Growth and green in the age of Web 2.0

In our Urban Laboratory this autumn, we decided to study Urban Growth and Ecosystem services in the age of Web 2.0. Three topics, seemingly different, but intimately connected. You can hardly find a planning project that does not destroy some of the urban green. People, however, tend to like their parks, forests and fields, and so the conflict is ready. How do planners cope with it? The easy solution - too often heard - is that they couldn't care less, since the residents are simply a bunch of NIMBYs, opposing everything that sounds like planning, with no respect for the hard realities of urban development, namely growth.

Could there be an alternative? This is not an easy question, but we may approach it from two perspectives. First, we need to get rid of the assumption that urban growth is a natural phenomenon, something that simply happens like weather or flooding, and which we should only be prepared for. It is also made by us: we invite people into our cities by providing housing, services, jobs, and a good living environment - including the urban green. If people like it, it must be something valuable (in fact its value to us as human animals can even be proved scientifically, but let us not go into that, at least not yet).

My point here is that we are in fact actively designing the qualities of our cities, we are not forced to react to some natural force. Politics of emergency ("there is no alternative") is not the right answer here. We could even decide not to grow, but this would come at a price: housing and property prices would probably go skyrocketing. I am not suggesting this, but rather a different mindset. Cities are made for hundreds, even thousands of years. They may grow, thrive and decline innumerable times during their history, and we should try to avoid shortsightedness in their planning.

But the urban green is not only liked by people, it also has a logic of its own. This may be a second problem in our traditional mindset: we tend to see construction as if a drawing on top of a green background; it is what is left over after planning. Thus it is no wonder that our cities often consist of small, unconnected patches of green, in addition to some larger recreational areas. It is interesting to compare this relationship with other urban functions. We don't think that streets are what is left over after the buildings are erected. And we don't think that ideal sites for housing are those that remain between industrial plants. But why do we think in this way when the urban green is considered? Like streets, they do - or should - form networks. Like housing areas, they are homes for several species. Like industrial plants, they produce food and materials for us. And like schools and shops, they do provide us services - the ecosystem services. And believe or not, these services are, for us, a matter of life and death.

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Some additional food for thought:

Hansen, R., Frantzeskaki, N., McPhearson, T., Rall, E, Kabisch, N., Kaczorowska, A., Kain, J-H., Artmann, M. and Pauleit, S., 2015. The uptake of the ecosystem services concept in planning discourses Ecosystem Services, vol.12, pp. 228-246.

Maes, J., et al., 2014. More green infrastructure is required to maintain ecosystem services under current trends in land-use change in Europe. Landscape Ecology. 1-18. doi: 10.1007/s10980-014-0083-2

Niemelä J., Saarela ,S.R., Söderman T., Kopperoinen L., Yli-Pelkonen V. Väre S., and Kotze, D.J., 2010.Using the ecosystem services approach for better planning and conservation of urban greenspaces. A Finland case study. Biodiversity Conservation 19:3225-3243

From Ivory Tower to Neoliberalism

In the Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP) congress last week, there was an interesting roundtable organised by the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI). You might have expected it to be a local debate about planning in the UK, but it turned out to be a more general discussion on the role of research in the context of planning practice and politics.

The event had its motivation in the observation that planning has been under attack by the neoliberal government in the UK, according to which planning represents needless and even harmful restrictions to the market economy and economic growth. In their attempt to defend planning against this accusation, the representatives of RTPI had designed a research agenda that would help them to demonstrate that planning can in fact promote economic growth. Unfortunately they had not found much help to from academic research, which has mainly concentrated on criticising neoliberalism. This is why they have started to promote and organise research that would give them suitable weapons in their 'war' against neoliberalism - the market itself cannot be beaten.

The invited members of the academic community were not so enthusiastic. In her memorable comment Simin Davoudi told the story of Alan Turing and his seemingly useless ideas, which however ended up in deciphering the German code Enigma (and thus shortening the 2nd World War) and - as if by chance - the design of the first electronic computer. The ways of science and researchers are mysterious: you never know what you get - but you need to give them leeway.

At first sight this seems like the age-old dichotomy between the Ivory Tower of academics and the down-to-earth attitude of the practitioners. However, the issue of the role and responsibility of research is worth readdressing in these turbulent times, when the university is no longer the self-evident fortress of disinterested research that it used to be. Well, perhaps it never was, if we believe Foucault, according to whom 'truth is a thing in this world'. But it is fair to say that societies are more than ever in the process of redefining the role of the university: we should form more partnerships with industry, and we should prepare our students to meet the requirements of working life rather than - though this is never explicitly said - making them critics of the established order.

Considering this context, the need for practitioners to defend their professional role is understandable, but a research agenda that is in effect positioned inside the neoliberal political framework would not only squeeze research into instrumentalism, but it would also give weapons to the opponents of professionalism. Even if we would no longer believe in the Durkheimian view of professions as moral fortresses, they are professions exactly because of their relative freedom to define their own commission. The day when doctors of medicine are no longer allowed to define health - but only politicians - we are in trouble. And the same is true of planners and the good environment.

Again referring to Davoudi, the original motivation of planning and the measure of its success was not GDP but the health and happiness of people, their access to good and affordable housing, etc. The fact these early aspirations now seem outdated or idealistic tells something of our contemporary society and politics.  And this is exactly what research should address.