New Thinking Is Needed In Urban Planning

http://www.citylab.com/housing/2015/07/is-urban-planning-having-an-identity-crisis/398804/

Prague, Czech Republic
Site of the AESOP Conference
Anthony Flint
citylab.com

Hello Everyone:

Over the past few months, it seems that everyone is having identity issues.  All you have to do is check the social media pages. One group of people apparently having an under-the-radar identity crisis are urban planners.  Anthony Flint's recently article for CityLab, "Is Urban Planning Having an Identity Crisis?" looks at the shift away from traditional neat-and-orderly practices toward "...planning is being conducted by planners themselves." Urban planning conducted by the planners themselves?  What is that about and how is this possible?  Let us find out.

Anthony Flint writes, "At the annual convening of the Association of European Schools of Planning here, there was no little soul-searching about the practice of the craft."  Europe has been in the on the vanguard of attempting to move urban growth in an orderly manner.  The European Union member not only made the rules, regulations, and policies for the member nations but also established something referred to territorial cohesion among the nations, looking to build economic agglomerations, for example, through high-speed rail way.

New Faculty Building for the School of Architecture
Czech Technical University
Prague, Czech Republic
piranesi.eu

The AESOP Conference was held at the Czech Technical University architecture and, according to Mr. Flint was, "refreshing in its honesty-that despite the grand efforts, planning wasn't really paying off."  Global urbanization came with multiple complexities, unintended consequences, and unanticipated results regardless of place.  Whereas the future moves in an organic fashion, planning moves in a straight, think "...the equivalent of banging one's head against the drafting table."  This is how frustrating traditional planning can be.

Gert de Roo of the University of Groningen in The Netherlands told an audience in a session called "Complexity, Planning, and Fuzzy Responsibilities,"  We kept on believing we could control growth...by building elegant neighborhoods.  China's rapid urbanization is an example of what Prof. de Roo is talking about, with its instant neighborhoods of a million or more.  Prof de continues, We have to rethink concepts of planning.

Prague rooftops
Anthony Flint
citylab.com

How mind numbingly difficult has urban planning become?  Take, for example, the simple problem of fixing a traffic jam.  The easy solution is to build a new bridge to mitigate the congestion, do follow-up observations to see if it worked.  Prof. de Roo adds,

Urbanization today is so much more complicated, it requires an approach far beyond trying to make sure the world is nicely dealt and comfortable.

In an uncertain future, planning must learn to be more flexible, incorporating multiple methodologies. According to Prof. de Roo and other presenters, Tis involves funky concepts of ground-up, crowd-sourced "self organization and spontaneous order.

Spontaneous order sounds like a complete oxymoron.

Anthony Flint was in Prague as part of the European launch of the book Planning for States and Nation States by his employer, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy (http://www.lincolninst.edu).  The book examines planning strategies in four American states (Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, and Oregon) and five EU countries (Denmark, France, Ireland, The Netherlands, the United Kingdom).  Europe has been a touchstone for the United States, although, as Mr. Flint notes, "in land use like many other things, the very idea of compact development excites some 'freedom fries' retorts and suspicions of socialism."

Plan El Paso-an example of smart growth
El Paso, Texas
citylab.com

Smart growth, urban growth boundaries or compact transit-oriented development, is mainly European.  However, the European nations are rebelling against the dysfunctional neat and orderly approach to planning in favor of more American approach-"a decentralized agenda, pushing down remaining responsibilities to local jurisdictions, and counting on local planners to engage the citizenry much."

It is not just the European planners that are having an existential crisis, so are the Americans.  No sooner had American planners mastered sustainable development practices and only a handful of intrepid planners have started to think regionally (Connecticut-New York like England-France-Germany), the whole thing gets upended.  Now what are we supposed to do?  The great planning guru counsels acceptance, in an existential way, was all of this for nothing?  What was the point?

Long Island City is having an identity crisis
Long Island City, Long Island, New York
observer.com

Gert de Roo is not one to throw up his hands, I will never say that...Planners must simply face the challenge of the decline of national mandates...while also understanding the incredibly complex realities of urban growth in the 21st century.  That's all.

The stated them of the AESOP Congress was "Definite Space-Fuzzy Responsibility," outlined in the conference manifesto, excerpted here:

While many of the initiatives and powers moved outside public control, the sense of responsibility for spatial change and sustainable development of cities and regions hardly overstepped the domain of city halls and ministries, and planners as their experts...

Our cities are spreading, the distances that most of us have to travel for jobs, shopping, and entertainment are steadily increasing, and money available for maintenance and improvement of roads, utilities and public services is shrinking.  Rich people are retiring to gated communities while others remain trapped in social and ethnic ghettoes.

All these problems are expected to tackled by planning as an instrument for urban and regional management.  But planning itself was affected by drift from hierarchic control by state and local governments, through public-private partnership projects, to governance where the actual field of municipalities' and states' action is dissolved and shared with business.  Also many services formerly provided by public domain have been outsourced.  Who should take responsibility for how the cities and regions are being changed?

Hanoi is having an identity crisis
Hanoi, Viet Nam
gehiarchitects.com

It sounds like the conference attendees are ready to throw their hands up in the face of the futility of urban planning in the millennium. However, urban planning could use a healthy dose of intellectual modesty.  Anthony Flint writes, "Not all answers are known or can be known, and even when you get the smartest people in the room, you can't ensure positive outcomes."  Mr. Flint uses the example of Albert Einstein as having established this framework and before him, Henry Rayleigh-Benard.  Mr. Flint writes, "...Henry Rayleigh-Benard, heating liquid saw structured patterns in convection cells-suggesting another non-linear, self-organizing system analogy."  Point taken, cities are organic, not static, entities.  Too much order, they reach a breaking point and begin to crumble, falling apart in a chaotic manner.

African urban identity crisis
Tatu City, Nairobi, Kenya
urbandesignreview.org

Urban planning does not work in a linear fashion.  The end results are what you plan for. In between conception and outcome are the intermediary steps, where different results are considered using computer modeling.  "Communities can choose the desired path: A, B or C, the thinking goes."

The new, non-linear approach which sounds so terrifically theoretical and cutting edge, folding in an understanding of complex and self-organizing system.  This is precisely what Jane Jacobs wrote about in her book The Death And Life Of Great American Cities.  Mr. Flint adds, "Planning for complexity is Jacobs turbocharged."  The tactical urbanist

Woonerf, Kaptensgatan, The Netherlands
La Citta Vita
flickr.com

movements understands that some of the best interventions happen without a lot of planning, not according to a rigid master plan.  The real key is flexibility-not being chained down to an immutable plan.  Another key is learning to let it go, the structured thinking not that annoying song.  One successful example of more flexible planning is the Dutch urban street design of the woonerf, "conventional signals-curbs,signs, traffic lights-are entirely removed.  The result is a surprisingly free-flowing movement of cars, pedestrians and bicycles..."  It sounds like accidents waiting to happen but it does work.

The urban planners's identity crisis is really more about changing the thought process.  It requires moving off the straight line and accepting the fact that cities are organic beings. The expand and contract; grow in an unruly manner.  They defy any attempt to impose a rigid sense of order.  This means that planners and would-be planners have to adopt a more complex mindset.  As cities grow, more flexible thinking will be needed to accommodate growth and sustainability.