II - plaNext–Next Generation Planning

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plaNext–Next Generation Planning is an international peer-reviewed open access e-journal. The young academics network of AESOP founded plaNext to provide prospective authors with an opportunity to engage their ideas in international planning debates as well as to make their research available to the wider planning audience. plaNext invites authors to submit original work that includes: empirical research; theoretical discussions; innovative methodologies; case studies; and book reviews on selected books, textbooks, or specific topics dealing within planning.

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Open Access
A Lacanian understanding of the southern planning theorists' identification under the hegemony of western philosophy
(AESOP, 2021) Mohammadzadeh, Mohsen
As a planning theorist who has studied and taught planning theory in the Global South and North, I grapple with the question - "What does planning theory mean in the Global South?" To answer this question, I ontologically investigate the meaning of Southern planning theory based on a Lacanian approach. Drawing on the Lacanian theory of human subjectivity, this article explains how planning theorists’ identities are constituted through their interactions within academia. Lacanian discourse theory assists in exploring how most Southern planning theorists adopt, internalise, and use hegemonic Western philosophy, ideas, and discourses as the only accepted mechanism of truth. Consequently, this process profoundly alienates Southern planning theorists from their local context, as they often devalue, overlook, and neglect non-Western beliefs, ideas, knowledge, and philosophy. I argue that although the number of Southern planning theorists has increased during the last decades, non-Western philosophy is seldom utilised as the core of their critical studies. Based on the Lacanian discourse theory, I show that they mostly remain in the hegemonic mechanism of knowledge production that is embedded in the colonial era.
Open Access
A methodological approach on studying policy-making of autonomous driving in cities
(AESOP, 2019) Servou, Eriketti
This commentary proposes a methodological approach about policy analysis on autonomous driving. It focuses on the role of discourse, the multiple actors and technologies involved in the processes of urban policy-making. Autonomous driving is considered a crucial case of policy-making in cities, because of the multitude of established and new actors involved as well as the combination of different digitalisation and automation technologies. Current research outlines the uncertainty planners and policymakers find themselves in regarding how to plan and regulate for autonomous driving, and calls for the need of finding the right forms of governance and policy for the implementation of autonomous driving in urban contexts. Therefore, studying the processes of its policy in the making is vital, as it is these processes that determine if and how any kind of policy will come into place. Subsequently, it is urban policy that will define the ways autonomous driving will be implemented and its implications in cities. Since both socio-political and material factors play a role in policy-making, a suitable methodological approach is needed that can address both. Therefore, this commentary discusses methodological developments drawing inspiration from Argumentative Discourse Analysis (ADA) and combining it with elements from Actor-Network-Theory (ANT). The insights provided by the commentary aim at a more comprehensive and thorough understanding of policy-making processes of autonomous driving and how policy change occurs (or not).
Open Access
Activism by lay and professional planners : Types, research issues, and ongoing analysis
(AESOP, 2019) Sager, Tore
Activism was one of the main themes of the AESOP PhD Workshop 2018 in Karlskrona and Tjärö, Sweden. One of my presentations was about the activist roles of planners working for local governments and lay planners affiliated with civil society organizations. I have kept a close eye on the academic literature on activist planning for many years, and am still working in that sub-field of planning theory. My aim is to explore the limits of how professional planners with an activist intent can practice their line of work inside a bureaucracy, and to study how actors from the civil society can use spatial planning and local environmental planning in combination with direct action as a strategy for achieving their goals. To specify the kind of planning I have in mind, I follow Healey (1997:69), stating that: ‘Spatial and environmental planning, understood relationally, becomes a practice of building a relational capacity which can address collective concerns about spatial co-existence, spatial organisation and the qualities of places’. Activist planners can contribute to the processes of such planning and help collect and form the input to spatial and environmental plans.
Open Access
Activist researchers : Four cases of affecting change
(AESOP, 2019) Sharkey, Megan; Lopez, Monica; Katharine Mottee, Lara; Scaffidi, Federica
Researchers in urban planning are frequently motivated by the desire to facilitate positive social change. In seeking better ways to effect change, the researcher becomes an activist by engaging with social and environmental issues in a meaningful way to solve a problem. It is also often at this nexus where practice and academia meet, where the researcher adopts an activist role. In this paper we argue that activist research requires researchers to place themselves in one of two dominant positionalities or engagement positions: the insider or the outsider, as they join efforts with their research participants and activities. Using four case examples from our own research, we discuss how each positionality influences the production of new knowledge in both practice and theory. We reflect on challenges faced by early-career activist researchers in adopting activist research approaches, highlighting implications for undertaking this type of research in urban planning, and the need for a rethink from current discourses to set a path for a more hopeful future.
Open Access
An anatomy of hope
(AESOP, 2015) Torisson, Frederik
‘So, it is the crisis of the idea of revolution. But behind the idea of revolution is the crisis of the idea of another world, of the possibility of, really, another organization of society, and so on. Not the crisis of the pure possibility, but the crisis of the historical possibility of something like that is caught in the facts themselves. And it is a crisis of negation because it is a crisis of a conception of negation which was a creative one.’(Alain Badiou)The paper seeks to elaborate on the concept of hope and the possibility of a ‘politics of hope’that goes beyond negation in relation to contemporary architectural practice. The focus will be on the affective modality of hope, the intra-personal, as opposed to the common understanding of hope as a personal feeling. Following Ernst Bloch’s notion of hope as ‘anticipatory consciousness’, the paper discusses the limitations and potentials of the principle of hope in contemporary spatial practices using Brecht’s dictum ‘something’s missing’ as a starting point for thinking about hope as a cognitive instrument. In a post-modern society, the notion of an ‘outside’ is hardly conceivable. The alternative orders of society imagined are almost invariably mirrors of what already is; these could be called utopias of compensation. At the same time, there has over the last couple of years been a rapid increase in instances of political upheaval, and the words change and hope are heard increasingly often in political discussion, signalling a dynamism as well as an openness in political discussion that goes well beyond the ideologies of the 20th century. Hope is in other words here understood as transformative; the concept is interlinked with the prospect of change. Hope is as an operative concept capable of a double move, simulta-neously being critical and propositional. The critical aspect is implicit in the connection to change; it denotes a desire for a different world than what is. The propositional aspect implies a direction and the exploration of an alternative. Hope in relation to spatial practices is thus concerned with the experimentation along the edge of the current doxai – challenging them and seeking to extend them.
Open Access
Balloons to talk about : Exploring conversational potential of an art intervention
(AESOP, 2019) Hotakainen, Tiina; Oikarinen, Essi
Relational approaches to urban development have gained ground in academic literature, highlighting diverse perspectives, such as experience, participation, aesthetics, performativity and affection. However, these practices neglect conversation as a connection between local everyday life and urban development. We argue that as art generally provokes discussion, material art acquires potential to question urban development and thus, act as a conversation mediator in public space. To test the hypothesis, we organised an explorative action research study: a data art installation within the annual ‘Oulu Night of the Arts’ in August 2017. The installation illustrated spatiotemporal analysis of everyday life in Åström Park, Oulu, Northern Finland. The art intervention succeeded in engaging diverse social groups online and on-site, although it proved challenging to evoke focused conversations. The induced discussions bore relevance to everyday realities in the locality. If public discourse on urban environment concentrates solely on municipal urban planning projects and visible new constructions, we risk creating a misconception of them being superior to mundane everyday life. The study suggests that even tentative information without specific objectives, when presented in a public data installation, could prove valuable for urban development discourse.
Open Access
Brazilian uprising : The spatial diffusion of protests during the June Journeys and the politics of identity
(AESOP, 2015) Gonçalves de Almeida, Rafael; da Silveira Grandi, Matheus
Brazil experienced, in June of 2013, the largest popular demonstrations in its recent history —an event that has been called the June Journeys. In this paper, we briefly address briefly the processes of spatial diffusion and dispersion observed during these journeys. We then reflect on how these processes relate to a politics of identity, and the strategies used by protesters to differentiate themselves from other groups, and by the State to classify the protesters in order to guide the use of police repression. Identity can, therefore, group individuals around a common struggle using as reference the location of the demon-stration as ‘spaces of identity reference’, but can also play an important role in the reproduction of dominant power relations by creating mechanisms with which to legitimate punitive action. The ‘vandal’ is, then, understood as the identity constructed to allow the transition from an indirect regulation to a mode of violent intervention. We conclude the paper by emphasising how both of these processes highlight the role of the politics of identity on this recent series of demonstrations in Brazil.
Open Access
Build it and they will come Analysis of an Online Deliberation initiative
(AESOP, 2017) Lusoli, Alberto; Sardo, Stefania
Public and private investments are increasingly being directed towards the development of ICTs for the construction of more inclusive and connected communities. Labelled as Collective Awareness Platforms (CAPs) under the European Seventh Framework Program, these initiatives explore the possibility of tackling societal issues relying on digitally-mediated citizen cooperation. As their diffusion increases, it is important to critically reflect on the extent to which they can effectively trigger forms of engagement and sustainable collaboration within and through digital artefacts. Among the associated risks is the furthering of a technocratic understanding of how collaborative processes work, based on the assumption that the introduction of CAPs would be a sufficient condition for the construction of inclusive and engaged communities. In this respect, this contribution investigates a case in which a digital platform was implemented with the aim of promoting citizens’ deliberation on urban-related issues. This experiment is analyzed by 1) assessing whether the platform functioned as a deliberative space; 2) tracking the negotiation processes of the digital artefacts’ functionalities occurring among initiative’s organizers, platform developers, and participants. The goal of the paper is to understand how different understandings and unexpected usages of the digital platform affected the deliberation process and therefore the initiative’s outcomes.
Open Access
Citizen’s motivation in neighbourhood planning in North West England
(AESOP, 2023) Cao, Xinxin; Sturzaker, John
Although some researchers have addressed the question of what motivates citizens to become involved in lower tier planning in the UK, the phenomenon is not yet fully understood. A lack of hard data, combined with some mutually contradictory arguments in the field, makes for imperfect analysis, and this can potentially undermine the effectiveness of individual engagement in Neighbourhood Plans (NPs). This paper focuses on what motivates citizens to participate in the process of creating NPs in North West England, and explores past theories on individual motivation. This study achieved its research aims through extensive research of the relevant literature, combined with an empirical study of five neighbourhoods in North West England. The main conclusion drawn from the dissertation is that there are complex and multiple motivations of people participating in NPs, and these impetuses are affected by a range of political, environmental and socio-economic factors. This research offers opportunities to enhance the effectiveness of NPs for researchers and NP stakeholders alike.
Open Access
Compliance with residential building standards in the context of customary land tenure system in Ghana
(AESOP, 2018) Offei, Eunice; Lengoiboni, Monica; Koeva, Mila
Zoning regulation is considered as a tool used by government to control developments to ensure sustainability. In Ghana where about 80% of lands are held under customary land tenure systems, implementation of residential standards, which is a government function may conflict with customary norms of holding land. This paper uses case study to examine the implementation of residential policies and enforcement of residential standards in areas under customary land tenure in Ghana and if these policies and standards affect the enjoyment of land rights in the context of customary land tenure. Results showed that non-compliance to residential standards and non-conformity to the local plan has minimal interference on enjoyment of land rights. Residents are ignorant of the details of the residential standards and have never seen a zoning regulations document. There is also low level of monitoring and enforcement. Spatial analysis reveals four main types of non-conformity between orthophoto and local plans i) discrepancies in the orientation of the parcel boundaries, ii) discrepancies in the shapes of plot boundaries, iii) houses constructed on the plot boundary or straddle parcel boundaries, and iii) differences in plot sizes. Results suggest the need for planning authority to use efficient approaches such as GIS and UAV’s to communicate, monitor and enforce the residential standards. It is concluded that collaboration between customary land authorities and the Municipality during the allocation and development of plots may improve spatial conformity between orthophoto and the local plans.
Open Access
COVID-19 Response in Freetown’s Slum Communities Embracing Situated Knowledge in Crises and Beyond
(AESOP, 2022) Beltrame, Daniela; Benitez, Joaquin; Groff, Karenna J.; Seabold, Amelia
The difficulties in tackling COVID-19 have shown with unparalleled strength the need to acknowledge alternative epistemologies in planning. Pandemic responses that seem to have been met with relative success were based upon the guidance, knowledge, and embodied experience of communities on the ground. While some recognize the key role of alternative or ‘non-expert’ knowledge in addressing current planning challenges, most have struggled to broaden their definition to include different ways in which community-based organizations generated data, shared knowledge, collaborated with other development actors, and learned from past experiences. This paper studies the response in Freetown´s slum communities to the unprecedented crisis brought by the COVID-19 outbreak. It analyzes how community-based organizations were able to leverage their situated knowledge to negotiate, develop, and occupy spaces of power in their city´s crisis management systems during the first months of the pandemic. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews and personal communications with residents of Freetown’s slum communities, workers of international non-governmental organizations (INGO) based in Freetown, researchers, and local government officials. This research discusses what knowledge is, where and by whom it is generated, and how it can be collectively leveraged in crisis situations. We also offer a reflection on what this may mean for the future of planning, in terms of transforming structures of exclusion and sustaining that transformation.
Open Access
Critical Cities volume 3 Ideas, knowledge and agitation from emerging urbanists
(AESOP, 2016) Tanulku, Basak
Inequality is a matter of everyday life and cities are places where inequality is experienced more violently. As Deepa Naik and Trenton Oldfield argue, cities, particularly large metropolises are sites to generate and reproduce inequalities, a similar process seen in different parts of the world. They suggest this is a result of what they call the “urban industry”. Critical Cities Volume 3—the third in a series published by “This Is Not a Gateway” (TINAG) platform—is an attempt to explore various urban inequalities. The editors, Naik Deepa and Trenton Oldfield, are actively involved in bringing forward various forms of inequalities related to cities. They formed the platform, which organizes the annual festival bringing together a wide variety of people working on and interested in urban issues. They also run Myrdle Court Press, an independent publishing house, and organise “Salons” to discuss urban and spatial issues. In addition, Deepa Naik and Trenton Oldfield also advise various cultural and not-for-profit organisations, charities, private businesses, independent publishers and organises courses, produces articles for a range of publications, prepares lectures, and presents research findings at various conferences, festivals and similar events.
Open Access
Cultural heritage challenges and Smart city concept (a strategic planning tool in a strategic planning framework)
(AESOP, 2022) Borotová, Barbora
The Smart City concept is often debated in academic, corporate, and institutional spheres, highlighting its conceptual model variations and technological interests. Many cities have decided to implement the Smart City concept as another development strategy with the vision of growth and efficiency enhancement. Such strategy refers to an extra instrument, in many cases, for bridging technological-based solutions with urban development. However, a social aspect is increasingly considered as the missing piece in the Smart City concept. This paper examines the presence of socio-economic aspects in the Smart City conceptual model and the difference by its practical implementation, searching specifically for cultural heritage. The paper uses case studies to investigate the models of cultural heritage integration in different existing Smart strategies of the historical cities and cities significant for their cultural heritage. Case studies aim to provide an oververview of Smart strategies and Smart technologies, that support cultural heritage as one of the main aspects of its development and address its global challenges. The paper provides a critical view of Smart strategies based on technological innovations in historical cities, where the aspect of cultural heritage as an identity creator was neglected. The research addresses the overall position of the Smart City strategy in the strategic planning framework. It draws attention to coherence with other development strategies searching for cultural heritage objectives, in the case study of Nitra. The paper concludes with recommendations for positioning Smart City's strategy in strategic planning frameworks.
Open Access
Delving deeper Considerations on applying empirical research methods to infrastructural urban technology projects
(AESOP, 2017) Fortin, Claude
Urban technologies are increasingly designed to support ubiquitous computing, which now includes different forms of digitally-augmented interactions in public space. This shift is underpinned by the development and management of digital infrastructures in metropolitan cities – a paradigm often rhetorically dubbed ‘smart cities’. Because the cityscape is uneven and characterized by diversity, this reconfiguration could be seen as a welcome opportunity to renegotiate the issue of agency in relation to the new technologies embedded in the built environment. Since the Urban Screen project was launched in 2005, digital art installations commissioned for public space have offered propitious terrain for rethinking this issue. Developing appropriate research methodologies, which could better support democratic practices within the infrastructural approach to urban technology design still stands out as pressing and necessary to facilitate the engagement of all concerned. This essay argues in favour of multidimensional approaches over unidimensional ones. To ground this discussion, it first describes the results of a unidimensional study carried out in 2015 in Montréal’s Quartier des Spectacles and then highlights some of the salient differences it presents with a multi-sited field study conducted on the same site from 2012-15. It finally concludes that a multidimensional approach seems more robust.
Open Access
Editorial introduction : Questioning planning, connecting places and times Introduction to the special issue
(AESOP, 2016) Tulumello, Simone; Healy, Patsy
Let us open this editorial introduction in an unusual way, made possible by plaNext’s innovative approach to peer-review. Let us quote a paragraph from one of the reviews to the articles of this issue, namely the review by Marco Allegra to Ignacio Castillo Ulloa’s article. One might suspect that this is a simplistic account of the functioning of the planning process: planners, after all, might be creative in their work; take risks (or not); simply rely on their professional expertise, but also use it in a strategic way to negotiate their role in the policy process; display a number of alternative, ‘non-planning strategies’; follow a private, particularistic or political agenda (rather than planning handbooks) in doing their job; cheat, lie, manipulate their clients, colleagues or the stakeholders in general. In sum, what the author presents as a dispute between two irreconcilable logics – between the rational, positivistic planner and the hysteric residents – might be part of a broader interaction between a ‘planner- actor’ and all the other participants to the planning process
Open Access
Editorial introduction Vol 2 (2016) : plaNext New ideas and perspectives on planning
(AESOP, 2016) Hammami, Feras
This volume marks an important stage in plaNext. It publishes original works following an open call, as the special-issue inaugural volume was dedicated to selected contributions from the 8th AESOP-YA annual conference. With the growing interest in plaNext, we see a bright future as a leading open access journal in planning and other related fields. Thanks to the generous contribution of AESOP, all articles are openly available at AESOP’s digital platform, InPlanning, and authors do not pay any article processing fee. In this respect, we envision plaNext as an effort by the young academic community of AESOP to help free the dissemination of knowledge from any unjust global academic system.
Open Access
Editorial introduction Vol. 1 (2015) : On the entangled paths of urban resistance, city planning and heritage conservation
(AESOP, 2015) Hou, Jeffrey; Hammami, Feras
Resistance, planning and conservation may seem like parallel or combating universes – while resistance almost always entails actions against the state institutions, planning and conservation practices function typically with and within them. These seemingly disen- gaged modalities of social and political processes came together as the focus of the 8th Annual AESOP Young Academics Conference, titled “Cities that Talks” that took place in Gothenburg, Sweden in 2014. The conference theme and an impressive array of case studies reflect the recent surge of urban resistance movements in Europe and elsewhere in the world. They also reflect a substantial level of interest among young academic scholars who, as a generation of young people, are themselves faced with social and political upheavals–including, but not limited to, the current impacts of neoliberal restructuring and austerity policies that percolate through the society today.
Open Access
Editorial Vol. 10 (2020) : Planning inclusive spaces–in a new light
(AESOP, 2020) Dörder, Pınar; Ibrahim, Batoul; Keil, Roger
It is deeply satisfying to know that Volume 10 of AESOP Young Academics’ peer-reviewed journal plaNext – Next Generation Planning is now available to you. This volume stems from the 13th Young Academics conference which took place from the 2nd to the 5th of April 2019 in Darmstadt and was hosted by the Graduate School of Urban Studies (URBANgrad) at the Faculty of Architecture of Technical University of Darmstadt. The conference was held under the title “Planning inclusive spaces: An inter- and transdisciplinary approach” and provided 50 young planning researchers with a platform for exchange for the following themes: “'Public space' and the dilemma of inclusion,” “Health promoting urban planning and design,” “Citizenship and governance in the production of space,” and “From sustainable to resilient urban strategies.” This volume comprises three top-quality papers which were presented at the conference. These are highly valuable contributions, as they approach complex matters of “planning inclusive spaces” from a variety of aspects, make critical observations, and reframe and reflect on topical debates in academia and planning practice. By presenting these papers, we believe this volume provides an insight into advancing our collective knowledge through the debates on inclusivity. We learn our lessons from policies and practices that are “good” but also from those that are “not so good”. The volume, therefore, shares these perspectives and viewpoints with relevance to the conference theme, and it does so by trying to identify what is really needed to adequately address spatial challenges and to facilitate a sustainable transition towards (more) inclusive spaces through inter- and transdisciplinarity.
Open Access
Editorial Vol. 11 (2021) : Introduction: Planning theories from 'southern turn' to 'deeply rooted/situated in the South/context' A project in the making
(AESOP, 2021) Mukhopadhyay, Chandrima; Hammami, Feras; Watson, Vanessa
Over the years a growing number of planning and urban theorists located in, or writing on, planning and urban theories in the global South have argued that theories emerged on the basis of assumptions within a northern context that do not ‘fit’ or are not applicable in global South contexts (Rao 2006; Ferguson 2006; Watson 2009; Roy 2009; Myers 2011; Parnell and Robinson 2012). Hence, they maintain, there is a need to rethink the northern bias in planning and urban theory and to develop new concepts, ideas, vocabularies and practices from southern perspectives. McFarlane (2008) uses the term ‘southern turn’ in urban studies, while arguing that productive comparisons across contexts constitute an epistemological transformation in urban theory. He uses the term ‘urban shadow’ to explain how southern cities are considered marginal and on the ‘edges’ of a predominantly Euro-American oriented urban theory canon (McFarlane 2004; 2008). Rao dwells on Amin & Thirft’s (2002) Cities: Reimagining the Urban to develop her ‘slum as theory’ wherein she critically reflects on the dominant discourses that inform and guide planning and urban theory. In 2009, Watson (2009), a scholar based in the South, introduced the idea of ‘seeing from the south’ to explain the need for context-rooted theory development. Yiftachel (2006) introduced a South-Eastern approach instead to break the binary of North-South and East-West. Roy (2009) calls for new geographies of ‘imagination and epistemologies’, as dominant theorizations are based on Euro-American experience, and are unable to capture the grounded reality of the global South.
Open Access
Editorial Vol. 12 (2022): Planning for uncertainty
(AESOP, 2022) Privitera, Elisa; Dhrami, Kejt; Madureira, Mafalda; Dörder, Pınar; Toto, Rudina
Volume 12 “Governing the Unknown: Adaptive Spatial Planning in the Age of Uncertainty” of the peer-reviewed journal plaNext – Next Generation Planning comes as a product of the 2021 AESOP YA Conference that took place at Polis University (Tirana) during March 29 and April 2, 2021. This was the 15th conference of the YA network, aimed at fostering a welcoming environment for debate and peer-learning among students, young and senior researchers, and practitioners interested in urban planning studies. Being the first YA conference since the initiation of the COVID pandemic, it was organized in a hybrid format, with the organizers managing more than 50 participants remotely from Albania. Despite fewer spontaneous and informal meetings than in previous events, due to the limitations imposed by the hybrid format, the conference went smoothly and engendered insightful reflections that provided a tangible input for this special issue of PlaNext.