The purpose of planning is to support a city’s efforts to notice, adjust and organize to ensure the city is able to integrate the needs of its citizens with its context. As we build cities, our work is to ensure that we create a habitat for ourselves in which we will thrive.
This second chapter of Nest City explores where the impulse to plan comes from as our cities become more complex. The first four posts that form the second chapter of Next City build on my experience in St. John’s, Newfoundland, where Mayor Dennis O’Keefe invites visitors to a planning conference to explore the ‘unplanned’ city. My exploring continued after my visit there. The first four posts that make this chapter are:
- Is an unplanned city unplanned? Part 1 Life conditions – the times we live in, the geographic place, the challenges we face and the social circumstances – shape the purpose of a city.
- Is an unplanned city unplanned? Part 2 The shape of a city is determined by its geography, its purpose, the activities within and in connection to other cities – it’s life conditions.
- Is an unplanned city unplanned? Part 3 As life conditions change, cities shift and adjust. The purpose of the city evolves. Planning is an activity that supports our collective work to organize ourselves to ensure our habitat – our cities – serve us well.
- Is an unplanned city unplanned? Part 4 Along with evolving purposes of the city come corresponding evolving modes of organizing. One of the new ways of organizing was the planning profession.
The subsequent posts tease out the complexity of planning now – it is not a simple linear, mechanical process:
- City – a dance of voice and values The evolving city purposes and modes of organizing are part of an evolving value system. There are four integral ‘voices’ in the city: city managers, city builders, civil society and citizens. These values and voices are in the mix as we organize ourselves to thrive in cities.
- Integrating voices and values Many purposes, modes of organizing and purposes occur all at once, creating a messy and uncertain world. No one entity has control of the city. Planners do not have a recipe – let alone all the ingredients.
- Recalibrating the purpose of planning As an activity, planning has to hold a destination in mind, allow for learning and adjustment along the way, and recognize that we do not know exactly where we are going to end up.
- A new era of planning cities Planning now is about have a clear, collective sense of intention and purpose to drive our work. Cities are growing and we are growing with them. The opportunity is to grow purposefully.
Sources –
Beck, Don Edward and Cowan, Christopher C., Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership, and Change, Blackwell Publishing Ltd., Oxford (2006), particularly pages 52-56.
Hamilton, Marilyn, Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive, New Society Publishers Inc., Gabriola Island (2008)
Sanders, Beth, “From the High Water Mark to the Back of the Fish Flakes: The Evolutionary Purpose of Cities,” Vol 51, No. 4, p 26-31, Plan Canada. Print publication of the Canadian Institute of Planners.