Post on 21-Mar-2017
Participation in Planning and Public Policy Conference – University of Aveiro, February 23rd 2017
Planning as a Trading Zone
Alessandro BalducciDepartment of Architecture and Urban Studies
Alessandro Balducci
• Land use planning and its limits
• What we learned looking at different decision making models from political science
• The rational model and Planning as Technical rationality
• Bounded political rationality and the opening towards participatory planning
• Different historical forms of participatory planning
• Facing a growing complexity the “garbage can” decision making model
• Planning and “trading zone”
• The need to develop different forms of interaction and participation for different planning problems
Outline
Alessandro Balducci
• Planning is a young discipline the aim is to control the spatial organisation of the human society
• the first chair in urban planning: Liverpool 1909
• For a very long time it has been based upon some form of land-use planning
• Even if in Europe there have been many different roots and traditions
Setting the scene
Alessandro Balducci
Planning tradition Countries
Regional Economic- Centralist France
Compreehensive integrated - Federalist Belgium, Germany, Switzerland
Comprehensive integrated -Municipalist Netherlands, Finland, Norway, Sweeden
Land-Use Management UK
Urbanism Grece, Italy, Portugal, Spain
Eastern “transitional” Poland, Check Rep, Bulgaria, etc.
Planning Traditions
Gualini, 2004
Alessandro Balducci
Land use planning
Land-use planning is concerned with the location, intensity, form, amount, and harmonization of land development required for the various space-using functions: housing, industry, recreation, transport, education, nature, agriculture, cultural activities
The assumption was that there was a general consensus about the goals of planning and that even with different approaches solutions were not uncertain
Alessandro Balducci
Land use planning
This heroic period lasted until when planning had to cope with expansion and development
When problems started to change planning solutions proved to be ineffective and even agreement about goals was problematic
This became very clear in the 1980s under the attack of neo-liberal policies (Tatcher/Regan) but it was already clear in theory since the 1960s
Alessandro Balducci
Land-use planning , even if necessary, is static, extremely detailed, passive, based upon analysis, comprehensive, and is typically based upon a rational comprehensive model.
Everything must be decided at once, in advance, before the transformation, and every change must follow all the same procedure adopted for the formation and approval of the plan.
It is un-flexible, not open to change, it is limited to the municipal boundaries, it is inward looking.
Land use planning and its limits
Alessandro Balducci
Emerging demands challenging the capacity of land use planning
Urban regenerationRegional urbanisationInfrastructures and major projectsShrinking citiesRe-vitalising economyUrban competitionAttraction of investments, urban marketingUrban sustainabilityUrban qualityMega EventsUrban social problemsPP Partnerships
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Karen Christensen,
Coping with Uncertaintyin Planning, 1985
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• What we have been discovering is that these problems had been common problems for many public policies and that already there had been a process of “translation” in the past
• Translations have always been important especially from political science about the roots of rationality
Translations
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The Rational Model
Guided by problems well defined, preferences clearly understandable, alternatives possible to enumerate, capacity of calculation and choices:
Two conditions:
– complete information and
– unitary isolated actors
Planning as technical rationality
Alessandro Balducci
• The rational model has long been at the basis of an idea of planning as land use planning capable to change the society through a planning activity, giving the opportunity of an equitable and rational use of space, being able to attack spatial injustice, to solve emerging urban problems through a rational and democratic process of design.
• It has been the basis of the Technical Rationality
Planning and technical rationality
Alessandro Balducci
• Herbert Simon (already in 1940) and Charles Lindblom(1959) attacked the two conditions of impracticability of the rational model– The first is the always incomplete information– The second the impossibility to identify a unitary
decision maker
• Translations have been quite disruptive here for the rational paradigm of planning on which land use planning was based
Towards bounded political rationality
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• Melvin Webber as a key figure in the process of translation both from political science to planning and from the US to Europe
• He has been in direct contact with Lindblom
• He conceived the idea of planning as a process rather than an act of design
• “Dilemmas in a general Theory of Planning” written with Horst Rittel planning problems are “wicked problems”
Towards reflective and participatory practices
Alessandro Balducci
1. There is no definitive formulation of a wicked problem
2. Wicked problems have no stopping rule
3. Solutions to wicked problems are not true-or-false, but good-or-bad
4. There is no immediate and no ultimate test of a solution to a wicked problem
5. Every solution to a wicked problem is a "one-shot operation"; because there is no opportunity to learn by trial-and-error, every attempt counts significantly
6. Wicked problems do not have an enumerable (or an exhaustively describable) set of potential solutions, nor is there a well-described set of permissible operations that may be incorporated into the plan
7. Every wicked problem is essentially unique
8. Every wicked problem can be considered to be a symptom of another problem
9. The existence of a discrepancy representing a wicked problem can be explained in numerous ways. The choice of explanation determines the nature of the problem's resolution
10. The planner has no right to be wrong
“Wicked” planning problems
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This period of reflection and re-thinking of the foundation of planning has been very important
to question the technical rationality approach
to consider uncertainty as constitutive
to consider conflict as endemic
to open up towards advocacy and participatory planning
Planning as reflective and participatory practice
What the user wantedAs installed at the user's site
As proposed by the project sponsor As specified in the project request
As produced by the programmers
As designed by the senior analyst
Largo Barracche prima del Pic Urban di Napoli nel 1986
2001
2001
2003
2004
Alessandro Balducci
Scientific vs Ordinary and interactive Knowledge
Lindblom and Cohen (1979):
professional social inquiry and ordinary knowledge
scientific analysis and interaction as alternative means to understand and solve social problems
in complex situations professional social inquiry and scientific analysis can operate only as a support for ordinary knowledge and interaction
Participation cycles (P. Fareri) ‘70: urban social movements
‘80: NIMBY
‘90: participatory planning
2000: self organisation
direction ideology relation with the political
system
what we learn
+
demand
to do
to stop doing _
_
selectiveexclusive
instrumental
the output?
experts are not always right
consensus is relevant
methodology is relevant
to do without asking
? ?
Participatory tools
(1) Public meetings(2) Public happenings(3) ‘Planning for Real’(4) workshop(5) Focus Group(5) Brainstorming(6) Scenario writing(7) Charrette(8) Visit to other cases(9) Participatory survey(10) Direct observation/shadowing(11) Prticipant observation(12) Lcal labs(14) Incremental construction of things(15) Exhibitions(16) Local events(17) Town Meeting(18) Open Space Technology
www.peplenandparticipation.net
Alessandro Balducci
Advantages:• The value of participation in providing qualitative and
detailed information for the planning process• The value of involving directly affected citizens in the
search for good solutions to urban problems (probing)
Risks:• To do participation but not what has been planned• To apply the wrong tools (bargaining vs experimentation)• To be suffocated by the strength of building• Intractable conflictual wicked problems
The most important advantages and the possible limits of participatory planning
Alessandro Balducci
March Olsen and Cohen 1978The decision "is a collection of choices looking for problems, issues and feelings looking for decision situations in which they might be aired, solutions looking for issues to which they might be the answer, and decision makers looking for work".
4 ambiguities1. Actors goals are unstable2. Actors participation is fluid and inconstant3. Limited opportunities to decide4. There is not a search for solutions but “garbage can”
Facing a Growing Complexity: the“garbage can model”
Alessandro Balducci
There has been the work of the “planning and complexity” group of Aesop
The work of Jean Hillier, de Roo, at al.
Theory of “assemblages” (Latour, Beauregard, Sassen)
The new book of Amin and Thrift “Seeing like a City” in which they emphasize the growing importance of the urban space as an aggregate of human and non human decision makes in which technologies are playing a growing role
No direct translation of the “garbage can” model
Model Who decides
How decides Structure Planning Translation
Rational Unitary subject
Instititionally competent
Problem solving
optimization
Central coordination
Technical Rationality
Bounded rationality
Organisation
Instititionally competent
Problem setting
satisficing
Central coordination
Reflectivepractice
Incrementalism Set of actors with interests
Disjointedincrementalism
consensus
Partisan mutual
adjustment
Participatoryplanning
Garbage can actants Casual matching
problems-solutions
casuality
?
Decision Making Models and Planning Translations
POLITICAL AMBIGUITY
SMALL
POLITICAL AMBIGUITY
GREAT
TECHNICAL UNCERTAINTY
SMALL
Rational approach
Technical Rationality
Political rationality
Incremental model
Participation for Bargaining
TECHNICAL UNCERTAINTY
GREAT
Bounded rationality model
Reflective practice (Schon)
Participation for Experimentation
Wicked problems
– Rittel & Webber 1973
Garbage can model
Planning problems(applying Christensen 1985)
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If conflict is endemic and uncertainty constitutive, in situations of extreme complexity we need to interpret the situations according to these dimensions in order to device innovative planning initiatives
Alessandro Balducci
Introduced by Peter Galison (1997, Image and Logic. A Material Culture of Microphysics) to explain innovations in science.
Studying the way in which paradigm shifts and disruptive innovations had historically happened he discovered that this was not because different groups of scientist agreed about the need to change or innovate but rather because groups with completely different values and objectives were forced to work together and simplifying their jargon have been able to create an environment of understanding – a trading zone- that allowed the innovation to happen
“Trading zone” and Boundary Objects
Alessandro Balducci
Galison shows through empirical observation of how innovations in science occurred historically – ranging from physics to nanotechnologies – how these give rise to concrete spaces or conceptual spaces where scientists belonging to different disciplinary fields with completely different paradigms and values are forced to find simplified and intermediate languages to be able to work together.
It is from this essential communication, which requires partial, contingent agreements, that innovations are born.
A platform where highly elaborate and complicated issues can be transformed into “thin descriptions” for the purposes of exchanging information – in a certain locality.
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Analogy to anthropological linguistics studies of pidgin and creole languages
Related to ’boundary object’ concept (Star & Griesemer1989) but more dynamic.
Trading Zone and Boundary objects
Alessandro Balducci
“Boundary object is an analytic concept of those scientific objects which both inhabit several intersecting social worlds and satisfy the informational requirements of each of them.
Boundary objects are objects which are both plastic enough to adapt to local needs and the constraints of the several parties employing them, yet robust enough to maintain a common identity across sites. They are weakly structured in common use, and become strongly structured in individual-site use. These objects may be abstract or concrete.
They have different meanings in different social worlds but their structure is common enough to more than one world to make them recognizable, a means of translation. The creation and management of boundary objects is a key process in developing and maintaining coherence across intersecting social worlds.”
- Star & Griesemer 1989, 393
Boundary Objects
Alessandro Balducci
SPONSOR(Alexander):
Commitment to conservation and educational philanthropy
TRAPPERS:Monetary pay-offs, hunting information
UNIVERSITYADMINISTRATION:
Prestige, national-class status,
externalfunding
RESEARCHERS (Grinnell): Extention to the theory of evolution – The evolution of the environment
COLLECTORS:Preservation of
California’s fauna for future generations
BOUNDARYOBJECTS:
•Standardized forms•Idealized maps
•Coincident(geographical)
boundaries•Repositories
Boundary objects in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Sociology, 1907-39
-> Boundary objects enablethe coordination of differentstakeholders’ activitieswithout the requirement of shared objectives
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Example: the Pedemontana Highway and the Greenway
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Pedemontana and the greenway
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What the Trading Zone concept adds to our reflection on interactive participatory planning?
It tells us that there are situations of extreme uncertainty in which rather than trying to organise the process to conquer a consensus about future initiatives it is better to play in the process searching for boundary objects, partial agreements even in persisting disagreement about objectives and values.
Participatory Planning and “Trading zone”
Alessandro Balducci
What are the consequences?
• never blaming other actors for not understanding• never delay the action if it is possible • never hide your position as a planner in the conflict• never conceive conflict mediation as a single process of
coordination in a unified arena• always try to make your position understandable to other
actors and lay people• always look intensely for partial agreements• always be open to divert your planned path • always try to see if it is possible to change a pidgin in creole
Participatory Planning and “Trading zone”
Alessandro Balducci
For a long period planning has been mainly land use planning
Facing the limits of this approach challenged by the growing complexity of society we started to look at other disciplines to translate concept that could orient our action
Decision making models of political science have been very influential
We discovered that technical rationality is applicable only in limited situation
That we need different forms of actors involvement either in the form of organised participation or in the form of searching for trading zones or boundary objects
Concluding
POLITICAL AMBIGUITY
SMALL
POLITICAL AMBIGUITY
GREAT
TECHNICAL UNCERTAINTY
SMALL
Rational approach
Technical Rationality
Political rationality
Incremental model
Participation for Bargaining
TECHNICAL UNCERTAINTY
GREAT
Bounded rationality model
Reflective practice (Schon)
Participation for Experimentation
Wicked problems
– Rittel & Webber 1973Garbage can modelInteraction for the creation of a Trading Zone
Planning problems(applying Christensen 1985)
Alessandro Balducci