Questioning Planning, Connecting Places and Times: Introduction to the Special Issue

Why do planners do what planners do? Are they moved by positivistic agendas set in stone in their manuals? Are they moved by a normative will to improve the ‘world’, the ‘dream of planning’ (Bertolini, 2009)? May their dreams blind them to the specificities of a situation? Or are they ‘normal’ human beings doing their job better or worse according to their particular interests, their idiosyncrasies, even the fashion or mood of the day? These are recurring questions that planning theory has been delving into for a few decades. Through this issue of plaNext, we want to suggest that it is high time to look back and discuss the many ideas and ‘buzzwords’ that have been used and misused, created and interpreted in, and by, planning theory.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

From Creating Spaces for Civic Discourse to Creating Resources for Action

In this paper, we investigate the role of technology to address the concerns of a civil society group carrying out community-level consultation on the allocation of £1 million of community funds. We explore issues of devolved decision-making through the evaluation of a sociodigital system designed to foster deliberative virtues. We describe the ways in which this group used our system in their consultation practices. Our findings highlight how they adopted our technology to privilege specific forms of expression, ascertain issues in their community, make use of and make sense of community data, and create resources for action within their existing practices. Based on related fieldwork we discuss the impacts of structuring and configuring tools for ‘talk-based’ consultation in order to turn attention to the potential pitfalls and prospects for designing civic technologies that create resources for action for civil society

L’élaboration des concepts de planification « communicative » et « collaborative »

I. Le contexte Les concepts d’élaboration « communicative » et « collaborative » des politiques font désormais partie intégrante du domaine de la planification. Ils se fondent sur l’importance de l’attention qui doit être portée, en premier lieu, à la qualité sociorelationnelle des processus de gouvernance et, en second lieu, aux microdynamiques sociales des pratiques de gouvernance dans toutes leurs dimensions performatives. Ces microdynamiques permettent d’élaborer des idées et des stratégi..

Knowledge flows, spatial strategy making, and the roles of academics

I explore the contribution of academics to the activity of spatial strategy making for urban areas. I focus on how academics have been involved in such policy formation work, their contribution to the framing of key strategic concepts, the extent to which academic contributions have affected the understanding of urban and regional dynamics embodied in such frames, and the role of academics in legitimating the strategies produced. I use examples from cases from Italy, the Netherlands, and the UK to highlight the significance of the institutional contexts in which academics have been drawn into spatial strategy-making activity, and the different kinds of relationships which have developed. I conclude that more attention is needed to this issue, in the context of improving the knowledge ability of spatial strategy-making practices, encouraging more reflexivity among academics involved in such activity about the institutional dynamics and ethical challenges of such involvement, and promoting more attention among policy makers to how they use experts in different kinds of institutional context when undertaking spatial strategy-making work.

'Rational method' as a mode of policy formation and implementation in land-use policy

In this paper the author discusses the place of rational method as a mode of operation in the procedures and actual practices of British land-use policy in recent years. In the first part she examines rational method and plan-based action in relation to other modes of operation within the context of theoretical debates about planning and public-policy procedures. This is followed by an exploration of the modes of operation evident in the procedures of British land-use policy. Then, drawing on research work on the detailed implementation of land-use policy, the author examines the way the modes of operation allowed by these procedures were used in the allocation of sites for major residential development and in the restraint of development. The author concludes with a comment on when rational method and plan-based action are likely to be adopted in British land-use policy practice.