Complexity and carrying structures
DRAFT
learning-by-doing in urban planning
Sybrand Tjallingii 1 and Gert de Roo
1
2
2
Delft University of Technology
Groningen University
Abstract
Over the last thirty years one can observe a paradigm shift in urban and regional planning, or at
least a shift in emphasis; from technical rationality to communicative rationality. Increasingly, we
live in a continuously and rapidly changing world, full of uncertainties and unpredictable
situations. In planning theory this has generated a transition from rational ‘objective’ systems’
thinking to interactive, inter-subjective planning process thinking. In the mean time, however,
systems’ thinking evolved and has generated new approaches to chaos and complexity. This may
bring new life to the academic debate about the possible interactions between technical and
communicative planning traditions. This paper builds on these debates and confronts theoretical
issues with experiences in planning practice, taking some Dutch urban planning cases as
examples. Most practical planning situations are between the two theoretical extremes of
technical and communicative rationales. In this ‘in between’ domain the paper focuses on two
issues. The first issue concerns complexity and the stages of planning, from plan-making to planrealising and addresses the step-by-step process from vision generating to goals’ realising. The
second issue is about complexity and the interaction between integrated and sector planning and
addresses the conflicts between the search for synergism and sharp sector targets. We will
emphasise here, the important role of objectifying conceptual tools in a learning-by-doing
perspective of coping with complexity. The planning cases will illustrate the role of these tools that
act as guiding models for the activities of planners and other actors in parallel planning
processes. The guiding models discussed here illustrate their role in creating robust carrying
structures as conditions for adaptive behaviour in two fields of planning. The first concerns urban
water systems that can cope with the uncertainties of climate change. The second issue relates
to non-linear spatial, economic and social transitions in the existing city. The conclusion part
discusses possible implications for the interaction between complexity theory and planning.
1. Introduction
Under the title The Question is Being or Becoming, De Roo (2009) confronts recent
developments in complexity theory with planning theory. His reasoning leads to a
scheme that positions technical rationality and communicative rationality on two sides of
the spectrum (fig. 1). In recent decades, planning theory has developed two answers to
the central issue of dealing with uncertainty. The first is the approach of communicative
rationality, focussing on interaction in planning processes and inter-subjectively
accepted interpretations of the planning situation. The second reaction emerges from the
study of complex systems and combines chaos theory, adaptation and self-organisation
with an evolution oriented approach to complex systems. In his paper, de Roo argues
that complexity theory may have an important role to play in bridging the gap between
the two extremes of rationality. The present paper will further explore the middle ground
between the technical and communicative rationality. Most practical planning projects
are muddling through this middle ground, combining technical substantive and
communicative procedural issues. They try to avoid the pitfalls of unpractical sense and
negotiated nonsense and seek to conceive strategies that build on the synergism of the
two sides. Therefore, we will confront the theoretical debate with some practical
experiences, widening the question from system-based Being or Becoming to the
activity-based question of Doing. What may theory learn from practice, and how may it
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guide practitioners through a world of complexity and uncertainty?
QuickTime™ and a
decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Fig. 1. Between technical and communicative rationality (de Roo, 2009)
As a first introduction we may briefly summarise a study about the methodology in Dutch
municipal water plans (vandeVen & Tjallingii 2005, vandeVen et al. 2006). Some cities
pioneered with municipal water plans since the early 1990s, but it was after the 2003
National Governance Agreement about Water that all municipalities were strongly
encouraged to elaborate a co-ordinating water plan for their territory. Evaluating the first
generation of these plans, the study distinguished three different approaches.
1. The target image approach. The basic idea is to agree about a blueprint of the future
situation. The method focuses on testing measures for their efficiency to reach the
target. The approach fits in the tradition of policy analysis and back-casting.
Instrumental, technical rationality is the basis. Examples are the water plans of The
Hague and Rotterdam that both combine ‘seducing’ images with precise ecological and
chemical standards.
2. The guiding principle approach. The basic idea is to agree about a set of principles for
development. The method focuses on the design of development strategies and physical
conditions. A toolkit of guiding models, resulting from previous experiences of integrated
planning is the basis for planning and design. The approach fits in the tradition of
planning as social learning. Creating conditions and interaction are the basic elements.
The water plans for Delft and Tilburg are examples.
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3. The negotiating approach. The basic idea is bringing together the stakeholders and
generating an interactive process that leads to targets and realisation. The method
focuses on negotiating strategies. Communicative rationality is the basis. The approach
fits in the tradition of planning as transaction. An example is the Almere water plan.
At first sight the three approaches demonstrate a striking similarity with the dichotomy of
technical and communicative rationality, described by De Roo and well known from
planning theory literature. Obviously, the specific case of municipal water plans shows
characteristics of a more general trend in both theory and practice. The approach of
guiding principles and guiding models explores the middle ground and it is interesting to
look at it more closely. How does this approach actually work in day-to-day practice?
The Gorcum and Schalkwijk cases are good illustrations. Before turning to the
theoretical debate these two cases will provide some concrete practical experiences.
In the complexity discussion it seems that there are two options. First: a radical jump
from object oriented systems approaches towards a process-oriented attitude. And
second: improving the systems approach by integrating complexity research and
adaptive planning. In this paper we will explore the middle ground between these two
options by focusing on the interaction of technical and communicative rationalities in
different situations illustrated by the two cases.
2. The Gorcum case
planning situation
Gorcum is a small city with 35.000 inhabitants in the area of big rivers of the Dutch Delta.
The city was built at the mouth of a small river, the Linge, where it runs into the Waal, the
large branch of the Rhine that passes Gorcum (Fig. 2). The area is on the southern
fringe of the Randstad Green Heart where the pressure of urbanisation is high. The case
concerns planning a new urban development of 1400 dwellings on the eastern fringe of
the town and, more specifically, focuses on the role of water in the future development.
As a consultant, the first author took part in the working party sessions devoted to these
issues. Three stakeholder groups, three actors, participated in this stage of the planning
process.
actors and their discourses
1. The local government and private developers joined their efforts in a public-private
development organisation. Their goal was to build houses. In their view the role of
water is primarily to create a safe and attractive environment to enhance the quality of
living in the new development. Naturally, the private developers wanted to make profit
and also the local government welcomed a profitable project to generate the funds they
needed for costly urban renewal projects in other parts of the town. For these actors, the
most efficient means to achieve their goals is building more houses and make them
more attractive. More space for surface water could be an option only, if more houses
can be built.
2. The second actor is the waterboard, responsible for a safe and healthy surface water
system. Their goals are specified objectives. The water level in the canals and ponds of
the new area should not be less than 0.70 cm below street level. To this standard they
add t = 10, meaning that a rainstorm occurring with a frequency of once in ten years
could be tolerated to make the surface water rise above this level. The quality standards
for surface water are: phosphate below 0.15 mg/l and nitrogen below 2.2 mg/l. The most
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efficient means are also specific. To guarantee the water level of 0.70 cm a minimal
surface of 10% of the built-up area should be designated for peak rainfall storage. The
phosphate and nitrogen contents can be achieved by rinsing the system with the water
of the river Linge that has phosphate and nitrogen levels slightly below the standard.
This is common practice already for the adjacent existing residential area.
3. The third actor is the New Dutch Water Line initiative, whose representatives take
part in the meetings. The goals of this organisation initiated by the National Government
together with five Provincial administrations are related to the role of cultural heritage.
The New Dutch Water Line is a 19th century defence line reaching from Amsterdam to
south of Gorcum with fortresses and inundation works. Funds are made available to
make this part of military and landscape history visible in future developments, such as
the present plan for urban expansion of Gorcum. More specifically, the objective of this
actor is to create conditions for a visible inundation event on “fortress day” a Saturday in
September when the public is invited to visit all the New Water Line Fortresses and
waterworks. The best means to realise this objective is to let in water from the river Waal
near Fort Vuren, the place that was designed for the inundations.
In the proposals put forward in the meetings of the working party on water planning, the
three actors each followed their own technical rationality, based on the most efficient
means to reach their own objectives. Communication was not easy because the
developers talked in terms of economic stories, the water engineers presented their
calculations and models and the Water Line representative was thinking and speaking in
visible images. This is a more general barrier to learning and communication (Müller et
al. (2005). Moreover, the plans of the actors in this case were not compatible. More
houses do not fit in with the preferred image of the Water Line actor. Letting in water
from the river Waal was rejected categorically by the water board because of the low
quality of this water.
guiding principles and guiding models
At this stage of the planning process, that explores common grounds for integrated
planning, the guiding principle approach played an important role. The actors shared
principles of sustainable water management for health and safety and for the
contribution of water in providing urban quality of life and enhancing landscape identity.
There was a general agreement about the priority principle proposed by the State
Committee on Watermanagement in the 21st Century: in urban water plans the first
priority should be on-site retention, next comes storage nearby and only if rainwater has
reached the river, discharge should be given priority (Commissie Waterbeheer, 2000).
Agreement about principles is important, but the consensus remains rather abstract. To
provide concrete guidance of planning and design processes a toolkit of guiding models
has been developed and one of these seems to fit very well to the situation of this case:
the circulation model (Tjallingii, 2007).
The circulation model is a scheme for a robust carrying structure of an urban surface
water system that can cope with extremes of too much and too little water. In this way
the model creates conditions for addressing the complexity and uncertainty of climate
change. In practice as in this case, the conceptual model guided the operational water
models that produce precise calculations relevant for the technical objectives and the
concrete dimensions of the plan. On the other hand the model also guided the design
process, making the plan fit to the needs of the actors and to the ecological potential of
the local landscape, as illustrated by Fig. 2.
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The circulation model assumes on-site retention at the level of dwellings and streets but
for the urban district level it focuses on creating rainwater storage in a small lake. This
water is circulated through the surface water network of an urban area. Fluctuating water
tables increase the peak storage and seasonal storage capacity. Storing rainfall peaks
creates conditions for separating wastewater and rainwater. Seasonal storage creates a
reservoir that is used in dry periods. Thus, the new system avoids both combined-sewer
overflows and the summer-supply of polluted river water and in this way the circulation
model effectively deals with the two most important sources of urban surface water
pollution. By connecting the circulation system to the adjacent existing neighbourhoods
the plan also creates conditions for disconnecting rainwater from the existing combined
sewer system. This implies that in due time, also there the pollution problem of combined
sewer overflows can be solved.
Linge
Outlet
QuickTime™ and a
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weir
New urban
development
pump
Storage lake
inundation
area
Helophytes
Fort Vuren
Waal
Fig. 2. The circulation model and the structure of the water system for the new
Gorcum development.
The small pump in the circulation system continuously keeps the water moving, which is
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good for water quality. A passage through a purifying wetland, the helophyte filter, is part
of the system and can be designed for reaching the required phosphate and nitrogen
standards. There is no more need for rinsing with external water, which is not a very
sustainable idea anyhow. As the saying goes: dilution is no solution to pollution.
On “fortress day”, in the Gorcum case, the weir on one side of the storage lake can be
closed, and the pump on the other side supplies enough water from the system’s own
sources to make the storage lake expand, inundating the adjacent meadows. There is
no need to increase the number of houses, at least not for the financing of the plan. The
storage lake in the eastern fringe of the plan will increase the value of the houses on the
edge. As a whole the multifunctional nature of the plan creates conditions for multi
funding and for public support from different actors.
The guiding model generated a planning proposal that can fulfil the basic goals of the
actors but not with the means they proposed. Rather than immediately looking for
compromises between the proposals, the guiding model guides the actors to a deeper
level, where it becomes possible to communicate between their basic needs and the
basic potentialities of the ecosystem and the local landscape. This created a common
language between the sector representatives and in the end, these actors agreed to the
circulation-model-based spatial structure for the Gorcum development as a basis for
further detailed operational planning and design. Summarising, the guiding model
provided a tool for designing a robust carrying structure addressing both the complexity
of climate change and the complexity of disagreement among the actors.
3. The Schalkwijk case
In complex planning situations full of uncertainties, in the absence of clear cause and
effect relations, one of the practical options is to start with a structure of the plan that
creates basic conditions, a frame of carrying structures instead of a blueprint master
plan. Water structures, as in the Gorcum case, are a good example. But, of course,
urban planning is more than water planning. The Schalkwijk case may illustrate how
water network structures can be combined with traffic network structures and how these
two networks may act as carrying structures, providing a frame that allows for flexible
infill in a socially and economically more complex planning situation (Fig. 3).
planning situation
Schalkwijk is a 30.000 inhabitants district of Haarlem built in the post-war period. It is a
one-sided social housing area with predominantly rental apartments. As many of the
apartment building developments of the same age, due to social and economic change
the area threatens to slip into a downward spiral of unemployment, poverty and poor
living conditions. A reconstruction and redevelopment scheme is well under way and the
basic planning document is the 1999 Structure Plan. The spatial structure is based on
the Two Networks’ Strategy, a guiding model that takes the networks of water and traffic
as carrying structures for development (Tjallingii,1996, 2005). As in the Gorcum case,
the guiding model stimulated the actors to discuss their ideas at a deeper level of needs
and potentialities. In an early stage a residents’ festival generated seventy proposals
that were used by working groups of public officials and private organizations for social,
environmental and spatial issues in the plan. Van Eijk (2003) describes the details of the
Schalkwijk communication process. In the context of this paper it is more relevant to
focus on the way the Two Networks’ Strategy, as a guiding model, addresses complexity
in this situation.
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fast and slow lane dynamics
All surveys demonstrate that most people highly value green spaces, but economically,
parks and gardens are always less profitable than built developments. In the power play
of urban development the quiet world of green spaces needs allies and water is an
obvious candidate. Flood prevention and water supply are related to politically powerful
issues such as safety, damage and health. Climate change increases the urgency to
create space for water. Thus, the synergism of blue and green provides promising
planning strategies for slow-lane environments. On the fast-lane side, the synergism of
traffic and logistics creates an urban environment for dynamic activities, such as industry
and commerce but also including intensified agricultural production and mass tourism.
River
Spaarne
to motorway
Storage
lake
Two Networks’ Strategy
Fig. 3. The Two Networks’ Strategy and the Schalkwijk restructuring plan.
On the map, the water is black. The arrows show where the road infrastructure
gives access to the area.
Together, the two networks create a robust framework that allows for flexible infill with a
variety of projects for housing, shops, offices and public open spaces. It is not a blueprint
of the future but it creates conditions. These conditions enhance the synergism of the
activities on the fast-lane and slow-lane sides. The design of the framework should avoid
conflicts between the dynamic and quiet sides.
Guided by the strategy the Schalkwijk planning process led to the decision not to build a
ring road in the urban fringe but to concentrate traffic, and slow down the speed, in the
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central zone with most offices and the shopping mall. As a result, the fringe zone can
become a quiet zone with a park, urban agriculture, interesting natural habitats for
biodiversity. Here the storage lake and the wetlands with helophytes are positioned, the
key elements in the water network. The circulation model also guided the design of the
Schalkwijk water system From the storage lake, the water circulates through the built-up
areas and then returns to the fringe. The redesigned fringe area greatly enhances the
quality of the edge. Here, new houses were built for middle class incomes.
Diversification of the housing stock is one of the social objectives. For those residents
that improve their income, it creates possibilities to stay in the Schalkwijk area and move
to the new houses on the edge with a very attractive view. Given the demand,
investment and development is relatively easy. At the same time, also the lower incomes
in the apartment buildings benefit from the presence of the green and quiet fringe zone.
The quality-of-the-edge approach can also be seen in combination with green structure
planning. A spatial structure of green spaces that follows the natural drainage pattern of
small valleys and rivers, not only creates a blue-green network that enhances the identity
of the city but also creates more edges with more quality. Research in many European
cities has demonstrated the great potential of dynamic green structure strategies
compared to static green belt strategies (Werquin, et al. 2005). In a process of urban
sprawl many people jumped over the green belts to settle in the countryside and
commute to the city, a process that has led to landscape fragmentation and traffic
congestion in many urban regions. Creating attractive edges is a promising alternative,
offering the proximity of both green and urban qualities. The future of urban development
is not in the edge cities (Garreau,1992) but in the quality of the edge of the city.
The two cases may illustrate a number of issues in the complexity and planning debate.
The Gorcum case illustrates how a guiding model for water systems can play a role in
bringing the discussions between different actors with different views to a deeper layer of
fundamental needs and opportunities. This happened also in the Schalkwijk project. The
description of this case throws more light on the role of a guiding model for urban
development in general. The two networks create a frame for basic quality of flows and
spaces and also provide a basis for adaptive decision making in the future. The two
cases demonstrate the role of guiding models in both technical and communicative
rationality as will be further discussed below.
4. Complexity, technical and communicative rationality
a process perspective
In the Gorcum case, the actors started with a goals and means perspective. The guiding
model brought them back to basics, back to a stage in the planning process with more
space for fundamental discussions about the long-term perspectives in this landscape at
this stage of development. The communicative rationality addresses the complexity of
disagreeing groups. But the instrument that plays a role in this communication process is
a guiding model about the technical rationality of a carrying structure for long-term
sustainable development. The guiding model generates answers to the complexity of
climate change. So, in practice, communicative and technical rationality are inextricably
bound up with each other. In a process perspective, the guiding model approach
emphasises the priority of basic conditions over specific goals and means. This will only
generate a basis for agreement, however, if the participants are able to link the basic
conditions to their goals here and now.
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The Schalkwijk case demonstrates the same issue of creating a common ground for
different actors, but also highlights the role of carrying structures, creating a frame for
adaptive planning decisions in the future. The complexity of uncertain future
developments asks for conditions that create continuity with the urban landscape history,
and thus identity. But at the same time there is a need for carrying structures that can
cope with increasing traffic flows in uncertain network developments. The structure of the
traffic and water networks generates a spatial plan that can play this role. In a process
perspective, there is a need for step-by-step decision making, for no-regret decisions
about a frame that leaves enough freedom for flexible future infill. Also here, we see an
intimate link between communicative and technical rationality.
Figure 4 illustrates different strategies to cope with complexity. In figure 4a we see an
approach to planning processes that is increasingly popular and is inspired by the New
Public Management (Hood, 1991). It is based on a solid belief in achievable and
measurable results and on realizing clearly defined targets. Everything and everybody is
held accountable for results. All planning should be ‘SMART’ – specific, measurable,
agreed, results-oriented and time-bound. As a result, there is a very limited space for
participation, innovation and coping with uncertainties. In government policy practice,
plan testing with an overestimation of accountancy and justification dominates at the
cost of good plan making. In the Gorcum case, the water board can show results even if
the phosphate content of surface water is reached by rinsing, thus by shifting problems
to other areas. In the Schalkwijk case, building a ring road, to replace the busy central
road, would reduce the number of people living within a short distance from the road.
And this is exactly one of the important indicators for results presently used in Dutch
planning practice.
Figure 4a demonstrates how, in the management approach, the planning process moves
to formulate targets as a starting point. Plan making follows the targets and thus focuses
on the way and the instruments to reach these targets. The central role of plan testing
embodies the focus on accountancy and justification, often called transparency.
Efficiency is the leading criterion.
The carrying structures approach, represented in figure 4b, follows a step-by-step course
that is comes close to the well-known tradition of strategic and operational planning
(Faludi,1987:118). There is a balance between the strategic stage on the right side,
where plan making dominates and the operational stages on the left side, where plan
realising is the leading activity. The role of plan testing is not only important for the
parameters of the parts but even more for the evaluation of the planning answers to
uncertainty and complexity. Most important are the ex post evaluations after the
realisation of the plan, in the stage of use and maintenance. That is the stage where we
can learn about the usefulness of the plan. Guiding principles and guiding models
primarily play a role in the process of plan making that leads first to a structure plan, a
vision about the coherence and synergy of the activities in the future. The vision of
framing and flexibility leads to a plan for the role and the nature of carrying structures.
On the operational plan realising side efficiency is the principal criterion, but on the plan
making side fit is the criterion. The question is whether the plan fits to the local
landscape, the local actors and the planning situation.
The management approach addresses complexity by assuming certainty in a process of
trial and error. The business plan formulates sharp targets as if there was absolute
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certainty about goals and means. If the underlying assumptions turn out to be wrong the
business plan is adjusted. In the extreme case the company goes bankrupt.
End results
initiative
PLAN REALISING
PLAN TESTING
efficiency
(PLAN MAKING)
Targets
Fig. 4a A management model of planning processes
Adaptive
planning
EVALUATION
ex post
PLAN REALISING
initiative
efficiency
fit
PLAN MAKING
Guiding
Models
Carrying Sructures
EVALUATION
ex ante
Guiding
Principles
vision
structure plan
Fig. 4b A carrying-structures model of planning processes.
The carrying structures approach is based on the view that public policies and spatial
planning cannot risk bankruptcy and cannot radically adjust their business plans after
one year. In spatial and environmental planning, with its role in creating long-term
conditions an approach of guiding models for carrying structures and adaptive planning
is more appropriate. Learning and adaptation are the key issues in dealing with
complexity.
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a systems’ perspective
The two cases may also throw light on complexity issues in planning practice from a
systems’ perspective. This relates both to the actor networks, their communicative
“systems”, and to the physical systems involved. The actors in the Gorcum case, the
developers, the water-board technicians and the Water-Line officials, represent groups
of actors, usually called “sectors”, operating in different “systems” with different
discourses. As mentioned briefly already, in the political and economic systems of the
developers, stories with convincing arguments count. The water-board technicians
represent the system of technical discourse. They have to convince their colleagues with
hard figures, calculations. The socio-cultural systems of the Water-Line officials follow a
discourse in which convincing images play a major role. It is with the stories, the
calculations and the images the participants in the meetings of the planning process
have to convince their boards, councils and colleagues when they come back to their
offices. If they fail to convince, their personal position is at stake, within the organisation.
If the sector fails to convince their supporting interest groups, the position of the sector is
at stake. The case illustrates how the communicative rationality asks for a way to
generate discourse coalitions (Hajer, 1995) that can combine the political, the economic,
the technical and the socio-cultural perspectives. This is what the carrying structures
approach with the guiding models seeks to achieve.
The Schalkwijk case, as discussed here, illustrates the physical system. In this case, the
two networks’ strategy is the guiding model for the carrying structure of urban
redevelopment. In traditional master planning, the end result of the system is defined in
a spatial plan. Different sectors, such as the water, traffic and environmental
departments have also defined their end results in terms of standards. They pose limiting
conditions to the plan. Spatial planners often describe them in the first chapter of the
planning document under the title “limitations”. Also natural and cultural heritage usually
falls into this category. The two networks’ strategy is not an approach of limiting
conditions but of carrying conditions, starting on the other side, the side of the basic
potentialities of the ground layer of the urban landscape and the available strategies for
robust technical approaches to traffic and water systems.
Figure 5 represents the layers of the carrying structures approach. The triangles part
goes back to one of the schemes of the Strategic Choice Approach, an influential school
of thought and practice in planning theory (Friend & Hickling, 1987). The message is that
communication at the level of positions is extremely difficult because there often is no
common ground. In negotiations there is a better chance to approach each other if the
discussion moves to the layer of interests. There is at least a common point. This is a
weak base, however. To reach an agreement the actors should move to the deeper
layer of needs. The Gorcum case illustrates how this moving to a deeper layer can work.
Both the Gorcum and Schalkwijk cases also demonstrate how the layer of needs should
be combined with the carrying structure of technological options and landscape
potentialities. The layer approach in spatial planning (CEC, 1999) stresses the
importance of the ground layer of the underlying landscape and the network layer as
basic conditions for occupation and land-use decisions. Figure 5 combines the layer
approach with the Strategic Choice. The scheme illustrates how the carrying structures
should be rooted in the potential of the local landscape, combined with a robust frame of
eco-technical networks as a basis for long-term needs that are less dependent on the
uncertainties of changing interests and positions. Thus these structures can also carry
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communication processes, demonstrating how inseparable the communicative and
technical rationality are.
Positions
Interests
Needs
Technical options
Landscape
potentialities
Carrying structures for basic needs
sustainable development
Fig 5. Layers of communication and planning (after Hickling).
In practice this approach will meet with strong counter forces. Greatly encouraged by
competing media and politicians, the sectors are being pushed to higher levels instead
of deeper layers. They have to show results and position themselves as successful
agencies. In this atmosphere of competition, loosing your face compared to other sectors
is the worst thing that can happen, especially if it is made clearly visible to the general
public. Division of labour is a key to successful management of complex matters. But the
division of tasks in sector departments of public administration increasingly also creates
barriers. The carrying structure approach explores ways to cooperate on the basic frame
for the basic needs.
5. Conclusions
How do these two specific cases and the remarks about processes and systems relate
to more general literature about planning and complexity?
Communicative rationality in planning is a concept inspired by Habermas’ Theorie des
Kommunikativen Handelns (Habermas, 1981). The basic idea is the interaction between
subjects in a non-hierarchical situation, seeking shared understanding about the
situation and agreement to coordinate their plans. It is an action-oriented concept that
contrasts with teleological rationality (goals and means), normative rationality (group
conformance to common values) and dramaturgical rationality (presentation to an
audience, strategic action). This paper started with the polarity between communicative
and technical rationality. Technical, as we discuss it here, indeed starts with teleological
goals and means reasoning, but the emergence of complexity theory with its emphasis
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on chaos and adaptive planning may widen the scope. The approach illustrated by the
two cases, a guiding model – carrying structure approach, can be described as both
technical and communicative. It is technical in the sense of rational reasoning of creating
robust conditions, but the approach is not teleological, not goals and means reasoning. It
is also communicative in the sense that it has the potential to create a common base,
even for actors that follow normative or dramaturgical rationalities. The guiding models
are instruments that may be useful to create agreement about conditions at a deeper
layer of potentialities and needs in an early stage of the planning process. Evidently, this
does not mean that reaching an agreement is guaranteed. It may be rightly argued that
the cases discussed here do not demonstrate deep cutting conflicts. This does not
mean, however, that the guiding models approach may not be able to contribute to
communication strategies in conflict situations. Even then, it remains essential to relate
possible solutions or compromises to the deeper layers indicated in Figure 5.
In the 1990s, communicative rationality emerged as a dominant feature in the
collaborative approach advocated by Healy and others. This approach can be seen as a
reaction to the modernist blueprint planning tradition. Healy (1998:1544) for example,
focuses on “fostering the institutional capacity to shape the ongoing flow of ‘place
making’ activities.” This relates communicative rationality to the physical world, but to
places rather than to carrying structures. It addresses the infill rather than the frame. She
criticises the economic bias of utility-maximising agency in favour of “ a social being,
constructing and reconstructing identity and preferences in different social situations.”
(Healy, 1998:1543). No doubt, institutional capacity can be a social carrying condition.
But this approach does not address the physical carrying structure and its ecological and
technical nature that creates the durable frame for flexible ‘place making’ that concerns
us in this paper.
Simplification seems to be the only way to address complex matters. Sometimes, in
modelling or problem solving, information that cannot be used is simply left out. This
reductionism has been successful in taking us to a modern technology dominated world.
But the technical rationality of reductionism also failed to solve many problems and has
generated new social, environmental and economic dilemmas. An increasing distrust of
objective truth and progress was feeding post modernism. The idea that the world
around us is just a social construct brought some to extreme relativism. But also within
the modernist tradition, researchers, planners and philosophers reacted to the untenable
claim of blueprints and linear goals and means reasoning. The Habermasian approach
of ‘shared understanding’ is one example. In environmental policy studies the idea of
Ecological Modernisation emerged (Hajer, 1995; Spaargaren et al. 2000), seeking to find
a way between modernist objectivism and post-modernist subjectivism. This is not only
“in between” technical control and undirected interaction. Ecological Modernisation is
based on the idea of partnership with nature. Not only humans and nature have intrinsic
values, but also “working with nature” has a value in its own right. Guiding models for
deeper layer carrying structures can be considered tools for working with nature. These
tools are not conceived for realising end results but for creating conditions. Thus the
guiding model - carrying structure approach is not only about “being” or “becoming” but
primarily about “doing”: creating conditions and interaction between human actors and
the physical environment, even if the end results are unknown.
In planning, a valuable contribution comes from the Strategic Choice approach (Friend &
Hickling, 1987) that is the source of the human interaction part of figure 5. Closer to the
technical rationality, systems research developed a better understanding of complexity
13
and uncertainty. One of the pioneers in this context is Checkland who developed the
Soft Systems Methodology (Checkland, 1999). This approach focuses on organisations
and the basic uncertainties of different goals of different actors in organisations. But in
the work of Van Eijk (2003), he applies Checkland’s concepts to urban restructuring and
the use of guiding models for carrying structures.
Summarising: the guiding model – carrying structures approach we propose in this paper
addresses the issue of complexity in two ways. First the carrying structures create a
frame of robust conditions that serves as a basis for adaptive planning. Secondly, the
guiding models provide the conceptual basis for a process of learning-by- doing.
Learning, here, refers both to the learning process of improving the frames, the carrying
structures and the process of ‘place making’ that can follow the construction of carrying
structures. The examples of the carrying networks of water and traffic have shown that in
urban planning practice these are promising carriers. But it is possible that other physical
networks as those for energy will be able to play a similar role in specific planning
situations. In this paper we focused on physical structures, but it is attractive to include in
the carrying structures the institutional capacity for a learning-by-doing practice of
adaptive planning. The guiding models are part of an open toolkit. Evaluation studies
may improve and add the tools and in a given planning process the tool that fits can be
used. Between the extremes of all-control systems and free-floating communication our
approach combines creating conditions and a process of learning.
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