Platforms of Change and Interstitial Spaces

Marking a new decade of life is always a momentous occasion. It draws celebration. Friends and family gather. Speeches are made. A toast is shared. Here I offer my toast to what has been a tremendous twenty years of published scholarship, critical debate and practice-based reflection for Planning Theory and Practice. In this Editorial I will add to the discussion across the editorials for volume 20 providing further reflection on a couple of challenges and new prospects for planning theory and practice as the Journal enters its third decade of life.

One of the objectives of this Journal is to engage deeply with the practice and theory nexus. In seeking to ‘combine intellectual rigour with practical impact’, the Journal has provided an important platform for theory and practice to interact and provide a place for critical reflection. A great example of this can be seen in an Interface piece in volume 17 on the research and practice exchange (Hurley et al., 2016). Planning Theory and Practice continues to provide an important platform and, no doubt, will continue to do so. But as our profession confronts new and increasingly complex social, spatial and political challenges, not to mention, climate change, a propulsion to ‘do something’ and “to act in the names of … .the environment, sustainability, resilience, climate change, social justice” as Swyngedouw writes (2018, p. 167), should be met with reflection. There is a need to consider why some planning interventions, when applied across different contexts, cities and spaces have fallen short in their many efforts to create more equitable, inclusive and climate just cities, regions and places, both for human and non-human flourishment.

It might be that we are at another critical juncture in planning to take on this wider social and political project of change (Sorensen, 2018). But at this juncture change is being mediated by the promise of new digital platforms. Materially, this juncture presents itself in the form of AirBnb, Uber, Lyft and PropTech and smart city visions of urban (re)development as seen, for instance, in Toronto’s Sidewalk Labs project. It is hard not to ponder how a form of planning predicated on socially, environmentally just and democratically inclusive methods of practice might assert itself, not just in reaction to the various digital disruptions now taking place, but as a guiding and influential force where counter strategic imaginaries and productive interventions might be forged.

Over successive Interfaces, including the one appearing in this volume, sustained examination of new digital platforms has cast a light on how these new spaces are shaping our cities and transforming how we live in them. Produced through the intricately woven power configurations that are global in reach but immensely local in their impact, these platforms are all around us, and are being created in the interstitial spaces where information-communication technology, political-economic forces, and social spatial relations are finding new ways to interact. The result is transformation in cities, and in the processes and practices shaping those cities. What role for planning theory and practice to rigorously critique and impact this world?

There is a long tradition in planning to be reflective in and of our practice. Paradoxically we are in a time when deep reflection must also be met with new imaginaries about how we might do impact. Swyngedouw (2018) joins Mimi Sheller (2018) and many others who are seeking to present their own alternatives and pathways towards more collective and impactful ways to transform cities. For planning theorists, practitioners and community activities, a need to think about what new spaces and indeed, platforms in planning might be necessary to take on this project must also be combined with what Heather Campbell (2018) described as a process that overcomes ‘disconnection’ to form more and deeper ‘connections’.

There has been a consistent call across pieces published in Planning Theory and Practice to create our own new platforms in planning where new spaces can provide the basis – a foundation – for such connections. Beyond the journal we can look to papers such as the ones presented in this volume where planners, community activists and educators are working through the vexing challenges faced in their respective neighborhoods, cities and regions by working in and across these platforms forging ever new connections and nurturing them over time.

One particularly interesting example of platform creation is explored in the paper by Tomer Dekel, Avinoam Meir and Nurit Alfasi. The paper examines a trans-local civic network as an alternative planning praxis. Bringing together planners, politicians, activists and organisations from local and international arenas to develop an alternative plan for the Bedouin settlements in the outer-rings of Be’er Sheva metropolis in Israel, the production of this formal network provided a platform to a broader counter-political effort for that region. The second research paper takes the idea of platform creation and extends it by examining a problem that has captured the interest of many planning scholars, which is the integration of policy. In this paper, Mari Kagstrom and Sylvia Dovlén cast a light onto the efforts of practitioners to translate policy into their everyday practice, arguing for greater cross-sectoral collaboration in planning and exploration into how different actors think and act in the policy-transformation process.

The third paper in this issue is by Julie T. Miao and it takes us to China. In arguing that urban planning is the product of contextual particularities shaped through what she describes as an “amalgam of path dependencies and everyday contestations” mediated by context, governance and planning practice, her examination of Chengdu’s successive City Master Plans brings to light the highly pragmatic nature of china’s urban development. We then turn to a paper by Miguel L. Navarro-Ligero, Julio A. Soria-Lara and Luis Miguel Vlenzuela-Montes. Applying a heuristic framework to their exploration of uncertainty, the authors develop a framework to interpret how planning actors make sense of perception and situations of uncertainty in the rapidly changing landscape of transport planning research. Then, taking the case of strategic master planning in Lahti, Finland, the final paper by Raine Mantysalo, Johanna Tuomisaari, Kaisa Granqvist and Vesa Kanninen argues that the theorising of strategic spatial planning has narrowed the distinctions between strategic spatial planning and traditional planning, preventing crucial insights to be gained particularly from instances where strategic-ness has been incorporated into traditional planning frameworks.

In this issue we then turn to the Interface piece entitled Planning, Land and Housing in the Digital Data Revolution, which includes contributions from Libby Porter, Desiree Fields, Ani Landau-Ward, Dallas Rogers, Jathan Sadowski, Sophia Maalsen, Rob Kitchin, Oliver Dawkins, Gareth Young and Lisa K. Bates. Their examination of the digital platforms and the complex and varied ways they are transforming how we live in cities, renders visible new platforms, particularly the co-emergence of PropTech and Big Data and the impact they are having on land and housing markets. Collectively, the authors do this whilst considering the wider impacts of PropTech and digital platforms for planning governance and systems. As we move through this digital and data revolution, this Interface presents as important reading for planning theorists and practitioners coming to grips with the impacts of digitization for the way data is accessed and used in the planning of future cities.

There are four pieces appearing in the Debates and Reflections section of this issue. Beginning with a piece from Kenneth Reardon and Antonio Raciti, this paper provides a historical account of the early work in advocacy planning before arguing that the development of a progressive national urban agenda could guide responses to the needs of people struggling in the midwestern states of the US. We then move from the US to the UK with a piece by Mick Lennon examining the ‘hollowing out’ and ‘filling in’ of local government in Ireland. This piece considers the scale and consequences of the streamlining of service delivery to achieve greater efficiency, and argues that this hollowing out has been met by parallel processes of ‘filling-in’, with the creation of platforms for public engagement where participation and empowerment can then be ‘contained’. Citing the debates on post-politics, Lennon laments that these contained spaces are highly stage-managed and post-political and that greater efforts will be required to resist what is a continued de-democratisation of planning.

Finally, this issue presents a double review of Andreas Faludi’s latest book The Poverty of Territorialism. The first review by Eduardo Medeiros provides a thoughtful overview of the book, before reflecting on some of the book’s most poignant contributions, including Faludi’s provocation of imagining alternatives to territorialism signalling the advantages of a transnational form of planning. The second review is from Rodrigo V. Cardoso. This metaphor-driven review engages with the spirit of Faludi’s book in its effort to convey the assets as well as the risks of de-territorialised relations.

Taken together, the contributions in this issue remind us that planning happens during the interactions and in the interstitial spaces of time, place, geography, territory, actor networks and ways of knowing. It might be through the mediation of those intersections and the creation of platforms for exchange and connection that planning practice and theory might continue to find innovative and thoughtful ways to have ongoing strategic impact in this ever-changing world.