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Summary articles Dilemmas in Infrastructure Planning
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Dilemmas of planning: Intervention, regulation, and investmentSavini, F., Majoor, S. & Salet, W. (2015).
In planning there are two ends of the spectrum that form a paradox. Cities are self evolving
and activities are controlled.
- Together they are area development
- They are completely logical in isolation but only apparently inconsistent when
juxtaposed (naast elkaar)
Dilemma's in the three policy sectors
It is not possible, or even desirable, to oversimplify the paradoxical nature of
planning practice → however we can try to make the language easier.
The three choices policy makers have to deal with in policy sectors:
- The capacity to establish territorially bordered areas of intervention in order to target
specific interventions.
- The capacity to control the “rules of the game” that govern a certain policy
implementation, binding individual action.
- The capacity to mobilize financial resources to achieve determined output and
promote specific trends.
Spatial planning entails these dimensions and it exists as a practice of organizing locational,
legal, and economic resources across space and time
Time and space dilemma/ intervention dilemma
- Spatial planning is first a practice of intervention as it intrinsically depends on a
definition of spaces and times of action within the plan-making process
- Time and space are still often geometrically defined and objectified, conceived as
“containers” of social action.
- using time and space only as tools of selection and implementation
- What we see today is that the space–time variables of specific interventions are (a
priori) fixed as a condition for interventions, while they could be the object of
participatory processes. Fixing boundaries is constitutively exclusionary
, - Planning is per definition an action that entails a link between a present situation and
a desired one (Campbell, 2012). This is why deconstructed and communicative views
on space and time cannot be realistically considered as prescriptive patterns of
action
- Problem with opening up conceptions of space is that it fails to consider the need to
establish frameworks of reference to enable collective action
- Yet, these frames often inhibit collective action. Despite the different examples, the
intervention dilemma thus stems from the fact that (a) if planning pursues an open
view of space and time in an intervention, it is unlikely to impact on wider urban and
regional dynamics, and (b) if it defines space and time in an intervention, it becomes
selective and thus excludes unpredicted possibilities. The risk posed by openness is
planning becoming an endless understanding of spatial problems and relations
without actual impact.
- Our argument is that the problem lies in the way open and closed notions of space
and time are actually encapsulated, combined, and linked with each other in the
planning process. Planners face an intervention dilemma whenever they need to
choose when and where to intervene in cities.
Regulation dilemma
- The regulation dilemma stems from the simultaneous objectives of planning practice
to open spaces for self-management while limiting opportunist action through specific
regulatory frameworks.
- On the one hand, planning is based on generic norms that condition, in general and
durable ways, the autonomous performances of governmental and civic actors
- On the other hand, planning is often regulated with detailed norms and instructions
that aim to specify action towards a specific output.
- Legal regulation consists of material norms and procedural norms
- “Material norms” refers to the use of substantive norms to manage, mitigate,
and defend against the potential conflict between different claims on
space → tend to be against creative urban change
- Procedural norms: these norms are geared to orient and stabilize
potentially complex and fragmented processes of decision making
to increase the legitimacy or representativeness of planning
processes → giving the same problem
- in practice, they have tended to become highly standardized and
overlapped with, rather than substituted for, more stringent legal
norms governing land use in specific areas
- The regulation dilemma lies in the paradoxical evidence that spatial planning exists
as a combination of two different components: legal certainty to avoid undesirable
outputs and to define desirable usages of land, and, on the other hand, the need to
provide grounds for unplanned innovation.
The ability to condition and enable spontaneous processes of spatial change and to
stimulate practices with unpredictable results is imperative. Yet, how can this be ensured
without relying on the same regulatory tools that have restricted self-regulation in a first
place?
,Investment dilemma
- these projects are driven by what can be defined as a supply-oriented attitude
towards urban development.
- Supply-led urban development is focused on increasing land values, an approach
oriented to the production of urban spaces that encourage a programmed social and
economic condition in the city.
- Financialized supply-led urban development has turned into a constitutive component
of city-regional planning based on the redistribution of the gains of certain projects
into other areas (as well as city incomes)
- Projects start with a debts for cities and private investors later the money
will be returned → Along this logic, both land-use planning and strategic
planning are instrumental in managing the prices of land, manipulating
earnings, and strategically governing the urban land market to control
both public and private investment returns
- The investment dilemma entails the tension between supply- and demand-led
development logics, and it relates to particular understandings of two notions of city-
regional policy making: risk and income. Supply-led models have been based on a
quantified, linear, and generally negative perception of risk
- The models combine high risk investments with low risk investments projects to
make it more equal
- The problem with a quantified notion of risk and income is that the real-estate supply
chain works as far as it can ensure a permanent inflow of city income with low public
and private risk over time.
- The investment dilemma in planning stems from the need to cope with the problems
of a pure supply-led approach by achieving more demand-responsive plans, but
without sacrificing the capacity of developers and investors to generate revenue
streams that could sustain other projects.
Navigating dilemma’s
- In the practice of spatial policy making, planners are confronted with the task of
achieving a pragmatic compromise between their need to control urban change and
the contemporary imperative of embracing self-organization.
- This does not uniquely affect land-use planning, but it addresses major issues in the
articulation between project realization, strategic planning at a larger scale, and long-
term urban development policies.
- Planning is still instrumentally conceived as a practice that can restore and reboot
sleeping projects by adapting instruments and design strategies. Instead, projects
might need more fluid processes of discussion over key objectives.
- Planning will always deal with perspectives of certainty. In our view, analyzing
concepts of space and time, material and procedural norms, and income and risk is a
conceptual task that can make practice more aware of its limits (and potentials) than
the normative mission to revolutionize current practice. (--> minder aannames, meer
zekerheid)
Conclusion
- First, innovation in planning practice can be enhanced by a better understanding of a
set of fundamental dilemmas.
, - Whatever the context, our main is that the relationship between the two poles of each
dilemma should be central in thinking and decision making: the combination of
planning tools that entail close definitions of space and time (e.g. zoning and land-
use plans) with more open and less defined practices; the articulation of the legal
infrastructure in a way that certain space for civic initiative is not inhibited; and the
definition of plans whose financial sustainability is not dependent on long-term
programming..
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