Abstract
Van Driessche, Ache, and Lagendijk (2023) have demonstrated that planning literature and research on ‘flexible’, ‘temporary’, ‘experimental’, ‘incremental’, ‘adaptive’, ‘anticipatory’, ‘informal’, ‘complex’, ‘organic’, ‘discontinuous’, etc. planning approaches have drastically increased in the past decade, particularly in the North-Western European urban context (Albrechts et al., 2019; Buitelaar, 2016; Cozzolino, 2017; Dembski et al., 2020; Hedblom et al., 2017; Moroni et al., 2019, 2018; Savini, 2017; Sengupta et al., 2016; Van Wezemael, 2010). In this commentary, I would like to raise two critical conceptual notes to this shifting focus in planning literature. First, I elaborate why and how this empirical attention has arisen in the first place in planning discourse. Second, I address how the concepts of ‘temporary’, ‘flexible’, ‘informal’, and ‘adaptive’ planning – often used synonymously – in fact differ significantly from one another. My overarching goal is to bring a more systematic analytical perspective to a literature discourse that I consider highly relevant to the contemporary and future effectiveness of urban planning.
Elaborating reasons for the rising awareness of flexibility, complexity, discontinuity, etc. research in planning literature
The provision of urban infrastructure (e.g. housing estates, leisure and education facilities, transport routes) for a rapidly growing global urban population presents a critical human development challenge (UNDESA, 2019; UN Habitat, 2022). Intense urbanisation – along with population growth, aging, and international migration – has increased infrastructure demand in cities worldwide (UN General Assembly, 2015).
To manage this population growth and rising demand, many states and cities (e.g. US, UK, Switzerland, all EU member countries) have introduced densification and upzoning policies over the past 20 years (Dembski et al., 2020; Hartmann et al., 2022). ‘Densification’ is a process aimed at transforming urban settlements. Its main goal is to increase urban sustainable development by, for instance, limiting land uptake, conserving the countryside, reducing the need to travel by car, and creating compact ‘15-minute’ neighbourhoods (Holman et al., 2015; Wicki et al., 2022). The process seeks to increase citywide use density (i.e. of apartments, services, and amenities) to reduce per capita consumption of natural resources (Broitman & Koomen, 2015: 34).
However, implementing such densification goals has made the urban land available for infrastructure provision scarce and socio-politically contentious among urban key actors, i.e. owners, investors, developers, authorities, and residents (Keil, 2020; McFarlane, 2016). As undeveloped greenfield or industrial land has been densified already in recent decades (Bishop & William, 2012; Debrunner & Gerber, 2021), the rising demand for urban infrastructure is increasingly being covered by the (re)development of built-up land and the transformation of existing real estate stocks (Götze & Jehling, 2022), e.g. in the format of replacements or renovations of existing buildings where residents still live on the site (Bibby et al., 2020).
To reduce this fast and increasing land use complexity, attempts to flexibilise and reform planning rules and procedures to speed up processes (e.g. hastening the provision of building permits, preventing neighborhood objections) have increased drastically. However, the socioeconomic and environmental consequences of such flexible planning approaches are not yet known.
Differences in key concepts of flexibility planning literature
Temporary use and temporary planning
For many years, ‘temporary use’ in urban studies and planning literature referred to an interim form of use deviating from the legally binding permanent use class, be it leisure, commercial, or residential (Amin & Thrift, 2002; Blumner, 2006; Oswald et al., 2003; Vallance et al., 2017). Temporary use often takes place in buildings or on land prior to demolition, reconstruction or change of land use (Bosetti & Colthorpe, 2018). Since the 1970s, temporary use of vacant spaces has been a preferred urban development strategy to preserve and revitalise centrally located neighbourhoods, to express political claims and to boost economic and social innovation in cities (Castells, 1983; Colomb, 2012; Galdini, 2019). Moreover, temporary use has been utilised by municipal planners as an informal planning instrument to reactivate urban brownfields (Bishop & Williams, 2012). The concept particularly flourished during the decline and transformation of industrial sites in the 1980s and 1990s (Florida, 2002; Holm & Kuhn, 2010).
However, owing to the reasons mentioned in Chapter 1, ‘temporary use’ has recently changed its strategic function from being a catalyst for revitalization to testing new uses in scarce and densifying urban environments (Galdini, 2019), particularly in cities with high population growth, density dynamics and severe housing shortages (Debrunner & Gerber, 2021). For instance, residential temporary use approaches (such as container or DIY living in tiny houses) are increasingly applied by city councils and municipal planning authorities to transform industrial areas into mixed-use housing zones (Honeck, 2017), providing a flexible planning solution to cope with affordable housing and urban land scarcity (Debrunner & Bossuyt, 2024, forthcoming).
Flexible planning
As Folke et al. (2010: 2), Savini et al. (2014) and Savini (2017: 860) described some time ago, ‘flexible planning’ is an approach that aims to embrace the variability of social dynamics and set the conditions for the adaptive capacity of socioecological systems. Buitelaar (2016) and van den Hoek et al. (2020) added that such flexible planning approaches incorporate mechanisms that allow municipal planners to, among other benefits, 1) speed up formal planning processes (e.g. zoning amendments); 2) allow non–zoning-compliant uses (e.g. commercial uses on industrial sites); 3) cope with unforeseen events, such as challenges of growing complexity, opportunism and diversity in cities; 4) simply leave options open; and 5) boost creative, adaptive and innovative urbanism.
Critical concluding remarks
How can the above-mentioned critical reflections and conceptual thoughts be interpreted for contemporary urban planning and development practice? What future conceptual shifts in planning discourse are expected to develop with respect to research into flexibility, complexity, discontinuity, etc.? What implementation challenges and recommendations result for sustainable land use development?
Owing to scarce urban land use conditions (see Chapter 1), it seems inevitable for municipalities and urban actors to navigate land use complexity through a more adaptable and flexible urban process in the format of e.g. strategic activation of temporary uses (Albrechts et al., 2019).