No abstract

Drawing upon the smart experiences of 'world class' cities in N. America, Canada and Europe, this special issue draws together five papers from leading international experts on the transition from intelligent to smart cities. Together they do what Hollands ('Will the real smart city stand up?' City 12(3), 302-320) has recently asked of smart cities and provide the definitional components, critical insights and institutional means by which to get beyond the all-too-often self-congratulatory tone cities across the world strike when claiming to be smart.

Master planning has undergone a revival in recent years. However, significant demographic and social changes are also occuring amid constraints resulting from the current economic stagnation, reduced public spending and the drive to respond to environmental imperatives. These conditions challenge the feasibility of applying master planning practices as they were conceived of in the past. The traditional view was that master planning was a design-led activity concerned with the architectural form of buildings, spaces and infrastructures. This is outdated and inadequate for coordinating the plural processes of developing sustainable places that satisfy social, functional, economic and environmental requirements as well as realising visually pleasing townscapes. Master planning requires both a business planning component, without which there is no delivery, and a governance component, without which the physical strategy has no legitimacy. A more adaptive master planning approach is required. The paper proposes how a flexible master planning process can provide a basis of a suitable approach for the development of sustainable settlements.

This paper explores the extent to which UK planning system reforms introduced during austerity affected the expectations, purposes and outcomes for and of planning. The perspectives of UK-wide planning system stakeholders were sought and collected through an extensive questionnaire. The findings indicate that though most reforms were welcomed in principle, the anticipated benefits had not been delivered. Instead, a loss of experienced staff and capacity, and the favouring of a neoliberal ideology that inadvertently constrained the purposes and delivery of the reforms, affecting in turn, planning's evolving raison d’être, occurred. With frequent mentioning of austerity as a needed tool for financial management, given the current national economic conditions e.g., in the UK (living cost crisis, post covid need for economic growth, public funding of facilities), the relevance of this paper is in warning about the risks towards planning reforms, that must now be more precautionary, and more evidence driven, during austerity.

No abstract