Urban futures: planning for city foresight and city visions

2022

Town Planning Review

Self Cite

COVID-19 has had a traumatic effect on both the way people live and work in their everyday lives, and the way places function. The rapid transformation of employment practices, including the necessity to stay at home for lockdown periods, has given rise to increased digitisation and technological use to enable people to continue to work and to remain in contact with friends and colleagues. Digital planning, and the enhancement of digital citizen engagement, has been one area that has started to inform local government’s online activity. This is coincidental to the UK government’s interest in transforming planning into a digital and map-based service. This article examines digital planning activity in English local planning authorities since COVID-19 hit the UK, reporting on two interrelated research studies that analysed statements of community involvement and planners’ perceptions of digital planning activity. The article shows that COVID-19 has certainly accelerated the adoption and deployment of digital planning, but it is an activity that has been developing in local planning incrementally for more than two decades.

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Changes Since the Millenniummentioning

confidence: 99%

COVID-19 and the rise of digital planning: fast and slow adoption of a digital planning system

Wilson

2022

Town Planning Review

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“…Narratives are not new constructs within planning, and the book offers us a useful typology of narratives for us to consider. One type of narrative that has been featured within planning, scenarios, have been employed across nations and cities over many decades to help us think about alternative futures and make political choices (Dixon & Tewdwr-Jones 2021). By focusing on long term futures, scenarios can be a popular way to set out alternative options for places and generate reactions to those options, leading to discussion and trade-offs about desirable or undesirable courses of action.…”

Section: From Meta-narratives To Micro Changementioning

confidence: 99%

Narratives of and in urban change and planning: whose narratives and how authentic?

2022

Fennia

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Lieven Ameel's book The Narrative Turn in Urban Planning offers a critical examination of the role of narratives and story-telling in questions concerning urban planning in future deliberations of urban change. The discussion provides an excellent way to identify, define and construct our understanding about narratives in and of planning, including the construction of a typology for the first time. But narratives of and for planning tend to mask wider meta-narrative issues that will affect how places are shaped and are changed in the future. These drivers of change not only encompass a range of socio-economic and environmental challenges. They will also have profound implications for our use of technology, and for the way our democratic processes operate. Such dramatic changes will impact on the context and form of planning, wherever you are in the world. And we are likely to see greater polarisation in attitudes toward urban and regional change, some of which may not only be proactive, but deeply reactive, subjective and selective. If the narrative turn will become more prominent in planning, we need to be ready for the likely proliferation of disruptive and insurgent narratives that will emerge and reflect the deep-seated vested interests that possess stakes in how and whether places change on their terms.

“…Technology may provide some new systems to help us recognise these challenges and begin to find timely solutions. But equally, it could be argued that there are also limitations of more corporate-driven, technology-centred, smart city interventions in and across cities, especially if they are not as transparent and accessible as traditional forms of urban democracy and are more remote from the citizens themselves (Dixon & Tewdwr-Jones, 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Co-Designing Urban Planning Engagement and Innovation: Using LEGO® to Facilitate Collaboration, Participation and Ideas

Wilson

2022

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There is a growing academic interest in the idea of co-designing methods to achieve urban innovation and urban planning. As we see cities as “living laboratories,” beyond the control of elected city government, there is a momentum to develop and test shared responses to the social, environmental, and economic challenges present in contemporary urbanism. These living laboratories are a function of open innovation or “quadruple helix” actors, drawn from state, business, higher education, and community sectors. However, translating the often-good intention principles of working together through shared and co-designed arrangements in any major urban area is often a significant challenge and a topic neglected to date. This article addresses this gap through the case study of Newcastle City Futures, a university-anchored platform in the northeast of the UK, that sought to co-design collaborative urban research, public engagement, and innovation. Newcastle City Futures created novel working methods centred on participatory games to facilitate shared understanding and joint ideas for new urban innovation projects across established sectors. This article will examine one method that was successful in generating collaboration and participation: “LEGO® mash-ups.” Detailed empirical accounts of the development of the LEGO® mash-up method are used to illustrate attitudes to urban challenges, the fostering of a spirit of open collaboration, and the development of innovative responses through co-design. These are used to support the conceptual argument that the use of the quadruple helix as a form of urban innovation system needs to be accompanied by accessible, workable, and easily interpreted translation methods, such as games, by intermediaries.