or operate it, and the partners have different and often conflicting interests (Verweij et al., 2022). Principal– agent theory, then, is concerned with how the incentive problems that may arise from this, can be dealt with and how the self-serving behavior of the agent can be regulated (Hodge et al., 2010). Hence, principal–agent theory is a useful lens to study PPPs as well. Network governance theories are a third theoretical mainstream. It is especially concerned with how the public and private sectors collaborate and manage projects and processes, as well as with the effective organizational forms for PPPs. The aforementioned Erik-Hans Klijn is a key author in this theoretical field. Although these are the dominant theories in the Public Administration literature on PPPs, they present just over a third of the theories applied (Wang et al., 2018). The literature on PPPs is in fact characterized by a diverse palette of theories with different theories being dominant in
public–private partnerships 317 different decades (Hodge et al., 2010; Wang et al., 2018).
Performance of PPPs: current debates and critiques This diversity has also contributed to a PPP research field that can be characterized as not only ‘voluminous’ but also as being ‘fragmented’ and consisting of ‘controversial research streams’ or, more positively, a field that is ‘complex and colorful’ (Shi et al., 2020, p. 2146). The PPP literature is multidisciplinary but less so interdisciplinary. This is causing competing logics about PPPs, and that heterogeneity is a central reason why PPP debates continue to be unresolved to date. For example, Graeme Hodge and Carsten Greve have long observed that the evidence for the assumed and expected superior performance of PPPs has remained mixed and contested (Hodge & Greve, 2017), which has been reconfirmed in a metareview of the literature on PPP performance (Petersen, 2019). Recent studies, in response to the observation that much of the PPP literature has been dominated by single case studies (Tang et al., 2010), have attempted to adopt more systematic and comparative approaches to evaluate the performance of PPPs, comparing them to traditional forms of infrastructure procurement against which— not infrequently in an implicit manner—the PPPs are expected to have the superior performance. Verweij et al. (2022), for instance, building on Petersen (2019), collected studies that assessed the performance of PPPs against counterfactuals of traditionally procured public projects focusing on materialized performance. Another topical debate revolves around issues of democracy and legitimacy in PPPs. In his research on the cost performance of infrastructure projects, Bent Flyvbjerg and colleagues suggested that increased private sector involvement may remedy some of the problems characterizing projects overrunning their budgets. At the same time, the increased involvement also implies the risk of sideling politics and diminishing policymakers’ influence on public projects (Verweij et al., 2022). This could call attention to the need to (re) politicize decision-making on PPPs. As a direction for future research, studies into the trade-offs involved in the adoption and governance of PPPs—e.g., the trade-off between
cost performance and democratic legitimacy highlighted here—hold the potential to integrate current PPP research and make it more interdisciplinary. Stefan Verweij
References Cui, C., Liu, Y., Hope, A., & Wang, J. (2018). Review of studies on the public-private partnerships (PPP) for infrastructure projects. International Journal of Project Management, 36(5), 773–794. De Castro e Silva Neto, D., Oliveira Cruz, C., Rodrigues, F., & Silva, P. (2016). Bibliometric analysis of PPP and PFI literature: Overview of 25 years of research. Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 142(10). Grimsey, D., & Lewis, M. K. (2004). Public private partnerships: The worldwide revolution in infrastructure provision and project finance. Edward Elgar. Hodge, G. A., & Greve, C. (2017). On public-private partnership performance: A contemporary review. Public Works Management and Policy, 22(1), 55–78. Hodge, G. A., Greve, C., & Boardman, A. E. (Eds.). (2010). International handbook on public-private partnerships. Edward Elgar. Petersen, O. H. (2019). Evaluating the costs, quality, and value for money of infrastructure public‐private partnerships: A systematic literature review. Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, 90(2), 227–244. Shi, J., Duan, K., Wu, G., Zhang, R., & Feng, X. (2020). Comprehensive metrological and content analysis of the public-private partnerships (PPPs) research field: A new bibliometric journey. Scientometrics, 124(3), 2145–2184. Tang, L., Shen, Q., & Cheng, E. W. L. (2010). A review of studies on public-private partnership projects in the construction industry. International Journal of Project Management, 28(7), 683–694. Verweij, S., Van Meerkerk, I. F., & Casady, C. B. (Eds.). (2022). Assessing the performance advantage of public-private partnerships: A comparative perspective. Edward Elgar. Wang, H., Xiong, W., Wu, G., & Zhu, D. (2018). Public-private partnership in public administration discipline: A literature stefan verweij
318 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design review. Public Management Review, 20(2), 293–316. See also: participation, ideology, power in planning, power/knowledge, modernism,
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public interest, public debate, social justice, smart growth, infrastructure, strategic planning, communicative planning, rationality, commons
107. Qualitative comparative analysis in planning studies Introduction Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA, see Ragin, 1987) is a systematic and formalised comparison across cases that can help urban and regional planners discern between what is unique and what recurring across the cases they study. Many insights into urban and regional planning derive from single, in-depth case descriptions. Rich case details clearly offer much in-depth knowledge about the history of individual case studies, but this knowledge might not be transferrable to other (even similar) cases. Planning research also includes comparisons across multiple cases, but they are often performed in a somewhat unstructured and non-formalised way, hence hampering the identification of limited generalisations across the selected cases.
History and value Planning studies are in a perpetual tension between finding those planning principles that are generic enough to travel from one case to the other, while simultaneously acknowledging the individual and unique characteristics of each case. A crude approach to this dilemma would be either to ignore differences and prioritise generality, or to highlight the unique nature of each case and conclude that nothing can be learned for other similar instances. Both approaches overlook that cases are neither completely unique, nor completely the same across the board. They represent a mix of unique and recurring characteristics; the complex causality characterising and driving any case under observation remains hence unaccounted for. In terms of methodological approaches, a low number of cases (usually indicated as ‘small to medium’ sample size) is insufficient to perform any meaningful statistical analysis, but they are too many to rely on qualitative case descriptions alone. Hence, scholars in spatial planning rarely embark on the comparison of more than a handful of cases. Despite efforts to bridge this dilemma
between uniqueness and generality, the comparison is usually not formalised. This is a problem because the task of the planner is to acknowledge the case-specific details, whilst at the same time also find common patterns that occur across multiple cases. It is precisely when faced with this dilemma between uniqueness and generality that Charles C. Ragin developed a method called Qualitative Comparative Analysis or QCA (Ragin, 1987). Rooted in set-theory and Boolean algebra, it considers cases to consist of properties, characteristics or aspects – called ‘conditions’ in the language of QCA – that may or may not be shared in terms of presence, absence or degrees thereof – across a set of cases. Ragin, therefore, stepped away from conventional notions of causation. Rather than asking ‘what is the additive net effect of an independent variable?’, QCA allows researchers to identify the multiple combinations of conditions (called ‘configurations’) under which a certain outcome may or may not occur. Therefore, the uniqueness of cases can be captured by the different combinations of conditions characterising a certain case (e.g., urban renewal project), which can, however, be shared by other similar cases, hence singling out cross-case patterns.
Forms As mentioned above, the method is primarily suitable for small- to medium-n sample sizes and is designed to work with in-depth, case-based data as generated in qualitative research. This is because, following the logic inherent to set-theory, QCA aims at identifying kinds (or types) of cases by transforming qualitative data into set-membership values. It hence provides a viable approach to work with the type and range of case studies typical to planning studies. However, in empirical research, researchers apply QCA to both small- and intermediate-n, and to large-n datasets. In the simplest form of QCA, crisp-set QCA (csQCA), cases are either fully in or fully out of (a set of) conditions, including the outcome condition to ‘explain’, and their set membership or non-membership is indicated as either 1 or 0. The method has gained much popularity since its inception, especially in political science, management studies and sociology. More recently, it has also been discovered by scholars in planning studies (Verweij & Trell, 2019) Over time, important methodological
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320 elgar encyclopedia in urban and regional planning and design advancements emerged, in particular fuzzyset QCA (Ragin, 2000), multi-value QCA (mvQCA) and various forms of time-based QCA (see below). Multi-value QCA is useful in those instances where different conditions have discrete values (i.e., 0, 1, 2, 3), but otherwise operates in the same way as csQCA. In fuzzyset QCA (fsQCA), set membership values can range between 0 and 1 (e.g., 4-value fuzzyset scale: 0.0, 0.3, 0.6 and 1.0), differentiating the examined cases not only in kind, but also in degree. In empirical research, fsQCA is used the most because the fuzzy set logic allows for a more finely grained differentiation versus the somewhat crude binary distinctions that csQCA forces upon the dataset. However, fsQCA may sometimes suggest a faux precision, while csQCA could generate more clearly interpretable results. All QCA versions have advantages and disadvantages that are described and discussed elsewhere (Mello, 2021; Rihoux & Ragin, 2009; Schneider & Wagemann, 2012). It is up to the researcher to decide which version to deploy given a certain research question and dataset.
Basic steps of qualitative comparative analysis In the following, we guide the reader through the main step to perform QCA. This serves to give a first a taste of how the method would pan out in practice but does not replace the necessary engagement with the method as offered by many handbooks and guides (see e.g., Gerrits & Verweij, 2018; Mello, 2021; Schneider & Wagemann, 2012). Assuming that a research question and theoretical framework is in place, the researcher should first identify the conditions, or factors, that could contribute to the outcome of interest. These may derive from prior research or may be developed from that data in a grounded fashion (Jopke & Gerrits, 2019). Owing to the nature of the method, the number of conditions to be considered is limited. When too many conditions are considered (e.g., more than seven), it becomes increasingly difficult to differentiate cases in a meaningful way. Cases. The selected case studies (e.g., 10