"Contested Cities: Social Process and Spatial Form" - David Harvey (1997)

The following is a review of David Harvey's work entitled "Contested Cities: Social Process and Spatial Form"

Throughout this text Harvey carries a 'dialectic' standpoint which is the art of arriving at the truth by the exchange of logical arguments (The Free Dictionary, 2014).

Throughout the introduction Harvey urges planners and policy makers to design flexible, adjustable cities and encourage fluid social processes that can be altered. He notes 'community' is not created through immaculate design, but "militant particular-ism in which a group coheres around a value" - e.g. environmental conservation.

• Harvey starts off by expressing the increasing urbanisation of the world, but hr questions why it is not discussed in political-economic processes and social trends. He goes on to state that continual urbanisation would lead to a 'dystopic' setting. 
• "Gas and water socialism" achieved a great deal in cleaning up cities throughout the late 19th and early 20th century, although it focused on social control it did allow living conditions for many to rise 
• Capital is not concerned with cities - it needs less workers and can move all over the world - this can lead to segregation of class within cities
• He highlights some fundamental questions and beliefs about the role of the city in political, economic, social and ecological life
• Relationships between process and form? Harvey believes process takes priority over 'things' - but often the 'things' shape the process and this is typically evident within the 'palimpsest' urban environment
• He suggests reducing urban (referring to the city as a minor feature of social organisation) - this can only occur when 3 assumptions are made about space and time:
• 1. They're passive and neutral containers of social action
• 2. They're containers of social action, but not neutral - space and time vary depending on the process
• 3. Relational view - space and time do not exist outside processes - the process determines space and time
• Therefore space and time are not simply constituted by but are also constituted by social processes
• Also true in the urban - urban and city are not simply constituted by but are also constitutive of them
• The process of urbanisation creates the thing-like structures of cities
• Social processes, in not giving rise to things, create the things which enhance the nature of those particular social pressures
• Aim should be to liberate processes of social change, however, we must understand politics will continue to be constrained to 'things' created in the past
• 
  
• Major points he makes:
• 1. Re-conceptualise the urban as a production of space and spatio-temporality to a dialectical relationship between process and time
• 2. Assumption that the 'community will save current city's mess - again, power with the thing not the process
• 3. No mention of cities in ecological literature - therefore failure to account for over 50% of the world's population
• 
  
• "Urbanisation is an ecological process and we desperately need creative ways to think and act on that relation
• We have to move urbanisation in a more central position to be debated, but before this occurs the following myths must be contested:
• 1. When we have the economic power, we then spend money of cities to support them
• 2. Political revolution sparks social relations - Harvey believes community mobilisation and transformation of militant particular-ism is vital - this enables us to find universal concerns that exist within a realm of difference
• 3. Cities are anti-ecological - however, they're ecological features themselves

'"Contested Cities" - the issue is not simply about contesting inside cities but more importantly concerns contests over the construction and framing of cities - especially into the future.'

"A Ladder of Citizen Participation" - Sherry R. Arnstein (1969)

The following is a review of Sherry Arnstein's work entitled "A Ladder of Citizen Participation". 

The basic concept of this text is summed up by Arnstein early - "citizen participation is arranged in a ladder pattern with each rung corresponding to the extent of citizens' power in determining the plan and/or program."

Arnstein describes citizen participation as citizen power, and citizen participation involves the redistribution of power that enables the 'have-nots' of society to have some say in economic and social processes. She then goes onto saying participation without redistribution of power is an empty process for these 'have-nots'.

Types of participation and non-participation 

8   Citizen Control

7   Delegated Power          Degree of citizen power

6   Partnership

5   Placation

4   Consultation                 Degree of tokenism

3   Informing

2   Therapy                        Non-participation

1   Manipulation

Characteristics and Illustrations

1. Manipulation

• On advisory committees to educate the 'have-nots'
• In the committees it is the officials who educate, persuade and advise, not the reverse
• Community Action Agencies have little power and act as grass-roots programs to somewhat include the 'have-nots'

2. Therapy

Refers to extensive activity to cure powerless of their 'pathology' rather than curing the core features (racism and victimisation for example) which cause the pathology

3. Informing

• Informing of rights, responsibilities and options citizens have
• The informing process tends to be one way - official to citizens - with little or no negotiation. This tends to be through media, pamphlets and responses to inquires

4. Consultation

• This refers to inviting citizens opinions (e.g. through attitude surveys)
• By doing this citizens "participate in participation"

5. Placation

• This refers to where citizens have some influence - tokenism is still present 
• This is the degree to which citizens are placated depends on:
• 1. Quality of technical assistance in articulating priorities
• 2. Extent to which citizens have been organised to press for these priorities 
• Citizens have clear and direct access to decision-making process

6. Partnership

• Power is redistributed through negotiation between citizens and power holders
• Shared responsibilities (joint policy boards, planning committees)
• Works best with organised power base in community - citizen leaders are accountable

7. Delegated Power

• Negotiation between citizens and power holders - may lead to citizens having majority support
• Citizens hold accountability to the program 
• Separate and parallel groups of citizen and power holders with provision for citizen veto if negotiation fails
• City councils have final veto even if citizens have majority support 

8. Citizen Power

• The degree of power where people can govern a program/institution, be in full charge of managerial aspects, be able to negotiate the conditions under which outsiders may change them
• Works best with neighbourhood co-operation with no intermediaries between it and source of funding
• Capitalised with research and development funds from the office of Economic Opportunity and other major sources of federal funding
• No model city can meet citizen control as final power and say always is with city council

Limitation of the typology

It does not include an analysis of the most significant roadblocks to achieving genuine participation - including: racism, paternalism and resistance to power redistribution, poor community's political socioeconomic infrastructure and knowledge base and difficulties of organising a citizen group in the face of futility, alienation and destruction.

Proposed West Belconnen Development

The proposal for future development further west of the already immensely sprawled suburbs of Canberra is astonishing. It first came to my attention about 3 weeks ago, but today, our guest speaker Michael Pilbrow - who is involved in the West Belconnen development, raised the issue again, and I was further puzzled. (Area of proposed development shown below):




Canberra, with a population density of just 443.5 people per km squared, is heavily sprawled. This immense sprawl is an identified issue - it's not unknown. In fact, as outlined in Time to Talk's Canberra 2030 report, it is one of the major goals for Canberra to become "a compact city" with "integrated and sustainable transport" and "lower carbon emissions" (Canberra 2030 report, 2010). Yet it seems - with confirmation from Pilbrow, that physical development will begin in around 18 months time, that these direct goals will be completely ignored - hence my astonishment.

A new suburb on the existing urban fringe would not achieve a more "compact city" and would not result in an "integrated and sustainable transport" system with "lower carbon emissions". Residents of the proposed suburb would be encouraged to use private transport just as much as existing fringe suburbs due to continual lack of access to public transport. This would lead to compounding issues within the suburb and city including increased traffic congestion and noise.

Additionally, I believe the West Belconnen development would hinder Canberra's sustainability goals - also identified in Canberra 2030. The development would be bordered by two waterways - the Murrumbidgee River and Ginninderra Creek (as shown above). A stated vision of the development is "protecting the environment - including the protection and rehabilitation of the Murrumbidgee River and Ginninderra Creek". However, in my view, a new suburb adjacent to natural waterways would disrupt the natural marine ecosystems and cause major damage to environmental functioning.

If the board of the West Belconnen development is serious about "protecting the environment" I'd consider not directly digging it up and developing it.

That's my opinion, check out the West Belconnen devlopment website and see what you think here: http://talkwestbelconnen.com.au/


References:

Canberra 2030 report - http://timetotalk.act.gov.au/storage/78d10e40d957379825347909b6e2bfd9.Time%20to%20talk%20-%20web%20version.pdf

Demographics info -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Canberra     

"Modernism and Early Urban Planning" - Richard T. LeGates and Fredric Stout (1998)

This following post will be a brief summary and review of "Modernism and Early Urban Planning" by Richard T. LeGates and Fredric Stout. The text covers all urban planning events and ideology spanning from 1870-1940.

The introduction to the text covers the main points which are to be explored in this quite informative chapter. Stated was the early efforts of urban planning, and to be expected, they were focused on traffic management as increased automobiles appeared on the increasingly urbanized cities' roads.While the chapter travels into the 20th Century and the depression era, it was identified that urban and regional planning's growth was stunted, however, it was this prompted the urban and regional planning profession to become more diversified. It spread into other areas such as construction, advocacy and transport at the national, state and local levels. The impact on the Industrial Revolution was also touched on and how it helped shape modern urban and regional planning.  

Starting chronologically, the ideology and movements in the 19th and 20th Centuries are reviewed:

1. The Parks Movement:
This movement was one of the first in response to industrial urbanism, with the aim of "providing the congested city with 'lung'". The first urban park, Birkenhead Park, was built in Liverpool in 1844, but undoubtedly the most famous urban park as it successfully acts as an "enhancement urban space by the intervention by the artfully designed nature" is New York's Central Park.

2. The Garden City ideal:
This movement was first introduced to not only improve the depleting health associated with the heavily polluted air in cities, but also to integrate the urban and rural and to act as an indicator of modern planning as a profession and body of theory. The original thoughts behind a Garden City was that it would consist of 1,000 acres of town surrounded by 5,000 acres of green-belt. This was planned and expected to house 32,000 people. Additionally, Garden Cities would be connected by rail and canal, while being economically self-sufficient. However, all these seemingly magical benefits of this movement came at was described as a "sound investment". The first official Garden City was Letchworth, London, which was built in 1909; the second Garden City was not built for another decade.

3. Urban Aestheticism and Beautiful City Movement:
This movement, beginning in the 1890s saw increased "adornment of cities with civic design, municipal art and 'The City Beautiful' supplanted parks and public health as the main focus of planners". With aesthetics high on the priority list, good design was imperative, this led to the inclusion of "magnificent boulevards and impressive public buildings" while placing emphasis on "city planning as a comprehensive and unified process".

4. 'Progressivism' and the city efficient
The concept of 'Progressivism' was associated with the new activist philosophy before and after WW1 often represented the middle class' social and economic interest. This the saw the rise of "new social and political ethos" leading to the City Beautiful and Urban Aesthetics concerns making way for an emphasis on city functioning efficiency.

5. The Master Plan
A man by the name of Edward Bassett introduced the concept of the 'Master Plan' which "sought to define what a general plan should contain and it's relation ship to the processes of city government." This introduction of comprehensive plans led to the "professionalisation of planning" and essentially acted as the launching pad of all future planning theory and practice.

New Towns and Regionalism
- The Regional Survey - Patrick Geddes
Patrick Geddes, as well as being a major player in creating Garden City planning as the mainstream urban planning practice, he proposed that before any changes could be made "a survey would place the city within the environmental context of its region's surrounding ecosystems".

- New Towns For America
The ideals of Lewis Mumford pointed directly toward some current planning features including decentralisation. Mumford saw transportation and communication technology as permits of decentralisation of a population industry. He also developed the vision of regional planning which shied away from sprawl and favored a "more human pattern of small cities"
This then progressed, under the ideals of Clearance Perry, to thinking about how city and suburban neighborhoods could function in the automobile age. Plans included the school as the centrepiece, use of culs-de-sacs and separated streets to "harmonise transportation with living space".

Prophets of High Modernism
- Utopia modernism

      Le Corbusier's vision
Le Corbusier focused on the issues our present day cities very much need and are working towards - being compact. He envisioned a city with "un-decorated skyscrapers, evenly spaced in a park" while simultaneously focusing on decongesting cities and housing 3 million people. Le Corbusier saw "the city as the administrative centre of bureaucratic, technocratic state".

     Frank Lloyd Wright's vision
Wright's vision contrasted heavily to Le Corbusier's, and is what we typically see in major cities and are trying to address. His vision embraced middle-class urban flight and vehicle-based urban sprawl. He proposed what was advertised in Australia as the "Great Australian Dream" - single detached dwellings on at least 1 acre with no large urban concentration what-so-ever. As we can clearly see today, this urban/suburban plan dominated planning into the future.

This informative chapter by LeGates and Stout is quite interesting, it shows that the changing philosophies and ideologies of key players throughout time had a great impact on the development of the urban and regional planning as a profession and basis of theory. These changing philosophies are also evident in modern cities today, and these have had positive and negative impacts on modern society.

"Fifty Theses on Urban Planning and Urban Planners" - Raphael Fischler (2012)

The following is a brief summary/analysis of Raphael Fischler's essay titled "Fifty Theses on Urban Planning and Urban Planners"

Fischler begins the essay and carries a common theme throughout, this is the fact that "urban planning as a field is ill defined in contents and in scope, and the public hardly knows what to expect of its practitioners". By doing this he is somewhat highlighting the broad and complex nature of the Urban Planning profession, but also possibly noting the potential difficulty he underwent when writing this paper.

The one introductory sentence, as stated above, creates the basis for many of Fischler's 50 theses. Fischler breaks his theses into six areas: General Thesis, the Meaning and Origins of Urban Planning, the Substance and uses of Urban Planning, on Good Planning and Good Plans, on Urban Planners and on Planning Education and Research.  

Fischler's General Thesis follows on nicely from his introductory statement. Here he explores the lengthy 18 contradictions, paradoxes and tensions involved in planning - including urban planning as a political activity and it as a technical activity, urban planning as a practical achievement or it as an ideological claim and urban planning as the exercise of power or it as a service to the powerful. These again highlights not only the profession's in depth complexity but the struggles planners face when defining their field.


Under the heading of 'Meaning and Origins of Urban Planning' the depth and evolution of planning is specified.

"5. Urban planning as a social activity has existed since cities have appeared... Urban planning as a professional activity originated in the industrial era

6. Modern urban planning is the progeny of a marriage between science and utopia"

With the field so subject to change and it evolving seemingly with the world - i.e. from industrialisation to the present social era - it seems as though it there's no wonder the profession is ill defined.

With the theme that planning is 'ill defined' with 'the public hardly knowing what to expect' it would make sense that the next section, 'the Substance and Uses of Urban Planning' covered a range of ideas. Guess what, that'd exactly what it does.
"11. Urban planning is a design activity
12. Urban planning is a political activity
14. It aims to increase freedom, but it interferes with individual liberties
15. Urban planning can be a force of good but also a force of evil"
All these points build to the generalised statement which can ultimately be used to sum up the entire essay - "16. Urban planning is a focused multidisciplinary field".

With all this in mind coming into the next sections 'Theses on Good Planning and Good Plans' and 'Theses on Urban Planners'  you may be excused to think good planning must be near impossible to achieve and good urban planners must be impossible to come by, however, Fischler explores the fact that good plans and good planners have a few basic characteristics. Good plans are ones that are effectively planned, have a clear goal, can be realistically achieved and are time effective. While good planners, although they play the roles of "architects, managers, mediators, advocates, educators and facilitators" are generally: critical thinkers, passionate people, respectful, transparent and effective communicators.

This leads to the final section labelled 'Theses on Planning Education and Research'. This quite predictably states that for more successful planners to be produced, like producing more successful anything, they need to be taught the skills and attributes young. Therefore planning specific schools and planning educations are most effective in gaining this goal.

In conclusion, the essay is an extremely comprehensive overview the theses of urban planning and planners, however it generally maintains a similar tone throughout communicating a general message - urban planning is a very complex and in depth profession and planners must be well trained and educated in order to succeed in the field.

This has been a general summary and analysis of Raphael Fischler's essay "Fifty Theses on Urban Planning and Urban Planners" - 2012 by Brad Maxwell, feel free to leave a comment and join the discussion!

Introduction

Hi,

My name's Brad Maxwell and I'm in my first year of studies of a Bachelor of Regional and Urban Planning at the University of Canberra. This blog has been set-up in conjunction with my course in order for our class to connect virtually, to work as a team and share our ideas and perspectives on relevant issues which develop over the course of the second semester. 

As mentioned, this blog will allow our class to share ideas which develop and conjure as the course progresses. This will allow all class members, and  my personal knowledge and perspective of current and relevant planning issues to prosper and in turn will better enable us to critically analyse planning issues in the future.

I look forward to reading everyone else's analyses and perspectives and working together with my fellow class mates through the semester.

Thanks,

Brad Maxwell