Questioning Planning, Connecting Places and Times: Introduction to the Special Issue

One might suspect that this is a simplistic account of the functioning of the planning process: planners, after all, might be creative in their work; take risks (or not); simply rely on their professional expertise, but also use it in a strategic way to negotiate their role in the policy process; display a number of alternative, ‘non-planning strategies’; follow a private, particularistic or political agenda (rather than planning handbooks) in doing their job; cheat, lie, manipulate their clients, colleagues or the stakeholders in general. In sum, what the author presents as a dispute between two irreconcilable logics – between the rational, positivistic planner and the hysteric residents – might be part of a broader interaction between a ‘planneractor’ and all the other participants to the planning process.

Why do planners do what planners do?Are they moved by positivistic agendas set in stone in their manuals?Are they moved by a normative will to improve the 'world', the 'dream of planning' (Bertolini, 2009)?May their dreams blind them to the specificities of a situation?Or are they 'normal' human beings doing their job better or worse according to their particular interests, their idiosyncrasies, even the fashion or mood of the day?These are recurring questions that planning theory has been delving into for a few decades. 3Through this issue of plaNext, we want to suggest that it is high time to look back and discuss the many ideas and 'buzzwords' that have been used and misused, created and interpreted in, and by, planning theory.
Ignacio Castillo Ulloa's article is a good example of why it is high time to do so.The article robustly summarises and tests the way Lacan's ideas can contribute to planning theory and practice, Lacan being an inspiration for several planning theorists lately (see, among others, Hillier, 2002;Bond, 2011;Gunder, 2016).But Castillo Ulloa's final words in his paper, looked at critically, highlight how the main practical/theoretical conclusions stemming from a study of Lacan are not very different from those reached by other scholars through other meansfor instance Flyvbjerg's phronesis (2004) or Mouffe's agonistic pluralism (2000).Castillo Ulloa's article, then, is both useful in providing some conclusions to the discussion on Lacan in planning, while opening the question of the way different theoretical ideas and buzzwords are being used, re-used and misused.This is just an example of the way the articles in this issue are capable of reaching conclusions and opening questions about the current state of planning research and theory.The articles show how new generations of planning researchers search rich and diverse literatures for conceptual inspiration to help in understanding diverse empirical situations.But because of this diversity, new discoveries may echo findings known to past planning scholars, and new conceptual vocabularies create frameworks with which to clothe ideas previously known, or developing in a similar way through diverse strands of intellectual endeavour.How do all these contributions enrich and deepen the wide field of planning scholarship?So we suggest this issue is an invitation to discussion and consolidation in our field, rather than a conclusion.
In what follows, we start by way of summarising 'how we got here', from the AESOP YA conference from which this special issue stems to the topics and ideas -the 'differences' and 'connections' sought by the conferencethat inspires us to question planning theory and research nowadays.Then, we comment on the issue's articles, with the aim of emphasising the new paths they follow and, at the same time, how they resonate with old ideas.In the brief concluding remarks, we question how a 'new generation of planners' lives the present, in between the will to shape the future and the recurrence of past ideas.

Differences and connections: questioning planning theory-research
This special issue of plaNext presents a selection of articles from the 9 th AESOP YA conference, "Differences and Connections: Beyond Universal Theories in Planning, Urban, and Heritage Studies", held in March 2015 in Palermo, Italy (see Caruso et al., 2016, for the conference report).The conference was designed to bring forward two perspectives: first, the need to fostering multi-and inter-disciplinary dialogues between planning theory and research, critical urban theories, human and cultural geography, critical heritage studies, and beyond; and, second, the idea that renewed efforts for comparative studies can help deparochialising urban theories too often based on the study of a few (global) cities, without giving up the construction of theoretical and horizontal understandings and explanations (cf.Robinson, 2016).
The papers, presented by around 40 early-career researchers and five keynote speakers (Patsy Healey, Jean Hillier, Cornelius Holtorf, Laura Saija and Leonie Sandercock) raised discussions around many contemporary issues and problems of urbanisation and government/governance thereof.The six articles selected for this special issue are well in line with the spirit sought for the conference; and employ a set of different approaches to question the aforementioned perspectives in the current practice, theory and research of planning.Underlying all the articles is a set of issues, brought forward by recent debates in critical and post-colonially inspired studies, that calls for a re-thinking of the differences between, and connections among, different places and times.
The starting point of many recent discussions in planning and urban studies is the influence of post-colonial studies (see, among others, Slater, 1992;Chakrabarty, 2000;Santos, 2010).Post-colonialism has urged scholars and planners to question the limits of universal theories (Roy, 2009;Tulumello, 2015), and emphasise the peculiarities of places and times.However, for a praxis like planning, which is shaped at the intersection of theory and action, relentless post-colonialism can entail the risk of falling into the trap of particularism and localismconsider, for instance, how the 'West'/'South' divide often tends to be transformed from a normative idea of diffusion of developmental strategies to a rigid epistemological divide for explanatory theories.The discussion on the way ideas and theories 'travel' and are 'translated' from place to place, and from language to language (see Healey, 2012;Baptista, 2013;Fall, Minca, 2013;Minca, 2016), can provide the post-colonial project with instruments to reconstruct after, and together with, the deconstruction of critique.In brief, we see two dimensions for this project.First, the research of ways and instruments 'to enrich the material available to those seeking to learn about experiences elsewhere which could help them work out whether and how to make use of them' (Healey, 2012, 196).This should be done using rich descriptions and critical comparison rather than simplified 'best practices', which often conceal hegemonic purposes.And, second, an exploration at the intersection between the 'planetary' scale of production of knowledge (cf.Pease, 2004) and the way ideas produced outside of global circles can be 'trans-lated', circulate and generate impact (or not) (cf.Minca, 2016).This issue contributes to such a project discussing a variety of topics, such as the contribution by Lacan to planning theory (Castillo Ulloa, this volume), collaborative governance (Holvandus and Leetma, this volume) and the upgrading of informal settlements (Fontana, this volume).From this perspective, we see of special interest the empirical exploration of places that have long been at the 'borderlands' of urban theory (Sandercock, 1995;Baptista, 2013), that is, they are not only under-studied but, more importantly, not clearly understandable through traditional labels such as 'the West' or 'Global South' and, at the same time, undergoing processes of turbulent changelike Central America (Castillo Ulloa, this volume), Eastern Europe (Holvandus and Leetma, this volume) or the republics born from the implosion of the former Soviet Union (Smirnova, this volume).
The efforts to de-provincialise urban and planning studies have gone hand in hand with critiques of, and advancements beyond, the technical and rational approaches to planning, and particularly with the attention to dynamics of power and conflict in urban development and public policy (see, among others, Young, 1990;Hillier, 2002;Flyvbjerg, 2004;McClymont, 2011;Metzger et al., 2015).This issue contributes to such a literature putting forward methodological and conceptual instruments.The contributions by Castillo Ulloa (this volume) and Doyle (this volume) focus on the 'discourse'the discourse of planning and discourses that shape planning practice, respectively.Levin-Keitel (this volume) draws from psychology to study the positioning of actors in governance networks.Questioning differences and connections, in our opinion, offers a privileged viewpoint to debate 'why do planners do what they do'why they adopt similar approaches in different places, how they build on past ideas or 'brand-new' ones, what can we learn from places distant from the mainstream 'core' of epistemological production.In the next section, we discuss how the articles in this issue question differences and connections, highlighting the way novel ideas often resonate with 'older' ones.

Novelties and resonances: contents of the issue
Ignacio Castillo Ulloa's article stimulates us to think through the 'theory-practice-research gap', drawing on Lacan's 'four discourses'.Lacan's main contribution to planning theory seems to be the possibility that the emphasis on the 'discourses', and on the discursive strategies employed by planners and other actors, can help overcome the divide between collaborative and agonistic approaches to planning theory (see Pløger, 2004;Innes and Booher, 2010;Bond, 2011).Castillo Ulloa brings us to a 'remote corner of a tropical country', Costa Rica, and draws on Lacan to expose the positivistic agenda of certain planning paradigms and their 'master' discourse -implicitly showing also the way 'Western' paradigms and tools of the trade have been imported, without much adaptation, in many other places.The article is concluded not by setting out any 'new axiom' for planning, but with the suggestion that 'it is in planners' self-criticismwhich is the mode of planning criticalhysterical research here developedthat storytelling, Lacanian theory and phronetic planning research could come across, encouraging thereby a more pragmatic and dynamic co-constitution of planning theory, research and practice'.There are links here with earlier ideas drawn from encounters between conceptual articulations and practical realities, which drew on pragmatist and social learning ideas (Friedmann, 1973;Forester, 1993).
Cora Fontana presents Hernando de Soto's proposals about 'land-titling' in informal settlements, one of the rare cases in which ideas from the 'South' have been able to travel and assume universal reach in mainstream discussions.One may suggest that this happened because de Soto's theories conform pretty well to developmental agendas of global institutions such as the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund: for instance, the hope that the registration of property rights to slum dwellers will allow citizens to become small entrepreneurs conforms to the 'empowerment' agenda long carried out by global institutions and NGOs (see Miraftab, 2004).Fontana concludes that 'the reason that de Soto became so famous and acclaimed […] could be that The Mystery of Capital is a sort of apologia for capitalism and a paean to Western economy'; but adds that de Soto 'deserves credit for triggering international debate on land titling and on informal housing policies and regulation in general, and for achieving all this by putting forth a different point of view that remarked on the importance of a reliable and open legal system'.In other words, despite adhering to Western political economy, de Soto's idea had a role in the overcoming of the traditional, rationalistic approach to informal settlements' regenerationthat is, land-use zoning, demolition and reconstruction.Her article reminds us how deeply the tools of Western-inspired planning practice are grounded in particular systems of land and property rights, an issue which is also raised by those studying at the tension between indigenous people's conception of land and such systems (Lane and Hibberd, 2005;Sandercock, 2004;Meir, 2009;Barry and Porter 2012).
Johanna Holvandus and Kadri Leetmaa study the role of neighbourhood associations in the building of 'collaborative' spatial planning and governance in Tallinn, Estonia.In doing so, the article provides a picture of the way ideas and practices, such as 'governance' and 'collaborative planning', have travelled to contexts in fast transformation under burgeoning neoliberalism.They set their account within a rich portrayal of a dynamically evolving urban governance landscape in a post-socialist political economy.Once again, the practices of formal planning systems are challenged by citizen's organisations and perceptions.The key interest of the paper is the extent and nature of the restructuring of boundaries between state, market and civil society in a post-communist era, as reflected in the growth of neighbourhood associations.Interestingly, a practice which has not been ultimately able to assume a dominant role for practice in Western Europe (see Hillier, 2002;Gunder, 2003) seems to have achieved a hegemonic (discursive?)role elsewhere4 .Among their findings, Holvandus and Leetma show how governance practices based on the free organisation and participation of citizens can hardly become representative of all the groups, interests and values on stake; while already privileged districts are the ones more capable of putting forward claims and requests.This echoes experiences elsewhere (Alfasi, 2003;Falanga, 2014;Davoudi and Madanipor, 2015).The article therefore provides a critique of the concept itself of 'governance' -and supports those who advocate improved 'government' supported by wide practices of 'governance' instead (Ferrão, 2015), that is, practices of civil society mobilisation and engagement co-evolve with those of the state.
Meike Levin-Keitel also struggles with the challenge of positioning different actors in complex governance landscapes.She draws on a recent revival of practice-oriented perspectives to planning theory -'there is no planning, only planning practices' as recently stated by Alexander ( 2016) -, which characterise planning as a process of decision-making in the context of uncertainty and complexity.If planning is, above everything else, practice, the 'methods' (broadly defined) become the central issues.This article presents us with a methodology imported from psychology, business and organisational sciences, that of systemic constellations, and its utility in spatial planning.Systemic constellations 'focus on the complex interplay of different elements in order to come to a better understanding of the whole system' and can be used for a plurality of goals, such as visualizing questions of power or cultural aspects underpinning the planning process, reflecting on alternative scenarios, supporting interviews with experts.The concept of systemic constellation has parallels with ideas of stakeholder mapping and institutional audits (Healey et al., 2003) as well as the kind of analysis encouraged by those interested in governance networks (Sorensen and Torfing, 2007) and Actor-Network Theory (Latour, 2005).Compared to this last, Levin-Keitel's concept seems to provide an instrument that is looser in its application, but without giving up the exploration of power relations and actors' agency (cf.Healey, 2012, 194).She also uses the concept of 'system' to refer both to the 'problem' being addressed and the collection of governance actors, calling up a longstanding metaphor and planning tool in the planning field.Levin-Keitel ends up (incidentally?) raising a crucial question when she admits that the method of constellation planning is very likely to be considered not 'objective enough' (emphasis added) within academic circles.What are the theoretical consequences of the idea of a method useful to planning practice and useless in planning research (which, indeed, is about planning practice, cf.Healey, 1991)?First, it problematizes the label 'planners' for its capacity to encompass all those individuals and groups in the 'community of planning inquirers' (cf.Healey, 2012).And, second, it re-opens the very first axiom of the article and brings us to ask what is, then, planning beyond practicefor we do think that planning exists beyond its (extant) practice(s) (cf.Brenner, 2009;Marcuse, 2010).
Aliaksandra Smirnova adopts an historical perspective to question the role of the (changing) political and social context in post-disaster reconstruction.Her case, the city of Minsk in Belarus and its rebuilding after the devastation of World War II, is somehow paradigmatic of a decision to re-build a city 'from scratch' according to a paradigm considered 'ideal' by its advocates.The particular interest of this case is the way ideas central to the Modern Movement (land-use zoning, functionalism, rationalist design…) intersect with the necessity to build a Soviet urbanism, for which the construction of monumental and decorative architecture, as well as the absence of spatial segregation were central.Smirnova highlights some clashes among outputs of the two faces of the 'soviet urban model'for instance the contrast between the monumental architecture in the urban centre and the homogeneous reproduction of standard typologies in the residential districtsand the complex 'construction' of a heritage in a devastated place.Smirnova builds her argument on the copresence of two concepts she considers to be in opposition, the 'rational' and the 'ideological', respectively typical of the (Western) Modern Movement and the Soviet state.But let us wonder for a moment what would happen if we considered the 'ideology' of Modern Movement tooan ideology grounded in illuminist, liberal democratic and capitalist concepts (Young, 1990, 243;Sandercock, 2003).Under such a lens, urban planning practices become a space where ideologies at war can coexist, where, irrespective of the 'evaluation' of the outputs of such a coexistence, the irreconcilable is reconcileda space of dialogue and conflict, after all.Indeed, they continue to co-exist as present generations struggle over what to recognise as 'heritage'.Aoife Doyle's review article focuses on a new concept which has literally flooded into urban and environmental planning discourse in recent years: resilience.She provides a review that raises a dialogue among three fields central to recent theoretical discussions: the adoption of the concept of resilience in urban studies; critical understandings of the urban dimension of the global economic crisis; and new institutionalisms.Specifically, Doyle advocates a combination of resilience and new institutionalist theories.In this proposal, evolutionary resilience theory has the capacity to ground practice in support of the capacity of cities to 'avoid and respond to shock', but risks becoming a discursive cover for neoliberal agendas; while discursive institutionalism theory can uncover the arguments framing those agendas and allow an open discussion of alternative and more democratic ways.This article opens many questions, but remains limited in its capacity to bring answers forward by the absence of empirical work.All in all, Doyle's approach resonates with the idea that neoliberalism should be understood, in its contradictory and paradoxical dimensions, through the connections between the global project and the local implementation of policies (cf.Tulumello, 2016).In this respect, we believe the next necessary step would be that of questioning the multi-scalar dimensions of the concept of urban resilience itself, which, Doyle's review shows, is global in the discourse, but quite local in practice and theorisation, having been generated in a context where neoliberalisation is particularly advanced, the UK.What meanings and relevance has 'resilience' assumed in other contexts, such as Southern Europe, where neoliberalisation is a less advanced, albeit incipient and lately turbulent, process (cf.Baptista, 2013;Le Galés, 2016;Tulumello, 2016)?

In conclusion: the 'planning project', future and past
All the articles of this special issue struggle with the relation of concepts to practices, and with how to set practices in a wider institutional context.All in all, they contribute to the discussion on the travels of planning ideas by providing evidence that planning theories are enriched when, rather than explaining processes of 'evolution' of planning 'paradigms', they put the emphasis on patterns of transformation and conflictual coexistence of change and permanence (Getimis, 2012;Tulumello, 2015).
At the same time, this issue shows a generation of researchers that is interested in the 'project' of planning (cf.Healey, 2010), that is, in finding conceptual, theoretical and methodological paths toward a newly normative (a 'neo-normative'?) planning researchpractice-theory.By means of newly normative we intend, beyond a positivistic understanding of planning as the application of science to public policyas Faludi outlined some time ago (1973)and against the risk of theoretical fragmentation that can stem from particularism and localism, the way these scholars consider planning as present action to shape the future.But, in conclusion, this opens a set of questions about the relation of present efforts to those of the past.
New generation scholars live in a very different conceptual world than the generations who began to build 'planning theory' back in the mid-twentieth centuryin places such as the Anglophone world (cf.Friedmann, 1987;Hillier and Healey, 2008), Southern Europe (cf.Scattoni and Falco, 2011;Ferrão, 2011) or the Netherlands (cf.Faludi, 2000).It is a world of multiple empirical referents from across the globe, and of multiple intellectual strands offering new inspirations.Perhaps it would be helpful now and again re-connect these new intellectual possibilities to the history of ideas in our field, wide and open as it is.We would surely find some recurrent concepts, such as 'system', perhaps used in different ways and with different realities in mind, or that new concepts, such as 'resilience' are similar to older ideas about change and transformation.And we would find that many of our current concerns have a long history, including the meaning and uses of the term 'planning'.Maybe the 'new' is never so new as we think, yet the 'old' is never so persistent as we fear.