Work Package 1
Governance and Communication
 Identification of current issues and dilemma in
communicating urban growth and green amongst the
involved stakeholders
 Creating a framework for learning lessons from past
experiences
 Discussing communication situations and tools for
interaction
By
: Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden
Lisbeth Birgersson
Björn Malbert
Knut Strömberg
Date : March 15th, 2001
CONTENTS
PREFACE
SUMMARY
1
WP1 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................ 4
2
COMMUNICATING URBAN GROWTH AND GREEN ................................................ 6
2.1
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT............................................................................... 6
2.1.1 SUSTAINABLE URBAN DEVELOPMENT ................................................................. 6
2.1.2 URBAN GREEN STRUCTURE .................................................................................. 6
2.2
GREEN STRUCTURE PLANNING ............................................................................. 7
2.2.1 IDENTIFICATION, DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS OF URBAN GREEN
STRUCTURE, ITS VARIOUS ELEMENTS AND FUNCTIONS .............................................. 7
2.2.2 TRANSLATION AND COMMUNICATION OF GREEN STRUCTURE ISSUES INTO
URBAN PLANNING STRATEGIES AND RECOMMENDATIONS (THE GREEN
STRUCTURE PLAN) ............................................................................................................. 8
2.2.3 IMPLEMENTATION OF GREEN SECTOR STRATEGIES AND
RECOMMENDATIONS IN THE URBAN DEVELOPMENT PROCESS .................................. 8
2.2.4 FROM PLANS TO IMPLEMENTATION...................................................................... 9
2.3
A MAP OF COMMUNICATION SITUATIONS .......................................................... 10
2.3.1 RESEARCHERS AND OTHER EXPERTS ............................................................... 12
2.3.2 PLANNERS .............................................................................................................. 12
2.3.3 INTEREST GROUPS ................................................................................................ 12
2.3.4 USERS ..................................................................................................................... 12
2.3.5 DEVELOPERS ......................................................................................................... 13
2.3.6 POLITICIANS ........................................................................................................... 13
2.3.7 PROCESSES OF COMMUNICATION IN A PROJECT OVER TIME ........................ 13
2.4
TOOLS IN ACTION AND FOR INTERACTION ........................................................ 14
2.4.1 TOOLS IN ACTION .................................................................................................. 14
2.4.2 TOOLS FOR INTERACTION .................................................................................... 15
3
THE COMMUNICATIVE TURN IN PLANNING THEORY AND PRACTICE ............. 17
Greenscom: Communicating Urban Growth and Green
Workpackage 1 – Governance and Communication
3.1
DISCOURSES IN PLANNING THEORY................................................................... 17
3.1.1 TENTATIVE ASSUMPTIONS ................................................................................... 19
3.2
SOME EXPERIENCE FROM PRACTICE ................................................................. 20
3.2.1 SKETCHING AS A TOOL FOR STIMULATING COMMUNICATION ....................... 20
3.2.2 COMMUNICATIVE PROCESSES AND SOCIAL EXCLUSION ................................ 21
3.2.3 COMMUNICATION AND POWER RELATIONS ...................................................... 22
3.2.4 PLANNING TOOLS AND DISTORTION OF COMMUNICATION ............................. 24
3.2.5 QUALITY AND ETHICS IN COMMUNICATIVE PLANNING .................................... 25
3.3
ASSUMPTIONS AND GENERAL CRITERIA ........................................................... 26
3.3.1 INTENTIONS AND EXPECTED EFFECTS OF PARTICIPATION ............................ 27
3.3.2 INTENTIONS AND FORMS FOR COMMUNICATIVE PROCESSES ....................... 27
3.3.3 CONTEXT-RELATED CRITERIA FOR THE CATEGORISATION OF
COMMUNICATION SITUATIONS ........................................................................................ 28
3.3.4 QUALITY-RELATED CRITERIA FOR THE ASSESSMENT OF COMMUNICATIVE
APPROACHES AND COMMUNICATION TOOLS .............................................................. 29
4
INNOVATIVE APPROACHES TOWARDS COMMUNICATIVE PLANNING ............ 30
4.1
PROCESS-ORIENTED SUBSTANTIVE APPROACH .............................................. 30
4.2
PROCESS-ORIENTED PROCEDURAL APPROACH .............................................. 31
4.3
LOCAL ACTION APPROACH .................................................................................. 32
4.4
TOWARDS REFLEXIVE PRACTICE ........................................................................ 33
5
THE PERSPECTIVE OF PLACE AND SPACE ........................................................ 36
5.1
PLACE AND SPACE ................................................................................................ 36
5.1.1 INTERFACES IN PLACE AND SPACE .................................................................... 37
5.2
TOOLS IN TRANSITION .......................................................................................... 38
5.2.1 REACH AND RANGE............................................................................................... 38
6
CONCLUSIONS AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS .................................................... 40
7
REFERENCES ......................................................................................................... 42
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PREFACE
This WP1 report on Governance and Communication is produced by the Chalmers team
within the framework of the Greenscom project and is mainly based on literature studies and
research seminars. It is the result of a collective work of the three authors with Björn Malbert
as the co-ordinator and editor. Together with the WP2 report on Governance and Policy
Instruments this report gives the theoretical frames for the preceding case studies of the
Greenscom project according to the case study manual presented in the WP3 report.
The participation of the Chalmers team in the Greenscom project is made possible by the
support from the national research programme ‘The Sustainable City’ managed by the
Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning
(earlier the Swedish Council for Building Research). The Greenscom project is directly linked
to the sub-programme ‘Sustainable Urban Development and Urban Structures’ that is the
part of the national research programme performed at Chalmers Architecture.
The Conference on “Communication in Urban Planning”, in Gothenburg 1999, gave the work
of the WP1 report valuable points of departure. This conference was organised by the
European Research Network ‘Urban Density and Green Structure’, Chalmers Architecture
and Gothenburg City in co-operation. The early ideas of the Greenscom project were
originally born in this research network and we would like to acknowledge the long-term
support of its members outside the formal partnership of Greenscom.
Draft versions of this report have been presented and discussed by the partners at
conferences and technical meetings in Helsinki (June 2000), Brussels (September 2000),
Utrecht (November 2000) and Paris (February 2001). In between, an extensive discussion
via the net has occurred. We would like to thank our partners for valuable comments and
contributions to our work. We would also like to thank our colleagues of the Urbman seminar,
Chalmers Architecture, and Professor Patsy Healey, University of Newcastle, for useful
inputs at different stages of the work.
Göteborg 15th of March, 2001
Lisbeth Birgersson, Björn Malbert and Knut Strömberg
Chalmers University of Technology
School of Architecture
SE-412 96 Göteborg
Sweden
Web address: http://www.arch.chalmers.se
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Greenscom: Communicating Urban Growth and Green
Workpackage 1 – Governance and Communication
SUMMARY
This first report from the Greenscom European research project focuses on communication
strategies in planning and management of urban growth and green issues. Together with the
simultaneously produced WP2 report on governance and policy instruments it presents
theoretical points of departure for case studies in seven European cities (Aarhus, CergyPontoise, Göteborg, Helsinki, Houten, Tampere and Utrecht). The main goal for the project
as a whole is to identify, analyse and recommend planning instruments and tools useful for
planning practice in different planning situations.
Tools for communication in urban planning are used in compulsory or voluntary activities like
information meetings, review processes, exhibitions, hearings and other knowledge building
or negotiation situations. Hence, tools refer in this report to a broad range of methods, social
settings, activities, illustrations and media that can be used for the exchange of knowledge
and arguments in communication situations concerning urban growth and green issues. In
order to frame the description, analyses and evaluation of the case studies different types of
communication situations are identified and mapped. Also, two basic types of tools are
identified: tools in action and tools for interaction.
Tools in action are integrated parts of practice and more or less specific for each actor
involved in urban planning. Such tools can be used and developed for a strategic and
comprehensive level of planning – strategic tools – or for the development, maintenance, or
protection of qualities in the urban landscape at more detailed levels – operational tools.
Most countries have a long tradition in using such tools to protect green areas and, more
recently trying to integrate green issues in the context of urban planning. The increasing
demand for communication in planning focuses on the functions of tools for interaction with
other actors. Tools for interaction support the exchange of knowledge and arguments across
disciplinary and cultural boarders in order to create shared actions. This can both be seen
from a strategic view – for instance, how to involve stakeholders to make and implement a
plan – and from an ethical view – for instance, the right of citizens to influence how the green
in the city is used.
Current discourses in planning theory and experience from planning practice is used as a
base for formulating criteria to discuss the quality of communicative planning and the
application of communicative tools. The quality has to be appraised both in terms of the
process itself as well as of the outcome of the planning efforts. The quality of the process
depends on e.g. ethical principles like inclusion of all relevant parties, representation of
interests effected not present and access to information about the framing of the situation in
terms of decision taking and resources. The quality of the process concerns whether the
processes have contributed to a constructive exchange of knowledge and arguments in a
mutual learning process among stakeholders. The quality of the outcome shall be appraised
in terms of their capacity to identify, analyse and communicate substantive issues of
relevance and if the processes have had any impact on balancing questions concerning
green and growth in relation to the intentions of the project. The main question is whether the
communicative processes have improved the practice of the actors involved and if they have
contributed to the building of long-term trust and ability for future shared actions.
With the help of examples from innovative approaches towards communicative planning, a
more relativistic perspective is also sketched out to support the case studies. Three different
approaches are identified to provide a base for analyses of the positions of the main actors in
the development of communication situations in urban planning and research. All three
approaches intend to extend existing practices towards a more reflexive perspective on
planning and research. Reflexive practice can be characterised by the view that learning and
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knowledge building is relational and based on shared and situated practice. Tools have to
function both within reach of the actors using them and within the range of their intended
actions. For urban planners, the tools have to be able to transform conceived experience in a
place into abstracted knowledge with a certain range in space. Such ‘spaced’ images and
concepts should, in turn, support co-ordination of different practices involved in planning and
implementation.
Reach and range, place and space are conceptual tools used to introduce the idea of
creating interfaces between different practices, in place and space, that will enable mutual
trust and learning, and thus give a framework for tools in transition. Planning tools in
transition function as learning instruments involving reaching and ranging of all practices
involved. They must have the ability to connect and develop the possibilities and options
created by relational trusts developed in place and the intellectual exchange in space. The
challenge in the Greenscom case studies is to analyse and evaluate the function of tools in
reaching and ranging practices and to discuss how to frame new interfaces using the
dimension of space as a key aspect.
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1
WP1 INTRODUCTION
This first report from the GREENSCOM European research project focuses on
communication strategies in urban planning, especially for the management of urban growth
and green issues. Together with the simultaneously produced WP2 report on governance
and policy instruments it presents theoretical points of departure for case studies in seven
European cities (Aarhus, Cergy-Pontoise, Göteborg, Helsinki, Houten, Tampere and
Utrecht). The main goal for the project as a whole is, according to the programme, to identify,
analyse and recommend planning instruments and tools useful for planning practice in
different planning situations in order to manage urban growth and green issues. While the
WP1 report more directly discusses the various communication situations involved, the WP2
report discusses the broader social planning context where the framing structures of
governance and communication are constructed. Thus, there are obviously strong interrelations between these two reports and some overlapping may occur.
For the communication in an international and cross-disciplinary research approach such as
the GREENSCOM project, language is essential and problematic. Concepts and terms are
important research tools for the analysis and communication of real world phenomena.
However, the same word can have various meaning for people of different background and
culture, which causes confusion and barriers for further understanding. Thus, questions like
what you mean by “policy instruments” and “tools” related to “urban growth and green issues”
are relevant and necessary in an early stage of this research project. On the other hand, too
early distinct answers of these questions may narrow the scoop for following case studies in
a way that important perspectives and aspects may stay invisible. Accordingly, in this report
we use broad definitions of these concepts based on the assumption that the case studies
will provide necessary support for a more detailed discussion on which kinds of policy
instruments and tools are useful for which types of issues (why? when? for what? for whom?
etc.).
Policy instruments related to urban growth and green issues are various policies, strategies,
plans, contracts, agreements etc. which are used by public authorities at different levels of
government in order to support, regulate or control urban development according to national
legislation and established practice of the cities. As such they can be seen as tools for the
public sector of these cities. However, the focus of this report is on tools for communication.
Such tools are for instance used for the making and implementation of these policy
instruments in compulsory or voluntary activities like information meetings, review processes,
exhibitions, hearings and other knowledge building or negotiation situations. Hence, in this
report tools refer to a broad range of methods, social settings, activities, illustrations and
media that can be used for the exchange of knowledge and arguments in communication
situations concerning urban growth and green issues.
The discussion in this WP1 report is based on experience from research and practice as
presented in the literature and papers from conferences on the topic. Valuable contributions
were given at the Gothenburg Conference on Communication in Urban Planning in October
1999. This conference was organised by the European Research Network Urban Density
and Green Structure in co-operation with Gothenburg City and Chalmers University of
Technology and can be regarded as an important pre-activity of the GREENSCOM project.
In chapter 2 below, the urban growth and green issues are briefly presented in the context of
sustainable development. By using the Swedish approach on green structure planning as an
example, not saying the only possible nor the best, different types of communication
situations are identified. The specific conditions and characteristics of these communication
situations are discussed and mapped in order to make a practical framework for a discussion
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on types of tools that are involved. ‘Tools in action’ are integrated parts of practice and,
accordingly, more or less specific for each actor involved in an urban planning process. Such
tools can be used and developed for a strategic and comprehensive level of planning, or for
the development, maintenance, or protection of qualities in the urban landscape at more
detailed levels. The requirement of ‘tools for interaction’ that can support the exchange of
knowledge and arguments across disciplinary and cultural boarders is emphasised as valid
for research as well as for planning practice.
In chapter 3 the main lines of current discourses in planning theory concerning the
communicative turn are briefly presented and discussed. Some assumptions are made in
order to support the search of relevant and general criteria for the identification and
evaluation of communicative planning approaches and tools. Experience from planning
practice is reviewed and discussed in order to support the formulation of criteria concerning
tools for communication. The quality of communication tools is related to the outcomes of
process as well as of project. Important criteria concern exchange of knowledge, the building
of mutual respect and learning, and the capacity for shared action in relation to framing
structures contained in legislation and traditions of the planning system. Framing structures
are also in each case constructed by the intentions of the process and the actors involved,
the exercise of power, the stages of the planning process and its relations to other ongoing,
physical or social, change processes in the context of the case.
In chapter 4 three contributions to the Gothenburg conference representing different
approaches in current research and development work are presented. They focus on
different aspects and stages of urban planning processes and have in common a search for
ways to improve planning practice. The need of deeper reflectivity is emphasised as well as
the inevitable relation between substance and procedure.
Finally, in chapter 5 the perspective of Place and Space is elaborated. This perspective is
important to better understand the problems of specific communication situations as well as it
provides a framework for the evaluation of communicative planning approaches. Some new
concepts are introduced in order to sharpen our discussion and support the continuing
research and evaluation process. Tools for communication are recognised at three levels:
tools in action, tools in interaction and tools in transition.
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2
COMMUNICATING URBAN GROWTH AND GREEN
2.1
Sustainable Development
The political vision of sustainable development according to the Brundtland commission
(WCED, 1987) is a complex challenge to urban planning. It includes the planning, design and
management of buildings, land and infrastructure of the urban areas to reduce the use of
resources and limit bad impacts on the environment. It also includes initiatives and change
processes for economic, social and cultural development, within the limits of global carrying
capacity and according to the principles of democracy and fair distribution of resources. This
complex vision on how to manage global problems of environmental degradation and poverty
have to be transformed into strategies and initiatives based on specific local situations. The
local situation is framed by multidimensional time and space related conditions that decide
which strategies, initiatives and measures that are motivated and possible to implement.
2.1.1
Sustainable urban development
A dominant theme when sustainable urban development is discussed in theory and practice
concerns urban structures and forms (e.g. Koskiaho 1994, Rådberg 1995, Jenks, Burton &
Williams 1996, Breheny 1996, Lapintie & Aspegren 1996, Næss, Lyssand Sandberg &
Halvorsen Thorén 1996, Tjallingii 1996, Næss 1997; Steen et al. 1997, Frey 1999). A main
question within this theme concerns urban growth and densification vs. multifunctional urban
green structures. This question relates the spatial dimension to the environmental, social,
economic and institutional dimensions of sustainable development and requires integrated
planning approaches across sectors and disciplines in order to be properly managed. It is
also important to the quality of urban everyday life and, thus, of great public interest.
Furthermore, it contains potential conflicts between different goals and aspects within the
vision of sustainable development. A recent literature survey on the topic (Falkheden and
Malbert 2000) shows that conclusions and recommendations are different and sometimes
contradictory depending on the aspects of sustainable development and the questions of fact
chosen for the studies.
2.1.2
Urban green structure
Urban green structure is a concept used in most Nordic countries, however with varying
interpretations and legal status. Urban green structure contains all land of the urban
landscape that is neither covered nor sealed, including parks, play grounds, sport fields,
allotments, private gardens, green space of housing districts, industrial properties as well as
along streets and rail roads etc. In Sweden, the concept was used in public reports for the
first time in the early 1990th (e.g. Naturvårdsverket, 1992, Boverket, 1992).
“A comprehensive view have to be developed where the multifunctional values of natural
green areas and parks can be taken in account. Planning of these issues at a structural level
is necessary if important values and functions shall be recognised.” (Boverket, 1992, in
Swedish)
The Swedish Council for Housing and Planning (Boverket, 1992) made a list, influenced by
contemporary sector research and experience also in other countries pointing out six main
functions of urban green structure:
• Recreation, everyday leisure time and health of the citizens,
• Preservation of bio-diversity,
• Urban design element, of importance to the urban structure,
• Cultural identity
• Health of the city: local climate improvement, air cleaning, dust and noise reduction, and
• Biological solutions to urban technical support problems.
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In a public report (SOU 1994:36), written to underlay a revision of the Swedish Planning and
Building Act, these functions were further elaborated and summarised as being of:
• Ecological importance
• Cultural importance
• Social importance
The report noted the lack of useful concepts to describe and understand this system of
green, land, and water as well as its functions in urban areas. The authors proposed that the
concept of green structure could be used as an overall term, including the physical elements
as well as their functions. According to the authors, at the time many municipal authorities
worked with various green sector plans, but these sector plans had limited impact on urban
development planning. Thus, the concept was originally launched in order to emphasise the
multifunctional values of urban green resources and to empower the green aspects in urban
development planning – ‘greening’ the city. This can be seen as an attempt by various green
sector experts to establish communication with urban planners and decision-makers. The
political vision of sustainable development, notably the notion of bio-diversity, opened up for
and enforced the argumentation.
2.2
Green Structure Planning
In current Swedish research, the interpretation of the concept green structure and its
implementation in urban planning is studied. So far, it seems as the concept is widely
recognised as covering important issues for urban development planning, especially at the
level of structure planning. Many municipal authorities make green structure plans as more
or less integrated parts of their comprehensive land-use plans. The urban planners easily
adopt the quantitative and spatial dimensions of the concept. The qualitative and functional
dimensions are more difficult to grasp and transform into land-use strategies, not least at
more detailed levels of planning. New knowledge, concepts, planning methods and
communication tools are asked for by the urban planners as well as the green experts in
order to improve planning practice, balancing ‘growth and green’.
The concept of green structure and the idea of a green structure plan in a Swedish context
will not be further evaluated at this stage, although there is an interesting discussion about
how it functions as a strategic policy instrument. It will be used here in order to illustrate
some communication problems that have to be addressed in the research of GREENSCOM.
A green structure plan (GSP) is one possible policy instrument that could support a holistic
approach to balancing ‘growth and green’ in urban development. However, a GSP planning
process is framed by its limitations in time and resources (funds and personnel), the
intentions and pre-understanding of the owner (of the process) as well of the style, methods,
procedures, tools applied according to the traditions and habits of the planning organisation.
Taken together these framing structures belonging to the planning situation will influence
what is included, or excluded, in each stage of a planning process. In the following
paragraphs (A-D) the communication situations at the different main stages will be described.
2.2.1
Identification, description and analysis of urban green structure, its various
elements and functions
This is normally a task of professional experts. Their challenge is to use their general
knowledge about green structure issues when analysing the specific conditions of a certain
urban landscape. Here communication problems exist between experts of different
background and culture that may result in different opinions about the situation and how it
can be understood. There are also local non-professional experts, the different users of
green structure elements. Similarly, they are not a homogeneous group. If they are
addressed or want to make influence, their challenge is to make their specific experience
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explicit and understood by other people. Normally, this is not necessary for their everyday
use of the green structure. Thus, there are also communication problems between different
users of the green structure as well as between professional experts and the laymen users.
Traditionally, main tools for communication at this stage are expert reports, or statements,
summaries of questionnaires, or interviews, and maps etc. In other words concrete results of
the investigation work that provide fragmented, simplified and abstract images of the real
green structure issues, following the intentions and ability of the authors. This written
documentation is sometimes complemented with oral presentations, hearings or further
elaborated in seminars or workshops.
2.2.2
Translation and communication of green structure issues into urban planning
strategies and recommendations (the green structure plan)
One key communication problem at this stage is between the different carriers of green
sector knowledge and the synthesiser(s) of the green structure plan (GSP). The challenge of
a synthesiser is to grasp the different perspectives on green structure applied on a specific
urban situation and translate this knowledge into adapted strategies and recommendations
for the preservation and development of green qualities of that situation. The latter is the idea
of the GSP as being a green sector policy instrument. The challenge of the synthesiser(s)
and the authoriser(s) also includes priority setting and choice between competing green
sector interests, for instance ecological vs. recreational interests. Another communication
problem is thus, between the green sector experts, including the GSP synthesiser(s), and the
actors who shall adopt the GPS, the authoriser(s) who shall implement it in the continuing
urban planning process. Common tools for the communication at this stage are the original
documents of the previous stage and draft versions of the GSP, often complemented with
documentation and experience from field studies, project meetings, review processes,
seminars and workshops etc. The final GPS is again a simplified and abstract image of the
real world issues involved.
2.2.3
Implementation of green sector strategies and recommendations in the urban
development process
At this stage similar communication problems as in the previous stage appear, although now
at another level between proponents for different urban planning sectors (often with own
sector plans). These sectors have more, or less, support from actors and citizens engaged in
the urban development process. For instance, from the perspective of sustainable
development most sectors can provide valid arguments for their own strategies, however
among themselves sometimes contra-dictionary. At this stage priority setting and choice,
now between competing sector interests, become crucial. In ‘balancing growth and green’
technical, environmental, ecological and social arguments have to face political and
economic realities of the planning situation. The challenge of the synthesiser(s) at this level
is to match the strategies of the different sectors in communication with the actors who shall
adopt the comprehensive land-use plan and implement its intentions in the urban
development process. Normally, similar tools for communication are used as for the GSP.
While the GPS is a voluntary policy instrument, the comprehensive land-use plan is
compulsory and its procedure is regulated. For instance, the formal adoption must be
proceeded by extensive review processes involving public and private stakeholders and
citizens, and including different information activities such as public exhibitions. This is a
most important activity, as the comprehensive land-use plan in Sweden is not legally binding.
The plan is supposed to confirm current intentions and strategies of the municipal authorities
for the urban development process and other land-use issues in order to guide and inform
private and public actors as well as citizens at more detailed levels of decision and action.
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2.2.4
From plans to implementation
The implementation of the plan – as well as its development - is in the hands of diverse
public and private actors in shared power situations. If the intentions of the GSP, or the
comprehensive land-use plan, shall be fulfilled or not, depends on the concluding result of a
huge number of decisions and choices over time. From this insight public planning
organisation search for new approaches and methods for communication, beyond the
requirements of established standard procedures, seeing planning as learning and
negotiation processes for the co-ordination of decisions and actions in line with overall policy
and local intentions.
In a communicative perspective - our focus - a discussion of GSP has to go beyond the
discussion of tools as good or bad tools compared to others for ‘balancing growth and
green’. The illustrated communication situations involved in a Swedish version of GSP show
that they are framed by the planning situation (context and content) and differ due to the
purpose of the communication as well as the actors involved in each stage of the process.
The emphasis on the multifunctional values of urban green structure moves the attention
from green areas to green functions. Ecological, cultural and social aspects are relevant.
New knowledge, and learning, is required in the planning process if these values/functions
shall be identified and managed. Different kinds of knowledge are relevant. Different carriers
of knowledge are involved. How can general expert knowledge about green structure
functions meet specific user knowledge in local situations in order to improve local practice?
What are the useful tools for communication and learning in order to understand the local
situation and find possible strategies for its improvement?
The GSP is a sector instrument to support green structure issues in the competition between
sectors and interests in the urban development process. Also within the green sector
conflicting interests appear. So called deadlocks in the communication between proponents
of different strategies can make further progress of the planning process difficult. What tools
or approaches are possible in order to open up such situations?
The spatial dimension of urban green structure contains all land, neither covered nor sealed,
of the urban landscape. This indicates that decisions and actions that have impact on green
structure qualities are in the hands of many different actors of the city, with, or without,
specific interest and knowledge in green structure issues. These actors have different
worldviews, values, and intentions as well as different relations to the green structure as
being owners, managers, keepers, developers or users. Accordingly, they are rooted in
different practices, where culture, traditions, knowledge, language, and taken for granted
assumptions varies. What are the useful tools for communication and learning in order to
support co-ordinated action for the development of green structure qualities?
The success or failure of the GSP instrument is not just tied to the product, the plan
document, and the physical results of its implementation. It has also to be discussed in terms
of how it supports shared trust and actions in a long-term perspective. Any tool will have
different meaning if connected to a specific product or result or if seen as part of a wider
process where such artefacts turn into tools for further development. For instance, one
concrete result could be ensuring that a park is created and remained as a park. This means
that land use restrictions have to be formalised in a plan and contracts for cultivation and
maintenance, for instance involving citizen groups, have to be signed. These are tools for the
establishment of the artefact, the park. The park itself can be seen as a tool for other longterm goals, for instance providing relaxation to the people using it and better air for the
neighbourhood. Participation in park management could aim to reproduce the civil structure
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of the city by shaping trust for more shared actions and decisions in the future. Thus, the very
concrete tools of plans and contracts can be evaluated concerning how they shape and
maintain the park, but also how they support the creation of new tools that will ensure new
artefacts being created in the future. This endless process of change can be maintained by the
continuously strengthening of the basis for shared action in a democratic and sustainable
way. What are the tools that support a continuous process for shared trust and sustainable
development?
2.3
A Map of Communication Situations
The brief illustration above referred to the different communication situations involved in the
making and the implementation of green structure plans in a Swedish context. Various
approaches in current research have main focus on different communication situations and
the planning theoretical discussion points at more or less hidden communication situations of
great importance to the actual outcome of planning processes (see Chapter 3 and 4 for
further discussion). It is not realistic to believe that our limited case studies can grasp and
analyse the full picture. Thus, one important question for the framing of the case studies, and
the search for possible tools, is to decide which communication situations we shall have in
focus. A map of the most relevant communication situations is presented below as a base for
this choice.
St tements
a
or
refl tions
e about
c
a s itua ion t
Poli iesc nd a
de s ions
c about
i
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Figure: Map over the most relevant communication situations of urban development
processes.
The assumption here is that there will be general aspects of communication situations to be
learned from the case studies. However, such aspects are related to the specific context of
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each case, for instance related to the discipline and training of the actors involved and their
power relations. Therefor we suggest to describe the communication situations in the case
studies using the map of commonly found categories. In this way the results will become
comparable and we will be able to further investigate the assumptions.
This map requires some explanations in order to distinguish the most important features.
First of all, the squares of the map above illustrate explicit expressions originating from the
practice of each actor group. These expressions are concrete results/tools of such practice.
However, they might be seen as abstract, confusing, and difficult to understand by other
actors. This is most obvious between actors carrying knowledge in or about a local situation,
respectively. The question: “Which tools work as tools for whom?” is a help to better
understand the communicative potential and the relation of the tools to different actors
involved. In practice, individuals sometimes act as bridges, or filters, between actors as they
belong to more than one of the main groups involved. For instance, the politician who lives in
the urban area in focus and who happens to be a member of the board of the local authority
will of course have a strategic position with certain impact on the power relations of the
planning situation. Depending on his/her personal intentions and ability, this can improve, or
disturb, the communication situations involved.
The grey field in the middle symbolises different kinds of communications situations that
might appear in a planning process. Some of them are included as normal parts of a
planning process (the lines), others are informal and not easy to identify. The communication
situations of the former category are more or less formalised and frequent according the
culture and rules of the planning organisation, i.e. what we normally regard as routines and
rituals. The communication situations between developers – politicians – planners are often
well established as being normal parts of these actors’ everyday practices, although not
always easy and friendly. Anyhow, these actors often have ‘trust’ in the outcome of well
known routines and rituals.
Experts and interest groups can get involved after invitation or own initiatives. When invited,
normally, communication situations with planners will be established. When own initiatives
are taken, politicians are often approached as a first step. In similar ways representatives of
user groups may get involved. Also here communication with the planners is the normal
contact to the planning process. The direct communication between politicians and citizens is
normally weak in the formal planning process. In a representative democracy the politicians
are supposed to represent all users. In situations of conflict mass media sometimes
intervene. Journalists, who are armed with more or less biased statements of experts and/or
angry citizens, then put politicians against the wall for immediate responses. At the best, this
can result in more fruitful direct communication between the parties involved, at worse it can
cause deeper conflicts or deadlocks in the planning process.
However, this kind of action belongs to the web of more or less hidden communication
situations that always exist in the social context of a formal planning process. While these
communication situations, and the power-relations involved, can have strong influence on the
outcomes of planning processes, they are often difficult to reveal and analyse.
Moving to the bubbles of the map representing main groups of actors of a planning process,
it is important to see that there are communications situations contained also here, both at
the individual and at the group level and belonging to the everyday practice of each group.
Thus any interaction involves multiple dimensions of communication.
In each case study, it is important to identify the relations most valid for the general focus of
GREENSCOM and specific problems of the cities involved – ‘balancing urban growth and
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green’ and its specific application in different local situations. In order to do so, the following
specification can be used as a check-list.
2.3.1
Researchers and other experts
Researchers and other experts belong to different disciplines and sectors, respectively.
Within these fields of knowledge competing schools and traditions appear. For instance, the
researcher uses and improves the theories, methods and tools of his/her tradition in the
everyday practice of building new knowledge. This can be seen as an individual
communication situation where established theories and standpoints are tested against new
empirical and theoretical findings. This includes the communication with colleagues within
the field. In inter-disciplinary approaches, like the GREENSCOM project, the existence of
complex communication situations between researchers of different disciplines and traditions
is obvious. The role of the researchers in the map of communication situations is, in this
case, to produce knowledge on urban growth and green issues and on how to deal with them
in an urban planning context. This is done in interaction with other researchers and with the
discourses of planning theory and practice as presented in the literature, and also in
interaction with the practitioners of the cities involved and their experience.
2.3.2
Planners
In a European perspective planners have different backgrounds as architects, urban
designers, town planners, landscape architects, civil engineers, and human geographers etc.
They are educated and trained in different traditions and the work within different sectors
such as land-use planning, transport planning, green planning etc. Furthermore, they work at
different levels of government (European, national, regional, local) and in different scales
(structural or detailed). Communication situations, similar as the ones of the researchers,
exist in the everyday practice of planners both at individual and group levels. The practice of
planners concerning green issues in urban planning is in focus for GREENSCOM. The role
of planners in the map of communication situations is to find out how to regulate or stimulate
the balance of ‘green and growth’. They need interactive tools in order to integrate
knowledge and co-ordinate actions into strategies and their implementation (management,
regulation, funding etc.), respectively. They also need social settings that can relate them to
all other actors of the map.
2.3.3
Interest groups
Interest groups have various focus and form. They have different issues in mind and,
accordingly, work differently. Environmental groups, for instance, can be members of
national or international associations, like Friends of the Earth or Green Peace. Such groups
often have specific issues on the agenda and the intentions to make influence everywhere.
There are also local environmental groups that try to make influence on all relevant issues in
their own environment. Communication within and between such groups will of course guide
their local practice. Processes of learning about the issues and the local conditions are
normal parts of such practice. Their relations to other actors in the map will be specific
according to the interests and the planning situation at hand.
2.3.4
Users
The users of urban areas constitute a broad and diverse group of public and private
organisations, businesses, and citizens with different values, intentions, culture and
resources. Their common connection is the urban area where they work or live that is a
shared place for their everyday actions. The communication situations involved are normally
established to manage, or take advantage of, the situation of co-existence. Such
communication situations may be occasional and spontaneous, more or less organised, or
even formalised, for instance, in neighbourhood committees. Also at the individual level
people make everyday choices and act in communication with features of the surrounding
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environment. This indicates that various people can have very different interpretations of and
relations to the same urban area. They seldom have the reason to make explicit expressions
of this local knowledge in order to manage everyday life. Most parts of this knowledge remain
tacit. In a planning situation, it is the intended change, or experienced threats for change, of
the place that defines this group and relate them to other actors of the map.
2.3.5
Developers
This group might look homogeneous at a first glance. However, the size and market
positions of these actors may have great influence on their everyday practice in urban
development processes. International firms acting on a global market may have quite
different views on and interests in the local situation than local firms acting on that specific
local market. Their common business idea is still making money on building and construction
work. Developers of quite other types are private or public organisations that want to invest in
the local situation in order to improve the conditions for their businesses or everyday life. All
these types of developers may work in competition or collaboration, which in turn will
influence their positions and actions in the communication situations of a planning process as
well as the communication between and within the organisations of the developers. They
often work on arenas, like interest or business associations, that stabilise relations and
support communication based on a trust in common actions. These relations also involve
other actors of the same implementation processes.
2.3.6
Politicians
Politicians belong to different parties and their worldviews and value varies accordingly. They
work on different levels of government and have missions within different policy areas.
Furthermore, they represent different groups of citizens. It is not difficult to understand that
the everyday practice of politicians includes several types of communication situations. This
is also true at the individual level when trying to make a personal profile within the framing
traditions and culture of a specific party in order to be recognised and re-elected. The
politicians work with urban planners, or planners from other sectors, on formal arenas that
have different framing in different countries and planning organisations. Their relations with
other actors of the map are more sporadic, but can nevertheless have strong impact on the
outcome of the planned action. The different political programs have different emphasis on
‘growth and green’ issues as well as on the demands and quality of the communication
situations involved.
2.3.7
Processes of communication in a project over time
Most development processes follow some typical phases over time. The communicative
efforts are parts of learning processes, intentional or not, mutual or not, and appear in all
phases of a development process and involve different actors. Be it the initial, informal,
formulating of ideas and opinions to later phases where concrete alternatives for action are
developed and evaluated to phases where standpoints for political decisions are developed
following rules for democratic debate. The intended use of an artefact or an area is likely to
change during time. Unexpected effects of that will start new processes of communication for
formulating ideas for further action. The main communication phases over time involving
stakeholders/experts/planners/politicians/interest groups/citizens/users in various degrees
are:
• Initiating, opinion building, opportunity creation or criticising
• Scanning, problem-structuring, structured mutual learning
• Decision making
• Decision taking
• Implementation
• Using and changing
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All these phases of learning and knowledge development are interdependent and
interconnected in a continuos web of every day decisions by individual citizen and business
far away from the realm of planning and political influence. That means that the cases we are
going to study are parts of processes with no definite start or end. Anyhow, we have to cut
out a segment in place, space and time in order to approach the communicative situation
with different intellectual means.
2.4
Tools in Action and for Interaction
The points of departure to our common research project and related to this map of
communication situations are:
• Many, very different, communication situations are involved in a communicative planning
process;
• Different kinds of communication tools are required in order to improve such planning
practice;
• Tools are integrated parts of everyday practice of the different groups of actors involved.
Tools developed for facilitating action in one group of actors may not be usable for interaction
with other groups due to specialist language or disciplinary knowledge. In such situations
new or complementary tools may be required for making co-operation possible. Such tools
can be learning devices or process management.
From these point of departure different strategies for the emphasis of the case studies can
be distinguished. One is to focus on one of the actor groups involved, for instance the
planners, and analyse their tools in action and ways to improve their practice in
communication situations. Here we can expect to find several illustrative examples and
promising efforts in the practice of our case study cities. Another more challenging strategy is
to focus on the communication situations themselves and look for tools for interaction that
can support and facilitate the meeting between different rationalities and knowledge, for
instance in communication situations between planners and users, or between planners of
different background and sectors. Such tools can support shared actions and have impact on
and improve the practice of all actors involved.
2.4.1
Tools in action
Most countries have traditional means of dealing with urban green issues, using concepts
like green belts, green hearts, green ways or green fingers. These are tools aiming at the
development of green qualities. More recent approaches, including ecological aspects and
influenced by the discussion on sustainable development, are Green Structure Plan as used
in Nordic countries and The Strategy of the Two Networks as developed in a Dutch context
(see Chapter 4). These types of tools concern the integration of green issues in the context
of urban development planning and are supposed to have long-term impact.
In more short-term perspectives and at detailed levels of planning, other tools are developed
in order to incorporate the strategic intentions of green issues into urban development
actions. Such tools are detailed plans, regulations, or other types of agreements aiming at
change, maintenance, or protection of urban qualities. For instance, real-estate development
contracts between landowners, entrepreneurs and the city council are used in the city of
Lahti, Finland, in order to develop the central areas of the city. Another example is contracts
between active citizens and the local authority in the city of Utrecht, the Netherlands, for the
development and maintenance of urban green areas and parks. These both examples also
illustrate two types of governance in urban development. In Lahti, partnerships are based on
the co-operation between actors that have access to economic and political resources. In
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Utrecht the role of the civil society and the initiatives of local residents are encouraged.
(Lapintie 2000.)
These types of planning tools are policy instruments that can most certainly be found and
analysed within the four themes chosen for the case studies of the Greenscom project:
- “The urban fringe.” Cases about communication and policy instruments related to urban
expansion, agriculture and the countryside.
- “Densification in the existing city.” Cases about communication and policy instruments
related to defending inner city green areas, increasing the ecological and recreational value
of these green areas etc.
- “Maintenance of green areas.” Cases about communication and policy instruments related
to participation of citizens, maintenance contracts etc.
- “Reconquering green areas.” Cases about communication and policy instruments
concerning ‘brown fields’ turned to green areas.
Planning tools are viewed from a specific practice, in our case urban planning, and used in
specific planning situations. As illustrated in the example of the Swedish green structure plan
above, such tools are shaped and implemented as a result of planning processes containing
several communication situations. Hence, when we use the term tools in action in this report,
we refer to tools that are more directly related to the practice of the specific actors involved.
For instance, traditional tools in action of urban planners are sketching and mapping. The
resulting illustrations and maps are, in turn, used as tools for communication of information
and ideas in the planning process. However, also other actors of this process, more or less
consciously, use tools in action developed within their specific practices. While the tools of
one actor can be found useful for other actors in a communication situation, other actors
again may find them difficult to use or without any meaning. Thus, when looking at tools in a
historical perspective and recognising the increased demands on communication, the
meaning of tools become more complex. New tools for communication are developed in
order to increase the effectiveness of the traditional tools. Simultaneously, old tools are
adapted and improved in new communication situations. In a communicative perspective we
have to focus on tools for interaction.
2.4.2
Tools for interaction
Tools for interaction in urban development processes can origin from tools in action of the
actors involved, for instance maps and reports, or from tools used in other social contexts, for
instance art and culture, pedagogic or business management. At least two categories of tools
for interaction can be distinguished:
• Tools related to artefacts (e.g. pictures) and media (e.g. GIS) for the exchange of
information, knowledge and ideas.
• Tools related to the design and use of social settings for mutual learning.
From a communicative perspective it is difficult to frame tools and their improvement only
from within the tradition of planning practice. Planning practice in the different countries
involved in Greenscom, that is the base of our investigation, differs due to legislation and
traditions. The function and meaning of tools are dependent on the specific conditions of the
planning situation. The question of ‘what tools are working for whom’ has to be asked in
every situation.
The discussion and evaluation of tools for interaction have to be related to the intentions of
the cases studied as well as the framing structures of the planning context shaped by
legislation, traditions and the local situation. The substantive results in focus are related to
global environmental problems. Relevant questions are how the tools are connected to these
environmental problems. How do the perceived problems frame the tools and how do the
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tools frame the problems? From a communicative perspective we are looking for tools for
interaction useful for communication and learning in order to support shared actions for the
development of urban green qualities.
Such tools can be discussed and evaluated concerning:
• Capacity for supporting the exchange of information, knowledge and ideas in the planning
process;
• Capacity for supporting mutual learning and shared action in the specific case (short-term
perspective);
• Capacity for supporting a continuous process for shared trust and sustainable development
(long-term perspective).
In this discussion it is important to realise that the cases studied are situated in time and
place as parts of wider contexts and longer processes of urban development where results
from one stage become tools for other stages or levels of planning.
The assumption is that it may be possible to draw general conclusions about tools in action
and tools for interaction. This is important as there seems to be a need of investigating
options to overcome professional bias and generalisations that do no right to the individual
situation of each actor involved for instance the users. The practice of planners includes
communication with politicians as well as other stakeholders and citizens. Our assumption is
also that traditional tools for interaction are not found sufficient in all communication
situations. In the case studies we expect to find interesting attempts to overcome this
problem worthy closer examination.
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3
3.1
THE COMMUNICATIVE TURN IN PLANNING THEORY AND PRACTICE
Discourses in Planning Theory
The discourse of planning theory during the end of the 20th century contained approaches
that in different ways questioned the rationales, methods and results of planning practice.
Urban planning practice has its roots in technical and spatial traditions developed to solve
the sanitary and hygienic problems of the growing industrial cities of the late 19th century.
From that point urban planning has developed into a complex and sector divided policy area
rooted in several different scientific disciplines and social practices (e.g. Friedmann 1987,
Faludi 1987, Pakarinen 1992, Sager 1994, Healey 1997).
The critique of a dominant synoptic tradition in urban planning based upon instrumental
rationality has resulted in various discourses in order to better understand and influence
planning practice (e.g. Lindblom 1959, Hudson 1979, Friedmann 1987, Faludi 1987, Sager
1994, Healey 1997). During the 1990th a communicative approach emerged in planning
theory inspired by Habermas’ ideas on communicative action and the ideal dialogue (e.g.
Forester 1989, Sager 1994, Healey 1997). It had great relevance to the actual requirements
of planning practice to manage new forms of co-operations across sectors, negotiations and
partnerships with private actors and demands on broader citizen participation in planning and
decision-making processes. Simultaneously, it was criticised for being naive and misleading
facing actual power relations in society (e.g. Flyvbjerg 1998) or to be too much framed by the
impossible conditions of the ideal dialogue situation (e.g. Lapintie 1999a, Orrskog 2001).
A competing approach in planning theory referring to Foucault’s concepts on power in the
society can be exemplified on the one hand by Flyvbjerg (1998). Flyvbjerg visualises the
more or less visible power relations that influence the processes and results of planning in
his study of Aalborg in Denmark. On the other hand, Lapintie (1999b) criticises Flyvbjerg's
strong conclusion – 'rationality yielding to power' – when claiming that a better result could
have been achieved if the planners were listened to. According to Lapintie, who is also
referring to Foucault, there is always some kind of rationality behind power and what
Flyvbjerg seems to refer to, as 'pure’ rationality is also a form of power. Thus, Flyvbjerg never
really addresses the basic Foucaultian conception of productive power, where planners are
clearly among the producers (Lapintie 2000, see also Sager 1994). However, one conclusion
is that both perspectives that focus on power analysis respectively communicative
approaches has been necessary to better understand planning. While the planning
theoretical debate of the late 1990th was characterised by the struggle between proponents
of these different approaches, the current discourses contain attempts to integrate them.
Lapintie (1999a) argues for communicative approaches supported by argumentative theory
that can guide planning practice and set the rules for dialogues between actors with typically
competing interests, values and worldviews in a way that avoids the impossibility of the
undistorted dialogue situation. In a critique of both rational and communicative planning
Orrskog (2001) promotes discourse analysis as a possible approach for post-social planning
practice. Although both Lapintie and Orrskog draw on Foucaultian thoughts of power, their
ideas turn out differently. Argumentative theory, according to Lapintie, can be used to
establish rules for the framing of social settings and fair debates among stakeholders.
Discourse analysis, according to Orrskog, moves the focus from the actors, and their
different ability and power to make themselves heard, to the varying discourses and their
strength, legitimacy and implications in a specific planning situation. This leads to different
roles of professionals involved in planning processes as facilitators/mediators and
interpreters/synthesisers respectively. Both types of roles can be discussed from a power
perspective. It is also possible to see them as complementary. Discourses are both results of
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and frames for argumentation. Discourse analysis could be one platform for the identification
of actors and stakeholders who should be involved in an argumentative process.
Another platform can be exemplified by the work of Bruno Latour (1998) and José Ramirez
(1995). Latour criticises the view that the society is a subject that human beings can grasp by
knowledge. According to Latour, society is constructed and reconstructed by all its actors –
including the researchers. To understand expressions of power one has to focus on the
practical work that keeps society stable. He points at the importance of artefacts in this
practice. Power is reproduced in the definition and redefinition of the artefacts that keep
society together. José Ramirez enlightens the mediating act that creates a relation between
distant and diffuse phenomena (like nature) and representations at hand (like woods, parks
etc) that can be given definitions and thus possible to be recognised and controlled by the
human being. For instance, writing is a mediating act for the creation of images that can be
studied and communicated to others, more or less independent of time and space. This
possibility can also cause problems. We tend to see the signs at hand as artefacts with fixed
relations to the phenomena that we try to understand and express. We might forget how
these relations are embedded in time and space. Accordingly, both Ramirez and Latour
show that such building boxes for knowledge can easily become ‘black boxes’, with contents
we can forget and take-for-granted. They also mean that empowerment is dependent on the
possibility to understand the act of mediation of artefacts and judge their range in time and
space.
On the same platform stand the proponents for ‘the reflexive conception of planning’ for
example as described by Lapintie (2000). In this approach communication is a social practice
that constructs its meaning and the object of discourse as well as power. The question is
what possibilities of reflection that exist in a ‘reflexive society’ where more control no longer
seems to lead to increased security (Beck, Giddens & Lash 1994). In a reflexive perspective
to planning the substantive issues are inevitable parts of any political process and planning
procedure. The substantive approach and the procedural approach in urban planning are
thus not seen as dichotomies. Substantive issues are easily identified as tangible artefacts,
for instance like new flowerbeds in a park. Furthermore, the institutional constructions that
governs communication situations, like the relations between government and citizens that
enable the users to maintain these gardens and how that effects the civil life and new shared
actions, are also such issues. This is discussed in the ongoing debate on institutional
capacity and governance.
A transition of urban planning from a formal bureaucracy to more open and self-organising
forms of governance means that the boundary between organisations from public and private
sectors has become permeable (Lapintie 2000). Lapintie, with reference to Stoker (1997)
sees the possibilities of two different approaches to this change. One, called the managerial,
is related to the adoption of new tools by the formal authorities and the emergence of new,
but less radical, processes. The other, called the systemic, refers to new practices, new cooperative ensembles, and the emergence of self-governing networks. At least the latter
means that some ‘black-boxes’ in urban planning and research has to be opened, probably
with the help of a more reflexive standpoint to human action. In both approaches institutional
capacity will be a key factor for consideration. The institutional capacity focuses on the web
of relations involved in urban governance in order to promote shared actions and better
understand how these relations and actions are shaped. Place, territory and locality are
concepts that support this focus (Healey, de Magalhaes & Madanipour 1999). A key question
is who are included and who are excluded in the building and rebuilding of institutional
capacity. The concept of planning as the intentional design and use of forums for discussion,
arenas for decision and courts for conflict management (Bryson and Crosby 1993) can be
seen as one tool and a possible approach to the design of different social settings involved in
planning.
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The communicative turn in planning theory and practice is based on severe critique on
established instrumental approaches and their defective abilities of controlling and guiding
social change for common good. Even the idea of a ‘common good’ is challenged in the late
20th century debate. The communicative approach to urban planning recognises planning as
a continuing political process of argumentation and learning in a pluralistic and multicultural
society in order to support co-existence in shared places. Limitations in time, space and
resources enforce common rules and regulation not only concerning spatial land-use, but
also for the management of urban flows and everyday actions of urban actors and citizens.
Taken together, this constitutes a real challenge to planners as well as planning
organisations in order to adapt and improve their practice accordingly. The building of
institutional capacity is asked for. The search for new policy instruments and communication
strategies is one expression of that.
3.1.1
Tentative assumptions
From the debate on the communicative approach in planning theory we can make some
tentative assumptions for the continuing search for tools useful for the management of urban
growth and green issues in urban planning as well as for relevant criteria useful for the
evaluation and discussion of such tools. The management of urban growth and green issues
involves a lot of actors as illustrated and discussed in the previous chapter. The first
assumptions are that the communication situations involved are framed by:
• Rationality, culture, traditions and language shaped by and guiding everyday practice of
each actor.
• Power of and power relations between actors shaped by traditions, legislation and policy
instruments, and the positions of the actors in the planning situation as formal stakeholders,
experts or citizens. Power relations are continuously shaped and reshaped by open or
hidden interactions among the actors involved, and thus also part of the continuous
reproduction of everyday practice.
Communicative approaches in planning practice can often be regarded as necessary
attempts to manage complex planning situations where established routines and tools fail, for
instance partnerships for project realisation (economy) or broader public participation in order
to gain support for action when conflicting interests are manifest (legitimacy). These
situations are typical for issues concerning urban green and growth. Proponents of the
communicative approach in planning theory emphasise the long-term importance of building
institutional capacity including mutual knowledge development, the strengthening of social
relations and the ability for shared actions. In this wider context the aspects of inclusion and
representation are crucial. The communication situations involved are also framed by:
• The intentions of the communication process in a short-term and a long-term perspective,
respectively (why and what?).
• The design and use of social setting for communication and access (where, when, and
how?).
• The inclusion/exclusion of actors, stakeholders and citizens (who?).
These ways of framing the communication situations are for the outcome dependent on each
other. For instance, when new tools are introduced aiming for a radical change in
governance - a systemic approach - and the social setting for communication and inclusion is
carried out within a managerial approach, the intentions are not likely to be fulfilled.
The communicative turn in planning practice constitutes challenges to professional planners,
notably physical planners. The traditional role as expert in plan making relied on professional
authority. Based on input from other experts, stakeholders and own observations the
planners design land use strategies and plans to be adopted by the formal decision-takers
after review and revision. In a communicative approach professional knowledge and
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concrete proposals of planners have to be made explicit, developed and defended with valid
arguments in discussions with other experts, stakeholders and citizens in order to be
recognised. For instance, the ‘ecological turn in urban green planning’, as illustrated above in
the Swedish GSP example, have brought new experts and stakeholders into the arena of
urban planning. In this situation also new roles of planners for facilitation and mediation
appear. The assumptions related to the roles of planners are that the communication
situations involved also are framed by:
• The ethical choices and practical abilities of planners when acting as experts, facilitators,
mediators and representatives of public agencies or authorities, respectively, or more difficult
when moving between these roles.
• The use and development of planning tools in action, as well as for interaction.
3.2
Some Experience from Practice
In this paragraph some reported cases will work as illustrations to possibilities and risks
connected to communicative processes and tools used in different phases of a planning
process. Planning tools like sketching and more elaborated ones like Environmental Impact
Analysis (EIA) all have their advantages and drawbacks. While sketching belongs to the
traditional tools of physical planners, EIA represents new planning tools that involves the
expertise of many different fields of knowledge and requires communication in order to be
shaped and used. When such tools are used in communication with other actors and
citizens, the drawbacks are often connected to their use as ‘black boxes’ of the experts
involved. Other more complicated risks are embedded in the design and use of the
communicative processes themselves. What are the main intentions involved, supporting
decision-making in formal arenas of the planning system or promoting mutual learning
processes in the building of institutional capacity?
3.2.1
Sketching as a tool for stimulating communication
Forester (1999 pp 75-81) describes a complex multiparty planning process for the waterfront
of Oslo, Norway. The case involves environmental issues, recreational pressure and more
generally conflicting land uses, scarce resources of land, water and environmental amenity,
as well as conflicting parties with different ideas of how these limited resources could be best
used. The planning director used his staff to manage special planning subcommittees
including professional planners and laymen citizens. The planners should let the parties
argue and try to find solutions; they could work with coloured pens and papers; they could
write; they could do whatever they liked. However, the basic attitude was to never let any
sketch be presented as the sketch. It was the intentions and characteristics of the sketches
that were important not the sketches themselves. The planners worked not only as expert
sources of information and neutral facilitators but also as mediators with a mission looking for
appropriate solutions. This mediator-planner is a full-fledged participant – not only as a
manager of a process but also a negotiator partner seeking to facilitate a process as well as
to explain substantive concerns or “interests”.
Forester’s description of the mediating design professionals’ activities involves more than
storytelling, relationship building and information providing. The sketching in these kinds of
processes, collective design, provide not fixed representations but questions, probes, ritual
objects designed to elicit ideas, suggestions and proposals for further refined options. In the
process participants had reformulated their perceptions of problems as well as of solutions.
The deliberative practice, reconsidering land use, amenities and environmental concerns led
them to new appreciation of how they could come forward together. (Forester op cit. p80, 81)
This example illustrates the design and use of informal forums to support decision-making on
formal arenas where the tools in action of planners (sketching and mapping) where used as
interactive tools in communication with other actors. The prerequisite was the rethinking of
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these sketches as not being products (completed proposals) but illustrations of ideas,
suggestions and proposal for further elaboration in the formal plan-making process. While
this is a self-evident and taken for granted view on sketches in the practice of planners, it is
not so for other actors who are used to see them only as illustrations to proposals produced
by experts. The example also emphasises the different roles of planners in such
communication situations as experts, facilitators and mediating actors and the obvious risks
of conscious, or unconscious exercise of illegitimate power (see also Sager 1994 for a
general discussion on the power of planners).
3.2.2
Communicative processes and social exclusion
Another Oslo case shows that this informal kind of co-operation between public authorities,
local citizens, and other stakeholders can be successful in some aspects and yet very
problematic in others. The case is described in some preliminary reports to the COST action
C9 “Processes to reach Urban Quality” (Geets et al 2000 and Strömberg 2000).
The project Environmental City of Old Oslo is part of a national research and development
program, The National Environmental City Program, aiming at the development of models for
sustainable urban development using a holistic approach. The municipal authorities of Oslo
wished to focus on improving living standards in the Borough of Old Oslo. The goals included
the making of an environmental plan, the reduction of greenhouse gasses, the improvement
of streets, in favour of pedestrians and bicycles and returning to them a greater part of the
public space, and making the neighbourhoods look nicer and greener. The goals for
sustainable urban development included ecological as well as social and economic aspects.
At the start of the project, the area was a run-down city centre area with lots of social and
environmental problems. One third of the population was immigrants. The area is now in a
state of rapid transition and gentrification.
The approach has been a combination of formal, traditional decision taking procedures and
innovative informal consensus building processes in close co-operation with inhabitants and
professionals in order to achieve the goals of the project during a limited period of time. The
strategy for the representatives of the municipality has been “to do what is necessary”. The
momentum of this “emergency-strategy” was to a high extent provided by committed
individuals initiating different local processes. Publicly financed taskforces provided expert
knowledge and short cuts through the official decision taking processes. The task forces had
contracts with the municipality on one-year terms. According to one of the task force
members, “we are not considered as representatives of the municipality by the inhabitants
but rather as facilitators that can help them formulate arguments and find ways through the
administrative apparatus”. The resources available did not permit any time-consuming
communicating efforts to be established. Simple lines of communication had to be used. One
channel for the dialogue with the citizens was a local newspaper distributed four times a
year.
According to a representative of one municipal task force the “normal” participants in the
development processes were families with children. Immigrants seldom or never took part in
public meetings or had in any other way influence on the development of the local area. Also,
no students and few elderly people took part. The co-operation was canalised through citizen
associations, normally resident’s associations and voluntary groups of different kinds. A
comment of the task force member was “we don’t co-operate with religious organisations as
they are not open for everybody”. Many immigrants of that area are normally social members
of religious associations and were thus consequently excluded from the local decision
making process.
The possibilities of the approach described are related to the local focus stimulating citizens
to engage in the shaping of their own area, stimulating their commitment and ‘production of
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locality’ in building social and political capital for the future. Such achievements are based on
confidence and relationship between the officials and the local stakeholders as well as the
ability of the municipality to present credible information and expertise. Some apparent risks
of this interactive way of working are to be found in the answers to questions like: Who are
not included in the processes? What are the relations between this local area and other
areas in the Oslo-region where many of the inhabitants had to move with their problems
unsolved?
This is an example of the design and use of informal forums in order to support decisionmaking on formal arenas as well as the building of local social capacity. Different tools for
interaction were used, for instance specific task forces providing expertise and direct links to
the formal planning system and a local newspaper for the dissemination of information. This
case also illustrates framing structures for the communication processes involved. The
limited time available resulted in an ad hoc strategy that excluded some groups. For
instance, a more advanced process design includes careful stakeholder mapping. This could
have revealed the risks of the exclusive contacts with the, in a Norwegian context, traditional
local citizen associations caused in this case, and the importance of working also with for
instance “religious people” if inclusion and broad reach out was the intention.
Both cases from Olso briefly described above raise questions about process design and
more profoundly political and institutional design. Bryson and Crosby (1996) see the design
and use of informal forums as possibilities for planners to intervene and influence the
development of planning issues. This raises some real ethical problems of the role of
planners and the political character in facilitating communication, mutual learning and
mediated negotiations. Such problems are contained in all informal participation processes
where stakeholders and citizens are actively involved. In what way have the planners, or
other official experts, the role of being guardians of democratic values at a more general
level? In what way are solutions and principles developed in such informal forums linked to
decision making at formal the arenas of the planning system? How is the production of
locality connected to the interventions of the planning system?
3.2.3
Communication and power relations
Two other Norwegian examples can be used to demonstrate the communicative approach
involving participation of stakeholders at different levels and the, sometimes problematic,
local-regional links. The cases are from the Bergen area in south west of Norway. The first
case demonstrates how broad local participation can support problem structuring and
development in the conflict between growth and green at the local level. The second case
demonstrates the usefulness of involving major stakeholders in the development at a
strategic level. Finally there is a demonstration of how environmental and economic priorities
at these levels counteract and deadlock each other. (The Bergen cases are described by
Arild Holt-Jensen in Healey, P. Khakee, A., Motte, A., Needham, B. (1997): Making Strategic
Spatial Plans, UCL Press, London)
The first case involves the use of broad participation and the application of SWOT-analysis in
the social learning stages of the planning process (SWOT = Strength, Weakness,
Opportunities, Threats). Landås is a municipal district area within the city and region of
Bergen. The area, primarily developed for housing, was presented in Bergen’s municipal
plan for 1989-2000 as completely developed. However, new political signals originating from
environmental concerns, which advocated a concentrated city and the reduction of further
urban sprawl, put pressure on remaining open space in Landås. Co-operative housing
companies and private developers put forward new housing projects. They spotted still open,
often green, areas and applied for building permits to develop these areas for new housing
schemes.
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The local Township Council invited to extensive public participation in a bottom-up planning
process. A “work-book”, partly interactive, was presented to the public at four large meetings
in the local schools, through the press, local clubs, church organisations, political groups and
so on. Many groups were formed and they delivered their opinions and suggestions through
meetings and workbooks. In the end, only about one percent of the population had actually
taken part in the process. Anyhow, the answers submitted seemed to be representative to
the population (according the report in Healey et al. 1997). The workbook and the process
were clearly results of integrative thinking based on the needs of the local communities, from
bottom-up. When all answers had been presented and conclusions had been made, the local
Township Council gave its consent to guidelines for a local development plan pointing out
some areas to be developed others to be kept as parks or open green space. The Township
Council also clearly stated aims for population development, schools, types of housing etc.
However, in accordance to the Norwegian Planning and Building Act the formal municipal
district plan had to be produced by the central Municipal Physical Planning Department of the
Bergen Area. The professional ambitions and abilities of that department took over the lead
and other sector departments did not feel responsible for the maintaining of the locally
founded guidelines. Thus, the integrative intentions of the local bottom-up process, which the
local council had initiated, were frustrated.
Simultaneously, at the regional level the development of an economic strategic plan for
Hordaland County and Bergen Municipality (Bergen kommune 1995) also included the
identification and involvement of main stakeholders in order to produce “commitment
packages”. The strategic planning process provided new alliances between private actors in
industry, representatives from the trade unions, public planning bodies and the politicians in
the county and in the city. The collaborative efforts were successful concerning the
implementation of action programmes but they did not include physical development plans.
The political head of the Physical Planning Committee, a marked environmentalist, created
harsh political conflicts with a proposal to reduce private cars access to city centre. The
tensions between economic and environmental priorities in the Bergen area continue.
There are political implications concerning process as well as content that differs between
broad public participation as in the Landås local development plan and participation of
stronger interest groups as in the strategic development plan of the region. New actors were
involved in both cases. The participants had influence on the content of the final plans,
although the politically elected representatives in the county and in the municipal councils,
respectively, took exclusively the formal decisions. The influence of the participants was
based on argumentation in the social learning processes of the different communities
involved as for instance the workbook groups in Landås. However, the ‘necessity’ of
participation might be viewed differently. While the participants in the processes of the
economic strategic plan will be actively engaged in the implementation of the resulting action
programmes, the participants of the local development plan only prepared guidelines to be
implemented by others, for instance developers and housing companies. The preparation of
new plans following the Landås model has now been called off as regarded as too timeconsuming and too expensive. Furthermore, “local participation might create unrealistic
proposals and demands”. The broad public participation of the Landås case may never be
repeated. Bottom-up interests have become too strong and have frustrated the control by
central politicians and administrators (Healey et al 1997, pp 148-151).
Both Bergen cases are examples of the design and use of informal forums for learning and
commitment building in order to make possible the implementation of strategies and
measures agreed upon. The tensions between the principles of representative and direct
democracy are well illustrated. The different types of governance building on existing political
and economic resources, or the structures of civil society, are also illustrated. The
communication process of the Landås case can be seen as a tool of the City Council to
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support the implementation of central policy for urban densification. The local Township
Council designed a local bottom-up process where tools for interaction were used, for
instance “workbooks”. A package of guidelines were produced that could support
densification, although perhaps not to the degree that satisfied the expectations of the
developers. Also the case of the economic strategic plan produced concrete results and
agreements, however differently. Both Bergen cases illustrates process design that didn’t
sufficiently take in account the actual power relations between formal decision-making
arenas at different levels and sectors of the public planning system, especially concerning
land-use planning where municipal power is framed according to national legislation. From a
communicative point of view the Landås process even became contra-productive. While the
central administration of Bergen found the approach time-consuming and difficult to control,
the local inhabitants probably find further participation meaningless and, even worse, they
might loose confidence in the planning system as whole. This is at risk in any communicative
process that is not properly designed and framed.
3.2.4
Planning tools and distortion of communication
Sager (1994) shows how a standardised tool for Impact Analysis (IA), can be used and
misused in communicative parts of planning processes. The base for the analysis is
comprehensive transportation and land-use plans for the ten largest urban regions of
Norway. Each of the regions was asked to develop strategies leading to three pre-formulated
scenarios called Trend, Public Transport and Environmental following guidelines from a
Central Advisory Group. Each urban region was also asked to present an impact assessment
of the strategies corresponding to the scenarios.
Sager discusses what he calls “distorted communication”. This term designates all forms of
restricted or prejudiced communication that inhibit a full discussion of problems, issues and
ideas of public relevance. There is communication in talk and in writing and it takes places
between numerous actors in the planning process. The distortion that Sager discusses is
primarily found in information written by planners addressed to bureaucrats, politicians and
the general public. The examples that Sager uses are meant to be typical when using tools
as Impact Analysis. His analysis shows how differently the results of IA were applied in
recommendations and it illustrates how various forms of misinformation distort
communication related to IA.
In all cities involved the Environmental-scenario gave the best values according to the
indicators and main goals used. In spite of that, most of the cities made recommendations for
compromise strategies that had little correspondence or argumentative connections to the
impact assessments. The compromises were not analysed in the same way as the other
scenarios and they were consequently not possible to compare to the other strategies. Sager
shows how politicians sometimes do not want to reveal to the general public that some
effects, goals or groups, were given higher priority than others. Information is suppressed
due to potential conflict material or due to time pressure. The analysis presents many forms
of misinformation by saying too little, too much or by making gaps in argumentative chains,
for instance presenting all strategies as environmental, formulating alternatives only to
exclude them at some stage, or using averages to conceal important impacts etc. One
explanation according to Sager is that simultaneously with the planning process the cities
were preparing the list of proposed road investments for the long-term Norwegian Road and
Traffic Plan. Since the local transportation plans and the national road plan will be coordinated, the choice of a low-investment environmental strategy mean that the politicians
favourite road projects may be excluded from the national road plan (Sager 1994 pp 195206). These kinds of hidden agendas are also emphasised in the analysis of Flyvbjerg (1996)
of the planning processes in Aalborg.
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The findings of Sager, also supported by the Bergen cases described above, illustrate issues
of importance for the framing of communication situations in urban planning. One is the fact
that a public administration, at regional, city, or municipal level, cannot be regarded as one
united actor in communicative planning approaches, although this is a usual perception
among citizens. Different sectors at different level of administration have different strategies
and priorities according to local policy, established practice, and formal authority as stated in
national legislation. The identification of actors and related decision domains also within the
public administration seems to be a crucial as well as the establishment of efficient links
between them and other actors and forums involved in a communicative process. This refers
to the design and use of social setting in communicative processes.
Another issue concerns secrecy that always to some degree frame communication situations
as a result of hidden agendas in illegitimate exercise of power or of, more or less, legitimate
political judgements in order to protect public interests. Similarly, in partnerships with private
business secrecy is involved for the protection of business ideas and favourable competition
conditions. This raises ethical questions about when and under what conditions broader
participation is a possible, or even appropriate approach avoiding contra-productivity. When
the building institutional capacity is required to handle the planning problems at hand, the lost
of trust is very destructive. Our assumption is that this is the case for the management of
urban growth and green issues in focus for the GREENSCOM project.
3.2.5
Quality and ethics in communicative planning
Voogd and Woltjer (1999) present a critical review of relevant literature in the field of
communicative planning. They mean that many planners today agree that planning should
be a process of facilitating community collaboration for consensus building. As a
consequence, it seems that communicative rationality is becoming more important in current
planning than in earlier approaches mainly based on instrumental rationality. Professional
approaches of the latter category are often criticised for being too technocratic. The authors
raise the question whether communicative planning is a better framework for protecting
values and reaching objectives than the framework that has justified planning interventions
up to now. The objective of the authors is not to focus on the obvious positive side of “good
communication” but on the other side of the coin. By using notions on quality and ethics as a
framework the authors critically evaluate the communicative ideology. The point of departure
for the study is the Dutch planning system, especially infrastructure planning, where citizen
participation is well organised and institutionalised by law both in the preparatory stages of
administrative plan-making and political decision making and in the implementation stages.
Voogd and Woltjer note that the concept of quality has outcome- as well as process-related
meaning. They apply five ethical principles for their appraisal of the planning outcome
including quality of life for future generations, protection of ecosystem, the coherence of
planning measures, the efficient use of resources and the prevail of collective interests in
social dilemma situations.
The quality of the planning processes are appraised by the following ethical principles:
1. “All relevant stakeholders should be actively involved in the planning process.
2. The participation of stakeholders should not be hampered by cultural and/or educational
differences.
3. The planning process should be manageable and transparent for stakeholders.
4. In a planning process, stakeholders should be endowed appropriately with the necessary
professional knowledge on relevant issues and the possible alternative solutions
5. The interests of stakeholders should be more important in the definition and weighting of
solutions than the degree of involvement of a stakeholder in the process.” (Voogd and
Woltjer, 1999, p. 845)
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The first point above is obviously problematic, as involvement must be voluntary. The
authors discuss and give examples from a huge amount of Dutch communicative planning
situations where these ethical principles are violated. For instance how the principle of
including all relevant stakeholders is violated simply because lack of time and resources.
This leads to selective participation. Furthermore, while some environmentalists deliberately
choose not to participate in official sessions, economic interest groups are strikingly eager to
become involved and to co-operate. Only when plans or projects become tangible or
conceivable do parties become active. In brief, discussions about ‘here and now’ are easier
than debates about change for ‘there and later’. In general, it is people with higher education
and social-economic status that actively participates (op cit. p 846-847).
In their analysis the authors conclude that nowadays ‘the project’ goes hand in hand with ‘the
process’. It is a quality requirement that a project has been subject for debate, consultation
and participation. However, experiences with communicative ideology in Dutch infrastructure
planning situations show signs of possible adverse effects on some ethical principles related
to quality. These ethical standards address the quality of the planning process (for example
selective participation) and the quality of the planning outcome (for example, inadequate
results in terms of sustainability, consistency and cohesion). Consensus and the quality of
spatial decisions may go hand in hand if planners realise that participants might be strongly
oriented on issues close to them: in terms of time, space and their own life world. Therefore
the role of planners should continue to be concentrated on long-term goals, balancing
interests thinking in terms of relationships between parts and perhaps even on designing
innovative and, if necessary, nonconformist solutions. The authors find that instrumental
planning and communicative planning are complementary and not substitutes. Deliberative
actions within the planning system often precede communicative practice. It can also
alternate with communicative practice over time. (op sit. p 851) Compare Sager (1994) who
argues for ‘communication and calculation’, where calculation sometimes can inform
communication, for instance in the management of conflicts, and the fact that instrumental
tools often are developed and accepted as a result of communication.
3.3
Assumptions and General Criteria
In the Greenscom project we need some criteria for the analysis of the communicating
strategies and tools in the cases studied. That means that we have to describe the tools and
the communicative processes themselves as well as to find ways to discuss the relation
between intentions and outcomes of the processes. What are the outcomes of the
communicative processes? Are they worth while? What stakeholders win? Who pay, now or
later? What do they win or pay for? Who represents non-present stakeholders and future
generations? There is no true answer and there is no possibility to find an objective way to
weigh neither intentions nor outcomes as these kinds of questions are interpreted differently
by different actors of a planning process. However, they are important to have in mind when
discussing intentions and outcomes of a case.
From the first paragraph of this chapter referring to the current discourses in planning theory
we can identify some basic themes of importance in our search for communication tools for
the management of urban growth and green issues in urban planning. These themes
concern:
• Rationality and Knowledge
• Power and Power Relations
• The Roles of Planners
• Institutional Capacity
• Inclusion and Exclusion
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The design and use of social settings seems to be crucial to the management of these issues
embedded in communicative planning approaches. What are the tools required in order to
manage the meeting between diverse actors of different practice and rationality avoiding
confusion and deadlocks? How can different expressions of power be revealed and
managed? How can the tools of planners be used and developed in new roles as facilitators
and mediators? What are the tools required for developing new knowledge, shaping social
relations and enforcing shared actions, i.e. building institutional capacity? How can exclusion
be avoided or managed? When is broad inclusion possible and necessary?
3.3.1
Intentions and expected effects of participation
Between the defined start and end of a development process several communicative
situations occur. They are framed and more or less structured by existing visible and invisible
rules, cultures, previous knowledge, available resources and commitment of the participants.
Participation is the key component for our studies, which can be approached in many ways.
Politicians need contact with and approval from citizens to exercise power and take decisions
for different projects. From a political science point of view the intentions and design of
formal rules for participation in planning processes may be related to the question of
legitimacy in the decision processes and resources for implementation. In this perspective
conflicting values and decision-making are driving forces. Another view is that participation
has intrinsic values in building commitment and institutional capacity. From that position,
questions concerning what groups of citizens are involved or excluded from real influence
are interesting, i.e. representation. In this perspective the production of locality is the focus.
Again, another view on citizen and stakeholder participation is based on the idea that the
participants can enrich planning and design processes with their unique experiences and
thus support the formulation of good alternatives. This includes the idea that latent conflicts
can be solved by stakeholder participation in early stages of the design process. From a
planning methodological point of view therefore a more pragmatic search for how intentional
design and use of formal and informal institutions can be developed. The focus then is on
mutual learning recognising conflicting interests.
Criteria for analysis of communicative approaches should involve ethical principles
concerning inclusion, and exclusion, of stakeholders and citizens and how they actually could
participate and influence the outcome. In all cases there are different communicative
situations involved that have different intentions and accordingly different expectations on
outcomes. Furthermore, these intentions and expectations will vary between different actors
in various phases of the process from initiative to implementation. As our studies concentrate
on the communicative parts of urban change processes, a main question is then what criteria
shall be used for describing and analysing the quality of the communicative process? There
is no meaning describing and analysing the communication per se if there is no relation to
the end and outcome of the process and an idea of what could have happened if another
approach had been applied – the contra factual question. What is then the quality of the
outcome of the communicative process? Deeper analysis of the outcomes of the processes
studied in Greenscom is of course not possible within given frames but could be discussed in
relation to the varying intentions of the actors involved.
3.3.2
Intentions and forms for communicative processes
In common for the case studies is that they all depart from an intentional change situation
concerning green and growth. It can be an active initiative to take or create an opportunity for
any form of urban development, be it a developer's intention to build an artefact or citizens’
intention to change the use of an area from parking to park. It can also be a reactive initiative
for protecting some people’s interest from an unwanted initiative, a “NIMBY “not in my back
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yard” or a LULU “locally unwanted land use” reaction. It can also be a proactive approach to
create a policy or a plan for the development of a common interest.
The different examples referred to above shows that the communicative practice and the use
of different tools varies over time depending on in which phase of a planning process they
occur. Communicative practice exists in the traditional political process where
representatives of political parties debate in the preparation of political decisions based on
representative democracy as well as in different types of learning processes both with direct
and representative participation. In the selection of cases we have to pay attention to where
and how different phases in the life of a project link the communicative practice in different
informal forums to the decision making practices in formal arenas. What communicative
practices and tools are used for linking the phases? Different actors often have different and
sometimes conflicting intentions for communication and participation. Do the participants
know the rules for their participation? Are all the stakeholders included? Who are excluded?
How are representatives selected? What are the outcomes of the processes?
The main assumption of this report is that the quality of the process depends on the design
and use of social settings recognising the importance of:
• The possible inclusion of all relevant parties.
• Representation of interests and parties effected but not present.
• Access to information and knowledge about ‘the rules of the game’ for all actors.
• Management of power and power relations, for instance following different positions and
relations of actors and their links to formal arenas and decision domains.
• Exchange of knowledge and arguments between actors with different frames of reference
and with different intentions in a fair debate based on mutual respect.
For the case studies of Greenscom we need context-related criteria for the definition of the
communication situations involved in their wider context of the urban development process
as well as the framing structures of the planning system, including the intentions and
background of the project and process. This will help us to better understand and describe
the planning situations where communication tools are used and developed. We also need
quality-related criteria for the evaluation and comparison of communication tools in relation to
the outcomes of process and project. This will help us to discuss which tools are useful in
which situations.
3.3.3
Context-related criteria for the categorisation of communication situations
• The planning process is a result of an active, reactive or proactive initiative, recognising the
varying intentions of the actors involved in the communication situations involved.
• The communication situations studied are, or are not, integrated parts of standard
procedures of the planning system, recognising that routines in one city may be innovative
from the viewpoint of other cities.
• The communication situations are, or are not, linked to decision making in formal arenas of
the planning system, recognising the risks of drawbacks and lost of trust involved if formal
decision-taking totally neglects the outcomes of communication processes.
• The communication situations studied take place at early or late stages of a planning
process, recognising the different demands on and conditions for communication in a
process from initiative to implementation.
• The communication situations occur occasionally or regularly in the planning process
studied, recognising the time available for continuous reflection and relation building of the
actors involved.
• The main intention of the planning process is to support decision-making at formal arenas
or to support the building of institutional capacity for shared actions in a more open-ended
process, i.e. following a managerial or systematic approach to governance, recognising the
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different rationalities involved. In practice, the intentions may contain elements of both
approaches with varying emphasis at different stages of the planning process.
• The outcome of the planning process are supposed to have strategic or operative value and
implications, recognising how this may influence the interest and commitment of the different
actors involved.
3.3.4
Quality-related criteria for the assessment of communicative approaches and
communication tools
Related to the quality of projects:
• Approaches and tools in action have, or have not, the ability to identify, analyse and
communicate substantive issues of relevance for ‘balancing urban growth and green’.
• The outcomes have, or have not, reasonable impact on the balance of growth and green in
relation to the intentions of the project and other guiding policies.
Related to the quality of process:
• Approaches and tools for interaction have, or have not, contributed to a constructive
exchange of knowledge and arguments (mutual learning).
• Approaches and tools for interaction have, or have not, contributed to the shaping of a
common ground for shared action in the specific case (mutual respect and commitment).
• The process and its outcomes have, or have not, contributed to long-term trust and ability
for future shared actions (the building of institutional capacity).
• The process have, or have not, improved the practice of the actors involved (renewed
frames of reference and deeper understanding).
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4
INNOVATIVE APPROACHES TOWARDS COMMUNICATIVE
PLANNING
In most practices language is an important tool. This is indeed valid for the practice of
research. In order to sharpen the communication with colleagues as well as with people
outside the community of researchers, different concepts and terms are used in order to
focus on specific features or aspects of relevance to the research questions. This is
simultaneously a problem and cause of confusion or misunderstanding, since words are
used and understood differently in different national and cultural contexts and different fields
of practice. Especially, it is problematic when one have to translate and find the right words in
a foreign language.
This situation became evident at the international conference on communication in urban
planning (Gothenburg, October 1999) which served as an inspiring early kick-off for the
Greenscom project. In order to facilitate and structure the reviewing of the papers, the
contributions were labelled according to the type of communicative processes they dealt
with. Here three relevant approaches will be presented: the process-oriented substantive
approach, the process-oriented procedural approach, and the local action approach.
Although departing from different scientific disciplines and perspectives and focusing on
different substantive questions, the search for improving communication and learning is in
common in a way that can be related to the different stages (A-D) of the Green Structure
Planning example referred in chapter 2.
Not all papers delivered at the conference are referred here. We have chosen the examples
of development work that give a good illustration of each of the three approaches. The
authors do not just belong to different national planning and research traditions, but are also
part of different approaches regarding communicative planning. Further, they have in many
cases tried out innovative practices within their approaches. The review of these different
innovative practices will hopefully help the Greenscom team to better understand the
different languages involved and support mutual exchange of experience.
4.1
Process-oriented Substantive Approach
Our denomination indicates that the focus is more on processes than on objects in the
integration of ecological knowledge in urban planning. The research and development work
within this field are interested in communication problems in connection to:
(2.2.1) Identification, description and analysis of urban green structure, its various elements
and functions
(2.2.2) Translation and communication of green structure issues into urban planning
strategies and recommendations
The interest here is to find tools for communication that can integrate green issues in urban
development planning. The assumptions behind this approach are that urban planning will be
improved if the planners of different categories can better understand the local conditions
(areas, flows and actors). This requires communication tools that can translate complex local
situations into concepts and strategies usable in a planning situation. The planners are
supposed to use the knowledge on green functions and integrate it with other perspectives
on urban development in order to make urban planning strategies and recommendations.
From a point of departure in urban ecology Sybrand Tjallingii (1999) introduces the Strategy
of the Two Networks (S2N) and the Forum – Pilot Project Strategy that together form a
theoretical framework of a process-oriented approach to urban ecology. The processoriented approach, that is used in several recent Dutch’s plans and projects, is developed as
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a critique to the traditional object-oriented approach to ecology (see Tjallingii, 1996). While
the object-oriented approach normally ends up in strategies for the protection of certain
species and areas, the process-oriented approach opens up for integrated urban planning
strategies. The strategy of the two networks deals with areas, flows and actors and has a
focus on water and transport systems that shape basic technical and spatial conditions for
urban life. The traditional object-oriented approach managed by specialised sector agencies
results in restrictions on planning. The process-oriented approach requires communication
between different experts and stakeholders in order to make influence on planning. Tjallingii
(1999) concludes that while the object-oriented approach is deeply rooted in institutional
structures, the institutional base for the process-oriented approach is still weak. The forum –
pilot project strategy is a framework for “planning as learning” as a basis for ecological
modernisation in town and country. It is a strategy for social learning, following the idea of
learning by doing, and it includes a scheme of pilot projects, initiated and evaluated by a
specific forum comprising municipal experts of various disciplines, planners, designers,
researchers, politicians, citizen and business groups. The ambition is also to use workshops
in order to enhance shared understanding among all stakeholders concerned. Experience
from practice indicates: while the S2N is a promising approach, in terms of shaping the
decision fields and of shaping the design of the districts as a base for an interactive planning
process, it does not guarantee the commitment of the stakeholders. Different relationship
between the basic tools of S2N and the actors are discussed in order to add more options to
the strategy (van Eijk et al., 1999).
4.2
Process-oriented Procedural Approach
The focus of the research and development work within this approach, when referring to the
GSP example, is:
(2.2.2) Translation and communication of green structure issues into urban planning
strategies and recommendations
(2.2.3) Implementation of green sector strategies and recommendations in the urban
development process
The perspective is derived from the point of view of the public planning system. The
assumption behind this approach is that implementation requires co-ordinated decisions and
actions among diverse public and private actors and users of the urban environment.
Planning is then seen as a learning process that can support and inform formal decisionmaking and agreement as well as everyday decisions and choices among urban actors and
citizens. Tools of interest, for the first stages, have the ability to relate substantive issues,
problems and their possible solutions, to the decision-domains where they belong, and thus
support the identification of actors to be involved in the planning process. Actors include both
those with the power to change a situation and those who benefit, or loose, from such
changes. Tools of interest for the following stages are those that can mobilise the actors
involved and support common learning and commitment building for co-ordinated decisions
and actions according to strategies and intentions agreed upon in the process. This means
that there are several communication situations of interest, between planners - politicians,
planners/politicians – users, planners/politicians – developers, users – developers etc. Tools
for management of power are essential for an inclusive and democratic process.
From a point of departure in planning theory and practice Knut Strömberg (1999) makes a
distinction between forums for learning and knowledge building and arenas for decisionmaking referring to Bryson and Crosby (1996). In a period of time, when different forms of
participation and partnerships are called for, almost as a mantra, to solve complex social
problems it is important to analyse such initiatives in the perspective of democracy (see e.g.
Elander 1999). Also from a practical point of view, broad participation must be used only
when it is relevant and necessary according to the planning situation. Important questions
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are when and how such initiatives for broader participation can be useful and, if so, how the
relevant stakeholders can be identified and get involved. The challenge could be finding
strategies and forms for direct participation that can support, complement and develop
representative democracy. It is about the shaping of intellectual, social and political capacity
that can inform the formal institutions of planning as well as the everyday practices of
citizens, businesses and public administrations.
Strömberg uses a modified version of the Strategic Choice Approach (Friend and Hickling
1987, 1997) as a tool in learning and commitment building processes. It is developed to
handle decision-making processes in complex settings, originally from the point of departure
in the processes of public administration. When applied in a Local Agenda 21 process,
formal decision-making was not the focus. Instead the ability of the tools contained in the
approach for problem structuring and common learning were tested. The issues of planning
were moved from the normal arena, with a framing structure that could not deal with nonstandard situations, to ‘temporal forums’ with new framing structures for communication and
access. This made possible for the participants to question rules, to test new ideas, and to
use new methods. The experience was that it is possible to build knowledge and shape
common insights in dialogue based modes of working, at least in smaller groups. There are,
however, crucial difficulties in conveying such insights to, and make them influence, actors
who have not been involved and when the number of participants increases (Strömberg
1999, Malbert and Strömberg 1996, Malbert 1998). These difficulties can be seen as the
problem of connecting the learning processes of innovative forums to the decision-making
processes of formal arenas. Strömberg (1986; 1993; 1999) identifies the problem of intraorganisational uncertainty referring to, more or less, hidden power relations, that are typical
to any planning situation, as an essential part of the above mentioned difficulties. Strömberg
recognises both the urgent need to develop social settings and practical methods that can
frame and facilitate dialogues with a wider group of citizens and the need of being conscious
of power relations to understand who’s interest will be empowered in each situation.
4.3
Local Action Approach
This approach discusses the planning process from the point of view of the users, people
that live, work or in other ways use the area studied, and focuses on:
(2.2.1) Identification, description and analysis of urban green structure, its various elements
and functions
(2.2.4) From plans to implementation
From this standpoint many decision-making processes are involved. Some of these
processes contain a cognitive view of communication others do not. The intentions about the
green issues are seen from the point of view of how they effect the use of the green, and
planning tools are regarded as relative. In this way, not just the planning and the decisionmaking tools are in focus, but also the policy instruments that frames them.
The basic assumption of the approach is that it is possible to develop planning tools that can
empower the users to act and thus take active part of the development process. This will
focus on communication situations that are not just framed by one actors view of what is
rational to do, but can manage communication as a social process. The development of the
green is not just a planning problem, but a management problem that includes the planning
situation.
Lisbeth Birgersson (2000) has been involved in research with the ambition to try out processoriented procedural approaches that through spatial means will improve the working
environments in urban areas and that, at the same time, will include peoples' ambitions to
develop their own work places. She argues for design theory as a tool for analysing and
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developing dialogues in planning processes. Design theory draws attention to a dialogue that
includes all human senses, and which not only involves the human actors, but also those
phenomena and objects they create and that surround them.
What is rational to do at a specific place is difficult to calculate from a cognitive view of
rationality. This is one of the points in Birgersson's discussion, and it is clearly illustrated in
Tim Delshammar’s paper (1999) on user participation in Public Park management.
Delshammar shows that people engage themselves in parks because they find the work
meaningful and it gives them a feeling of belonging as well as it is an easy way to be
together. If increased relations between people and between people and nature are the
reasons, that make people involved in shared actions, it is understandable that it is difficult to
direct the interest of users into the production of written documents in planning procedures.
Such text is abstracted from the social practice from which it arises. Delshammar means that
we have to regard participation from the view that it has different meaning in different
contexts. He also indicates that people want to develop local assets, like parks, but they don't
want to execute the order of an authority. They want power to work. This can be an asset –
e.g. cutting costs and gaining legitimacy - but also a threat to the culture of the professional
management. Delshammar stresses that user participation demands more co-operative
ability on the behalf of the management rather than a capacity to produce professional
solutions and neat park spaces.
From a pilot case study on how children’s needs of outdoor place(s) are reflected in
municipal planning Maria Kylin (1999) discusses different perceptions of green space among
planners, teachers and children. She shows that adults (planners and teachers) and children
do not use the same language when describing places preferred by children. While the
adults use descriptive terms such as “varied, wild and not maintained” the children usually
refer to the same places in terms of what you can do there. The teachers were sometimes
closer to the children when talking about certain features of a place such as a big tree or a
hut. In her case study Kylin uses focus group discussions and walk interviews as tools to
capture the language and perceptions of her informants. These methods could also be
recognised as possible tools for communication between different stakeholders in actual
planning situations.
4.4
Towards Reflexive Practice
The different research and development approaches in the conference papers reviewed are
all aiming at the improvement of planning practice. They represent different positions and
perspectives of relevance. They focus on different parts of a planning situation and the
communication problems related. From their different points of departure they search for
improved tools and procedures that can grasp and manage the planning situation as a
whole. Experience from applications in practice demonstrates limitations connected to each
approach. They all want to develop a more communicative approach to urban planning,
although communication itself is interpreted differently.
The strategy of the Two Networks is developed within the field of urban ecology. Thus it has
a direct relation to the substantive issues of balancing urban growth and green. This tool has
great potential to guarantee the quality of the project, as shown in many Dutch’s application.
The approach and the concepts used are well anchored in the Dutch planning situation, and
have probably to be translated and adapted for recognition and application in other cultural
and geographical context. While the strategy with focus on basic conditions seems to be
useful as tool for interaction in communication situations between planners from the different
sectors involved it has been more difficult to explain and gain acceptance in communication
with other actors. The complementing Forum – Pilot study strategy is developed to address
this problem.
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Prerequisites and tools for communication in planning situations are the substantive issues of
the two other approaches presented above. These approaches have roots in planning theory
and urban planning practice and discuss questions related to the quality of the process. They
are not specifically developed in the context of urban growth and green issues but more
generally for the management of complex urban change processes and the involvement of
local practice in urban planning, respectively. In common is the focus on the design and use
of social settings in a communicative approach to planning. The requirements of adaptation
to the substantive issues and the actors involved in the planning process are emphasised.
The issues frame the process as well as the process frames the substantive outcomes.
In common for the approaches presented above is a move towards reflexive practice aiming
at the use and the improvement of perspectives and tools of different approaches. Reflexive
practice can be characterised by the view that learning and knowledge building is relational
and based not just on cognitive reflection but also on shared and situated practice. No single
actor, or his/her practice, can control the whole process – for instance, in order to balance
urban growth and green – and thus the communication situations involved have to find
modes of exchange, or interfaces, that can support and co-ordinate shared actions. The
basic assumption is that tools are an integrated part of practice. Practice can be improved or
changed through learning in meetings with other practices. However, such change of
practice is a slow and complex process for any person as well as for the tradition or culture of
the community he/she belongs to.
Is it possible to organise interfaces that make trust and mutual learning possible for shared
action in research, or planning practice? What are the prerequisites and limiting conditions?
How can the communicative situation be framed? What are the possible tools? Strategic
planning tools that make it possible to express intentions – like the green structure plan - are
important, but they are expressions situated in the practice of planners. How does this
influence the ability of these tools to support shared actions in certain directions? How is this
related to the degree of interaction achieved in the plan-making process?
Experience from practice shows that differences in rationality and understanding can result in
disturbed communication situations when one approach, or rationality, becomes dominant
overruling other legitimate approaches, or when the communication ends up in deadlocks
that delay, or prevent, further steps in any possible direction. Currently, many actors within
the planning and research professions try to increase their own range of communication and
sometimes find themselves involved in ‘dialogues of the deafs’ (Van Eeten, 1999).
Thus, we are looking for tools with a capacity in the long run to shape mutual respect and
support mutual learning in specific communication situations. These situations are
characterised by the meeting between actors of different backgrounds and culture who have
different relations to the issues as well as the urban area involved in the planning situation.
Basic assumptions are that each actor is situated in his/her everyday practice and that this
shape, and reshape, the worldview, the perspectives and the taken for granted assumptions
of the actor. Differences between the actors in these aspects may disturb or diffuse the
communication situation. Another basic assumption is that communication situations based
on mutual respect may support learning in ways that make shared actions possible. Crucial
questions are when and how this is possible and what kind of tools that are required in each
specific communication situations. An assumption related to these questions is that we are
talking about a broad range of tools contained in the design and use of social settings where
each actor is given reasonable time and place for the improvement of his/her own practice in
communication with others. Such interaction may be established in the rules and modes of
working, in agenda setting, in the use of metaphors or other illustrations, or by individuals
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acting as facilitators or intermediaries etc. These assumptions are valid not only in planning
but also in research practice.
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5
THE PERSPECTIVE OF PLACE AND SPACE
The three research approaches, from the international conference in Gothenburg, described
above all want to develop a more communicative approach to urban planning. It is inherited
in the different approaches to view communication differently. However, we have detected a
move towards a more reflexive practice in all of them. To support this development, we will
finally introduce some new concepts.
5.1
Place and Space
All humans are placed in the world. We all have places where our experience is deep and
where we can make everyday actions effectively and easy without specific reflections on the
situation. For instance, places where we grow up or where we work regularly. In these places
we learn by living and working with others, using the same tools in similar ways. Thus we
become part of a practice. We learn the tools at the social site within reach of our everyday
actions.
The representations and tools we use in a place are intimately connected to the habits and
traditions of the practice developed there. For instance, when planners in a town planning
office discuss a plan, they don’t need to talk to understand what a planning situation is, what
the plan as a tool means, etc. This is shared knowledge and taken for granted in their
everyday practice. Instead, they will talk about the specific situation and the specific
conditions of the planning area. As experts, they want their knowledge about different
characters and conditions of the area to be representative.
The planning area is the place for the everyday life of the inhabitants. While the inhabitants
can have difficulties in understanding the planning situation as well as the reasons and
impacts of a plan in general, they have a lot of knowledge in their place. This knowledge is
gained by experience and normally not made explicit in everyday action. The planners might
have been in contact with the inhabitants to make some of their knowledge of the area
explicit and usable for the plan-making process. It is a challenge of the planners in the
communication situation with the inhabitants to turn underlying assumptions in a place into
abstracted knowledge of relevance to the planning situation. Such ‘spaced’ images and
concepts are thus tools of planning practice for the description and understanding of specific
aspects of a place. It is a way to untangle certain issues from the ‘wholeness’ of the place.
Placed on a map, as symbols, colours or concepts, these representations can be discussed
at a distance – for instance around a table in an office. This is quite a different
communication situation from the one situated in the field where you just can refer to the
impressions of your own body – and compare them with knowledge from other cases and
places. (The base of all scientific knowledge production, in Latour 1998.) The mediating act
of turning ‘places to spaces’ makes it possible to compare one place with others, and set the
specific conditions into a picture of more generalised knowledge.
In order to design a plan that will be appreciated and carried out – turned into practice by
builders and users – the planners have to solve several communication problems. Many of
them have already been mentioned. Using the notion of ‘place and space, they can be
classified, as occurring when:
turning ‘place to space’ (i.e. making local experience explicit and understood by others);
co-ordinating different practices that use different spaced expressions to guide their
intentions and actions in the process (i.e. combining systematically different codified
languages); and
turning ‘space to place’, when the planned changes of the built environment become parts of
new practical habits (i.e. implementing measures agreed upon and change of practice).
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These three types of communication situations can be found in the knowledge process
described in Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995 and with focus on the importance of place in
Nonaka and Konno 1998). The first situation focus on communication between inhabitants
and the planners and the different ‘techniques’ used to get the complex webs of real world
relations and flows into a language that can be handled within the planning system. The
second one can be illustrated by the communication situations when proponents of different
planning practice meet, e.g. the ‘green’ planners and the ‘traffic’ planners in a plan-making
process. The third one deals with the situations that occur when changes derived with the
help of spaced images and concepts will be sited and influence practice. It refers to what
Hardt and Negri calls ‘the production of locality’ in which peoples’ relations and identity are
produced and reproduced. (Hardt and Negri 2000, referred by Rajanti 2000) Furthermore, it
can also refer to how the relations in and the identity of professional practice, and other
practices involved, become strengthened or weakened by the introduction of new intellectual
tools in planning.
A common critique of the planning system – and other expert systems - is that spaced
language has developed in such a way that the links to the places referred are lost.
Habermas has named this the dominance of system over life-world (Habermas, 1987).
Today the notion of ‘place and space’ is quite commonly used. However, different authors
put slightly different meanings and intentions in the words, which is a bit confusing. The
notion is used in approaches aiming to connect global networks with local networks (e.g.
Castells 1998, Bauman 1998, Jacobs 1993) as well as to increase creativity in practice (e.g.
Törnqvist 1999, Nonaka and Takeuchi 1995). The concepts of place and space also have
relevance in approaches to knowledge creation (Ramirez 1995, Johnson 1990), and to
strengthening of local networks, the identity of places, and the civil society (e.g. Putnam
1993, Hardt and Negri 2000). Finally, the concepts are also used in approaches towards
sustainable development (e.g. Bech-Danielsen 1998, Falkheden 1999). In all approaches
mentioned the common idea is to bridge the gap between the use of spaced
representations/tools in the system and the way they are connected to and effect everyday
life.
5.1.1
Interfaces in place and space
In Denmark, sustainable urban initiatives are shaped by two different development strategies
linked together. One, centrally initiated, tries to regulate environmental issues in a functional
way. Dealing with one issue at a time, the strategy is aiming at general changes in urban
space. The other one is a bottom up strategy guided by an ‘urban ecology’ perspective
where all environmental problems at one place are in focus and changes are searched for
that can support everyday practice in sustainable directions (Jensen 1995). As part of such
approaches, sustainability projects encourage and are encouraged by the ‘production of
locality’. Different interfaces are developed in order to bridge the gap between local initiatives
within reach of specific places and general regulations with national range. They are used to
frame the local situation where people will shape concepts to direct their actions as well as to
co-ordinate such actions to the national regulation practice. Lena Falkheden (1999), in a
study of three such initiatives in Denmark, stresses the importance of these communicative
links that co-ordinate bottom-up and top-down strategies. She sees the possibilities to
develop further links of various kinds including designed links – by means of the built
environment and other artefacts – that will advocate ‘a tangible and sensuous sustainability
to counteract an intangible and not sensuous lack of sustainability’ (Falkheden 1999, p 253).
In this way, shared actions based on relations within reach of people and artefacts at a place
can be strengthened.
When emphasising place – and still recognising the inevitable links to space – we are trying
to emphasise the possibilities of making the spatial dimension an active part in planning, as
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shown in the Danish example. It is about giving the practices involved time and place to
develop their own experience and habits in interaction with each other. The interface
between the different practices then becomes important communication situations where
tools for mutual exchange and learning are required. In such situations the different actors
can develop trust for each other’s practice as well as reflect on the habits of their own
practices. Options for change are depending of the ‘outside’ range as well as of the ‘inside’
reach of the networks of people and artefacts involved.
5.2
Tools in Transition
Up to now we have focused on tools in action and tools for interaction. We now want to
introduce a third distinction: tools in transition. This refers to the concepts of frame reflection,
re-framing, and double loop learning (Schön and Rein 1994). It belongs to a discourse in
planning under formation with inflow from different discussions already mentioned under
headings like governance, institutional capacity building, reflexive planning etc. A key
dimension for tools in transition is space. Important concepts here are reach and range,
originally introduced by Torsten Hägersten (referred to in Törnqvist 1996, Öhrström 1996).
These concepts are, in our interpretation, closely connected to place and space as discussed
above. Reach and range, place and space are conceptual tools for us to introduce the idea
of creating interfaces between different practices, in place and space, that will enable mutual
learning and give a framework for tools in transition.
5.2.1
Reach and range
Tools have to function within reach of the actors using them and within the range of their
intended actions. Within reach of our daily actions we rely basically and traditionally on lots of
tools that are part of what we learnt in life but no longer have to think much about, unless
extra-ordinary things happens. These tools we learn from each other, mainly by living and
working together, supported by the explicit knowledge that schools and handbooks etc. can
provide. Town planners have formal education and training. However, they develop their
skills when working at specific places where related actors and artefacts help to incorporate
as many tools as possible in their bodies. This makes them able to focus with confidence on
the latest issue at hand. For planners, tools that can grasp and communicate the conditions
of any place, as well as the intentions for change of places, are of crucial importance. Other
people, at the place to be changed, or other actors involved in the changing process working
elsewhere, has to be informed or more and less involved, with the help of the range of such
tools.
The tools within the field of urban planning are developed in order to increase the quality of
urban change as well as their range. The problem is that some tools are so much part of the
practice and the identity of the experts that they have become “black boxes” (Rajanti 2000
referring to Latour 1997). I.e. they are tools used more or less automatically and not part of
the reflection in action (Schön 1983). For instance, when planning a new housing area within
a former green area, the planner is fully occupied refining the limits of the covered area and
compiling the figures reflecting the environmental effects in order to balance growth and
green. When showing this balance for an action group formed in the planning area, the
planner might get confused when the people in the action group don’t respond to the maps
and figures shown. In fact, they might start talking about completely different things not
being able to connect the maps and tables with their own experience. The planner’s practice,
developed within his/hers reach, is in this case meeting other practices of the people living in
the area that are developed from the use of the green assets in everyday life. Both parties
take lots of issues and tools for granted and have difficulties to understand each other. This
is a well-known situation in planning often referred to as the “dialogues of the deaf”. From
both sides conceived experience in a specific place and time has to be transformed into
abstracted knowledge with some range in space in order to create some common
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standpoints from which further discussions and actions can be formed. In such cases,
planners might have to reflect over previously abstracted knowledge used as tools – open
some “black boxes” – and modify them, or develop new ones, in order to increase the
interaction with different groups of laymen.
A tool that is fully integrated within the reach of an actor’s practice is a very effective working
instrument. It is an inevitable part of gaining skills and creative action at a place. When used
to do something elsewhere it aims for creating abstractions that can carry intentions over
time and space. This process do not only change the actor’s own practice, but also the other
places and practices involved. How planning tools function in reaching and ranging planning
practice and how this effects the reaching and ranging of other practices is an aspect of vital
importance when discussing tools in a situation characterised by self-organising forms of
governance and a reflexive perspective of planning.
We have already shown that the communicative perspective complicates the use of tools
from being part of an action, where other actors are informed and will inform back, to be part
of transactions where the meaning of information is crucial in gaining some shared
understanding and action. Experience shows that this complication is not enough. We also
find the urban planners in situations where their frame of reference is questioned, and thus
has to be reflected in the communicative situation in order to reach shared action. This leads
us to a perspective of tools as useful at three levels of communication as illustrated in the
table below.
Reach and range are spatial dimensions referring both to social place and geographical
space. What can be conceived by experience in the place of everyday life is within reach.
What can be made explicit will have a range in space. Within this range the interpreter can
make influence out of conceptualised aspects. Tools in transition have the ability to connect
and develop the possibilities and options created by relational trusts developed in place and
the intellectual exchange in space. The challenge is then to analyse and evaluate the
function of tools in reaching and ranging practice and to discuss how to frame new interfaces
with the dimension of space as the key aspect.
Planning tools in action
Planning tools in interaction
Planning tools in transition
To inform and be informed about The tools within reach and range
a situation
of town planning are formed out
of its own logic
To create the meaning needed
The tools have to function as
for shared action within the
communication tools within the
frames of a given situation
range of all practices involved
To create trust between different The tools have to function as
frames of references in a
learning instruments involving
changing situation
reaching and ranging of all
practices involved
The assumption behind the table above is that is important to discuss the interactive capacity
of planning tools, recognising the increasing demands when new actors, professionals as
well as laymen, are involved in the planning process. Innovations can be found at each level
in relation to the intentions of the planning process in each case studied.
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6
CONCLUSIONS AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS
Tools for communication in urban planning are used in compulsory or voluntary activities like
information meetings, review processes, exhibitions, hearings and other knowledge building
or negotiation situations. Hence, tools refer in this report to a broad range of methods, social
settings, activities, illustrations and media that can be used for the exchange of knowledge
and arguments in communication situations concerning urban growth and green issues. In
order to frame the description, analyses and evaluation of the case studies different types of
communication situations has been identified and mapped. Also, two basic types of tools are
suggested: tools in action and tools for interaction.
Conclusion 1: In this report a map that frames the communication situation is suggested. It
includes some of the main groups of actors involved in urban planning and the
communication situations that might appear. Some of the communication situations are
regular, normal, open, formal parts of the planning process others are irregular, informal,
hidden and not easy to identify.
This map separates out the explicit expressions originating from the practice of each actor
group. These expressions are concrete results/tools of such practice. However they might be
seen as abstract, confusing and difficult to understand by other actors. This is most obvious
between actors carrying knowledge in or about a local situations, respectively.
Research questions: Which are the main groups of actors involved in the case? What are
their intentions? What are the expressions/tools used by the initiating actors to do what? How
are the green issues expressed? Which communication situations are involved? Which
communication situations are in focus? How are they framed in time and space? Which tools
work as tools for whom?
Conclusion 2: Tools in action are integrated parts of a specific practice and more or less
specific for each actor involved in urban planning. Such tools are used and developed for a
strategic and comprehensive level of planning or for the development, maintenance, or
protection of qualities in the urban landscape at more detailed levels. Most countries have a
long tradition in using such tools to protect green areas and, more recently trying to integrate
ecological issues in the context of urban planning. The increasing demand for
communication in planning focuses on the functions of tools for interaction between actors.
Research questions: Which practices are involved in the case and which are the tools in
action? What kinds of communication problems are identified concerning growth and green?
Which innovations are applied in order to overcome these problems?
Conclusion 3: Tools for interaction support the exchange of knowledge and arguments
across disciplinary and cultural boarders in order to support shared actions for the
development of urban green qualities. This can be seen in a short-term perspective – for
instance, how to involve relevant actors to make and implement a specific plan, and how to
avoid deadlocks, wasting energy in futile disputes – and in a long-term perspective – for the
support of a continuous process for shared trust and sustainable development.
Research questions: Which tools for interaction are in focus in the case? Which type of
tools are used? By whom and with what intentions were they implied? How do the perceived
problems frame the tools and how do the tools frame the problems? How do they function as
tools for the different groups of actors involved – in the short-term and in the long-term? How
do these interactive tools effect the way green issues are carried through the planning
process?
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Conclusion 4: The quality of the process has to do with ethical principles concerning
inclusion and reasonable conditions for participation in time and space as well as the
outcomes concerning green and growth issues. In the Greenscom case studies this can be
discussed in relation to the intentions of the actors involved.
Research questions: Who are the relevant actors according to the planning issues and how
have they been able to make influence? How have the interests of non-present actors been
advocated? How do the actors involved describe their views of the outcomes in relation to
their intentions? How are growth and green issues identified, analysed and managed in the
cases?
Conclusion 5: Innovative tools for interactions are tools that can work and adapt to
continuously changing conditions of the social context – tools in transition. This means
creating interfaces between different practices that will enable mutual trust and learning.
Research questions: Can changed practice of actors involved be traced in the cases? Is
such changes related to a managerial or a systematic approach to governance? Which tools
are used? How do these changes effect the attitudes on and use of urban green?
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7
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