Introduction: crisis and renewal of contemporary urban planning

Geographica Helvetica, 2025

Crises dominate current political debates. They shift the spaces of possibility for geographical research practice and global theory formation. Our starting point in this forum is the diagnosis of a dual crisis: on the one hand, the epistemological crisis put forth in post-and decolonial scholarship and, on the other hand, the ubiquity of worldly crises-variously described as the pluri-crisis, polycrisis, or socio-ecological crisis. This pervasiveness poses new questions about how the entanglement of these diagnoses operates in the realm of geographical knowledge practice. Clearly, crisis phenomena have always conditioned the production of geographical knowledge. As crises restrict mobility or create precarious working conditions, they have not only shaped the everyday research life of many scholars worldwide, but also defined current knowledge (production) through the absence of certain scholars' voices at international conferences or in international publications. Having patterned global theory formation in this way, crises are firmly embedded in any knowledge canon. This forum discusses the transformation of urban geography in times of multiple crises. In our introductory reflections, we highlight some of the forum contributions' crosscutting insights, weave a common thread through this dialogue, and discuss obstacles to as well as critical resources necessary when rethinking and possibly changing practices of knowledge production.

Town Planning Review , 2020

Global crises such as COVID-19 produce a variety of responses, locally in towns and cities, and nationally from governments. The UK's approach to 'lockdown', 'testing and tracing' and 'social distancing', as well as its financial stimulus to mitigate the effects of the crisis, reflect the political outlook of the prevailing government as well as the particular conditions that make up nation states-people, finances and even its institutions. These different components produce highly uneven paths, and while there is much controversy about the optimal course of action, there is consensus that COVID-19 will have long-term repercussions and impact on many aspects of society, which will necessitate changes to our daily lives for years to come. In business and management, crises invariably produce innovation spikes with disruptive effects that ultimately benefit society. Schumpeter's (1934[AQ1]) work on creative destruction notes 'the gale of destruction during downturns'. While this is certainly the case in business, in which there is a flurry of innovations during a time of much upheaval and contraction, we also argue that this is the case for wider systems of innovation, which we explore here in an urban planning context. Traditionally, urban planning has been viewed as a paradigmatic practice through which land use, service planning, design, architecture, heritage, transport, utilities and even economies are planned for and take place. While there has been some previous recognition of the frailties of urban planning models, which arise from the tension between space and politics (see Gualini, 2015), the rigidities of the system itself, which require more than deregulation (Goodchild, 2010), and the nature of stakeholder cooperation (Simpson and Chapman, 1999), what has been laid bare by COVID-19 is the need for speed and agility. Planning has needed to apply critical thinking, communication and problem solving rapidly to address quickly evolving and complex challenges. One might even argue that current approaches to urban planning, which individually have merit, lack a comprehensive understanding of what is needed in practice and at speed, which has been exposed by the pandemic. We take as the starting point the different characteristics and merits of, e.g., rational-comprehensive , incremental, transactive, communication, advocacy and equity approaches, which cover the broad spectrum of theoretical and practice-based approaches to urban planning currently in operation.

Urban Studies

The meaning of 'urban crisis', and its applications in concrete struggles to govern and contest austerity urbanism, remains under-specified analytically and poorly understood empirically. This paper addresses the lacuna by opening up the concept of urban crisis to critical scrutiny. It begins by exploring how urban 'crisistalk' tends to over-extend the concept in ways that can render it shallow or meaningless. The paper looks secondly at different applications of the terminology of 'crisis', disclosing key framings and problematics. In the spirit of critical urban studies, it focuses, thirdly, on practices of crisis-resistance and crisis-making. The paper concludes by summarizing the six urban crisis framings linked to six urban problematics, in order to inform future studies of austerity urbanism and assist in developing more reflexive approaches to the concept.

Town Planning Review, 2020

Global crises such as COVID-produce a variety of responses, locally in towns and cities, and nationally from governments. The UK's approach to 'lockdown', 'testing and tracing' and 'social distancing', as well as its financial stimulus to mitigate the effects of the crisis, reflect the political outlook of the prevailing government as well as the particular conditions that make up nation states-people, finances and even its institutions. These different components produce highly uneven paths, and while there is much controversy about the optimal course of action, there is consensus that COVID-will have long-term repercussions and impact on many aspects of society, which will necessitate changes to our daily lives for years to come. In business and management, crises invariably produce innovation spikes with disruptive effects that ultimately benefit society. Schumpeter's () work on creative destruction notes 'the gale of destruction during downturns'. While this is certainly the case in business, in which there is a flurry of innovations during a time of much upheaval and contraction , we also argue that this is the case for wider systems of innovation, which we explore here in an urban planning context. Traditionally, urban planning has been viewed as a paradigmatic practice through which land use, service planning, design, architecture, heritage, transport, utilities and even economies are planned for and take place. While there has been some previous recognition of the frailties of urban planning models, which arise from the tension between space and politics (see Gualini,), the rigidities of the system itself, which require more than deregulation (Goodchild,), and the nature of stakeholder cooperation (Simpson and Chapman,), what has been laid bare by COVID-is the need for speed and agility. Planning has needed to apply critical thinking, communication and problem solving rapidly to address quickly evolving and complex challenges. One might even argue that current approaches to urban planning, which individually have merit, lack a comprehensive understanding of what is needed in practice and at speed, which has been exposed by the pandemic. We take as the starting point the different characteristics and merits of, e.g., rational-comprehensive , incremental, transactive, communication, advocacy and equity approaches, which cover the broad spectrum of theoretical and practice-based approaches to urban planning currently in operation.

2014

It is common knowledge that crisis also signifies opportunity and opens spaces for change. When responding to the current economic crisis, is urban planning seizing this opportunity? This article investigates the case of the Swedish city of Malmö and explores its responses to the crisis by looking dialectically at the crisis, municipal planning policy and real-estate capital. In this article, the local state and urban planning are regarded as social relations, with the aim of going beyond traditional formulations that oppose market (neoliberal) and state intervention (Keynesianism) as the main focus for crisis management. Against this background, the article shows that the 2008 crisis was met in Malmö by an active municipality that confirmed the existing visions and tendencies, rather than exploiting the crisis as a moment for changes and transformation. The article seeks to explain this by looking at the social relations that have constituted the urban policies in Malmö for the past two decades.

The importance of understanding the economy of cities unfolds in the academic domain: theoretical physicist Geoffrey West (2011) - ‘I can assure you that we desperately need a serious science of cities to complement the traditional social sciences and economical sciences of cities’. Historian of architecture Wouter Vanstiphout (2013) - ‘Money has become the central critical issue for architecture and planning. How to plan and build when public and private funds have dried up?’. Professor of Anthropology and Geography David Harvey (2012) asks: ‘How can we stop the city being constructed and reconstructed by the power of the developers, financiers and all of those who make profit of speculative housing?’ The selection of quotes by renowned trans-disciplinary academics illustrate that integrative approach towards handling cities has to be developed way further theoretically and practically than it is today. Understanding of global economy, finances and money flows has to receive much more attention by spatial professionals. The main objectives of this paper are to give reason and understanding of the situation, where and how specifically architecture and urbanism fields should (and why) shift after recent financial recession and how they are interconnected with the real estate and financial world. If the roles of architects and planners have to change (Vanstiphout, 2012), then how and in what terms? Roles of main contributors to the city life are examined: how municipalities, governments, private developers, civil society and spatial planners can act in order to help to prevent future economic crises? The literature reviewed includes diversity of researchers from various scientific fields (mostly Urbanism), which include theories and on-going research on socio-economic factors of cities. Chosen bibliography discuss the role of finance, real estate, architecture and planning inside the city processes, as well as analyses urban theories and practices from less successful to more successful. Investigation is exemplified by empirical research. It is concluded that in the coming years the greatest challenge for planners, architects and civil society will need to be to adopt entirely new financial paradigms and specific programs at the same time transcending linear disciplinary knowledge in order to be free of speculation, alienation and exploitation. There is an enormous potential created by the collapse of the old financial systems (Geel, 2012) to create an architecture that could exist on its own terms. Could it exist either through total reuse of existing material resources, maybe new financial currencies and models or simply by exchange of goods without finances? How to avoid decline-oriented planning?

Academia Letters, 2021

Towards a new way of planning the city: Considerations and Perspectives Christian Andrés Quinteros Flores, Independent Researcher Recently in Chile, due to the social and health crises that have occurred in the last two years, new forms of protests and citizen practices have emerged that seek new ways of intervening in territorial spaces by questioning development planners about the application of new theoretical and epistemological perspectives to address urban space (Márquez, Gutiérrez & Inzulza 2019). Increase in the conditions of allegation, demands for greater social integration (Arriagada, 2017), accumulation of citizen sensitivities regarding the care and preservation of the environment, increased questioning of extractivist practices, land seizures (Murphy, 2014), among other situations, they challenge planning instruments and those responsible for them. These demands and, in some cases, innovative forms of collective expression of discomfort, are supported with increasing force from academic spaces, but to a lesser degree from technical or public policy spaces, noting a significant gap between them, which complicates an institutional approach coherent and integral to the urban problem. It does not happen only in Chile. The social crises that have affected Latin America have undoubtedly raised the question of the paradigms and disciplinary assumptions on which development planning and its working methods are based. Indeed, for some there is a global crisis of traditional planning (Miraftab, 2018) that has based its guidelines on rigid and normative positions at the service of the market, which has caused strong real estate development but also deep territorial inequalities and homeless people or that claim access to the territory through illegal seizures. Even Miraftab points out that concepts such as social inclusion or citizen participation are institutionalized concepts that must be rejected by the new insurgent movements. These crises then challenge the ways of doing development planning in its different sectors and forms. In the field of territorial planning, it refers basically to instruments for spatial planning, here the challenge is very important and it translates into epistemological,

2021

This paper is about the necessity of adopting a new approach to urban planning subsequent to the coronavirus crisis. It is argued that this crisis / disaster has brought forward a need to adapt the current planning thought and practice to respond more efficiently to the necessities of such crisis /disasters.

International Planning Studies

This article introduces the special issue 'Planning amid crisis and austerity: in, against and beyond the contemporary juncture'. It starts by acknowledging two limits of the existing body of literature on the planning/crisis/austerity nexus: on the one hand, the excessive reliance on cases at the 'core' of the financial crisis of 2007-2008, with impacts on the understanding of austerity as a response to economic crises; and, on the other, the limited attention given to the impacts of austerity on planning, and their implications for planning practice and research. Based on the contributions in the special issue, the article reflects on some lessons learned: first, the need for a more nuanced understanding of the multiple geographies and temporalities of crisis and austerity; second, the problematic standing of planning practice and research in the face of crisis and austerity; and, third, the potential and limitations of (local) responses and grassroots mobilizations in shaping alternatives. KEYWORDS Spatial planning; austerity politics; geographies of crisis; anti-austerity movements; planning research Crisis and austerity in, against and beyond the contemporary conjuncture Crisis denoted the turning point of a disease, a critical phase in which life or death was at stake and called for an irrevocable decision. (Roitman 2014, 15) Crises are moments of potential change, but the nature of their resolution is not given. It may be that society moves on to another version of the same thing … or to a somewhat transformed version … or relations can be radically transformed. (Hall and Massey 2010, 57)

Review of applied socio-economic research, 2017

Going beyond traditionalist discourses on economic backwardness, uneven demographic growth and cultural secularism, this article proposes an interpretation of Mediterranean urbanities based on place-specific settlement morphology and characteristic socioeconomic traits, including unregulated regional planning, poorly-participated local governance and typical socio-spatial structures. By questioning the (supposedly weak) strategies containing regional disparities and the failed opportunities to promote scenic landscapes and cultural heritage of peri-urban areas, a framework investigating long-term urban dynamics in the Mediterranean was illustrated here and can be generalized to other metropolitan regions with similar morphological and functional traits. The proposed framework is based on the analysis of ecologically-fragile and socially-unstable contexts in view of the persistence of a structural crisis affecting the economic base, the institutions and the governance system. In this...

Urban Research & Practice, 2020

This Special Issue explores new approaches to urban regeneration, and potentially give new meanings to the term itself, as it appears in the context of austerity urbanism. In particular, the aim of this Special Issue is to offer a Southern European perspective of the nexus between the withdrawal of the State from urban governance, and of the new forms of cooperation arising from civil society, thus presenting original research material, and innovative perspectives, for current debates in urban studies.

ZARCH

El auge de los proyectos urbanos estratégicos (PUE) en las últimas décadas del siglo XX se vio favorecido por una serie de factores políticos y económicos, así como consecuencia de las teorías urbanísticas del momento. En estos proyectos europeos, aún con sus lógicas diferencias y especificidades locales, tanto en las formas y estructuras urbanas como en la esfera de las actividades productivas, es posible encontrar unos objetivos, características, estrategias y procesos similares. En muchos casos, los PUE han conseguido gran parte de sus objetivos, aunque también han recibido críticas, sobre todo desde el ámbito académico. La crisis económica y el cambio de paradigmas urbanos, con una mayor conciencia ambiental y de participación pública, hicieron replantearse su idoneidad como instrumento para la intervención a gran escala y la regeneración urbana en áreas centrales, produciéndose un cambio de modelo. El presente artículo realiza una revisión crítica de los PUE, así como su eficie...

Sustainability

The irreversible transition towards urban living entails complex challenges and vulnerabilities for citizens, civic authorities, and the management of global commons. Many cities remain beset by political, infrastructural, social, or economic fragility, with crisis arguably becoming an increasingly present condition of urban life. While acknowledging the intense vulnerabilities that cities can face, this article contends that innovative, flexible, and often ground-breaking policies, practices, and activities designed to manage and overcome fragility can emerge in cities beset by crisis. We argue that a deeper understanding of such practices and the knowledge emerging from contexts of urban crisis may offer important insights to support urban resilience and sustainable development. We outline a simple conceptual representation of the interrelationships between urban crisis and knowledge production, situate this in the context of literature on resilience, sustainability, and crisis, a...

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 2013

This essay calls for a systematic investigation of the financial-economic crisis as a source of new urban governance rationalities across Europe. We propose combining an understanding of neoliberalization as a variegated social phenomenon with a cultural political economy approach sensitive to the discursive dimension of variegation and the evolutionary mechanisms through which discursive variation is translated into geo-institutional differentiation. We illustrate how this theoretical framework may help to analyse the impact of the crisis on urban governmental rationalities. Rather than offering a complete cultural political economy account of the responses of European cities to the financial-economic crisis, we analyse how the crisis and the responses to it have been represented in discourses on urban policies and development by focusing on two discursive sites that are of strategic importance, namely OECD LEED and URBACT. Our preliminary findings suggest a re-assemblage of existing discourses rather than the emergence of a new post-neoliberal urban government rationality. Cities in crisis Cities have been at the heart of the global financial crisis. It has been pointed out, however, that 'more needs to be done to understand the specific role played by the production of urban space in bringing on and lessening the effects of the crisis' (Keil, 2010: 941). The critical academic literature has so far addressed the urban dimension of the crisis from three different angles: (1) the urban roots of the crisis; (2) the crisis as an opportunity for progressive post-neoliberal urban transformations; and (3) the crisis as another wave of the constant restructuring of urban neoliberalization. Already in early analyses of the global financial crisis, authors have pointed to the urban nature of the crisis, linking it to the geographically uneven financialization of the urbanization process (Rutland, 2010). Various accounts have explained how the subprime mortgage crisis was in fact symptomatic of a neoliberal urban accumulation system, often based on deregulation of financial and land markets and planning systems, financialization and speculative property development, and state incentives encouraging homeownership and overbuilding (see e.g. García, 2010; Rolnik, 2013, this issue). Other authors have pointed out that the crisis is an opportunity to challenge the excesses of the prevalent urban growth model. Now that the limits of some of the current This essay is part of ongoing research funded by the Leverhulme Trust (grant number F10/1010 A) under the title 'Towards a Postneoliberal Urban Deal' with colleagues

2005

How do cities plan for the unplanned? Do cities plan for recovery from every possible sudden shock? How does one prepare a plan for the recovery after a tragedy, like the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York? The book discovers the systematic features that contribute to the success of planning institutions. In cities filled with uncertainty and complexity, planning institutions effectively tackle unexpected and sudden change by relying on the old and the familiar, rather than the new and the innovative. The author argues that planning programs institutions were successful because they were bureaucratic, and relied on standardized routines, rigorous sets of established regimes, familiar programs, and institutionalized hierarchies. Also contrary to popular perception, neither the leaders at the top of the institutions nor those workers at the grassroots level were the most important in the implementation of such routines. The key actors were middle managers, because they knew the institutional structures inside out, what the routines were and how to use them, and were successful go-betweens between national governments and grassroots community groups. Case studies from Mexico City, Los Angeles and New York provide a deeper understanding of urban planning processes. The case studies reveal that systematic institutional analysis helps us understand what works in planning, and why. They also demonstrate the manner in which institutional routines serve as powerful and effective tools for addressing novel situations.