Daniel Galland – författare

Planning Regional Futures is an intellectual call to engage planners to critically explore what planning is, and should be, in how cities and regions are planned.

This is in a context where planning is seen to face powerful challenges – professionally, intellectually and practically – in ways arguably not seen before: planning is no longer solely the domain of professional planners but opened-up to a diverse group of actors; the link between the study of cities and regions, which traditionally had a disciplinary home in planning schools and the like, steadily eroded as research increasingly takes place in interdisciplinary research institutes; the advent of real-time modelling posing fundamental challenges for the type of long-term perspective that planning has traditionally afforded; ‘regional planning’ and its mixed record of achievement; and, the link between ‘region’ and ‘planning’ becoming decoupled as alternative regional (and other spatial) approaches to planning have emerged.

This book takes up the intellectual and practical challenge of planning regional futures, moving beyond the narrow confines of existing debate and providing a forum for debating what planning is, and should be, for in how we plan cities and regions.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Regional Studies.

Planning Regional Futures is an intellectual call to engage planners to critically explore what planning is, and should be, in how cities and regions are planned.

This is in a context where planning is seen to face powerful challenges – professionally, intellectually and practically – in ways arguably not seen before: planning is no longer solely the domain of professional planners but opened-up to a diverse group of actors; the link between the study of cities and regions, which traditionally had a disciplinary home in planning schools and the like, steadily eroded as research increasingly takes place in interdisciplinary research institutes; the advent of real-time modelling posing fundamental challenges for the type of long-term perspective that planning has traditionally afforded; ‘regional planning’ and its mixed record of achievement; and, the link between ‘region’ and ‘planning’ becoming decoupled as alternative regional (and other spatial) approaches to planning have emerged.

This book takes up the intellectual and practical challenge of planning regional futures, moving beyond the narrow confines of existing debate and providing a forum for debating what planning is, and should be, for in how we plan cities and regions.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Regional Studies.

Leading experts explore how a situated urban contingency approach engages with different planning interventions, ranging from disciplinary identities and everyday practices to digitalisation for citizen engagement, systems of bureaucratic knowledge production and infrastructural doctrines. Chapters delve into case studies such as the development of affordable housing, professional boundary work in integrating climate change adaptation, and the role of urban experimentation in planning for urban sustainability. The book further demonstrates how context-sensitivity fosters creative knowledge production and more inclusive planning, advocating for the integration of best practices with an urban contingency logic.

Students and scholars of planning and related disciplines such as geography, urban studies, sociology and sustainability studies will find this a vital resource. Practitioners working in planning and climate change mitigation will greatly benefit from this informative book.

The aim of this book is to investigate contemporary processes of metropolitan change and approaches to planning and governing metropolitan regions. To do so, it focuses on four central tenets of metropolitan change in terms of planning and governance: institutional approaches, policy mobilities, spatial imaginaries, and planning styles. The book’s main contribution lies in providing readers with a new conceptual and analytical framework for researching contemporary dynamics in metropolitan regions. It will chiefly benefit researchers and students in planning, urban studies, policy and governance studies, especially those interested in metropolitan regions.

The relentless pace of urban change in globalization poses fundamental questions about how to best plan and govern 21st-century metropolitan regions. The problem for metropolitan regions—especially for those with policy and decision-making responsibilities—is a growing recognition that these spaces are typically reliant on inadequate urban-economic infrastructure and fragmented planning and governance arrangements. Moreover, as the demand for more ‘appropriate’—i.e., more flexible, networked and smart—forms of planning and governance increases, new expressions of territorial cooperation and conflict are emerging around issues and agendas of (de-)growth, infrastructure expansion, and the collective provision of services.