Tuesday, 28 August 2012

Art, Science and Planning

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The Reading: “Practitioners and the Art of Planning”, Eugenie Ladner Birch, 2001
This week’s reading focussed on the Art of Planning and to a lesser extent its relationship with science. I was teamed with Alex and we presented our thoughts on the reading to the class. It was a pretty dry history of planning and the emergence of art as a key principle within the profession. Science was also mentioned within the reading, and we asked everyone what they associated with both art and science.
The answers were pretty simple; art makes people think of creativity, galleries, emotion and self expression while science makes people think of laboratories, test tubes and generally sterile environments.
Art vs Science (lol
Birch described the art of planning within the context of design, craft and presentation.
Design refers to the physicality of planning; the urban structure and “arrangement of land and buildings to the creation of visions for ideal communities” (p. 407). There are some liberties within this aspect of the art of planning but it is generally more regimented than other aspects.
The craft aspect refers to the planning techniques. This is probably the most scientific of three aspects and involves an “understanding of legal, quantitative, social science [and] geographic” (p. 407) elements. Ultimately it involves the academics behind the planning. Without this background knowledge and education, a planner lacks the context of planning as a profession.
Presentation is the final aspect in the art of planning. This is the skill of the planner, not only artistic but administrative, judgement and their ability to think critically. It is the presentation aspect that represents the multi-disciplinary nature of planning. The nature of planning is such that planners must play different roles within a single occupation.
Ultimately, planning can never be mutually exclusive. While the traditionally artistic principles of imagination, aesthetics and social inclusion are imperative to successful planning, it also relies on the formulaic approach of science. There must be a method and an investigation. Planners must know what is desired, by the community, by the financiers. Freedom of expression is one thing, but without boundaries of science, even the best plans might be completely inefficient and unsatisfactory. This is often why utopias fail. Planning cannot succeed on ideology alone. To use a simile I referred to in my presentation, a planner is like a dancer. While emotional expression and theatrics make a great performance, there must be a foundation of technical skill on which to base that creativity. 
Source: http://www.nedlands.wa.gov.au/
Thus our knowledge of planning theory must inform our decisions as future planners. Planners, like the urban planning profession, must adapt to new challenges. Without an opportunity for self reflection there is no time to learn from past mistakes.

Thursday, 23 August 2012

To Plan or Not to Plan


The Reading: Arguments for and Against Planning, Richard E. Klostermann 1985
Source: chinadaily.com.cn
So as I hoped, planning theory has involved the other disciples that we study in our very broad degree. All of a sudden our knowledge from social policy or economics is being referenced as influential for the development of urban planning theory.
I think the Klostermann’s reading can be summarised to state that planning is necessary in the case of failure. This is analysed from various perspectives. Economically speaking, where the market failed to provide for itself, government intervention is required. From a pluralist perspective, the individual concerns of the multiple smaller groups mean they fail to provide a consistent set of planning parameters that satisfy the whole community. Again planners must intervene to reach a solution.
The economic arguments for planning argued by Klostermann are important because, despite what some people may argue, I do believe the world revolves around money. It provides funding for projects and ensures participation within society. As we also discussed in class, urban planning can be considered a form of social policy or government intervention. However, such policy would only be effective if it reflected the wants and needs of the community (or market). If the market could provide adequate planning and development organically, there would be no need for additional planning intervention. However, cities that are unplanned are often, you guessed it, unplanned and unstructured. This represents market failure which requires government intervention. In this case, the intervention comes in the form a structured urban planning.
The idea, from the Marxist perspective, that “fundamental social improvements can result only from the revolutionary activity of labour” (p 94) is also very intriguing. Should planners be considered visionaries and revolutionaries? Should planners aim to create widespread social reform through redevelopment of urban places or is it in the public interest to move slowly? Promoting large scale changes has provided solutions in the past. Suburbia developed in response to massive population growth, but urban sprawl has proved isolating and unsustainable. Maybe it will be the contemporary ideas of urban consolidation and infilling which provide the planning reforms that reshape the modern built environment.

Monday, 20 August 2012

Fifty Shades of Planning

So I'm not really sure how to go about these blogs but here is my first attempt.


So this past week we had a reading discussing fifty theses on urban planning ("Fifty Theses  on Urban Planning and Urban Planners" Raphael Fischler). The essay outlined the how complicated it is to define the process of urban planning and even pin-point an inception period for when urban planning become an independent discipline. The various theses ranged from basic descriptions about the industry to paradoxes that occur when trying to define what urban planning is. The reading even contained theses on the type of people urban planners are and what are their roles.

I found the paradoxical arguments the most interesting, as they outline the struggles that urban planning faces between the conceptual ideas and the real world application of those ideas. Especially true for me where the problems of the reign of freedom urban planners can have compared with the constraint of past plans put in place for a city. This is certainly an aspect of the Walter Burley Griffin Plan which Canberrans struggle with. How much of Griffin's ideals can be abandoned and disregarded as too old fashioned and restrictive. Obviously Canberra hopes to maintain its heritage, especially coming up to the Centenary in 2013, but Canberra must also move forward. As the capital city it needs to create a modern and metropolitan identity, one that can be an example to the rest of Australia, if not the world. This requires prudent and systematic planning which must incorporate community feedback and interaction.

Urban planning must be "marriage between science and utopia". A plan must compromise between the vision of the planners and the needs of the community. This will always be a struggle but it is worthwhile in order to achieve a city structure that reflects careful consideration and effort as well as providing a positive sense of space that is liveable and connected.

Monday, 13 August 2012

Hello strangers!

Welcome to my blog. I hope it doesn't take me too long to figure everything out, so I can have a super planning blog up and running as soon as possible :)

Happy planning, 

Will