The role of the expert knowledge in politicizing urban planning processes: A case from Istanbul

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-259
Author(s):  
Esin Özdemir
Keyword(s):  
Urban Planning ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
Expert Knowledge ◽  
The Political ◽  
Planning Processes ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Critical Literature ◽  
Active Citizen

This article discusses the relationship between the expert knowledge and the prospects of politicizing and democratizing urban planning. The term ‘experts’ refers mainly to urban planners, yet also includes architects, engineers and lawyers, who are specialized in planning. The article begins with a review of the critical literature on communicative planning, agonistic pluralism, agonistic planning and discussions on what needs to be done in planning focusing on the role of the expert knowledge. It argues that expert knowledge can gain different and multi-dimensional roles in urban planning processes, leading not necessarily to techno-management, yet contributing in their inclusiveness and conflict sensitivity. Encompassing both technical support and objective intermediation for local communities, it can both be utilized to build an agonistic space and help the communities better utilize the existing communicative/collaborative channels to voice their disagreements. By this way, it contributes in the politicization and democratization of planning processes. With this argument, the article also aims to challenge the strict distinction between ‘the politics’ and ‘the political’ as well as the related communicative–agonistic divide. The argument is supported by evidence from a case study on two informally built residential neighbourhoods in Istanbul, where there has been an active citizen opposition and involvement in a planning process.

scholarly journals Conceptualizing Testbed Planning: Urban Planning in the Intersection between Experimental and Public Sector Logics

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lina Berglund-Snodgrass ◽  
Dalia Mukhtar-Landgren
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Urban Planning ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
Governance Structure ◽  
Formal Structure ◽  
Local Climate ◽  
The Public ◽  
Planning Processes ◽  
Experimental Logic

Urban planning is, in many countries, increasingly becoming intertwined with local climate ambitions, investments in urban attractiveness and “smart city” innovation measures. In the intersection between these trends, urban experimentation has developed as a process where actors are granted action space to test innovations in a collaborative setting. One arena for urban experimentation is urban testbeds. Testbeds are sites of urban development, in which experimentation constitutes an integral part of planning and developing the area. This article introduces the notion of testbed planning as a way to conceptualize planning processes in delimited sites where planning is combined with processes of urban experimentation. We define testbed planning as a multi-actor, collaborative planning process in a delimited area, with the ambition to generate and disseminate learning while simultaneously developing the site. The aim of this article is to explore processes of testbed planning with regard to the role of urban planners. Using an institutional logics perspective we conceptualize planners as navigating between a public sector—and an experimental logic. The public sector logic constitutes the formal structure of “traditional” urban planning, and the experimental logic a collaborative and testing governance structure. Using examples from three Nordic municipalities, this article explores planning roles in experiments with autonomous buses in testbeds. The analysis shows that planners negotiate these logics in three different ways, combining and merging them, separating and moving between them or acting within a conflictual process where the public sector logic dominates.

scholarly journals Self-managing socialism and urban planning: The case study of general plan of Belgrade 1972

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-94
Author(s):  
Jelena Radosavljević
Keyword(s):  
Urban Planning ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Institutional Arrangements ◽  
Planning Practice ◽  
General Plan ◽  
Managing System ◽  
The Impact

This paper aims to open up a discussion about relations between former Yugoslavia's socialism and planning practice resulting from self-managing system established in early 1950s. Although this system was applied through a top-down approach, it implied, at least allegedly, coordination, integration and democratic harmonisation of particular interests with common and general ones on local level. The paper will briefly review the history and concept of socialist ideology and consider the impact that it had on institutional arrangements evolution and planning practice in Serbia. It will then touch on the role of ideology for urban planning process at the local level, understanding self-managing planning principles, their benefits, role and significance in planning practice.

scholarly journals Dialectical Design Dialogues: Negotiating Ethics in Participatory Planning by Building a Critical Design Atlas

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 238-251
Author(s):  
Barbara Roosen ◽  
Liesbeth Huybrechts ◽  
Oswald Devisch ◽  
Pieter Van den Broeck
Keyword(s):  
Urban Planning ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Participatory Planning ◽  
Dialectical Approach ◽  
Urban Transformations ◽  
Planning Processes ◽  
Everyday Reality ◽  
The City

This article explores ‘dialectical design dialogues’ as an approach to engage with ethics in everyday urban planning contexts. It starts from Paulo Freire’s pedagogical view (1970/2017), in which dialogues imply the establishment of a horizontal relation between professionals and amateurs, in order to understand, question and imagine things in everyday reality, in this case, urban transformations, applied to participatory planning and enriched through David Harvey’s (2000, 2009) dialectical approach. A dialectical approach to design dialogues acknowledges and renegotiates contrasts and convergences of ethical concerns specific to the reality of concrete daily life, rather than artificially presenting daily life as made of consensus or homogeneity. The article analyses an atlas as a tool to facilitate dialectical design dialogues in a case study of a low-density residential neighbourhood in the city of Genk, Belgium. It sees the production of the atlas as a collective endeavour during which planners, authorities and citizens reflect on possible futures starting from a confrontation of competing uses and perspectives of neighbourhood spaces. The article contributes to the state-of-the-art in participatory urban planning in two ways: (1) by reframing the theoretical discussion on ethics by arguing that not only the verbal discourses around designerly atlas techniques but also the techniques themselves can support urban planners in dealing more consciously with ethics (accountability, morality and authorship) throughout urban planning processes, (2) by offering a concrete practice-based example of producing an atlas that supports the participatory articulation and negotiation of dialectical inquiry of ethics through dialogues in a ‘real-time’ urban planning process.

scholarly journals The role of transitional uses, temporary interventions & "ephemerality" in post-industrial waterfront spaces: lessons for Toronto's port lands.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn J. Hickey
Keyword(s):  
Urban Planning ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Social Engagement ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
Urban Planning And Development ◽  
Planning Processes ◽  
Time Gap ◽  
Post Industrial

Post-industrial waterfronts are often characterized by a time-gap or a moment of standstill between the collapse of a previous use and the transition to a new and future use. However, conventional planning processes often leave these areas in a curious limbo while they are being prepared or while their futures are being determined. Changing contemporary conditions demand that planners re-evaluate urban planning and development approaches. Transitional uses and temporary interventions must be recognized as legitimate and important aspects of the planning process especially in these ephemeral landscapes as they provide an outlet for innovative and adaptive practices. This paper discusses three case studies. The cities of Melbourne, Amsterdam and Hamburg implemented unique and adaptive projects along their waterfronts as mechanisms to catalyze redevelopment and foster social engagement during indeterminate times. This paper explores these projects and applies the strategies used in each to Toronto’s vacant and extensively underutilized Port Lands.

scholarly journals The role of transitional uses, temporary interventions & "ephemerality" in post-industrial waterfront spaces: lessons for Toronto's port lands.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn J. Hickey
Keyword(s):  
Urban Planning ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Social Engagement ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
Urban Planning And Development ◽  
Planning Processes ◽  
Time Gap ◽  
Post Industrial

Post-industrial waterfronts are often characterized by a time-gap or a moment of standstill between the collapse of a previous use and the transition to a new and future use. However, conventional planning processes often leave these areas in a curious limbo while they are being prepared or while their futures are being determined. Changing contemporary conditions demand that planners re-evaluate urban planning and development approaches. Transitional uses and temporary interventions must be recognized as legitimate and important aspects of the planning process especially in these ephemeral landscapes as they provide an outlet for innovative and adaptive practices. This paper discusses three case studies. The cities of Melbourne, Amsterdam and Hamburg implemented unique and adaptive projects along their waterfronts as mechanisms to catalyze redevelopment and foster social engagement during indeterminate times. This paper explores these projects and applies the strategies used in each to Toronto’s vacant and extensively underutilized Port Lands.

La Corona

2020 ◽  
pp. 171-195
Author(s):  
Marcello A. Canuto ◽  
Tomás Barrientos Q.
Keyword(s):  
Complex Interaction ◽  
Classic Period ◽  
The Political ◽  
Local Power ◽  
Late Classic ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
Secondary Center ◽  
The Relationship

Chapter 9 explores the political landscape of the Late Classic Kaanul kingdom. Marcello A. Canuto and Tomás Barrientos Q. consider the role of secondary centers in the geopolitical landscape of the lowlands during the Late Classic period, using La Corona, Guatemala as a case study. In Chapter 9, Canuto and Barrientos Q. demonstrate that the relationship between the Kaanul hegemony and La Corona was much more complicated than simple political alliance. Kaanul’s complex interaction with its secondary center reveals some of the tools it used to create a monumental political landscape, including, in the case of La Corona, manipulating the local power structure, the community’s social organization, and even its sacred history.

scholarly journals Fighting Thatcher with Comedy: What to Do When There Is No Alternative

2016 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 374-397 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gavin Schaffer
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Political Values ◽  
Alternative Material ◽  
Political Challenge ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Weapon ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThis article offers a history of British alternative comedy as a case study of political challenge and opposition in the 1980s and considers the role of humor in political campaigning more broadly. It explores left-wing thinking on culture as a potential political weapon, and questions how this informed the development and impact of alternative comedy as a genre. The article observes that pioneering alternative comedians went some way to change British comedy values and inform political discussions. However, it also argues that the complex operation of jokes and the tendency of comedians to become “incorporated” within the political and cultural mainstream ensured that the impacts of radical alternative material were limited and ambiguous. It contends that the practice of alternative comedy was undermined by business and political values that were often influenced by Thatcherism, and that alternative comedians mostly failed to capture the imaginations of working-class Britons. These communities retained instead an affection for more traditional, differently rebellious, comedic voices. Ultimately, this article frames alternative comedy within a longer history of radical humor, drawing out broader lessons concerning the revolutionary potential of jokes and the relationship between comedians, their audiences, and politics.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guy Beiner
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
The Political ◽  
History And Memory ◽  
The Past ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Relationship

An understanding of the historical dynamics of social forgetting can be learned from the detailed case study of the vernacular historiography of the 1798 Rebellion in Ulster. It has far-reaching implications for a more meaningful appreciation of the relationship between history and memory. The political impasse in post-conflict Northern Ireland, which has stumbled over disagreements on ‘dealing with the past’ in the context of finding acceptable arrangements for transitional justice, could benefit from showing more sensitivity, not only to the role of oral history storytelling, but also to ingrained traditions of ‘vernacular silence’ that perpetuate social forgetting. A brief inspection of some prominent twentieth-century examples demonstrates the wider relevance of studying social forgetting. In today’s digital age, explorations of social forgetting suggest new possibilities for reconciling conflicts between an inner duty to remember and the right to be outwardly forgotten.

Kämpfe um Bergbau und die Möglichkeiten demokratischer Transformation

2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (189) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristina Dietz
Keyword(s):  
Direct Democracy ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
The Political ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Political Effects ◽  
Mining Project ◽  
National Governments ◽  
The Relationship

The article explores the political effects of popular consultations as a means of direct democracy in struggles over mining. Building on concepts from participatory and materialist democracy theory, it shows the transformative potentials of processes of direct democracy towards democratization and emancipation under, and beyond, capitalist and liberal democratic conditions. Empirically the analysis is based on a case study on the protests against the La Colosa gold mining project in Colombia. The analysis reveals that although processes of direct democracy in conflicts over mining cannot transform existing class inequalities and social power relations fundamentally, they can nevertheless alter elements thereof. These are for example the relationship between local and national governments, changes of the political agenda of mining and the opening of new spaces for political participation, where previously there were none. It is here where it’s emancipatory potential can be found.

On Metaphysics and the Political: A Polemics of Reading Baudelaire in the 1930s

2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-259
Author(s):  
Joseph Acquisto
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern Poetry ◽  
Progressive Politics ◽  
The World ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into

This essay examines a polemic between two Baudelaire critics of the 1930s, Jean Cassou and Benjamin Fondane, which centered on the relationship of poetry to progressive politics and metaphysics. I argue that a return to Baudelaire's poetry can yield insight into what seems like an impasse in Cassou and Fondane. Baudelaire provides the possibility of realigning metaphysics and politics so that poetry has the potential to become the space in which we can begin to think the two of them together, as opposed to seeing them in unresolvable tension. Or rather, the tension that Baudelaire animates between the two allows us a new way of thinking about the role of esthetics in moments of political crisis. We can in some ways see Baudelaire as responding, avant la lettre, to two of his early twentieth-century readers who correctly perceived his work as the space that breathes a new urgency into the questions of how modern poetry relates to the world from which it springs and in which it intervenes.

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