Thinking about complexity and planning

ABSTRACT

This paper proposes to examine the concept of complexity and its relevance for charting the newly emerging mega-conurbations in Asia. From the hyper-complexity of these giant constellations of the urban resulting from their scale, density, speed of development and the multiplicity of centres of governance and power. This paper tries to draw some conclusions for what can be planned and what cannot, and how planning might be organized. The paper is divided into five sections: the views of complex systems by three distinguished social scientists; a brief review of the planning literature on urban complexity; a sketch of the Yangtze Delta as a hyper-complex, pluricentric urban region; a rethinking of spatial planning in the face of urban complexity; and some principles for spatial planning under conditions of hyper-complexity in Asia.

Acknowledgements

This paper has had a long gestation period. I am grateful to several friends and colleagues for their critical responses which helped shape it, particularly André Sorensen whose insightful comments helped me to clarify my ideas and who encouraged me to make this a ‘stand-alone’ paper. Other critical contributions came from Danielle Labbé (Université de Montreal), Tong Ming of Tongji University (Shanghai), and Lisa Bjorkman (Lexington University).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In China, the major distinction between urban and rural land is that all urban land is held in public ownership whereas rural land is held in common by collective villages. Land markets trade only urban leaseholds of state-owned land. Collective land cannot be alienated in principle, though it can be converted to urban land by village incorporation into the city (urban). (Municipal boundaries frequently encompass both urban and rural lands.)

2. The following partial check list may provide some insight into why the governance of complexity is unlikely to be either efficient or effective:

Long delays between an occurrence and its capture by the information system of the local state; the statistical system of the local state is subject to large margins of error and gaps in time series; the statistical system of the local state is blind to all information concerning the so-called informal sector of the economy and related dimensions of household formation and housing, which in some countries/metro-areas may render up to 40 per cent of the urban economy invisible (e.g. in metropolitan Mumbai); different agencies, both public and private, collect different statistical series but fail to share the information they have (silo mentality); although available, raw information is neither well analysed nor understood as regards patterns, trends, and their significance for policy; severe financial constraints limit the local government to what can be accomplished; disinterest on part of critical agencies to collect information that would reveal ‘unpleasant’ truths; government secrecy and censorship hide relevant information from potential actors; widespread disbelief in the accuracy or completeness of the information; countervailing arguments (based on different data sources, interpretations, etc.) may delay relevant action by the local state; political lobbying by powerful private interests may undermine the system’s capacity to govern by withholding information, providing misinformation, blocking initiatives, etc.; widespread corruption throughout the governance and private sectors.

3. According to Patsy Healey (personal communication), these Dutch theorists are building on Jean Hillier’s ground-breaking essay in the Town Planning Review (2011). This essay endeavours to translate the esoteric philosophical writings of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari into the vocabulary of planning, particularly as it is practised in the EU. But Hillier’s efforts at what she calls ‘spatial navigation’ have until now made relatively little foray into North American planning literature and even less so into the work of professional planners. Nevertheless, her basic conclusion regarding strategic planning resonates with my own beliefs when she writes:

 … I see spatial planning as a field of experimentation … based on communication and involvement of actors … . In regarding spatial planning as an experimental practice working with doubt and uncertainty, engaged with adaptation and creation rather than scientistic proof-discovery … I suggest a definition of spatial planning as strategic navigation along the lines of the investigation of ‘virtualities’ unseen in the present; the speculation of what may yet happen; the inquiry into what … we might think or do and how this might influence socially and environmentally just spatial form. (505)

4. The factual basis for these guiding principles will have to be investigated on the ground, in each conurbation and in its specific institutional setting. The situation in the Yangtze conurbation conforms to the Chinese mode of planning, which is not the issue here.

5. As argued in Friedmann’s (1993) prize-winning paper.

6. These suggestions are based in part on experience with regional governance in Metro-Vancouver.

7. Participatory budgeting initially introduced in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre during the 1990s and since adapted widely in a number of countries may provide some suggestions on how such a process may be organized (see Abers 2000; Fung and Wright 2003).