Participation in Planning and Public Policy Conference – University of Aveiro, February 23rd 2017

Planning as a Trading Zone

Alessandro BalducciDepartment of Architecture and Urban Studies

Alessandro Balducci

• Land use planning and its limits

• What we learned looking at different decision making models from political science

• The rational model and Planning as Technical rationality

• Bounded political rationality and the opening towards participatory planning

• Different historical forms of participatory planning

• Facing a growing complexity the “garbage can” decision making model

• Planning and “trading zone”

• The need to develop different forms of interaction and participation for different planning problems

Outline

Alessandro Balducci

• Planning is a young discipline the aim is to control the spatial organisation of the human society

• the first chair in urban planning: Liverpool 1909

• For a very long time it has been based upon some form of land-use planning

• Even if in Europe there have been many different roots and traditions

Setting the scene

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Planning tradition Countries

Regional Economic- Centralist France

Compreehensive integrated - Federalist Belgium, Germany, Switzerland

Comprehensive integrated -Municipalist Netherlands, Finland, Norway, Sweeden

Land-Use Management UK

Urbanism Grece, Italy, Portugal, Spain

Eastern “transitional” Poland, Check Rep, Bulgaria, etc.

Planning Traditions

Gualini, 2004

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Land use planning

Land-use planning is concerned with the location, intensity, form, amount, and harmonization of land development required for the various space-using functions: housing, industry, recreation, transport, education, nature, agriculture, cultural activities

The assumption was that there was a general consensus about the goals of planning and that even with different approaches solutions were not uncertain

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Land use planning

This heroic period lasted until when planning had to cope with expansion and development

When problems started to change planning solutions proved to be ineffective and even agreement about goals was problematic

This became very clear in the 1980s under the attack of neo-liberal policies (Tatcher/Regan) but it was already clear in theory since the 1960s

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Land-use planning , even if necessary, is static, extremely detailed, passive, based upon analysis, comprehensive, and is typically based upon a rational comprehensive model.

Everything must be decided at once, in advance, before the transformation, and every change must follow all the same procedure adopted for the formation and approval of the plan.

It is un-flexible, not open to change, it is limited to the municipal boundaries, it is inward looking.

Land use planning and its limits

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Emerging demands challenging the capacity of land use planning

Urban regenerationRegional urbanisationInfrastructures and major projectsShrinking citiesRe-vitalising economyUrban competitionAttraction of investments, urban marketingUrban sustainabilityUrban qualityMega EventsUrban social problemsPP Partnerships

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Karen Christensen,

Coping with Uncertaintyin Planning, 1985

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• What we have been discovering is that these problems had been common problems for many public policies and that already there had been a process of “translation” in the past

• Translations have always been important especially from political science about the roots of rationality

Translations

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The Rational Model

Guided by problems well defined, preferences clearly understandable, alternatives possible to enumerate, capacity of calculation and choices:

Two conditions:

– complete information and

– unitary isolated actors

Planning as technical rationality

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• The rational model has long been at the basis of an idea of planning as land use planning capable to change the society through a planning activity, giving the opportunity of an equitable and rational use of space, being able to attack spatial injustice, to solve emerging urban problems through a rational and democratic process of design.

• It has been the basis of the Technical Rationality

Planning and technical rationality

Alessandro Balducci

• Herbert Simon (already in 1940) and Charles Lindblom(1959) attacked the two conditions of impracticability of the rational model– The first is the always incomplete information– The second the impossibility to identify a unitary

decision maker

• Translations have been quite disruptive here for the rational paradigm of planning on which land use planning was based

Towards bounded political rationality

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• Melvin Webber as a key figure in the process of translation both from political science to planning and from the US to Europe

• He has been in direct contact with Lindblom

• He conceived the idea of planning as a process rather than an act of design

• “Dilemmas in a general Theory of Planning” written with Horst Rittel planning problems are “wicked problems”

Towards reflective and participatory practices

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1. There is no definitive formulation of a wicked problem

2. Wicked problems have no stopping rule

3. Solutions to wicked problems are not true-or-false, but good-or-bad

4. There is no immediate and no ultimate test of a solution to a wicked problem

5. Every solution to a wicked problem is a "one-shot operation"; because there is no opportunity to learn by trial-and-error, every attempt counts significantly

6. Wicked problems do not have an enumerable (or an exhaustively describable) set of potential solutions, nor is there a well-described set of permissible operations that may be incorporated into the plan

7. Every wicked problem is essentially unique

8. Every wicked problem can be considered to be a symptom of another problem

9. The existence of a discrepancy representing a wicked problem can be explained in numerous ways. The choice of explanation determines the nature of the problem's resolution

10. The planner has no right to be wrong

“Wicked” planning problems

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This period of reflection and re-thinking of the foundation of planning has been very important

to question the technical rationality approach

to consider uncertainty as constitutive

to consider conflict as endemic

to open up towards advocacy and participatory planning

Planning as reflective and participatory practice

What the user wantedAs installed at the user's site

As proposed by the project sponsor As specified in the project request

As produced by the programmers

As designed by the senior analyst

Largo Barracche prima del Pic Urban di Napoli nel 1986

2001

2001

2003

2004

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Scientific vs Ordinary and interactive Knowledge

Lindblom and Cohen (1979):

professional social inquiry and ordinary knowledge

scientific analysis and interaction as alternative means to understand and solve social problems

in complex situations professional social inquiry and scientific analysis can operate only as a support for ordinary knowledge and interaction

Participation cycles (P. Fareri) ‘70: urban social movements

‘80: NIMBY

‘90: participatory planning

2000: self organisation

direction ideology relation with the political

system

what we learn

+

demand

to do

to stop doing _

_

selectiveexclusive

instrumental

the output?

experts are not always right

consensus is relevant

methodology is relevant

to do without asking

? ?

Participatory tools

(1) Public meetings(2) Public happenings(3) ‘Planning for Real’(4) workshop(5) Focus Group(5) Brainstorming(6) Scenario writing(7) Charrette(8) Visit to other cases(9) Participatory survey(10) Direct observation/shadowing(11) Prticipant observation(12) Lcal labs(14) Incremental construction of things(15) Exhibitions(16) Local events(17) Town Meeting(18) Open Space Technology

www.peplenandparticipation.net

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Advantages:• The value of participation in providing qualitative and

detailed information for the planning process• The value of involving directly affected citizens in the

search for good solutions to urban problems (probing)

Risks:• To do participation but not what has been planned• To apply the wrong tools (bargaining vs experimentation)• To be suffocated by the strength of building• Intractable conflictual wicked problems

The most important advantages and the possible limits of participatory planning

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March Olsen and Cohen 1978The decision "is a collection of choices looking for problems, issues and feelings looking for decision situations in which they might be aired, solutions looking for issues to which they might be the answer, and decision makers looking for work".

4 ambiguities1. Actors goals are unstable2. Actors participation is fluid and inconstant3. Limited opportunities to decide4. There is not a search for solutions but “garbage can”

Facing a Growing Complexity: the“garbage can model”

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There has been the work of the “planning and complexity” group of Aesop

The work of Jean Hillier, de Roo, at al.

Theory of “assemblages” (Latour, Beauregard, Sassen)

The new book of Amin and Thrift “Seeing like a City” in which they emphasize the growing importance of the urban space as an aggregate of human and non human decision makes in which technologies are playing a growing role

No direct translation of the “garbage can” model

Model Who decides

How decides Structure Planning Translation

Rational Unitary subject

Instititionally competent

Problem solving

optimization

Central coordination

Technical Rationality

Bounded rationality

Organisation

Instititionally competent

Problem setting

satisficing

Central coordination

Reflectivepractice

Incrementalism Set of actors with interests

Disjointedincrementalism

consensus

Partisan mutual

adjustment

Participatoryplanning

Garbage can actants Casual matching

problems-solutions

casuality

?

Decision Making Models and Planning Translations

POLITICAL AMBIGUITY

SMALL

POLITICAL AMBIGUITY

GREAT

TECHNICAL UNCERTAINTY

SMALL

Rational approach

Technical Rationality

Political rationality

Incremental model

Participation for Bargaining

TECHNICAL UNCERTAINTY

GREAT

Bounded rationality model

Reflective practice (Schon)

Participation for Experimentation

Wicked problems

– Rittel & Webber 1973

Garbage can model

Planning problems(applying Christensen 1985)

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If conflict is endemic and uncertainty constitutive, in situations of extreme complexity we need to interpret the situations according to these dimensions in order to device innovative planning initiatives

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Introduced by Peter Galison (1997, Image and Logic. A Material Culture of Microphysics) to explain innovations in science.

Studying the way in which paradigm shifts and disruptive innovations had historically happened he discovered that this was not because different groups of scientist agreed about the need to change or innovate but rather because groups with completely different values and objectives were forced to work together and simplifying their jargon have been able to create an environment of understanding – a trading zone- that allowed the innovation to happen

“Trading zone” and Boundary Objects

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Galison shows through empirical observation of how innovations in science occurred historically – ranging from physics to nanotechnologies – how these give rise to concrete spaces or conceptual spaces where scientists belonging to different disciplinary fields with completely different paradigms and values are forced to find simplified and intermediate languages to be able to work together.

It is from this essential communication, which requires partial, contingent agreements, that innovations are born.

A platform where highly elaborate and complicated issues can be transformed into “thin descriptions” for the purposes of exchanging information – in a certain locality.

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Analogy to anthropological linguistics studies of pidgin and creole languages

Related to ’boundary object’ concept (Star & Griesemer1989) but more dynamic.

Trading Zone and Boundary objects

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“Boundary object is an analytic concept of those scientific objects which both inhabit several intersecting social worlds and satisfy the informational requirements of each of them.

Boundary objects are objects which are both plastic enough to adapt to local needs and the constraints of the several parties employing them, yet robust enough to maintain a common identity across sites. They are weakly structured in common use, and become strongly structured in individual-site use. These objects may be abstract or concrete.

They have different meanings in different social worlds but their structure is common enough to more than one world to make them recognizable, a means of translation. The creation and management of boundary objects is a key process in developing and maintaining coherence across intersecting social worlds.”

- Star & Griesemer 1989, 393

Boundary Objects

Alessandro Balducci

SPONSOR(Alexander):

Commitment to conservation and educational philanthropy

TRAPPERS:Monetary pay-offs, hunting information

UNIVERSITYADMINISTRATION:

Prestige, national-class status,

externalfunding

RESEARCHERS (Grinnell): Extention to the theory of evolution – The evolution of the environment

COLLECTORS:Preservation of

California’s fauna for future generations

BOUNDARYOBJECTS:

•Standardized forms•Idealized maps

•Coincident(geographical)

boundaries•Repositories

Boundary objects in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Sociology, 1907-39

-> Boundary objects enablethe coordination of differentstakeholders’ activitieswithout the requirement of shared objectives

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Example: the Pedemontana Highway and the Greenway

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Pedemontana and the greenway

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What the Trading Zone concept adds to our reflection on interactive participatory planning?

It tells us that there are situations of extreme uncertainty in which rather than trying to organise the process to conquer a consensus about future initiatives it is better to play in the process searching for boundary objects, partial agreements even in persisting disagreement about objectives and values.

Participatory Planning and “Trading zone”

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What are the consequences?

• never blaming other actors for not understanding• never delay the action if it is possible • never hide your position as a planner in the conflict• never conceive conflict mediation as a single process of

coordination in a unified arena• always try to make your position understandable to other

actors and lay people• always look intensely for partial agreements• always be open to divert your planned path • always try to see if it is possible to change a pidgin in creole

Participatory Planning and “Trading zone”

Alessandro Balducci

For a long period planning has been mainly land use planning

Facing the limits of this approach challenged by the growing complexity of society we started to look at other disciplines to translate concept that could orient our action

Decision making models of political science have been very influential

We discovered that technical rationality is applicable only in limited situation

That we need different forms of actors involvement either in the form of organised participation or in the form of searching for trading zones or boundary objects

Concluding

POLITICAL AMBIGUITY

SMALL

POLITICAL AMBIGUITY

GREAT

TECHNICAL UNCERTAINTY

SMALL

Rational approach

Technical Rationality

Political rationality

Incremental model

Participation for Bargaining

TECHNICAL UNCERTAINTY

GREAT

Bounded rationality model

Reflective practice (Schon)

Participation for Experimentation

Wicked problems

– Rittel & Webber 1973Garbage can modelInteraction for the creation of a Trading Zone

Planning problems(applying Christensen 1985)

Alessandro Balducci