Breakout session 2
Topic: History of Develop’t Planning: What are lessons? How has it evolved? What
are the intellectual turns so that now we can say where we should go?
Room C
Attendants: Bish, Michael, Eugine, Diane, Faranak, Sunil, Ofer
Rapporteur: Laura, Mitch
Bish- link b/w schools that offer develop’t planning and what they were
offering. our reason to look back at history as a field is to see did the way we
progress in the field, did we take the rights steps? or what are the lessons we can
draw from looking at the history of development as a field? did we take the right
direction? ppl could argue that you went so national w/ development economics
that not close enough to the city at all. many Amer planners, w/ contrast b/w
community level engagement, you ask Alise, if you say doing community
development, the scale she thought was useful was very different. Ask Shila Patel
now, it’s happening community development. can’t restructure or rebuild these
areas w/o community development. many ppl saying your expertise is in the
community, important to draw lessons from if we did the right thing. what did you
see as the main turning points, as a post WWII phenomena. in urban planning, the
first course i can think of was taught on Puerto Rico, then Lloyd, then U Chicago,
started offering a course. Harvey had work as well. John Friedman. Onder Gundar
Frank. people interested what is happening in these countries. Alliance for
Progress w/ Charles Abrams- major pt b/c worried about cold war. Jon Friedman
left MIT, and first job w/ Ford Foundation in Chile, and Ford Foundation gets
involved w/ develop’t,
asks by Harvy perloff to create school of planning at UCLA.
Question- did we conceptually focus on the right things? what can we learn from
that history. Where did the ideas of what to offer in international come from?
Faranak: Two moves - 1) going from national to level that things are global so we
don’t need to have any rooted knowledge now we are coming back to the ground
(going from national to being everywhere and therefore nowhere and now coming
back to a grounded understanding to theorize and see global) (2) Going from
national planning scale to community level - from national development plans to
neighborhood level now we are trying to go interscalar (and relationship between
these two levels).
Eugine- any interest in thinking about rural-urban continuum? not just think
national, neighborhood, but continuum. are people doing that?
Faranak- Neema looking at secondary, smaller cities
Eugine- I’m thinking about dependencies (ecosystems)
Bish- interesting question, b/c in 19th century, urbanization a problem. John
Friedman offer classes on rural developm’t. issue didn’t’ stick w/ practice, b/c
conceptualization and world of practice not the same. so rural development, in
Cornell w/ agriculture, much more legitimacy to talk about agriculture. if look at
NSF research now, now looking at peri-urban, transformation on the edge, in terms
of employment, land markets, it’s back
Diane: My own reading of this through sociology of development - agriculture it
used to be bread and butter of international development it started falling out
because of the dominance of national scale...agra was consequence of politics of
oligarchy there wasn’t sufficient attention paid to connection between rural and
urban and now when it has come back in it is thought of falling UNDER the domain
of urban but plenty of scope to think about landscape across the environment that
ranges from the city out to what has been considered agricultural land without
necessarily subordinating those changes to urbanization. I think most of the debate
on climate change is about the ecological landscape in which urbanization is
happening. So it has fallen out but question: how do we draw lessons? What was the
things that it wasn’t able to anticipate (international development)? What are the
problems it produced? We aren’t able to look at those environmental landscapes. At
GSD, we have separate program on landscape architecture and that is where the
questions about energy and environment are happening and they are coming to
planning...because they aren’t thinking about institutions/politics in landscape
architecture.
Hooper- infrastructure work now often in landscape arch, b/c captures physical
aspects. Sees this at GSD.
Bish- At MIT “advanced urbanism lab” w/ Alan Berger. does not have the
developing economy.
-first fight was policy planners and economics, then planners vs. designers.
-Can we really do design and economic development?
Tribid- 1. claim that the planning field lost control of the concept of urban. urban
studies taken over into general scholarship. center of urbanism dominated by
architects. focus on develop’t studies should focus back on urban. WB looking at
FAR. 2. AAG conference in LA couple wks ago- Christen Schmit from Zurich- study
on 10 large cities of the world. one of arguments that urban-rural distinction no
longer relevant. don’t know how respond to this argument. In development
argument, talk about political economy, affects of globalization, in my work, better
to look at how globalization affects urban form.
-Lot more emphasis on institutional issues, emphasis on transport,
participation/grassroots, ideas transferred to international context. less emphasis
on the reality of the built environment, and more emphasis on that
social/institutional arrangements.
Diane- re distinction b/w urban and rural. don’t buy if care about political
institutions. in the field, if thinking about institutions that make space, interested in
concepts of space or territory, want to ground in physical space. moving to a
critical understanding to the spaces of development. asking questions about the
territorial scales of development is very important.
Tribid- difficult to ask who is the rural population and who is the urban
population?
Castells 1971 no such thing as urban tried to come up with collective consumption
but didn’t work
In field of planning if you are thinking about institutions that make collective
decisions about space, it may fall in urban/national/rural you want to ground it in
physical space.
Diane- always aware that urban was never defined demographically. do we want to
think about spaces of development through the function? Why did rural-urban
analysis fall out? Diane thinks b/c agriculture became purview of national gov’t.
1970s when we began to legitimize informal settlements and how government does
that the human rights came out of how governments did with unauthorized
settlements
Sunil- the historical trajectory w/ an agricultural studies program. let me step back,
with introduction into the history, one of the mistakes is that don’t reflect on the
history much. interesting that mention tension b/w designers and economic
development planners, b/c not something aware of as a student, and would have
been helpful.
Part of rural development, who is in charge of the rural? In India, clear how they
define rural. Need to go back to institutional structure. Agree that can’t just get rid
of rural, and where they do intersect is in rapidly urbanizing areas, leading to
violence, ppl become rich off their land- needs to be problematized.
tensions- have we given too much space to a neoclassical type of reasoning? What is
the logic of putting human rights in the ID field?
Planning is broader. Show the tensions w/in our field.
Hooper- Interesting to think where students get the intellectual history, if they get
that content. GSD core class, tension b/w hist and theory w/ core class.
Faranak- Good things is seeing resistance. One of the benefits of local/regional back
and forth, is seeing the intervention also comes from below. If not, maybe these
policies from above would have never changed. Danger of a notion of planning of
development from non-territorial is lose that dimension of resistance. Increasingly
coming back to the localities, and how ppl influencing these policies. I see this as a
good turn, and paying attention to how changes in development policies being
initiated from teh ground.
Hooper- Students real hunger for the history. THe history component is very
important, b/c where most likely to bring the ‘developing’ and ‘developed’
together. Need to put the international material together w/ the domestic for the
history. History of practice of international development or planning gaining
interest at GSD
City business people came together 1910s (APA created, IBA) and started the field of
urban planning.
Ofer- in Israel, what is called planning in international development is called
planning in Israel.
Tribid- The domain of practice is broad. And this is good. You cannot define
planning narrowly.
We aren’t the only ones having a dilemma about what we are doing (US, in terms of
planning).
Colonialism: Master planning if we are going to do this in planning, we cannot just
talk about the past but talk about how it has created hybrid land governance
institutions
Hooper- Students aren’t aware of the contextual history w/ knowledge.
Diane- Issue of questioning knowledge not coming above. Tension w/ master
planning matra hiding behind urban design. Colonialism- if underscore history for
development planners today, don’t just think about as an artifact, but about how
part of institutions that exist today in the developing world. Resistance- feeling that
haven’t emphasized the history of resistance enough in the field of developt
planning. Interested in reflections of resistance, ranging from violence, like
squatting, informality, manifestation of resistance. Our field needs to frame as
instances of resistance, few planning depts look at social mov’ts. Important
becomes frames what we are looking at in the developing world now. Don’t call
community developm’t what we talk about w/ SDI/Sheela, but talk about resistance,
b/c respond to differently.
Resistance: The field of development planning hasn’t paid attention to all the
resistance that was going on...we were so happy about putting the state against the
market and capital there might not have been enough emphasis on the resistance.
Theorize and empiricize resistance WITHIN development planning. The problems
we try to solve are often instances of resistance TO planning...e.g. violence, squatting,
property rights are sort of instances of resistance.
Bish- Mobilization literature, out of that came the post-developmental
school. Planners didn’t explain social mov’ts well, so went into another domain.
Faranak- Maybe the links haven’t been clear, that there was something before the
official intervention, and that was oppositional voices. Policy is responding to
something, and often the something doesn’t get enough attention in what we teach
and write. Often just stay w/ policy interventions, and those came b/c something
else happening on teh ground.
Bish- What is interesting is from progressive ideas of opposition to institutions
things in 80s and 90s as local gov’ts asked to do other things.
Diane- there are other ways we can think of everyday resistance, and needs to be
brough back into what has happened over the last 40 years.
Bish- WHy did this negotiation lit come in? B/c of resistance. Need a way to manage
the resistance.
-Conversation of participation very egalitarian mode to get projects done (1980s
90s).
John Friedman - Knowledge to Action: Planning in the Public Domain (six traditions
of planning) - social mobilization is a central idea. Anarchists who never liked the
state were there from the early 20th century.
Lisa Peattie - The Barrio
Williamson - Rational Choice
Tribid- The last few yrs have been the yrs of resistance.
Diane- Good to link resistance to a history, b/c not a new thing.
Bish- Interesting pt about institutions, institutional turn came, institutional theory
explanations on rationality, rational choice. nothing normative in that
explanation. That has been planning’s strength and weakness. For planners,
institutionalism about how organizations respond to problems- organization
theory. Planning stands out from that conversation, and still haven’t been able to
theorize about normative things in a serious way.
What is the trajectory of the intellectual focus on institutions within planning? Is it
just because that is where the money is or is it because of some larger meta-trend?
Diane- discussion of when certain institutions come in and out of planning, b/c
when looking at cities in the developing world, some of the things we are seeing is
mkts coming in. Be reflective which institutions are we giving attention to, b/c
money there to look at private institutions. Why is it changing?
Tribid- Part of shift of new institutional economics start from the WB, b/c realize
that can’t just go to mkt w/o institutions.
Bish- Diff b/w planning and develop’t planning, and diff institutions being
emphasized. Industrial institutions not into planning, but development.
-Our question, is what should be the focus?
Sunil- In Brazil, it’s a massive gov’t effort. Interesting agenda as new space open for
develop’t theory, with role of gov’t intervention in this historical moment.
Faranak- I don’t know if we’ve really dug into how BRICs doing development
differently. I don’t know if they are just replicating or if they are doing something
new.
Brazil reducing inequality w/ land grabbing, vs. India and CHina.
Bish- new critique of development- important role in planning to have critique of
planning in a more grounded way.
Bish: Planning about creating a process of public interest.
Diane: About public interest, not passe, the territorial context of planning.
-What is the domain of planning? Pushing the spatial context. Think about what I’m
doing in international development planning, and what else should I be doing? A
huge problem is jobs that no one has mentioned today. Once we start moving down
to the territorial scale, it’s an open question about how do jobs come back to
creating those spaces. This is where we need economists- need economics who
understand the possibilities of work w/in a spatial scale. People don’t just survive
by having land.
In a post-industrial period, and what that means in the context of the developing
world? Where does jobs fit in?
Faranak- What should we be doing? Inspired by our conversation on jobs and
deindustrialization. Golden opportunity that can bring in students those who think
they are focused on domestic. Issues of deindustrialization, abandoned spaces, one
of places where bring international into transnational.
Tribid- Not sure how much deindustrial experience has yet happened in Global S. In
N, deinstrialization not creating jobs. Real problem. Global S- jobs are being created,
but mainly service jobs or low wage subsistence. Question is who is to blame? part
of larger political econ of developt.