> Planning as Place-making: Can planning and design better combine to make demonstrably greater places? Can we re-make planning together, by mak- ing more of design, by grounding our planning in the making of great places... and, if so, what does this really mean for the way we practice planning?
Could we have some useful conversation around
these questions—perhaps helping our profession shift gears, and even possibly transform itself? It entails reconsidering relationships: the design/planning relationship; the space/place relationship; and the planning/place-making relationship. And an openness to forging new relationships, whereby planners might re-make their planning from the inside out, by shifting the focus of their planning, from outer space to inner place.
THE CONTEXT
What’s in prospect is possibly the next frontier for planning. Though we might take it too easily for granted, the planning most of us practice can mostly be specified as “modern” planning: it is a product of modernity; it serves a modernizing agenda, and strives to be a force for good. However, with its modern bias, it can be blinkered, especially where place is con- cerned; modern planning has preferred to focus on space. Pre-modernity had its minuses but it also had its pluses—some of which revolved around place, and early planning as early place-making. Post-modernity has also come calling, in part drawing place back in to our planning calculus, but post-modern planning has struggled to make headway against the powerful iner- tia represented by modern planning, especially in its statutory form: the legislation, the limitations, the reg- ulations, the administrative systems. The next frontier for planning will ideally transcend, while including, the best aspects of former “plannings”—an integration of the pre-modern, modern and post-modern “pluses”. The underlying exercise may be characterized as
making space for place, construed in terms of not simply its external expression, but simultaneously in terms of its inner manifestation—in individuals personally and in collectives culturally. Place is regarded as an inte- gration of physicality and functionality—on the outside, and community and spirituality on the inside. This is the orienting perspective for reflecting more deeply on what we do and where it’s at. For the pur- poses of this inquiry, planning itself is also being defined broadly as “linking knowledge and action” (John Friedmann) or as “ethical inquiry and action” (Leonie Sandercock). It will help the inquiry process if we can try to “place” these core sentiments at the centre of our own being and doing. In terms of broad strategy, the approach involves contrasting our planning with a potentially close
cousin, one with which we don’t always get along well: design. This will be seen to help enable the projected desirable shift in our underlying focus, i.e., from space to place, with community as the key denominator. This also lays the ground for advocating a new context for planning that we might want to welcome: planning as place-making. For the more entrepreneurial among you, could we
really be in the great place-making business? Could our winning formula be p×d/c=gp²? [Planning multi- plied by Design, divided into Community = gp squared (Great Places and Great Planning)].
THE PLANNING/DESIGN RELATIONSHIP
Fundamentally, whether our planning setting is a city or county, a neighbourhood or a region, there is the potential for it to be about not simply a single objective entity (a clinical or technical “it”) but many great places, that reflect and represent the place of planning by design with community in mind. Design can be conceived as the integration of perception, intention and making. It is a fundamental human faculty; it is what has got us here, as a species. Design is what will keep us evolving, sooner than later, if we let it, if we work with it, if it becomes essentially co-design (or we-design). And this can be the arena for planning to contribute to the further development of design— beyond “I-design”. Design entails creative problem-solving through
valuing the many possibilities that are present in our world. Design—like planning—is grounded in enabling, bettering, improving, enhancing, raising, broadening, opening up… making a positive difference, in service of community. Planning needs to come to better terms with design, if it is to keep evolving as a service to the good society, and on many levels. Planning needs to better “team” with design, to be a greater force in the art of great place-making. In the process it can bring out a broader, more inclusive view of design: beyond style, beyond visual containers, beyond what is physically built or materially rendered.
31
COHOS EVAMY + HOTSON BAKKER BONIFACE HADEN + MOLE WHITE ASSOCIATES + OFFICE FOR URBANISM ARE NOW KNOWN AS
We are planners, urban designers, architects, engineers and interior designers who collaborate with you to create extraordinary results.
Toronto | Calgary | Edmonton | Vancouver
www.designdialog.ca
p l an c ana da | summe r · étÉ 201 1
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56