What Is Planning? Definition and Strategy

A profession, such as planning, needs an explicit definition, a satisfactory something to profess. The purposes such a definition must serve are touched upon, but whatever other characteristics the definition has it must be “strategic,” that is, adapted to the internal and external necessities of the planning game. A number of going definitions are examined and summarily rejected, and a new start is attempted. The complexities of what is actually intended by “planning” are given fresh consideration. A “clouded clarity” is aimed at: something clear enough to make certain vital distinctions, but not so clear as to introduce an artificial distinction or corner one in an untenable position. The much neglected side of planning as “Art” rather than technology is sketched as to its nature and pleaded for as to its place. A final cast is made—final to the paper, but we would hope initiatory to an extended conversation—at a definition of the planner as a rational artist or artist of rationality. It is in his spanning of the terms of such an antinomy that his peculiar role is believed to lie.     

Urban Planning and the Delimitation of Diversity: Roma as ‘In Place’ and ‘Out of Place’ in Jungbusch,Mannheim

Planning theory is increasingly concerned with how urban planning is engaged in the management of cultural difference and diversity. But there is a need to consider the conditions by which difference is ‘allowed’ in processes of planning and urban development. This paper explores the conditions under which the Roma is admitted into the image of Jungbusch, Mannheim, as a ‘diverse’ neighbourhood, and thereby into the category of diversity in the local discourse of planning. We argue that cultural differences are allowed in the category of diversity to the degree that they contribute to the economic and normative aims of managed diversity.     

Planning Experience and Planners’ Ethics

Problem, research strategy, and ­findings: Ethical considerations are integral to most aspects of planning, but the bases of planners’ ethical decisions are not well understood. In fact, there has been no follow-up to Elizabeth Howe and Jerome Kaufman’s original 1979 survey of the ethics of American planners in this journal (45(3), 243–255). Our research evaluates the differences in planning roles and planners’ ethical perspectives since then. In their study, Howe and Kaufman use hypothetical scenarios to determine which of three roles planners play: technician, politician, or a hybrid. They also evaluate how the role that planners assume affects their ethical views. Our research uses similar scenarios to evaluate these relationships in contemporary planning practice while simultaneously evaluating the influence of professional experience on the ethical bases of those choices. We confirm many of Howe and Kaufman’s findings, but first we find that today’s planners assume different roles than they did in the mid-1970s, conforming more often to a technical role and less to a political or hybrid role. Second, today’s planners tend to make virtue-based choices when concerned with ideological and legal issues, but revert to rule-based or utilitarian choices when faced with the dissemination and quality of information and segments of the population receiving special advantages. Finally, we find that planners, at all stages in their careers, maintain a mixture of virtue- and rule-based ethical choices while affirming the profession’s core values (as represented in the 2009 AICP Code).

Takeaway for practice: The vast majority of practicing planners in our sample (80%) use the AICP Code of Ethics in response to our hypothetical scenarios. At the same time, self-interested responses were rarely made. These findings reaffirm the code’s value to the profession.     

People,Planning and Adaptability

This article is based on a survey of the New Residential Area in Tangshan.The purposes of the survey were tounderstand the characteristics of the residents' activities,probe into the state of adaptability between people andplanning where conflict lies,and search for the ways to improve planning in residential area.     

Down to Earth: Linking Planning Theory and Practice in the ‘Metropole’ and Beyond

The paper explores the issue of the link between planning theory and practice, and achieving what is sometimes termed ‘situated’ planning theory. It argues that mainstream planning theory (i.e. the various strands of communicative planning theory [CPT]) has come closer to this than most previous theorizing, but that there is still a significant gap between theorizing about, and the reality of, practice in particular contexts. While this issue has been a subject of debate within that part of the world where CPT has its origins (the global North), the relevance of mainstream planning theory to practice in other parts of the world has had less attention. This paper asks how well CPT ‘travels’ across the globe, and what might be required to improve its portability.     

The ‘Infrastructure Turn’ in Australian Metropolitan Spatial Planning

This paper argues that a recent resurgence in Australian spatial planning has been superseded by a resort to infrastructure to address urban problems. The paper uses case studies of the Melbourne and South East Queensland (Brisbane) metropolitan regions to chart the renewal of new spatial planning, after a period of neglect. This paper then shows this spatial planning renewal has given way to a new emphasis on urban infrastructure planning as the primary mode of intervention in these cities. The infrastructure turn raises important questions about the spatial planning and infrastructure of cities within a new era of global strategic challenges.     

‘Unfinished Business’: Neoliberal Planning Reform in Australia

Abstract

This paper reviews the recent and contemporary neoliberal reform agendas that have sought a reduced role for planning in Australia. Our aim is to describe these reform paths and to theorise their broader implications for urban governance in Australia. Our analysis focuses on two initiatives: first, the broad reform framework embodied in National Competition Policy that is now affecting planning regulation at the state level; and second, the new vision for a standardised development control system that has been put forward by the Property Council of Australia. As we will show, neoliberal reforms have the potential both to reduce the possibility for spatial regulation and also to undermine the other recent reform agendas that have sought a positive transformation of planning; namely, community democratic movements and environmentalism.     

The ‘Wicked Problem’ of Planning for Housing Development

The problem of planning for housing development has never been wholly resolved in England but instead re-invented in different guises as successive governments have sought to reflect values and interests in ascendancy at any particular moment. This paper seeks to trace and explain how this has happened over the past 40 years, and especially between 1997 and 2010, by reviewing policy developments around the overall supply of housing land, the split between brownfield and greenfield locations and the extent to which market-based information has been considered relevant to planning decisions. The account points to policy evolution, rather than radical departure, and suggests limited manoeuvrability for policy makers, when faced with wicked problems.     

Is There Something Beyond ‘Outside of the Box’?

Here, architectural and scientific researcher Rachel Armstrong questions whether the definition of ‘experimental’ green design presented here goes far enough. She urges architects to not dwell on evaluation processes, performance and ‘strategies’ and to seek a far more radical solution to sustainability, which abandons the current emphasis on industrial technologies and the existing educational and professional frameworks. In its place, she envisions employing biology as a driver for wholly new living materials and systems. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

What do we mean by ‘flexibility’ and ‘variability’ of systems?

International usage highlights interesting differences in interpreting the terminology commonly associated with building systems, says the author, who here suggests a more unified interpretation.     

One Nation,Two Planning Systems? Spatial Planning and Multi-Level Policy Integration in Ghana: Mechanisms,Challenges and the Way Forward

Effective integration across policy domains and between spatial scales is indispensable in dealing with the inherently complex process of policy formulation and implementation at all levels. In this paper, we examine the key features of Ghana’s spatial planning system focusing on the mechanisms and challenges of policy integration in practice. We show that a combination of path dependence and recent reforms has inevitably created two distinctly separate planning systems: an established Development Planning System and a newly instituted Spatial Planning System. Under the established notion of the ‘spatial’ being distinctively separate from the ‘socio-economic’ in planning, these two systems deploy separate institutional and legal arrangements as well as policy instruments to accomplish the task of planning. Within this context, mechanisms to ensure effective policy integration were found to be weak and ineffective. Moreover, the absence of a tradition of strategic regional planning and a culture of strategic partnerships among local authorities, the lack of appropriate institutional arrangements and sustainable sources of finance and duplicitous institutional functions were the key barriers to effective integration within the new concept of hierarchical spatial planning. We argue that a new paradigm of integrated planning under a unified planning system is urgently needed as a pre-condition for effective multi-level policy integration. We suggest that some forms of institutional restructuring would be necessary to establish a tradition of integrated planning. Finally, we recommend the use of legally binding mechanisms to institutionalize and enforce a culture of strategic alliance among local governments in cross-cutting matters.     

Changing Interpretations of ‘Flexibility’ in the Planning Literature: From Opportunism to Creativity?

This article reflects on changing interpretations of flexibility in planning literature from the planning scholars' point of view. Flexibility was seen as a negative feature in the 1960s in the literature. In time, the literature shifted towards the idea that flexibility may be a positive asset that helps the stakeholders of urban development to cope with the challenges of growing complexity and diversity in urban space and society. In the recent literature, flexibility is associated with creativity. The article discusses recent trends in planning literature practice to explain this change.     

The Potentials and Pitfalls of ‘Art in Research’ Methodologies: Foregrounding Memory and Emotion in Planning Research

ABSTRACT

The article draws on a two-month project with forty-four high school students in Reston, Virginia to suggest that ‘art in research’ methodologies might be useful to shift away from the problematic histories of planning as solely a technical endeavor based in masculinist conceptions of legitimate research. I propose that we can radically reimagine planning research and practice as an emancipatory endeavor for its participants, suggesting that the iterative and longer art-making process may usefully complement traditional qualitative planning research, specifically helping to uncover relevant memories and emotions of participants.     

Planning for decline: the ‘D’‐village policy of County Durham,UK

From the 1930s to the 1970s the contraction of the coal mining industry in County Durham in northern England was followed closely by plans to abolish many of the settlements that had supported the mining population. This article examines the development of the policies that were used to classify villages for demolition, the local resistance that developed in defence of the villages and the justifications provided in support of this policy. The bulk of the research is based on archived contemporary newspaper reporting of the events as they happened. Through this approach it is possible to document the course of popular opposition to planning policies. The policy was wide ranging, with 121 villages designated as category ‘D’, meaning that they were to be demolished. This paper examines the local response in specific case study localities, showing that the main tensions were between the economic concerns and aesthetic appraisal of policy makers and community‐based perceptions of social relations and the environment. The paper suggests that the legacy of the ‘D'‐village policy continued until relatively recently in the minds of planners and residents in Durham's ex‐mining localities.     

Sport events,space and the ‘Live City’

Specially-designed, temporary festive spaces designed to accommodate spectators and visitors have become commonplace when hosting major and mega sporting events but to date they have received very little academic attention in the urban policy or planning fields. In this paper I explore the development of a ‘Live City’ concept that organisers in Glasgow operationalised during the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games. Empirically, I draw on fieldwork undertaken before, during and after the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games, including documentary analysis, semi-structured interviews, and observation of the four managed Live Zones operational during the event.Findings suggest that the concept of the Live City operationalised at G2014 represents a subtle, yet effective, means of further embedding capital accumulation processes in the urban setting. The Live City concept is reflective of a trend toward the staging of atmospheres as an urban policy tool. In effect, event visitors are welcomed to a fantasy city that only ever exists temporarily, staged for the benefit of others' consumption. The Live City is managed and assembled to prioritise affective atmospheres, reimagining the entire city centre as a venue to be experienced, mediated and replicated in the future when other major spectacles are attracted.