Francesco Lo Piccolo

Participative Planning Processes in the Absence of the (Public) Space of Democracy

Abstract This article aims to investigate the role, limits and opportunities of participation programmes in a local political context where consensus-building and inclusionary practices are not high priorities. A public housing neighbourhood in Palermo is used as a case study in order to critically highlight the ambiguous role that participative practices tend to play in fragile contexts. The case study also highlights the need for some preconditions for effective participatory practices in planning. These preconditions are focused on Arendts notion of the ‘space of democracy’. Some concepts developed by Hannah Arendt will be used to explain the necessity of these preconditions, and their relevance to the political discourses of participatory planning processes will be discussed.

Research Ethics in Planning: a Framework for Discussion

This article discusses research into planning, and specifically how we might best frame the ethical issues which arise in, and through, such research. One of its central contentions is that ethical sensitivity is developed by researchers as part of a social practice, that is, through communal activity of a particular kind. Therefore, important as it is to ensure that researchers are aware of their personal ethical responsibilities, understanding what the moral point of view requires — that is, being sensitive to ethical issues, especially in new circumstances — is something which researchers acquire through involvement in appropriately conducted social practices. The articles suggestion is that the notion of a social practice, as used by MacIntyre (1985) and others is helpful in framing thinking about research ethics in planning because it places the individuals acquisition and development of a moral perception, and judgements, within a social context. The first section discusses this notion. The article also explores whether the notion of a social practice can usefully be employed to distinguish between the ethical issues which arise in scholarly research in planning as opposed to those which arise in policy-related research in planning.

Local development partnership programmes in Sicily: Planning cities without plans

As it is generally known, the main goal of classical town planning is to carefully plan the use of the territory and its resources in order to protect them against incompatible economic activities. Historically, in Italy, as in a number of other European countries, the legal requirement that is derived from this assumption is the acknowledgement that the physical development of cities and territories falls within the main goals of the state. The clash of interests between private, state and community calls for the creation of a set of rules standardising the use of the territory by means of town-planning instruments and laws regulating private actions in the general public interest. The safeguarding of the public interest is a priority issue. Regulation through town planning is judged by its efficacy and practical results. It is based on two general principles:

Legal Discourse, the Individual and the Claim for Equality in British Planning

This article explores some of the constraints in fashioning a British planning practice which supports a particular kind of multicultural society. Its argument is that juridical principles enshrined in statute and legal practices can be congruent with, or contradictory to, public policy initiatives supporting multiculturalism, and that this is especially significant in regulatory practices, such as the British planning system, where juridical influence is, historically, strong. The article examines various juridical conceptions of difference and equality and their policy implications. An examination of a specific initiative to recognize cultural diversity follows. This concludes that juridical principles influential in British planning are inconsistent with the initiative, and a failure to address this issue in political and professional arenas has undermined its efficacy. Nevertheless, some progress may be possible, as discussed in the articles concluding sections.

Planning Research ‘with’ Minorities in Palermo: Negotiating Ethics and Commitments in a Participatory Process

Introduction The present paper will explore some ethical issues that arise when undertaking research with minorities (ethnic groups, children, poor people) in the context of an uncollaborative planning process, like the Palermo Local Agenda 21 (LA21). There are important ethical issues that have to be carefully considered when undertaking research with people, particularly when these people are marginalized or excluded by wider society. Here, issues of powerlessness and vulnerability abound. If this is accepted, some questions arise. How are we supposed to consider planning researchers—understood as immersed in the policy process—as moral/political agents, given their political commitments? Here there are both general ethical issues and specifically research ethical issues: the article will stress the perspective of the researcher, although Abstract The paper will explore some ethical issues which arise when undertaking research with minorities (ethnic groups, children, poor people) in the context of an uncollaborative planning process, like the Palermo Local Agenda 21. There are important ethical issues that have to be carefully considered when undertaking research with people, particularly when these people are marginalised or excluded by wider society. Here, issues of powerlessness and vulnerability abound. If this is accepted, some questions arise. How are we supposed to consider planning researchers – understood as immersed in the policy process – as moral/political agents, given their political commitments? Here there are both general ethical issues and specifically research ethical issues: the article will stress the perspective of the researcher, although a strict and rigid distinction does not entirely apply to the case, given the context which will be described. These include: What is a ‘‘significant’’ knowledge? Which sort of knowledge is not ‘‘recognised’’ and consequently excluded by institutions? What obligations does a researcher have in relation to the power relations assumed and supported by answers to these questions?

Palermo, a City in Transition: Saint Benedict 'The Moor' versus Saint Rosalia

This paper discusses responses of the city council in Palermo to trends in immigration, in the context of the long-term physical decline of the historic centre. The paper describes these trends, the role and needs of ethnic minorities and problems related to their living conditions in the historic centre. It goes on to assess whether the specific issue of planning and ethnic minorities can suggest new approaches to a wider re-analysis of planning practices.

From Planning to Management of Cult Ural Heritage Sites: Controversies and Conflicts Between Unesco Whl Management Plans and Local Spatial Planning in South-Eastern Sicily

Abstract The paper investigates the relationship between the preservation of cultural heritage and planning in UNESCO World Heritage List (WHL) sites, with special reference to the relation between Management Plans and other (local and regional) planning instruments and policies able to influence the promotion of sustainable and responsible development. This will be explored through a case study related to South-Eastern Sicilian UNESCO sites (in particular Syracuse). The analysis of this case study will point out the challenge of integrating different management and planning regimes - which mainly refer to a performative model - in a (still) very conformative planning system. The paper will show how supranational protection tools and models often lose their efficacy in relation to local planning systems.

Francesco Lo Piccolo, Marco Picone, Filippo Schilleci — Italy

Für diese Umfrage haben wir aus einzelnen europäischen Ländern eine je nach Land unterschiedliche Anzahl von Antworten erhalten. Wir möchten darauf hinweisen, dass diese Umfrage für ganz Europa und für die einzelnen Länder im Speziellen nicht als repräsentativ erachtet werden kann. Vielmehr dient sie nur als Hilfestellung, um gewisse grobe Tendenzen des aktuellen Stands der Raumplanung zu erörtern. Ferner ist es uns wichtig, dass die an der Umfrage Teilnehmenden einem ganz unterschiedlichen institutionellen Hintergrund entstammen und hierbei ausschliesslich ihre persönliche Meinung äussern, dementsprechend auch keine abschliessenden Schlussfolgerungen für einzelne Institutionen oder Organisationen gezogen werden können. 1. What is the present state of planning, whether urban and regional or spatial and environmental, in politics and in the society of your country?1. Present Status of Planning The role of planning in Italy is now in crisis, and this crisis has been going on for more than a decade. As a consequence, planning practitioners face a hard time when trying to deal with the national political framework and to relate to most important topics, such as commons, public spaces, environmental threats, and so on. In the widespread context of the neoliberal turn, Italy has been experiencing a growing attraction towards everything that is private, and a strong rejection of all that is public. However, planning proficiencies are still requested in those cases where civil society activates bottom-up processes for local transformation projects. These processes often try to fill the gap that is caused by the lack of efficiency in traditional, top-down policies. The ever-growing number of local organizations, NGOs, insurgent practices, and the like are proof of the attention paid to these bottom-up (and often agonistic) practices, which are, however, rarely supported by national and local governments – while sometimes the actual support of national and local governments is utterly rejected as a matter of principle. The reasons for this weak or nonexistent support are linked to a rhetorical discourse that considers planning s a hindrance to the resolution of environmental and development issues and/or conflicts, rather than a proactive approach to the solution of the consequent problems. These general reflections can obviously be declined in different ways, based on local political peculiarities.

La pluralità dello spazio pubblico: una analisi ricognitiva nel centro storico di Palermo

The literature about modern and postmodern urban development, from Michel Foucault to Henri Lefebvre, has introduced a debate on the classic concept of openness/accessibility of public space, stressing aspects such as spatial exclusion, surveillance and social control, the matter of the “right to the city”. We face a progressive reduction or substitution of public space – privatized, fortified, commercialized – which the weakest and most marginal people are particularly affected from. Sometimes new forms of social production of space emerge, for instance through informal re-appropriation of “waste places”. The research work has focused on an area within the historic centre of Palermo, characterized by a return of medium-high social bands, relatively young, coming side by side of the autochthonous population, resident for generations, and of a substantial number of immigrants. Some behavioural maps have come out, in relation to the uses of space, both according to law and illegal, making arise the need for new strategies of accessibility to the historic city

Book Review: Richard Scholar (ed.), Divided Cities: The Oxford Amnesty Lectures 2003. London and New York: Oxford University Press, 2006, 228 pp., ISBN 978 0192807083, GB£17.00/US

One of the book’s opening statements is that ‘divided cities are at the stage upon which fundamental political concepts – such as those of citizenship, democracy and human rights – both find their origins and encounter their limits’ (p. 2). In spite of the important purpose and the premise of its intriguing title, the volume, which is a collection of heterogeneous and sometimes conflicting essays, presents an evident discrepancy, because if on the one hand it gives us some useful pictures of a number of recent global trends and phenomena, on the other hand it is unable to build up a structured and consistent analysis of the divided cities. For this reason, it is necessary to describe briefly the contents of each chapter, in order to give potential readers a flavour of the book. Most of the chapters in the book were first presented as Oxford Amnesty Lectures in January and February 2003. In addition to the revised lectures given by Patrick Declerck, Stuart Hall, David Harvey, Richard Rogers, Patricia Williams and James Wolfensohn, the book contains short introductions to the lives and works of the above-mentioned authors and two chapters of responses by Michael B. Likosky and Peter Hall. Stuart Hall shows how the character of cities has largely changed in the last three decades in consequence of the rise of the post-industrial economy, globalization and mass migration, producing new social and spatial divisions that can be framed within the post-colonial paradigm. This is not a fresh insight, of course: a wide literature already illustrates the new scenarios of difference stemming from such phenomena as international migrations, post-colonialism or the rise of new forms of articulation of society (Loomba, 1998; Sandercock, 2000). Thus, the theme of difference is more and more frequently dealt with in contemporary debates, starting from the acknowledgement of the fragmentation of our society into an archipelago of ‘minority’ and ‘plural’ groups (Sibley, 1995; Soja, 1989). Is the result of such processes a cosmopolitan diversity or the occasion for even deeper lines of division? While the multiculturalism is at the base of this (unsolved) dilemma, Hall explores the main elements of these changes: the new global order after the crisis of 11 September, which is also at the heart of