Why do we need planning anymore? Why we hear a little about institutions in planning’s agendas? What is the future of planning? The future of future cities? To answer these enquires, yesterday,
Newcastle university was host for a seminar on “THE PLANNING PROJECT: PAST, PRESENT AND THE FUTURE”. Early stage research careers, practioners and urban mangers from different parts of the world were there. Interestingly, although
participants were trying to address these questions, there was a negative common
atmosphere around the answers and discussions. However, different speakers shed
light on different subjects. The head of RTPI (Royal Town Planning Institute) opened
the seminar by discussing decentralised planning and tried to link the problem
with a lack of trust and high expectation between agency and locals. Similarly,
a lecturer from our school (APL) believed that the problem of contemporary
planning might be in our expectation from planning. Today’s our societies [especially
in western world such as UK] are not anymore the society that we knew and experienced
in past; rather, now we are a group of individuals. Hence, the expectation of societies
including planners and decision makers has been changed. Indeed, we need to
first redefine ourselves as urban planners! Education was another issue that
was linked with gap said a lecturer from APL. The problem might be in the education
system of urban planning, particularly in the UK context. Meanwhile, another
panel members speaker addressed the problem to the other professions. She believed
that not only the problem is not about planning or planners but also it is
about architects and designers, when Sir Norman foster is invited to plan and design
the “best metro system”!. A Newcastle city council member concentrated on strategic
planning in which great and affordable places to live, work and entertainment are
created and protected through the great strategies not just regulations. Nevertheless,
another professor explained planning as an institutional design, which is a
neglected aspect toward planning while the spatial design is about urban
design.
To me, it seems these ideas are just nice words in
which the realistic view is missing and also to some extent dark. Moreover, we
are searching a panacea for planning, which might be there is no panacea! The
context in which a Chinese city that is demolished and reconstructed in each
ten years is completely different from a context like Netherland that locals
are traditionally and personally interested to have permission for every tiny change
in their house, said a lecturer from Netherland. Another point is all of us, in
different disciplines, the more we know, the more suspicious we are. Since we
have more information about the process and outcomes of planning in the UK, inevitably
we find more shortcomings here, which we might feel pessimistic about planning
here. An unknown context might look with less problems while when we zoom in,
the more flaws are seen. The optimistic speakers, who were the minority group, tried
to address a realistic utopia – looking at worlds in an uncertain way – through
new ideas about future cities. For instance, one speaker discussed some ideas
such as small change can make large shift or less focus on fixity and more
focus on flexibility can lead us towards better places. Temporary managements
of urban spaces such as festivals and pop up shops, new governance or creating
active cities with new technology were some of the mentioned ideas. But, still it
seems that the question is unanswered, do we need planning in the way that it
goes or we might think about the different and uncertain ways, from education to
professional level.
