P
lanning, at its best, has always been driven by an impulse to improve, to better, to do (more) good, to serve well-being in all contexts. At its core it is a linking
endeavour—linking appropriate knowledge and understanding with desired actions or good intentions. Planning as we know it—and especially in its current professional form—was born in modernity; mature professions and rational planning are possibly among the strongest markers of modernity. Planning has certainly aided socio-cultural evolution, but not without its biases and predilections. It has had a space fixation; it has privileged the application of the sciences (over the application of the arts and the humanities); it has focused on the physical, espe- cially land and its use, or the environmental; there has been a strong statutory bias (privileging the status quo); and it has lacked a design sensibility. Its linking, synthesizing, integrating essence often seems to have been missed in the heat of action. Place-making could provide a critical “course-correction” for planning, by design.
Place can be considered to incorporate qualities 30
essential to meeting basic and not-so-basic human needs; it is in a sense inseparable from being human. Yet place has too often, too easily been dehumanized as simply an “it”, as an objective—often spatial— identifier. What is made of place in such a reductionist context is necessarily limited, and limiting, in terms of planning; at best it might mark a progressive modern planning—but one that only goes so far. It is testimony to the value of directly exploring a more expansive perspective on place, as anything but a mere “it”, as centrally including consideration of the actual making of place, in all its dynamics, as a fruitful manifestation of a more explicitly integral approach—as the integra- tion of “It” and “We” with the “I” of each place maker, of agents in communion. What, then, makes great planning? What makes
great places? How might both be achieved? Is there a formula that we can follow? Could it be as simple as “planning”, multiplied by “design”, divided into “com- munity”: p×d/c=gp²? (Great Places; Great Planning). Can planners work this out, so that their work is an ongo- ing solving of this problem-cum-equation—planners as great place makers? How does this role-casting feel? Does it appeal? Is it at least intriguing?
This article explores a rethinking of planning, as
place-making, as the next step in the evolution of planning—taking it to a higher plane, transcending while including the fundamentals. I begin with a con- sideration of the role of design, then look at the place of place (especially vis-a-vis space), as key parts of the shift to planning as place-making.
> The Role of Design: How might planning better integrate design, while retaining its basis in commu- nity? Where are the success stories? What is the formula for success? Could they have something to do with people and planners co-designing space- place transformation?
> The Place of Place: (vis-à-vis Space):Have we as planners had too much of a space fixation (have we effectively been “lost in space”), and too little of a place disposition (might we become “found in place”)? Can we stretch ourselves across both, to be better agents of the transformation of space to place? What is the case for re-branding planning as place-making, as being in the great place-making business? What is the role of design in such planning? Is this (planning+design) a more natural pairing, when place and place-making are front and center?
p l an c ana da | summe r · étÉ 201 1
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