SESSION 11:

Promises of Strategic Urban Planning

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The ‘traditional’ or formal approaches to urban planning inherited from the modernism times have been actively criticised over the last decades for their sectoral views instead of integrated thinking and cooperative (collaborative) practices, and for being restrictive instead of motivating and supporting effectively new developments towards consensus-based future visions and (urban) sustainability. In this context, strategic (urban) planning has become 'a new hope' aimed to improve urban development patterns and processes in Western, Central and Eastern Europe alike while meeting all these new, better characteristics.  

The enthusiasm for strategic planning approaches has been lasting for more than two decades already – firstly, imported in Central and Western Europe and here broadly applied, tested and discussed at the regional and municipal level, and quite recently discovered and promoted in Eastern Europe. The latter discovery has been supported importantly by international organisations (e.g. UN, GIZ , USAID, etc.) and private planning companies from abroad. But finally, ‘policy transfers’ are always challenged by the specific local contexts of implantation, its actors, institutional settings and broader governance arrangements, its legacies, situative needs and by many more intervening factors. These contexts influence on the concepts and processes of transfer themselves, potentially triggering (un-)intended local effects.

The critical attention to and sound discussion of the various European experiences with strategic urban planning are thus – from our point of view – of high value with regard to the practice-relevant learning [knowledge] and theoretical thinking. Against this background and with a particular interest to the promises of strategic (urban) planning in post-socialist Europe, the session is intended to tackle the following questions:

• concept: What are [local] understandings of strategic (urban) planning? What are critical differences as well as commonalities, and why?

• mobility: What are values as well as mechanisms which ease or hinder the travel transfer, interpretation and ‘implantation’ of the strategic (urban) planning concept to local contexts?

• effects: What are – finally – the actual and potential / tangible and intangible outcomes of strategic urban planning on the local ground? What are risks and challenges; what are benefits?

 

Session chairs:

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Dr. Carola Neugebauer, Faculty of Architecture, RWTH Aachen University, Germany; carola.neugebauer@rwth-aachen.de

Dr. Carola S. Neugebauer studied landscape architecture and urban design in Germany and France. She is Associate Professor at the RWTH Aachen University. Taking up an interdisciplinary and comparative stance on cities, her research has been focused on urban transformations, planning and cultural heritage in Central Eastern Europe and the post-Soviet space.

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M.Sc. Arch. Vladyslav Tyminskyi, Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Stuttgart; vlad.tyminski@gmail.com

M.Sc. Arch. Vladyslav Tyminskyi is an architect, researcher, a Ph.D. Candidate and consultant on strategic urban design and spatial planning. As a researcher, he is focused on strategic spatial planning and integrated urban development, urban policy transferring, alternative forms of governance in the context of contemporary urban development in Central Eastern Europe.

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