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To tackle the accelerating societal polycrises, contemporary planning has to deal with increasingly complex questions, which defy sectorial and scalar boundaries. Therefore, a need for integrated planning has emerged and shared leadership logic has gained popularity in municipal planning organizations. Still, their potential mismatches have remained unacknowledged. Exploring experiences from everyday practice, this research provides theory guided analysis on how shared leadership is not automatically in line with integrative aims, but its interpretation and operationalization should move from individually-focused selective self-organization in the operational sphere towards collective sensemaking in the tactical sphere to support adequate overall awareness and shared understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Placemaking is a concept used in urban planning to shape public spaces. It is a complex and evolving concept that involves various actors with different goals, including grassroots community members, artists, developers, and governments. Placemaking has the potential to address urban crises and improve urban life, but it is distinct from mainstream planning and can take the form of informal interventions led by activists. It has been influenced by various discourses, including post-capitalism and post-liberalism, and it is important to consider how it can benefit marginalized groups and contribute to meeting place-based goals of access and inclusion. Placemaking has gained renewed attention during the COVID-19 pandemic, but there are challenges to maintaining its integrity, such as the rush to implement initiatives without proper community engagement. Despite these challenges, placemaking holds potential for progress in addressing social vulnerabilities and building bridges across communities. [Extracted from the article]

Pairing data-driven and participatory processes is an alluring approach for contentious urban issues. However, within these processes, the ongoing role of whiteness – an unnamed norm that privileges White people – is understudied and undertheorized. I examine how data and participation were positioned within conversations of gentrification in Lexington, KY. Beyond considering who participates, I analyse how the expectations and burdens of engagement associated with these processes were racialized. I argue that surfacing and problematizing racialized expectations of engagement disrupts how whiteness produces a strategic recognizing and disavowing – an unseeing – of racial oppression and thus diagnoses the whiteness of urban planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban laboratories are gaining popularity in Latin America as spaces of experimentation within urban planning. Based on semi-structured interviews across Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil, we identify two tensions behind the current proliferation of urban laboratories in Latin America. Firstly, the temporary and informal nature of urban laboratories, while promoting innovative thinking and experimentation, limits their long-term impact. Secondly, their reliance on international best practices and highly educated "trendy urbanists" often hinder their ability to foster more democratic and inclusive outcomes. We conclude by reflecting how these tensions highlight larger challenges in realizing the transformative potential of experimental approaches to planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on a Community-Engaged Learning (CEL) class with the community of Jisr Azzarqa, this paper examines the engagement with technology in urban planning practice. The paper argues that a CEL that utilizes advanced and situated technology, that is, Technology Oriented CEL (TOCEL), advances reciprocity in collaborations with underserved communities by developing trustworthy relationships, mutual learning, and crossing social, cultural, and geographical boundaries. The conclusion suggests that TOCEL pedagogy educates planners to work inclusively, better engage with communities, and implement decolonized practices. Moreover, it is suggested that applications of diverse technology in traditional planning processes can advance diversity, equity, and inclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The search for a good planning theory to underpin just and effective practice, and thereby narrow the growing gap between theory and practice, has been central to literature on planning since the mid-twentieth century. This paper brings together three seemingly unrelated urban planning perspectives and shows that combining them could provide a complete, feasible approach to planning. Complexity theory offers code-based planning regulations appropriate for multi-agent urban dynamics. The responsibility model contributes negotiation-based decision-making suitable for situations with multiple agents. Ethics of care outlines how to evaluate planning tools and policies in ways that dignify all human agents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

All operate galleries that exhibit art, facilitate the production of new art and support artists' practices. Beyond What is Finished in Practice The integration of art projects as essential components of so-called "culture-led regeneration" has necessitated an interdisciplinary working practice be forged between planners and artists and art professionals. (Dis)Ordering Space and Sense in the Built Environment Danny McNally and Katie McClymont Robin Hood Gardens: The Aesthetic Politics of Listed Buildings Edward Brookes Screaming Public Art: Tonalities of Agonism in Planning Politics and Practice Friederike Landau-Donnelly and Jason Luger Mapping Cities - Intersections in Art and Planning Gloria Lanci Beyond Beauty - Re-Discovering Planning as Civic Art Katy Lock and Rebecca Lambert From the Ground Up: Non-Profit Galleries and Planning Gerda R. Wekerle Creative Practices for Planning Urban Mobility Elahe Karimnia Beyond What is Finished in Practice Julie Crawshaw Planning and Urban Imaginaries: A Reflection on Speculative Planning with Slum-Dwelling Children in the Philippines Aireen Grace Andal Planning for Environmental Change and Learning from Engaged Creative Practice George Revill and Liza Griffin A Speculative Afterword: (Dis)Ordering Space and Sense in the Built Environment Danny McNally and Katie McClymont Planning, Art, and Aesthetics: (Dis)Ordering Space and Sense in the Built Environment This I Interface i presents nine pieces which engage with the broad theme of "art and planning" in a new and diverse way. Outlook: Art, Planning and the Complex Tones of Our Time Thus, given the a(nta)gonisms, complexities and shifting tonalities of art's interface with urban planning, we return, critically, to the possibilities and challenges between planning and art. [Extracted from the article]

Since 2020 we have advised over 80 community groups on property purchases in the greater Glasgow area and developed an urban community land reform policy agenda, while developing national land reform. I'd like to start with a thought experiment: imagine being a planner in a place where community organisations have wide-ranging powers over land ownership and use. The Scottish Community Land Ownership Model In Scotland in 2022, what constitutes "community landownership" is well established: ownership (legal title and a generally exclusive right of possession) of land and/or assets by a Community Body that is locally-led and linked to a defined geographic community (McMorran et al., [27]). [Extracted from the article]

Advancing equity and justice in climate action planning (CAP) presents a considerable challenge for urban governance actors. This paper provides necessary and practical guidance for developing participatory approaches that help planners avoid perpetuating dominant knowledge systems and corresponding planning interventions that have brought us to the current state of climate change and social inequity. Advancing equity and justice in CAP requires reflexive, participatory practice that centers vulnerable residents and supports communication across differences in social position and systems of meaning. These actions require a fuller accounting of the underlying social processes that drive vulnerability to climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban experimentation is increasingly seen as a means to facilitate (social) innovation and to promote sustainability transitions. However, whether and how novel approaches developed in local experiments get adopted and contribute to changes in the municipal planning practice has been insufficiently investigated and theorized. This article develops a conceptual framework to study the 'innovation potential' of urban experiments for urban planning. By deciphering the factors, actors, and processes that influence how urban experiments impact or innovate planning practices, we offer a novel perspective on what should be considered in their analysis, design and implementation and suggest avenues for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We show that while some of them can be seen as mobile policies in the McCann/Ward and Peck/Theodore sense, most have been developed in situ with only diffuse connections to policies elsewhere or via innovatively combining selected aspects of several extant policies from elsewhere. By contrast, while the mobile policy literature acknowledges that "teritorialisation" and transformation of policies can occur, this is subordinate to the uprooting, mobilization and circulation of policies across space (Ward & McCann, [19], p. 170). Conclusion: Rebalancing Mobile Urban Policies Discourse This paper has set out to open up debate around mobile urban policy discourse by addressing pertinent questions about the ways in which innovative new urban policies are generated. Recent scholarship on how cities come to adopt new policies has focused on the notion of mobile policy. [Extracted from the article]

The COVID-19 pandemic: Impacts on cities and major lessons for urban planning, design, and management. The Covid-19 pandemic has left society dazed and confused. Planning Theory & Practice, 21 (3), 343 - 348. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649357.2020.1781445 14 Sepe, M. Covid-19 pandemic and public spaces: Improving quality and flexibility for healthier places. [Extracted from the article]

These may include community-based ownership of land resources, the increased use of land trusts or pursuing land justice for Indigenous peoples in settler colonial nations. The concentration of land ownership and wider questions of land reform are of critical importance in determining more socially just land policies. As reported by the OECD ([10]), land and buildings on it, constitute by far the most important share of wealth across OECD countries, comprising 86 per cent of total capital stock, broadly split evenly between land and property. [Extracted from the article]

"Regulation and Planning: Practices, Institutions, Agency" is a book that challenges common misconceptions about regulation and planning. It presents international case studies that demonstrate the creative and visionary aspects of regulation in the field of planning. The book raises important questions about the nature of planning and regulation, exploring their mutually constitutive aspects. It covers a wide range of topics and theoretical perspectives, providing valuable insights into the impact of regulation on the development of shared futures. While the book offers a breadth of perspectives, it also highlights the need for further research to understand the specific ways in which regulation can enable or disable desired outcomes in planning. [Extracted from the article]

When I wrote my last Editorial for I Planning Theory & Practice i (Grant, [7]), we were in the first waves of the Covid-19 pandemic. What's more, in a context where housing supply and affordability has become a significant issue in many nations, politicians increasingly call for "better planning" and "red-tape reduction" as they systematically attack the fundamental principles of local self-governance and sound planning. Contemporary "reforms" promise more housing units, more beautiful places, and more nimble government processes by turning planning into a more efficient tool of neoliberal governance. [Extracted from the article]

Consistent with ideas of urban shrinkage, many town centres have experienced years of increasing vacancy due to the loss of brand name retailers, and a crisis has emerged as conditions have deteriorated. This paper makes conceptual and practical linkages to the related "smart-decline"/"rightsizing" literature to provide insights regarding the challenges of town centre shrinkage and the strategies and governance structures required to realise the opportunities arising. These conceptions/ideas are applied through case study analysis, with the findings suggesting that adopting "smart-decline"/"rightsizing" concepts/ideas provides an important new lens for future town centre research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This year saw the publication of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) 6th comprehensive assessment of climate change, including the third and final section, published in April 2022, outlining the urgency of transitioning to a zero carbon society (IPCC, [6]). With understatement, the IPCC review highlights the challenge of overcoming the I implementation gap i between agreed greenhouse gas emission targets and projected higher global emissions. However, rather than a rapid acceleration of mitigation, the IPCC assessment notes that projected cumulative future CO SB 2 sb emissions over the lifetime of existing and currently planned fossil fuel infrastructure, without additional abatement, will exceed the total cumulative net CO SB 2 sb emissions that limit warming to 1.5 °C. As highlighted by the IPCC review, cities and urban areas offer significant opportunities for emissions reductions, through lower energy consumption (such as by creating compact, walkable cities), electrification of transport in combination with low-emission energy sources, and enhanced carbon uptake and storage using nature. [Extracted from the article]

Conclusions In this commentary, we studied Bulgaria's Sea Capital Varna over thirty years to better understand how planning can and should evolve as societies become less centralized and more pluralistic. Key Empirical Sources Our empirical study focuses on Bulgaria and, specifically, the city of Varna, where planning methods changed from highly centralized to mostly decentralized, following the growing pluralism of Bulgarian society in the aftermath of state socialism. How to plan for urban development in pluralistic societies, where the interests of diverse social groups inevitably collide? Caving under this pressure, only two years after the TDP's adoption, in 1999, Varna adopted a new planning ordinance: "Specific Rules of Property Development in Varna Municipality.". [Extracted from the article]

When planning sustainable districts, planners mediate between the knowledge claims of citizens and experts. The planning strategies nudging and participation provide contradictory ideas about how planners can perform this mediation. We analyse handbooks for the two strategies, guided by the question: whose knowledge counts? These handbooks provide citizens, experts and planners with varying degrees of authority. While nudging positions behavioural experts as holding authority, and citizens are central in participation, planners feature in the background in both strategies. We show how these seemingly apolitical strategies are actually value-laden. Implementing them literally will undermine planning for urban sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Instead, the government and spatial planners should be more vigilant in identifying opportunities to practise restorative justice, recognising the needs and identities of those who are affected by planning actions in space and time, and involving them as part of the "solutions" through procedural justice. The onset of the highly contagious Omicron virus has revealed disturbing issues of spatial inequities in Hong Kong. Without recognition justice, it is even more difficult to contemplate procedural justice, especially in a Chinese culture that still emphasises duties more than people's individual rights. [Extracted from the article]

This article examines professional lobbying in urban planning and the related decision-making process, as perceived by lobbyists, planners, and politicians in Finland. The implications as to the transparency of planning are particularly discussed. Transparency is generally considered a key value of public governance under democratic control, while for professional lobbying a key asset is its ability to manage transparency and publicity. Examining lobbying in planning complements the picture of planning transparency, the deficiency of which has been identified as a problem of democracy. The prevailing transparency discourse appears to oppose the practices of publicity management, but does it produce only ostensible improvements to planning democracy? The emerging picture of planning transparency suggests that transparency, and thus democratic practices, play a smaller role in the legitimacy in planning than generally thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neighbourhood Planning, although broadly garnering cross-party support at national levels, proves contentious particularly in areas of deprivation where this becomes one initiative to shape local neighbourhoods amongst several others, including regeneration funding schemes. Reflecting on research experiences into multicultural neighbourhoods in Helsinki Finland, they discuss how planners could draw on deeper insights into everyday life of diverse communities to enhance their consultation with the public. Discussing case studies of how cemeteries spaces are managed and defined in policies in Oslo and Copenhagen, they not only raise interesting issues about the management of "deathscapes", but also about the nature of urban public space. Several students commented on the high levels of fly tipping visible in the neighbourhood, of abandoned fridges in particular. [Extracted from the article]

Injustices and oppressions are also not experienced evenly; deep intersections are at play, as reflected by activist Indigenous disabled people, disabled people of colour, disabled people in the global south, queer disabled people, and disabled women and girls. We are so excited about the powerful contributions and messages on disability justice and urban planning made by the diverse contributions of academics, students, practitioners and activists with different positionality - most of whom identify as disabled person/person with disability, or person with lived experience of disability. Recognising, Accepting, and Valuing Disability Diversity with all of its intersectionalities, including but not limited to, acknowledging: Disability as a natural part of being human Value All Disabled People - all bodies, all minds, all functionalities Invisible & Visible Disabilities Our value of diversity in identities and experiences comprising of: Indigenous Peoples, People of Colour, Gender, Age, Class, Geography, and Ethnicity Having people with disabilities as part of decisions about planning cities, towns, neighbourhoods, not on the margins. Embracing diversity without oppression is crucial for Indigenous disabled people, disabled people of colour, disabled people from the global south, disabled girls and women, low-income disabled people and LGBTIQA + disabled people. [Extracted from the article]

The paper provides an empirical review of a widely used tool in the English planning system – pre-application discussions ('pre-apps') and a theoretical exposition of governmental 'logics' that underpin neoliberal-informed planning reforms. We present five logic frames of growth, efficiency, commercialisation, participation and quality, and apply these to pre-application negotiation practice, to highlight how Local Planning Authorities (LPAs) are faced with the challenge of reconciling a complex of multiple and often competing aims that appear irreconcilable in practice. We highlight that whilst 'ordinary' planning tools such as pre-apps may appear mundane, they can provide valuable instantiations where logics collide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a study of Neighbourhood Planning in more deprived urban areas of the North West region of England, revealing that the stance of elected representatives is important in shaping the processes and outcomes of this new more citizen-led form of planning. The paper considers how far barriers to Neighbourhood Planning, and the variable support offered by local planning authorities to deprived urban communities, might be accounted for by practices of clientelism. It concludes that clientelism provides a useful lens through which to interpret attitudes towards Neighbourhood Planning as a disruptor of established patterns of influence and powerholding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Strategic planning researchers need to explore the complexity of time and temporality beyond the straightforward clock-time view of temporal variation (linear, objective time). Both time and temporality are important to understand and theorize with regards to the practice of strategic spatial planning (Sandberg & Tsoukas, [32], p. 341). This short characterization of strategic spatial planning research leads us to three suggestions: Firstly, and not surprisingly, strategic planning researchers do I not i ignore time and temporality. Since past and present inevitably form the basis for the future distribution of activities in space, the time dimension is as essential for spatial planning as it is for any other type of planning. [Extracted from the article]

'Knowledge-based' approaches have recently made a breakthrough in urban planning. How to develop balance in knowledge-based planning between abstract and scientific knowledge, on the one hand, and 'local knowledge' on the other hand has been long debated. To this debate, we add a form of knowledge with potential for sustainable urban planning, i.e. ethnographic knowledge that could transmit an understanding of urban dwellers' daily practices and values to planning organisations. Theoretical literature is the foundation of our argument, which we illustrate with a case study involving urban planners and decision-makers in the Helsinki region of Finland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stoney's Executive Order preceded a new state law taking effect which grants local governments the right to make decisions about the alteration or removal of their war memorials, and he acted without the authorization of the city council, though they ratified Stoney's order in early August. These Soviet artifacts were constructed to commemorate historical epochs in "Kyivan Rus", a medieval political conglomerate of the East Slavs, now believed to be a predecessor of the states of Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus (Subtelny, [50], pp. 19-21). Instead, decommunization has been most effective as an antithesis to the Soviet state's "monumental propaganda", a Communist-era policy that was responsible for the countless Soviet toponyms and for the most ideologically charged architecture and monumental art that decommunization is addressing. There is currently no universal consensus on whether Ukraine is a post-colonial state, nor whether Russia and the Soviet Union were actual colonizers or just agents of modernization (see Hirsch, [39]; Hrytsak, [40]; Kuzjo, [43]; Martin, [44]; Slezkine, [49]). RMF: The Philosophical Project Whilst the fall of Rhodes' statue is a pivotal moment in the history of the RMF movement, the movement aims to have all statues, plaques and monuments at UCT that valorise figures like Rhodes, who is a "symbol of genocide, enslavement, conquest, colonization, apartheid, material dispossession and author of inequalities haunting South Africa today" (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, [19], p. 222), removed. [Extracted from the article]

This paper explores planning negotiations in neighbourhood-level urban redevelopment. Rapidly densifying cities routinely approve development projects that exceed zoning permissions, conditional on negotiations with developers for affordable housing and park space, among other public benefits. This paper provides a case analysis on negotiations in multi-actor urban redevelopment projects involving density bonusing in Toronto, Canada. Local actors framed urban redevelopment to justify broad public need, while using their wherewithal to build bargaining power with developers and city councillors. The paper finds that negotiations are symptomatic of ad-hoc planning and perpetuate uneven development processes, which pose challenges for planners to ensure stability and predictability in market-driven, discretionary planning environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The field of urban planning and its scholarship, while acknowledging harmful development practices for marginalized groups, has not directly engaged in alternative, trauma-informed planning processes at the municipal level. Social work and law have a scholarly tradition of acknowledging trauma and providing frameworks for carrying out trauma-informed practice; planning scholars have proposed models like therapeutic planning, but lack an understanding of how to formalize such approaches. We use the case study of the redevelopment of the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children to provide lessons and recommendations for how planners might codify trauma-informed practices into formal processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we highlight some of the challenges associated with strategic spatial planning, including long-time frames, limited control, translation and implementation gaps. We then explore how tactical urbanism might, in theory, address these s given its emphasis on small-scale, immediate, experimental action for long-term change. Our research with a Charter-based, principles-led, action-oriented network is then used to test these possibilities in practice. We conclude that tactical urbanism can be considered the antithesis of, complement to, or antidote depending on the disposition of planning authorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

San Roque settlement with hotel, shopping mall and commercial towers San Roque is a large informal settlement housing about 30,000 people within walking distance of a major transport, shopping and commercial hub. Yet, Kadamay has been tagged as too "radical" in its approach to housing issues, due to its long-standing campaign against the NHA relocation scheme and a 2017 mass occupation of empty NHA housing units allotted for military personnel. Jun (not his real name) sits in a makeshift booth at one of the entrances to San Roque (see Figure 1), an informal settlement in Metro Manila's North Triangle district. Residents who have returned to San Roque from their "off-city" relocation sites describe the resettlement areas as "death zones" due to the dismal state of social services and the lack of livelihood opportunities. [Extracted from the article]

Robert Goodspeed's I Scenario Planning for Cities and Regions i argues that the challenges posed by climate change, technological change, and sustainability goals "requires breaking from past planning approaches" (p. viii). However, while the attempt to think so holistically about cities, planning, and policy decision making should be applauded, ultimately I Scenario Planning for Cities and Regions i falls prey to the technocratic abstraction that the author explicitly rejects. [Extracted from the article]

The systematic evacuation of planning's political content (Porter, [7]), has been deepened by privatisation in the sector, with growing numbers of planners now working outside of public institutions. It invites a reflexivity that comes with an understanding of the impacts of planning's work and the political content it possesses, as Porter ([7]) argued. In a 2011 Editorial for I Planning Theory and Practice i titled "The Point is to Change It", Libby Porter treated readers to a passionate call to reveal planning's politics. Planning Theory and Practice, 12 (4), 477 - 480. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649357.2011.626296 8 Porter, L., Roy, A., & Legacy, C. (2021). [Extracted from the article]

This paper explores how applying psychological and cognitive theories in nudge design can increase the effectiveness of nudging in public space. Nudges are those policy instruments that alter human behaviour by exploiting cognitive biases/heuristics, without limiting the choice set. Based on interviews with Dutch urban planners, barriers in applying such behavioural theories are identified. These barriers relate both to urban planners' inexperience with nudging and to the organisational and societal context in which nudges are designed. A design framework is presented to optimise the design of nudges by helping planners to identify when and where nudging is feasible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It begins with examining Mvskoke community through a futurity lens, which allows the community to focus on speculating on a future that their ancestors desired, that they desire in a current temporality, and build something that caretakes our community for future relatives. My operating definition of futurity is the enactment of theories and practices that activate our ancestors' unrealized possibilities, the act of living out the futures we wish for in a contemporary moment, and the creation of the conditions for these futures. However, Indigenous planning scholars have grappled with community and temporality, for example, seven generation planning, walking backwards into the future, speculating futures, viscerality, and foreclosed futures of Native erasure (Dorries, [3]; Harjo, [6]; Jojola, [9]; Matunga, [12]; Sweet, [16]). Planning Just Futures: An Introduction Marisa A. Zapata Indigenous Planning: Constellating with Kin and Urban Futurity Laura Harjo Planning: Reclaiming the Dream of Better Futures Lucie Laurian Possible Beyond Plausible: Reimagining Ourselves and Our Cities Olivia Bina and Lavinia Pereira Foreclosing the Future: How Finance Got There First Rachel Weber For Utopian Planning Andy Inch Dreams from People, Dreams for Communities Marisa A. Zapata Planning Just Futures: An Introduction Marisa A. Zapata SP a sp Portland State University, Portland, Oregon, USA SP a sp In 2020, without much thinking I said "yes" to working on an I Interface i about planning just futures. [Extracted from the article]

Ponzini asserts that we should consider this process critically to create grounds for a discussion about reconsidering the position of named architects in the contemporary world. Transnational Architecture and Urbanism: Rethinking How Cities Plan, Transform and Learn: by D. Ponzini, England, UK, Routledge, 2020, 320 pp., £120.00, £96.00 (hardback); £29.59 (eBook), ISBN 9780415787925 This book addresses trends in contemporary urban transformation by engaging the theoretical framework of transnational architecture and urbanism to examine selected projects. [Extracted from the article]

And the futures created by more permissive planning and market-led development will make it harder to address the pressing conjunction of crises the country now faces in any coordinated way. Oxfam ([7]) reported in March that whilst wealthy countries were vaccinating one citizen per second, the majority of low and middle-income countries had yet to administer a single dose. The American-Canadian author of speculative fiction William Gibson famously argues that "the future is already here, it's just not very evenly distributed".[1] As attention in some parts of the world continues to turn towards prospects for post-pandemic recovery (however uncertain and faltering that may yet prove) the idea of unequal access to the future seems one way of making sense of the current moment. The town and country planning system in England is not a site where many radical political hopes are invested, however, it is also clear that the Conservative government led by Boris Johnson continue to view it as a barrier to the market-led recovery they believe the country needs. [Extracted from the article]

Strategic urban planning is promoted to effectively implement sustainability policies. This paper investigates the role of practitioners when conducting strategic urban planning in a Swedish development project: the RiverCity Gothenburg. A case study of the project shows how practitioners serve a crucial role as boundary-spanners when dealing with the organisational challenges arising during the planning process. The paper concludes that the responsibility put on practitioners risks diminishing the political legitimacy of the strategic planning process. Therefore, there is a need to reduce the gap between politicians and practitioners for addressing the political aspects of strategic goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If the city manager exerts strong control over the planners' recommendations, then council members will be unable to discern whether they are receiving the planners' best professional advice or the city manager's politically-inflected transformation of that advice; this interaction between planners and the city manager becomes a "black box" into which council members cannot see. But what constitutes a good city council member and a good mayor? These conversations enriched my understanding of the range of discretion mayors have about how (within legal bounds) to enact their roles.[9] I Good mayors must know how to convert aspirations into action i . Being a Mayor is Far More Difficult If being a council member is difficult, being a mayor is far more so. [Extracted from the article]

Most studies use quantitative measures to assess spatial planning outcomes. Instead, this paper proposes a novel qualitative framework to assess spatial planning outcomes that seek to understand why outcomes conform to, or deviate from, the intentions of spatial planning instruments. This novel framework links the conformance perspective with governance research. We tested our analytical framework in six Swiss and German municipalities. Drawing on interviews, observations and planning documents, our findings demonstrate which factors decisively influence planning outcomes. Our findings also demonstrate that high conformance does not necessarily equal spatial planning success. Qualitatively assessing planning outcomes contributes to the evaluation of the success and failure of spatial planning, and improves the implementation of planning instruments and practices accordingly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Part of the appeal of abstraction in planning theory appears to be that it might free us up from the messy particulars making "cases" unique. I leave to the reader to work out how this exercise suggests important practical answers for the "two chairs" efficacy exercise. But as I have tried to explore planning theory and practice together, a series of particular trials and errors, thought experiments, and exercises have been striking. Five generations of theory-practice tensions: Enriching socio-ecological practice research. [Extracted from the article]

Local planning discourse is torn between three trends: the withdrawal of central governments from local issues, the rise of local expertise and powers, and the mobility of policies from one country to another. While these trends have an impact on local planning, their respective weight is left undiscussed. This paper analyses the textual discourse of 34 French and English local transport plans using textometry combined with the constitution of comparable lexical categories in two languages. Our results show that local discourses are shaped by the national context they belong to, and that no trace of trans-national homogenisation is yet visible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a broadly liberal-political context, wary of state sanctioned "religion" yet welcoming constitutional regimes of rights and responsibilities, planners seek spatial interventions to be religion-blind so that all citizens, irrespective of their views towards religion, have the same opportunity to influence and benefit from planning and policy outcomes. Babak Manouchehrifar SP a sp and John Forester SP b sp SP a sp Department of Urban Studies and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA; SP b sp Department of City and Regional Planning, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA Urban planners - whose disciplinary focus is the local, the spatial, and the practical - have been largely indifferent to the significance of religious difference in urban settings and seemingly unable to understand why religious diversity presents both problems I and i opportunities for the modern city. While the US case - with its state policies and constitutional protections for religious freedom - represents a different kind of secular management of religion, it is nonetheless the case that secular norms and expectations (and laws and regulations) for religion likewise shape expectations that religious groups in modern life will accept the terms of secularity and the forms of religious cooperation that it celebrates (Bender [131], Bender and Klassen [132], Goldschmidt [137]). Religion is not monolithic and the faith communities present most likely represent a diversity of traditions, sizes, capacities, spaces, demographics, social and political capital. [Extracted from the article]

As he tells Rieux his story, Tarrou articulates his philosophy in terms of addressing pestilences in society: "All I say is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims - and as far as possible one must refuse to be on the side of the pestilence" (Camus, [6]a, p. 195). 3 The theme of rebellion against the absurdity of suffering in life manifests throughout Camus' work, as discussed in Camus ([4]), Ponnou-Delaffon ([24]), and De Botton ([12]). Representing the ills of the colonial and modernist city (Carroll, [8], p. 99), Camus' I Oran of The Plague i presents a stark contrast to his reverent writings of his beloved Algerian coastline that drip with life and saltwater sensuality (see, for example, Camus, [5], [7]b). [Extracted from the article]

Thank you to Robert Lake whose close reading and insightful comments added an important depth to my amateur sketch on "banality"; it was Bob's idea that I read Minnich ([16])"s work, and the quote from Arendt's essay 'Civil Disobedience" comes from him, too. The power of our unceasing critical and reflexive thinking is its ability to connect with young minds whose realities have not yet been tainted with "the" reality. 7 Elizabeth Farrelly, in her opinion piece 'The decline of universities, where students are customers and academics itinerant workers', writes: 'Now, bloated by a 20-year addiction to immense cash flow, glamorous buildings, corporate values, industry partnerships and a teaching model that is threadbare at best, our universities flap about like overstuffed geese on a deflating life raft. This provocation is a pillar of anti-essentialist thinking, which reminds us that what's unethical or morally wrong is not a product of inherent, thoroughly-intended evil-ness, but a simple byproduct of non-thinking and cerebral numb-ness (Bernstein, [5]; Minnich, [16]). [Extracted from the article]

The dilemma of openness reflects a long-standing ontological debate about public space. The dilemma is between creating boundless spaces that allow for an infinite diversity of uses but lack coherence, and bounding spaces to secure coherence at the cost of diversity. The implications for the theory and practice of public space planning, regulation, management and design are fundamentally different. By analyzing movement, occupation and identity in public spaces in the context of protest, I explore the concept of spaces of becoming: a fluid approach to public space interpretation and an alternative to the 'dilemma of openness.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few studies have considered greenspace governance provision from a local government perspective. This paper applies previously overlooked insights from urban planning and social research, investigate the key question: 'how do governance factors influence the provision of greenspace in cities?'. It examines governance tools, organisational leadership and culture, and political leadership. Findings reveal the tensions between a need for certainty and a desire for flexibility, highlighting inconsistencies between planning theory and practice. Better understanding the interplay of these enablers and constraints can inform policy-making to ensure that rapidly growing cities can respond to their residents' needs using available resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]