![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
Decentralization has actively engaged various fields of sociology, economy, and governance in the development of urban regions and territories. As a multifaceted strategy, decentralization contributes to enrich our understanding of national and international forces, power struggles, economic factors, and their impacts on the built environment. To frame the discourse of decentralization on urban development, three institutions of ENSAG Université Grenoble Alpes, Politecnico di Milano, and the Delft University of Technology closely collaborated to organize three conferences in Grenoble, Milan, and Delft, respectively. They called scholarly attention re-thinking of urban and regional planning of the twentieth century through the lens of decentralization’s values and ideologies. These three conferences laid out how decentralization and its evolution engaged with the field of planning, and in turn, affected urban transformation and regional development worldwide. Focusing on the role of decentralization in urban and regional planning, these scholarly events offered an innovative perspective on research on planning history. This report, therefore, reflects upon the discussions took place at these three conferences to outline the diversity of perspectives on decentralization and its role in urban and regional planning in the past, present, and future.
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to the insightful comments and support of Prof. Carola Hein, Prof. Catherine Maumi, and Assistant Prof. Gaia Caramellino. We thank the anonymous reviewers whose comments helped to improve this manuscript.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Elmira Jafari is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology. Her research interests focus on the transmission of visionary urban models to Iran in the mid-twentieth century, and the way that integration and implementation of these urban initiatives transformed Tehran's socio-spatial structure to this day.
Nicole De Togni is a postdoc research fellow at the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies, Politecnico di Milano. Her research addresses the post-war debate about tasks, limits, tools and references of architecture and planning which shaped the concrete reconstruction and expansion of cities, while influencing the urban imaginaries and modelling the role and self-perception of professionals, technicians and bureaucracies.
Notes
1 Settlements, Metropolitan Planning and Management.
2 Hall, “The Centenary of Modern Planning.”
3 See Conn, “Americans against the City”; Vellinga, “The End of Cities.”
4 Conyers, “Decentralization and Development.”
8 Conyers, “Decentralization and Development.”