Introduction: crisis and renewal of contemporary urban planning

ABSTRACT

Since 2008, cities in the Western world have been under stress due to pressures that have been labelled as the 'crisis' and its 'consequences'. Despite the fact that several years have passed, international planning debates have not fully highlighted what we have learned from this challenging phase. How and to what extent have these stresses and changes affected planning activities and knowledge? How are current reforms of national and local planning systems influenced by the crisis beyond its discursive appearance? How can we cultivate critical approaches and how can we pragmatically translate critical knowledge into practice during and after a time of crisis? This article outlines the broad questions that were addressed, under different perspectives, by the authors in the theme issue. The article serves as an introduction by, first, briefly reviewing relevant positions in the planning and urban studies debates and explaining the relationships between urban planning and the crisis; second, by presenting the papers in the issue and highlighting planners’ roles, responsibilities and relevance in the crisis and in subsequent phases; and third, by calling for closer attention to the current signals of crisis in planning theory and practice, as well as by considering new responses derived from research.

KEYWORDS:

• Economic crisis
• planning theory
• planning system
• urban policy
• urban planning

Acknowledgements

The core ideas for this theme issue were discussed in the seminar series ‘Crisis and Renewal of Contemporary Urban Planning’ which was organized by Stefano Moroni and myself in early 2014, on the occasion of the inaugural year of the Ph.D. Programme in Urban Planning, Design and Policy at the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies of the Politecnico di Milano. I would like to thank Jill Diane Friedman for her linguistic advice. An earlier version of this paper was commented by Manuel Aalbers, Edwin Buitelaar, Stefano Moroni, Ugo Rossi, Tore Sager, Matti Siemiatycki. Usual caveat applies.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.