Infrastructure Planning: in a State of Panic?

Abstract

Infrastructure is routinely framed in contemporary urban policy as a vehicle to grow the economy through the creation of jobs. In periods of economic downturn and when ongoing fiscal uncertainty ensues, governments may look to the construction and maintenance of social and public infrastructure such as social housing and public transport. Cities and communities that have endured infrastructure deficits in the past may become the beneficiaries of adjusted national and state-level policy to support economic prosperity through expedient infrastructure implementation programs. Yet in the post-GFC policy environment urban infrastructure has recentred the role of infrastructure in driving urban economic recovery in terms of economic prosperity. Drawing from the state of exception literature, I call on the notion of urgency to explore infrastructure planning as it manifests at the juncture between strategic planning and implementation. This paper will contribute to the critical urban planning literature by examining how infrastructure prioritisation and implementation is shaped through a characterisation of urgency which subverts the relationship between urban infrastructure planning, implementation and planning process.     

Architecture of Disbelief: Is Architectural Speciation a Good Thing?

Can visionary architects have their cake and eat it, luxuriating in pecuniary success while also continuing to assert their avant-gardism? Neil Spiller attended a conference in Cornell that brought the role of the architectural visionary under the spotlight and gave him much food for thought. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Planning: A Fashionable Industry?

One is tempted to view ‘planning and design’ as a rational, technical exercise pursued by ‘experts’. These experts, through the judicious use of facts and analytical techniques, produce plans and proposals which are represented as the best possible answer to the situation at hand. However, looking back over the last ten years or so of planning experience in Australia, a better perspective may be to view planning as a fashion industry-an industry dominated by new fashionable ideas or fads that last only so long as they serve the interests of their protagonists. Fashionable ideas can make professional or political careers, facilitate the implementation of a particular project and legitimize inappropriate responses to local needs.     

What Makes a Good City in Pre-schoolers' Eyes? Findings from Participatory Planning Projects in Australia and New Zealand

Pre-schooler's voices are absent in urban planning and design. With the possible exception of playgrounds, there is limited knowledge about their experiences in and expectations for urban environments. This paper discusses pre-schoolers' aspirations and desires for aesthetic and accessible green spaces as well as social and physical connectedness. Although this age range has so far been limited in its ability to inform policy and decision-makers, it is argued that pre-schoolers have the capacity and capability of making valuable contributions to design. In the eyes of pre-schoolers, creating a good city means to live in a safe place full of diverse destinations in which they can become streetwise and socialize as part of society.     

Tokenism or Political Activism? Some Reflections on Participatory Planning

With the communicative turn in planning theory and the emergence of governance, public participation has become a central issue with respect to inclusionary discourse and the institutionalization of more democratic planning practices. A multitude of participatory planning practices have been implemented with reference to different theoretical perspectives and technical approaches ranging from the traditional to the radical model. Although the current debate about these different participatory activities has brought to the fore an increasing gap between rhetoric and the reality of various models, there are few attempts to compare them in practice. A comparison of participatory activities according to traditional/tokenist and radical models, respectively, should be of interest in the current debate on the crisis of participatory planning and barriers to the institutionalization of participatory planning. This paper discusses tokenist participation in the development planning of Hammarby Sjöstad in Stockholm, Sweden and political activism in a deprived community, Enziteto in Bari, Italy. These two different examples of planner–'community' interaction show the necessity to understand power politics that underlie the ideal of public participation in planning.     

Planning without plans? Nomocracy or teleocracy for social-spatial ordering

Debate about social-spatial ordering systems began as the opposition between planning and markets. This symposium discusses a related dichotomy: teleocracy (traditional directive planning) vs. nomocracy: social-spatial ordering by general-relational rules. This debate is not only theory; real institutional proposals and alternative practices demonstrate its practical relevance. In addition to the introduction, three contributions make up this volume.     

Planning for Active Living: Should We Support a New Moral Environmentalism?

In recent years, planning and public health have rebuilt interdisciplinary linkages. Programs to promote physical activity and fight obesity by modifying the built environment are now emerging throughout the US and Europe. This article seeks to engage the planning profession in a collective reflection about the ethical meaning and implications of the ‘active living’ agenda. It builds on a historical comparison between the American 19th century sanitation movement and this new agenda. Striking similarities emerge. While they both represent genuine efforts to foster health-supportive environments, they also rely on similar and problematic environmental determinism and positive modernism assumptions, and imply moral and disciplinary control goals. It is argued that environmental and sustainability arguments are ethically superior and more compatible with the American planners' code of ethics than the public health rationale for planning for physically active lifestyles.     

Community Planning Based on Socio-Spatial Production:Explorations in “New Qinghe Experiment”

Rapid urbanization and the booming of diversified community development requirements have challenged the development of community planning in China from theory to practice. Community planning, especially with localized and practice-oriented characteristics, is now facing many limitations. These include aspects such as traditional urban planning techniques that mainly focus on space, a restricted research perspective, as well as basic planning theories that are mostly imported from the West. Using the perspective of socio-spatial dialectic for reference, this paper summarizes the evolution process of Chinese modern residential space planning and design from residential district planning under the planned economy system, to housing estate planning in the real estate development, and to community planning in the new era, presenting an important characteristic of transitioning from "producing space" to "production of space," with "society" gradually replacing "space" and returning to the goal of production. Based on the analysis on the main limitations and problems in the former work of community planning in China, the paper takes the practical exploration on community planning in the "New Qinghe Experiment" in Haidian District, Beijing for an example. Aimed at the prominent problem of an extreme imbalance between "urbanization of space" and "urbanization of population" in the current Qinghe area, the key objective, means, and technical path of new-type community planning are proposed, within which three significant transition features are demonstrated, including going from "need-oriented" to "capital-oriented," from "interest intervention" to "relationship intervention," and from "community construction" to "community building."     

Strategic Planning for City Networks: The Emergence of a Basque Global City?

Throughout Europe, policy-makers recognize the development potentials of regions in which multiple cities are located close to each other. However, developing synergies among these cities requires networking to optimize the critical mass and exploit complementarities. Much is expected of spatial planning in terms of fostering networks. However, little is known about the actual contribution planning may have in developing city networks, in particular, since it involves planning on a new scale and based upon new starting points and objectives. Exemplary is the territorial development strategy (1990s) of the Basque country aimed at developing the networking among its three main cities (Bilbao, San Sebastian and Vitoria) to develop a Basque ‘Global City’. We find that the leverage of this planning strategy has been poor, due to strong local identities and the lack of regional organizing capacity. This also appears to be common for other polycentric regions.     

Reflexive Modernization: The Re-enlightenment of Planning?

In recent decades, the modern state and its institutions - including planning - have been the subjects of sustained and ultimately destabilizing critique by post-modernists. More recently, a new perspective on the 'crisis of modernity' has emerged. The theory of 'reflexive modernisation' has sought to renew both understanding of, and support for, the radical political-ethical vision of the Enlightenment. Whilst the perspective seems to have generated a vigorous debate in sociology, its impact on geography and urban planning has been much more limited, especially in Australia. This paper argues that theories of reflexive modernization are directly relevant to the concerns of the spatial sciences. In particular, I aim to show that the notion of reflexive modernization and its subsidiary concepts (e.g., risk society) can provide a powerful theoretical frame within which to place and understand the recent transformations of western urban and environmental planning systems. I draw upon the reflexive modernization thesis to describe and explain the broad changes and reform pressures that have emerged within planning in Australia.     

State Planning: A German Success Story?

Among planners in Europe, Germany has a reputation for its long tradition of spatial planning. The paper gives a concise overview over spatial planning achievements in Germany at two tiers of decision making, the federal and the state level, using Bavaria, North Rhine-Westphalia and Berlin-Brandenburg as examples. The main conclusion from the paper is that spatial planning in Germany has played an important role in guiding spatial development in the country, in reserving space for transport corridors, in maintaining the balanced system of urban settlements and in preserving the natural and cultural environments. Moreover it has contributed much to strengthen the regional identity of the regions (states). Its role as a tool for economic development, however, has been marginal, partly because spatial planning at the federal and state level has never left the internal circles of the planning establishment to become a field of popular and media attention.     

Concept and Method of Asset-Based Community Development Planning: A Case Study on Minlecun Community in Chongqing’s Yuzhong District

With the transformation of the Chinese economy from an extensive growth to intensive development, city development is also gradually turning from incremental construction to stock management. Community, as a basic unit of human settlements, is an important platform to build and improve the social governance capability. In 2013, Shiyoulu Jiedao Offi ce of Yuzhong District led the 1st urban community development planning, which was a milestone of Chongqing’s city regeneration and governance innovation. This paper focuses on two key issues: how to understand the community values and make the community development planning based on the above, and how to integrate with the local forces so that the community development planning can be integrated into the action plan. Combined with the practice of Minlecun Community Development Planning, using the concept of asset-based community development, a comprehensive survey is conducted on community assets(including three aspects of physical, human, and social capital), and a community comprehensive planning strategy is formulated which covers two parts: the optimization of community spaces and the upgrading of community governance. The paper explores the local-based community planning theories and methods from such aspects as value attitude, public participation, role transformation of urban planners, and others.     

Half-Full or Half-Empty? Planning for Women's Safety in Victoria,Australia

Over the past two decades there has been an emerging international consensus that locally coordinated efforts are effective in addressing violence and insecurity. Promoting “women's safety” has become a recognized international planning and governance strategy. There are, however, concerns about how the “women's safety” approach can address intimate partner violence, incorporate diversity between women from different cultures, and integrate a gender mainstreaming approach to male on male violence. Finally, there are challenges in evaluating these initiatives. The paper will use the Gender, Local Governance, and Violence Prevention (GLOVE) research project in Victoria, Australia as a case study to examine these tensions.     

What’s in a name: Project or programme?

The common conception of programme management as an extension or variant of project management, and therefore endowed with the same rationalist, instrumental underpinnings, is reviewed and questioned. In particular, the implications of labelling are highlighted, and the limitations for practice of conflated or poorly differentiated conceptions or models of project management and programme management are discussed. The central argument of this paper is that a distinct programme management model, grounded in a view of social reality as continually constructed through the actions and interactions of individuals - a becoming or related social constructionist ontology - provides an alternative way of shaping and undertaking change initiatives. Such a programme management model, when practised by reflective, context sensitive and value/ethically aware practitioners, can co-exist with and complement traditional project management approaches within an organisation.     

Planning for Mixed Use: Affordable for Whom?

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Mixed-use zoning is widely advocated to increase density; promote active transportation; encourage economic development; and create lively, diverse neighborhoods. We know little, however, about whether mixed-use developments affect housing affordability. We question the impact of mixed-use zoning on housing affordability in Toronto (Canada) between 1991 and 2006 in the face of waning government support for affordable housing and increasing income inequality due to the occupational restructuring accompanying a shift to a knowledge-based economy. We fi nd that housing in mixed-use zones remained less affordable than housing in the rest of the city and in the metropolitan region. High-income service occupations experienced improved affordability while lower wage service, trade, and manufacturing occupations experienced stagnant or worsening affordability. Housing in mixed-use zones is increasingly affordable only to workers already able to pay higher housing costs. Our findings are limited to Canada's largest city but have lessons for large North American cities with similar urban economies and housing markets.

Takeaway for practice: Mixed-use developments may reduce housing affordability in core areas and inadvertently reinforce the sociospatial inequality resulting from occupational polarization unless supported by appropriate affordable housing policies. Planners should consider a range of policy measures to offset the unintentional outcomes of mixed-use developments and ensure affordability within mixed-use zones: inclusionary zoning, density bonuses linked to affordable housing, affordable housing trusts, and other relevant methods.