Planners between the Chairs: How Planners (Do Not) Adapt to Transformative Practices

Abstract

Even though the turn to practice is widely accepted in the field of urban planning, the practices of planners are empirically largely unexplored. Looking at the daily routines and practices of urban planners thus allows a deeper insight into what planning is, and how planning practices are related to innovation and transformation. To do so, we start from the assumption that behaviour is a constellation of practices, including certain activities, a set of choices and actions, patterns of behaviour or forms of interaction that is organised in a certain space or context by common understandings and rules. By conducting an online survey among planners in medium-sized German cities, we first identified a wide range of planning practices and activities in general. In a second step, we conducted a statistical cluster analysis resulting in six types of planners: (1) the ‘local-specific analysts,’ (2) the ‘experienced generalists,’ (3) the ‘reactive pragmatists,’ (4) the ‘project-oriented planners,’ (5) the ‘compensatory moderators,’ and (6) the ‘innovative designers.’ Each cluster has specific practices and activities, linked to characteristic value-sets, role interpretations and self-perceptions that might help explain the differences with regard to innovation and transformation. From the identified six groups or clusters of planners, only two clusters more or less consequently aim at innovation, experimentation and new approaches. One cluster is dedicated to collaborative practices whereas traditional practices predominate in three clusters at least, mainly because of legal requirements. This is the result of an increasing ‘formalisation’ of land-use planning, making planners focus on technical and formal practices, and, at the same time, lead to the reduced ‘attention’ to and implementation of conceptual approaches or ‘necessary’ transformative practices, including proactive approaches and strategic coordination with regard to sustainable urban development, but also comprising experiments, real labs or social innovations.

Narrowing the Implementation Gap

“…However, these methods did not provide enough detailed information about the needs of the planners for digital tool development. The daily routines of planners can be better understood through empirical research (Othengrafen & Levin-Keitel, 2019). In the next phases, our aim is to complement user research with on-site observation and real-life planning pilots.…”

Reinforcing nature-based solutions through tools providing social-ecological-technological integration

“…Systems knowledge represents a significant barrier in management seeking the integration of technology. Transformative knowledge in turn can exist in local activist groups as innovative and transformative practices are not common amongst planning professionals (see an example from Germany in Othengrafen and Levin-Keitel ( 2019 )).…”

On planning, planning theories, and practices: A critical reflection

“…Its members based their theoretical reflections on empirical observation: case studies, participant observation, and interviews. 27 But they were not really researching planning practices; they saw “planning” practice as a starting point for their own excursions in critical planning theory (Zimmerman 2017 in Othengrafen and Levin-Keitel, 2019: 112). Consequently, the movement divided into theoretical “camps” (Watson, 2002b: 180), some (e.g., Baum, 1983; Forester, 2012; Hoch, 1994; Throgmorton, 1996) identifying with Habermasian communicative rationality, while others (e.g., Flyvberg,1998; Fischler, 2000) were inspired by Foucault.…”

“…A forerunner is Rydin’s (2013) excellent use of ANT to frame her study of environmental planners’ epistemic culture in a case of regulating commercial development. Another is the recent DFG Project that studied planning practices in mid-sized German cities (Levin-Keitel et al, 2019; Othengrafen and Levin-Keitel, 2019). 28 What we can learn from such studies is quite different from what the “practice movement” tells us, and more research like this is needed for relevant (something) planning theories.…”