Alessandro Balducci

Planning as agonistic communication in a trading zone: Re-examining Lindblom's partisan mutual adjustment

The article re-examines Charles E Lindblom’s theory of partisan mutual adjustment (PMA), by reflecting on the recent ideas on cross-cultural cooperation and communication, developed in sociological studies of science and technology. While the critical arguments of the so-called communicative (or collaborative) planning theorists on PMA are well known and well placed, they may have overlooked the complexities of planning communication. Especially Peter Galison’s concept of ‘trading zone’ offers a fresh outlook on these complexities. In the article, Lindblomian bargaining and compromise-seeking are re-interpreted in terms of creating a local trading zone between the stakeholders representing different cultures of meaning and value. This approach challenges two assumptions that have become commonplace in the planning theoretical debate around PMA: firstly, that trading between interests would not necessitate mutual dialogue and generation of a realm of shared understandings, and secondly, that approaching planning communication as trading between interests would mean adopting the political ideology of (neo)liberalism.

Practicing Strategic Planning: In Search of Critical Features to Explain the Strategic Character of Plans

Abstract Strategic planning is “hot” in many places (cities, regions, etc.) today. And, the literature on strategic planning is expanding (Healey 2007; Balducci et al. 2011; Oosterlynck et al. 2011). As in traditional planning, there are different traditions of strategic planning and there is no one way or best way to do strategic planning. But to what extent are the (often self-proclaimed) strategic plans really strategic? To what extent are they different from traditional planning? The purpose of this paper is to examine some of the critical features that make these plans really strategic. We look at the reasons to embark on a strategic planning process; context: political, institutional, challenges ahead, problems, etc.; issues, actors, legal status of the plan in the official planning system; momentum, time frame of the plan, plan horizon, and the link with projects. In this way we intend to question and enrich our own view, in theory and in practice, of strategic planning, which we have constructed over the last decade (Albrechts 2004, 2006; Motte 2006; Balducci 2008).

Policies, Plans and Projects: Governing the City-region of Milan

Like many other metropolitan cities, Milan has experienced spatial decentralization of industry and population during the last decades. At present, a multiplicity of settlement patterns can be observed. Particularly the highly industrialized North has been able to strengthen its position in many sectors with areas of specialization and intense growth based mostly on small enterprise. This article presents the evolution of the city-region Milan and the metropolitan governance experience in the Milanese area. It argues that new demand for general spatial planning is basically tied much more to the problem of constructing and legitimating choices than of certifying rights; of making action possible rather than of imposing choices based on rational technical principles. Furthermore, a demand for reference frameworks to facilitate co-operation and agreement in unstable and highly fragmented situations is identified. The case of Milan gives strong evidence that any of the problems which have prevented metropolitan governments from being effective or even coming into existence are positively solved when there is a bottom-up aggregation of municipalities and actors.

Happiness and Quality of City Life: The Case of Milan, the Richest Italian City

In this paper we made use of an ad hoc survey on different aspects of city life conducted in 2006 in ten metropolitan areas of the developed word. We investigate the relationship between eight indicators of quality of urban life and subjective well-being expressed by the interviewed citizens, showing that the subjective well-being is strongly correlated with the opportunity of personal relationships, which are given both by the town physical structure (availability of meeting places, accessibility of local shops, mobility) and by the existing social organisation of life (local meeting opportunities, volunteering).

Towards Creative City Region Governance in Italy and Germany

City regions all over Europe are experiencing considerable pressure to rethink regional governance. They are well aware of the necessity of regional cooperation in times of globalization and urban competition. Although they have all experimented with various forms of regional cooperation in the past, no valid European model has emerged so far, which addresses the manifold challenges city regions are facing from Italy to Finland, and Spain to Germany. Scholarly research (Salet et al. 2003; Albrechts et al. 2003) and professional experience shows that in the end each city region in Europe has to find its own solution of how to organize regional cooperation. Italy and Germany are two countries of the European Union with quite different traditions in urban and regional governance. While Italy is characterized by a clear-cut system of multi-tiered planning and decision-making with dynamic local political territories, Germany, being a federal country with powerful states or Länder, independent city-states and politically self-governing local governments, exhibits quite different regional political cultures. Given Italy’s and Germany’s different political and planning cultures, it is worthwhile to explore their different approaches to regional cooperation in city regions, or at last to learn from their respective efforts, their successes and failures. In both countries there is no clear definition of the term “city region”. Although the Federal German Ministry of Transport, Housing and Planning has identified seven metropolitan regions (MURL 1997), while neglecting the city regions of Hanover and Nuremberg, these city regions represent just one possible approach to the definition of city region territories. The city-states (Hamburg, Bremen and Berlin), which have grown over the last decades beyond their traditional boundaries, are forced to seek consensus with the federal states in which they are geographically embedded (Lower Saxony and Brandenburg). Frankfurt/Main is just one city in the conurbation extending over three federal states (Hesse, Bavaria and Rhineland-Palatine). The RheinRuhr agglomeration, with a population of 12 million inhabitants in more than a dozen large cities such as Cologne, Essen or Dortmund, is as big as the conurbations of Paris or London. Stuttgart is surrounded by a large number of economically quite strong and politically independent medium-sized cities, Munich, in turn, is a powerful capital of a very much centralized state, surrounded by a plethora of suburban communities due to the limited development space of the central city. In East Germany, dreams to form a powerful city network made up of Dresden, Leipzig and Halle have not yet materialized. In Italy, the law 142/1990 introduced the Cittá metropolitana as an independent institutional body at the intermediate level between city council and region. Ten Italian city regions received the metropolitan label: Turin, Milan, Venice, Genoa, Bologna, Florence, Rome, Bari, Naples and Cagliari. This new authority has never been implemented in any of these metropolitan cities, yet the initiative of the Central Government produced some interesting experiments across the country. In a few of these metropolitan cities new modes of governance emerged. As a rule they were initiated from the local government, hence “from the bottom” and were related to particular topics or particular territories within city regions. In recent years we have also seen the emergence of city regions that go far beyond the original concept of metropolitan area. This is particularly true for central Lombardy, where an area of at least five million people (belonging to five provinces and three regions) live in a very integrated pattern, in the Veneto Region, the area between Verona and Venice, in the area of Naples etc. For all these reasons the idea of “city region” is more appropriate than that of “metropolitan city”, and at the same time it raises new governance issues. Comparing Germany and Italy seems particularly valuable because – against a similar legal and institutional background – local and regional planning take on very different roles. Despite some emerging similarities, the role, the routines and approaches, as well as the implementation and financing of planning strategies differ widely between these two countries. However, regional authorities in Italy – comparable to the Länder in Germany – developed quite innovative institutional planning procedures over the last decade, tools and policies, which are worthwhile to be examined and assessed from a German perspective, while the German efforts to cope with city region cooperation may offer some new insights for the Italian debate. As a rule, governance structures cannot be transferred from one country to another one-to-one. However, there is much room for mutual learning, from failures as from successes. In November 2004, a colloquium “Creativity and Urban Governance in European City Regions” will take place at the Villa Vigoni, the Italian-German Centre of Cultural Exchange at Lake Como in Italy. The colloquium will focus on the elements, capacities, and legal as well as financial tools for city region cooperation. It will discuss the ways and means to initiate and maintain creative and effective governance within city regions in both countries, and the role local and regional institutions, planners and groups of civil society will have to play. It will particularly aim at bridging the information gap between the two countries. Six dimensions of creative regional governance will be discussed at the symposium:

Creative Governance in Dynamic City Regions: Dealing with a “Wicked Problem” in Milan

In Italy, the housing problem is becoming more worrisome, not only for the lowest- income people, but also for larger segments of the middle class. At the turn of the millennium, traditional public policies are in a crisis and the residential market is unable to respond to new social needs. For Milan, a core city of 1.3 million inhabitants in a dynamic city region, it is estimated that 50,000 households lack adequate housing. Increasing fragmentation of the public sphere has transformed the government process, making it now even less transparent and understandable than before. Traditional public actors are more or less paralyzed in dealing with housing: one of the most crucial problems facing the public sphere today. This paper will present an initiative that deals with the housing problem in a creative way by mobilizing semi-public and private actors. Based on the experience gained through the case study, it can be concluded that creative governance is facilitated when a process of social experimentation is allowed to find solutions to cope with emerging social problems.

The State of European Cities Report: some critical reflections upon urban phenomena in the European Union 1

The article provides some critical reflection on the contents of the 2007 State of European Cities Report. It proposes to read it from two different perspectives: on the one hand, insofar it aims to provide an updated picture of the urban face of the European Union; on the other insofar it contains descriptions oriented to action, aimed at helping cities to understand and adapt to ongoing changes and adjust their policies in order to replicate the strengths and potentialities of cities as peculiar drivers of development of the EU. In order to do that, the authors interrogate it from a more general underlying question: what are cities today? In fact, though exploring the processes of transformations they are currently facing, the report seems to be avoiding questioning cities per se. Our approach opens up an interesting space for reflection and also gives some possible answers to a number of questions raised by the Report itself.

Planning the post-metropolis

Introducing his book The Prospects of Cities at the beginning of the 2000s, John Friedmann wrote, “The city is dead. It vanished sometime during the 20th century.” He proposed calling the emerging forms of human habitat simply “the urban”. In fact, facing the acceleration of urbanization processes in the last 30 years, we have been looking relentlessly for new words capable of expressing what has been happening to cities: the endless city, the città diffusa, disurbia, outer city, rurban, dispersed urbanization, urban region, regional urbanization, mega-city-region, etc. What is clear is that the conceptual terms “city” and “metropolis”, with their hierarchical and dichotomous implications, are no longer useful for understanding what is happening to the spatial organization of society.

“Trading Zone”: A Useful Concept for Some Planning Dilemmas

In this chapter I use the concept of trading zone to reflect upon a planning experience of which I have been directly responsible: the strategic plan for the Milan’s province. In the first part I briefly describe the process and the results of this very intense experience. It was conceived to be an inclusive planning process capable to involve and therefore convince all the relevant actors to converge on the vision proposed. In the second part, describing the many difficulties of the process and the few positive results, I hold that while the participatory approach risks to be quite neo-technocratic and is unable on the end to deal with radical conflicts, the trading zone concept encourages to look for the elaboration of an intermediate language that allows the production of partial agreements and the discovery of boundary strategies accepted by different parties. The suggestion of the chapter is that this change of perspective is not only important to deal with the problems of participatory planning but also for planning in general.

Smart Planning for Smart Cities

Pushed by European research programs, ministries and local governments, the discussion on smart cities is growing rapidly. Most urban planners are looking with interest at the re-emergence of the word “city” in European programs and other public projects, but they are not the protagonists in this discussion. This is mostly in the hands of ICT people and engineers. In this column, I would like to reflect on the potential opportunities emerging from the integration of planning, new media and technologies – with particular reference to the challenges and dilemmas of the post-metropolitan space, which I addressed in the last disP column.