Planning Theory

In recent years, enclosed residential domains have emerged in Dutch housing developments. Commentators fear that enclosed residential domains will lead to a loss of the public realm. This article considers such claims. Based on a conceptual analysis, it is argued that the question of how enclosed residential domains imply a loss of public realm should be addressed by distinguishing between three theoretical perspectives: the social perspective, the market perspective, and the civic perspective. It is also argued that the specific morphological characteristics of Dutch enclosed residential domains should be taken into account. Because of the absence of closed gates, for instance, many of the Dutch enclosed residential domains differ from gated communities abroad.

The purpose of this article is to explore what kind of (land-use) regulation is more compatible with a radical acceptance of the idea of the complexity of socio-spatial systems and of the intrinsic limits of explanation and prediction. The article applies insights from complexity sciences to planning practice, critically comparing different land-use regulatory instruments (in particular, patterning-instruments and framework-instruments). The main result and conclusion is that it is necessary to embrace the challenge of complexity and self-organisation, and consequently to start profound revision of regulatory instruments.

The aim is to study how ideologies come through in urban regeneration plans. Neo-liberalism, participatory democracy and environmentalism are systems of ideas competing for the minds of citizens in large parts of the world. Typical urban policies linked to each ideology are listed to provide a basis for identifying features of development plans that reflect aspirations for an entrepreneurial, green or open and inclusive society. A case study from Trondheim, Norway, maps ideological traces in waterfront development plans. The central question to be addressed is whether the internationally widespread allegations of neo-liberal hegemony over urban plans are reasonable. In light of the case data, it can be questioned whether neo-liberal ideology, although influential, is hegemonic in the plans. This doubt lingers, even if the chosen case Nedre Elvehavn is the kind of large-scale transformation of former dockyards close to the central business district that is often regarded as prototypical neo-liberal development in academic planning literature.

Planning through processes of “co-creation” has become a priority for practitioners, urban activists, and scientific researchers. However, urban development still shows a close instrumentalism on goal-specific tasks, means, and outcomes despite awareness that planning should enlarge possibilities for social change rather than constrain them. The article explores the dilemmas of planning agency in light of the contemporary need to open spaces for innovative practices. Planning is understood as a paradox; a structural tension between organization and spontaneity. The article provides a detailed profile of three specific dilemmas stemming from this condition. We distinguish and conceptually explore the dilemmas of intervention, regulation, and investment in current practices. The article provides a specific understanding of today’s planning dilemmas, exploring the key notions of “space and time” in the intervention dilemma, “material and procedural norms” in the regulation dilemma, and “risk and income” in the investment dilemma. We suggest that planning practice today needs to make sense of these dilemmas, navigating through their extremes to find new contextualized forms of synthesis.

It is often suggested that a defining feature of planning is its interventionist nature which requires connecting knowledge to action. With the upsurge of evidence-based planning, much is rehearsed about the utilitarian necessity of making such connection. What is less widely discussed is the epistemological nuances and challenges of knowledge–action relationship. This essay aims to contribute to the latter by conceptualising planning as practice of knowing. This is to shift the focus from knowledge as something that planners have to knowing as something that planners do. I would argue that, rather than thinking about knowledge as having an instrumental place in planning, it is more useful to think about planning as practice of knowing that involves knowing what, knowing how, knowing to what end and doing. Seen in this way, practice of knowing is a dynamic process that is situated and provisional, collective and distributed, purposive and pragmatic, and mediated and contested.