Speaker
Description
The field of spatial planning is currently experiencing a profound shift driven by technological advancements, known as the digital transformation of planning. This transformative process has the potential to reshape the very essence of planning practice and the way it delivers fundamental values, including equity, social justice, transparency, and efficiency (Hersperger et al., 2022). Despite documented awareness of digital transformation in the planning community, there is a lack of knowledge that could support practitioners in navigating this transformative journey and guide researchers in analyzing the digitalization of planning. Eminent scholars point out that the digital transformation is largely technology-driven (Kitchin et al., 2021; Boland et al., 2021). This raises questions about the nature of digital planning and the extent to which planning should become computationally codified and automated and ultimately develop into a post-political practice. These questions will become more pressing as the political pressure to adopt digital technologies intensifies. The necessary foundations for approaching them are lacking, as most research to date has focused on the development of new technological tools and digital data including planning support systems, digital-co-production platforms, digital plan data and methods in urban analytics. The restructuring of relationships within planning practice resulting from the complex interplay between digital technology and people has however been neglected. With this research we are contributing towards closing this gap.
To understand the digital transformation of planning, a focus on what happens in planning practice – what planners do – is warranted. Only a close look at individual actions in practice can reveal the distinct changes associated with the gradual, slow, and ongoing digitalization that planning is experiencing (Christmann and Schinagl, 2023). However, planning practice is poorly understood, mostly because of a lack of theories as well as a paucity of empirical research, leaving the daily routines and practices of planners largely unexplored (Forester, 2023). There are many ways to break down the complexity of planning practice for analysis. Since it is expected that the effects of digitalization will be particularly prominent in the technologically mediated interaction between public officials and citizens and in evidence-based decision-making, we pursue a breakdown toward this. Thus, and drawing from literature on the planning-technology nexus, on digital technologies and data, and on spatial planning practice, we propose four interrelated core concepts of planning practice in which digitalization manifests itself, i.e., encounter, discretion, representation and domain integration. Encounters relate to the interaction between citizens and public officials that are increasingly mediated through digital portals. Discretion denotes the degrees of freedom planners experience in micro-level decision-making that can be affected using digital tools and algorithms in decision support. The representation of plans and environments refers to means that change from analog forms to increasingly complex digital ones, including city information models and virtual reality experiences, with issues regarding standardization and data analytics, among others. Domain integration highlights the increasing emphasis on integrating different environmental and social policy concerns within coherent spatial frameworks and domain specific data, involving technology-supported evidence-based planning, often in planning support systems and data analytics. We outline an interdisciplinary research approach currently conducted with the support of an SNSF Advanced Grant to understand how digitalization changes planning practice in these core concepts. The aim is to develop a theoretical model that will explain how the use of digital technologies in daily practice alter actor’s relationships, planning processes and outcomes. We expect that this will contribute towards effectively and critically supporting the digital transformation of spatial planning.
References
Boland P, Durrant A, McHenry J, et al. (2021) A ‘planning revolution’ or an ‘attack on planning’ in England: Digitization, digitalization, and democratization. International Planning Studies: 1-18.
Christmann G and Schinagl M. (2023) Digitalisation in everyday urban planning activities: Consequences for embodied practices, spatial knowledge, planning processes, and workplaces. Journal of Urban Management 12: 141-150.
Forester J. (2023) How planners might improvise in the face of power: waking up theory for practice. Planning Theory & Practice 24: 147-150.
Hersperger AM, Thurnheer-Wittenwiler C, Tobias S, et al. (2022) Digitalization in land-use planning: Effects of digital plan data on efficiency, transparency and innovation. European Planning Studies 30: 2537-2553.
Kitchin R, Young GW and Dawkins O. (2021) Planning and 3D spatial media: Progress, prospects, and the knowledge and experiences of local government planners in Ireland. Planning Theory & Practice 22: 349-367.
| Keywords | land-use planning; digitalization; theoretical model; planning values |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | Yes |
