Planning in the face of conflict

This weeks reading  was called“Planning in the face of conflict" by John Forester.

This weeks article presents local planners own accounts of the challenges they face as simultaneous negotiators and mediators in local land-use permitting processes.Planning Directors and staff in New England cities and towns, urban and suburban, shared their viewpoints on a series of extensive open ended interviews with John Forester.

The article next explores a range of mediated negotiation strategies that planners use as they deal with local land-use permitting conflicts.How local planning organisations encourage effective negotiation and how mediated negotiation strategies give power to the powerless.

The above picture highlights the role of a planner in the situation where a resident and developer are arguing over a planning decision affecting there neighborhood. It is the job of the planner to create meetings and mediate discussions between the two parties, to ensure all viewpoints are heard and that a middle ground or mutual decision can be found.

In the face of conflict, planners also give power to the powerless, most of the time this is referring to local citizens.For example a planner could mediate a discussion between residents and developers on an issue effecting there neighborhood. In this case, the planner is giving the residents more power as they have the opportunity to speak directly to the people who want implement the change .

In one of the many interviews that John Forester undertook, a planning director suggested that planners and developers often share a common language. They have the ability to pinpoint technichal and regulatory issues and understand what one another sare saying. He also pinpoints the need to teach special terms of local zoning code to affected neighbors before tackling the issues that are at hand.

If the planner, developer and resident are all able to speak in a professional language in which they can all understand one another, then the chance of reaching a mutual agreement is drastically increased and reduces the chance of conflict.



 Creating successful plans in the face of conflict is a challenged faced by thousands in the planning profession, dozens of different strategies are used by different individuals in order to mediate discussions between developers and residents. The planners role in these discussions is essential if residents and developers alike want to continue to work together to keep creating successful plans for the future.

A Ladder of Citizenship Participation

 The reading this week was called " A ladder of Citizenship Participation" from the Journal of The American Institute of Planners (1969) by Shelly Arnstein.

This weeks presentation by Pat and Jess was strongly centred on the role and involvement various communities have in planning decisions. A group activity was set up to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of incorporating people from the community into planning decision making.From this group discussion many interesting and some controversial opinions were raised, including references to hitler, irrational people and meritocracy just to name a few.

Some of the advantages to this that were discussed included: satisfying citizens and making them feel they are making a difference to there area, it attracts a number of different perspectives around the issues that are being discussed, allows for transparency and citizens are using there power to do what they desire, for the most part this is to further imrpove there local community.

As always there are disadvantages that come along with the above,  these include: the cost, it can be dangerous giving citizens access to resources as it could lead to a misuse and waste of money, unprofessionalism may play a part as not everyone is a planning professional and conflict could quite easily occur through disagreements amongst different citizens who have opposing opinions about community issues.

So are communties being involved enough in the decisions that are ultimately going to affect themselves the most ? In 1969 planning decisions involved the upper class and excluded the poor, especially certain minorities, where as now there is increased community involvement and consultation, although the community still does not have complete control. An example of this is seen through the canberra 2030 plan- time to talk.

Nowadays on the eight rungs of the ladder of citizen participation we find ourselves around number four, in the area of tokenism.  Through local councils, governments, community forums and community events local citizens are becoming increasingly involved in planning decisions. We are moving into an era where the opinion of the people is having a greater impact on the powers at be and it is this interaction amongst the smallest of citizens to the most powerful of planners that sustainable plans and communities will come to life.

Advocacy and Pluralism in Planning

This weeks reading was called Advocacy and Pluralism in Planning by Paul Davidoff and was written in 1965. It strongly concentrated on the interaction between planning professionals and people or local communities, highlighting the importance of putting plans into action that involve what the people actually want and need, as opposed to assuming everything the government says is the correct course of action.

Pluralism describes the process and advocacy describes the role performed by the professional in the process, in this case we are referring to planners.

In this weeks seminar Dan and Adam prepared two group activities for us to participate in, these involved taking on the role and point of views of Government, Corporations and the people. Through this we were able to look at certain situatuions from different perspectives and how planning decisions effect each individual group.

An important aspect I noticed during the first activity is that the government and corporations proposals were ultimately going to succeed over the needs of the local community, in this case Grassington (sorry if I got the name wrong). This then raised the issue amongst the group, how do we as planners give the community a better voice? How can we advocate and give a voice to the ideas that people believe will be most sustainable and economically viable for there town.

Similar to a legal advocate, a planning advocate pleads for his own and the peoples view of the good society. One of the many benefits that comes with advocate planning is the possibility it creates for a planner to find employment with agencies holding values similar to his or her own. If a planner can be surrounded by a working environment where everyone shares the same values, then the liklihood of gaining the best possible result for the client is increased.

Early Planning and Modernisation

The reading this week was: Modernism and Early Urban Planning by Richard LeGrates and Fredic Stout. It focused on the modernism of planning and how early urban planning has evolved over the past two centuries through works such as the Garden City Movement, City Beautiful and the Park's movement.

Many of these new planning movements were as a result of the worlds industrial revolution and the effects it had on cities and large urban areas. This was a period of time when people were moving from rural areas to city living in order to give themselves better life opportunities through working in factories which quickly became the scene of extremely horrific health standards.

Due to a massive increase in factory workers residential and urban areas soon became sites of disease and poverty stricken slums.  It was this that sparked early urban planners into action in attempts to drastically imrpove the image of cities and increase standards of living through the Garden and City Beautiful movements.

The key to the Garden City movement was to eliminate congestion and keep large areas of open country side accessible. In Ebenezer Howards original plan of the Garden City, it would consist of 6000 acres, with a township of 1000 acres surrounded by a greenbelt of 5000 acres, which would be able so support a total population of 32 000. Designing a city that would draw people away from the dirty slums seen in the early 1900's of London would also include several municipal services and infrastructure, this included amentities, parks, public gardens and asylums.  Although this seems like an exceptional idea to improve health and living standards in urban areas, the plan was never implemented to the scale that Howard would have hoped, but it was still an improvement nonetheless.

Theories and plans such as the Garden City movement have since been adopted into modernist planning, with Canberra being a good example of a Garden City. Although despite the evolution of cars I believe that Canberra still maintains its position as a Garden City. Through the suburbs of Belconnen, Bruce and Woden public parks, walkways and houses lined with trees still greet people as they go about there day to day life. Creating a peaceful atmosphere that allows people to enjoy the lifestyle of a largely populated urban area whilst still being placed in a rural setting.

So what will the next 100 years of planning bring to us? I hope it is something similar to what we experience in Canberra today with just minor ammendments because of the inevitable progression of technology.

Planning: Art, Science or a combination of the two?

"Imagination is more important then knowledge, for knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand" - Albert Einstein

I thought it would be interesting to begin with the above quote by arguably the worlds most renowned scienctist Albert Einstein as I believe it largely focuses on the reading we had this week " Practitioners and the Art of Planning by Eugenie Birch".

This past week in class we discussed and brainstormed on the arguement about planning as an Art or Science. So which is it? With these two areas covering such an extensive range of different values, opinions and even careers it is extremely difficult to highlight planning as one or the other.

In my opinion whenever I think of any aspect of life that involves Art or an Art, I immediately think of imagination. Imagination is the single aspect that drives any Art form, whether it be painting, sculpting or architecture, the list goes on. Whenever a planner is challenged to create something that has not been done before, they are called upon there own imagination do so, they cannot simply rely on past or current knowledge alone to create something that will be unique and well accepted by society. For example the Islands of the world in Dubai, it took imagination and creativity to inspire a man made island like this to become a reality.

However when dealing with planning issues in towns, cities and countries it is almost compulsory that a planner includes the scientific side of things in order for everything to function properly. Without areas like environmental science, which also include chemistry and physics, econonmics and geography being incorporated into a planners ideas societies would not be able to exist as they do today. Without the infrastructure that planners use through science to provide to communities such as communications, healthcare, transportation and renewable energy then these communities would simply be another nice artform to look at.

So in conclusion, I believe that planning is a complex relationship between Art and Science, with one needing the other in order to be successfull. Imagination through Art must be used in order for planners to keep there work interesting, while science must be incorporated to ensure these imaginitive ideas are able to be kept sustainable and liveable.