City-Visions: visioning and delivering Scotland's economic future

Abstract

The theme of this paper is the current practice of vision and visioning in land use planning in Scotland. The recent allocation of £90 million as part of the Building Better Cities Growth Fund required Scotland's six principal cities to prepare a city-vision. This was based on the perceived necessity of shared visions in providing a clear framework to guide development. The paper examines the contested concepts of visions and visioning and asks whether the prescriptive approach to the city-visions provides for inspirational or aspirational visions.

Keywords:

• Visions
• visioning
• visionaries
• city-visions
• city regions
• Utopian

Acknowledgement

Deborah Peel wishes to acknowledge the support of the British Academy for their award to attend the Canadian Institute of Planners’ (2004) Moving Minds: Our Urban Challenge conference held in Toronto, where a version of this paper was presented.

Notes

 http://www.scotland.gov.uk/library5/government/pfbs-01.asp.

 http://www.scotland.gov.uk/library5/planning/frcp-00.asp.

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/library4/FCSD/POLUnit/00016092.aspx.