Tore Sager, Professor Emeritus
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)
7491, Trondheim, Norway
tore.sager@ntnu.no
Phone +47 918 97 158
Abstract: Prefigurative mobilizations, such as alternative micro-communities and urban social movements, organize their practice here and now in ways that are in line with and reveal...
Collaborative planning based on Habermasian communicative theories is a holistic planning theory different from action-oriented planning theories (Levin-Keitel & Behrend, 2023). In empirical research, collaborative planning is often explained well in the literature review, but its application in examining local planning cases tends to be superficial. Much of the focus is on whether the case...
Public trust in democratic governance structures (including planning structures) is at historic lows (OECD, 2022), while attacks on democratic institutions, coupled with increasing support for ethnonationalist political parties, warrant palpable concerns for a looming anti-democratic/anti-planning turn, globally (Freedom House, 2021). But attacks on democracy and public-sector planning stem...
Planning theory literature has changed signfiicantly since the emergence of planning theory as a subdiscipline. In recent decades, the literature has moved away from big conceptual turns and 'grand theories.' But what has it moved towards? This paper originates from the author team's interest in the question: what has planning theory research focused on in recent years? What are key streams of...
Understanding Uncertainty in Planning;
Case study of demographic forecasts in urban plans in Iran
Uncertainty is an intrinsic notion in planning that is mostly recognized as the obstacle in the process of planning and achieving its goals. So planning devoted practice and theory to reduce this unpopular notion and take control of reality. But all the tools introduced to tackle with...
Planning is a collective action, and planners work in increasingly more diverse interdisciplinary teams which involve both experts and non-experts. Learning is an essential component of such interdisciplinary collaborations. In this study, we focus on professional learning as an integral part of everyday planning practice and consider planners as storytellers of this practice (Watson, 2002)....
Over the past few decades, the role of and need for plans, as written and agreed documents, has been questioned or denied by many planning practitioners and theorists (Neuman 1998; Moroni 2023). Nevertheless, plans continue to be produced by organisations and governments at all spatial levels and to be used in addressing a wide range of complex urban and social futures.
All planning and plans...
In planning as a professional discipline, the term โplanningโ in Planning Theory carries a dual meaning โ planning as a field of study and planning as a professional activity. In terms of planning as a field of study, the project of planning theory has made substantial progress, having developed an extremely diverse range of theories that interpret and evaluate planning as a phenomenon....
Although scientific and technological innovation has been playing a crucial role in the evolution of urban planning as a professional practice and academic discipline, an overall critical assessment of the domination of technoscientific-centrism in the field of planning theories seems missing. Whilst the literature acknowledges that both scientific inquiry and technological innovation are...
The post-foundational line of thought and the post-political critique that has come out of it provides the field of planning theory with a critical energy that it has long been in need of. In the framework of this critique, first the Habermasian communicative rationality is denounced for denigrating and rejecting of any manifestation of disagreement in the society in the name of democracy. The...
**The paper is more of a reflection than a conclusive answer to the question โShould planning and politics converge around the concept of โcommunities of disagreementโ?
The field of planning, both in theory and practice, often has consensus building as a guiding inspiration for its normative theoretical and practical development. Politics, on the other hand, is an activity characterized by...
This paper examines spatial planning as a cultural practice, conceptualizing it as an interplay between attitudes, actions, and artifacts. Spatial planning is not merely a technical, political, or communicative activity, but rather a complex cultural practice influenced by shared societal norms, values, and practices that evolve over time. This study adopts a meaning-oriented and praxeological...
The need for social-ecological transformation is beyond question. The relevance of spatial planning in shaping this transformation is equally undisputed (cf. Hofmeister & Warner, 2021 among others). However, we still know little about whether planning for transformations also involves a substantial transformation of planning itself (cf. Schreiber et al., 2023, for one of the few exceptions)....
Germany is currently experiencing a wave of large-scale urban expansion projects (Hesse 2021), driven by a growing demand for housing and an ongoing shortage of developable land within city centres. These new suburban developments are being promoted as models of sustainability and participatory, inclusive planning. However, in terms of participatory justice (cf. Blue et al. 2019), it is not...
The urgency of the climate crisis and ambitious political aims towards climate neutrality are increasing the pressure to accelerate projects for the post-fossil transformation. In Germany, this particularly affects energy transition projects, such as wind power and photovoltaic systems, whose acceleration is justified by an โoverwhelming public interestโ in planning. In contrast, environmental...
To critically reflect and theorize on politics, strategy, power, and conflict in spatial planning, more attention towards time and temporality is needed (Hutter, Wiechmann et al. 2024). Various research streams have taken up issues of temporality, for instance, research on path dependence (Sorensen 2023) based on โHistorical Institutionalism (HI)โ (Mahoney et al. 2016). Our contribution aims...
Cities face the wicked problem of dealing with the conflicting policy objectives of urban densification and climate adaptation. This problem is also known as the sustainable city paradox. Addressing and finding a solution to this problem is crucial regarding the present-day challenges of the pressing housing shortage and the perceivable consequences of climate change on the urban landscape,...
Rural landscapes are in transition worldwide driven by intersecting processes including climate change, structural changes in agriculture (concentration, specialization, intensification/extensification), urbanization in various forms, and decline in biodiversity (Pinto-Correia et al. 2018). Also, public policies and planning are changing at all levels and sectors (including both market...
An interesting recent debate made an impression on placemaking practitioners and planners alike. De Graafโs confession that โI have no idea what placemaking isโ (2023), still being relevant; one has only to browse the comments section, was followed by another confession by way of response, that of Marradesโs โI donโt care what placemaking exactly isโ (2023). This round seemingly ended with the...
The proposed contribution argues for stronger integration of the theoretical notion of place in planning against multiple current challenges. It revisits established and novel conceptual readings of place and outlines its implications for planning, arguing for the theoretically informed use of the place notion as instrumental in planning better cities for people.
Cities have undergone...
In the age of planetary crisis, factors influencing urban development have become increasingly intricate. A deep understanding of complexity is crucial for accurately assessing these factors. The influence of complexity theory on urban and planning studies has long been recognized. Complexity theory, which took shape in the 1940s, has provided a foundation for complex theories of cities (CTC)...
In the context of the pressing environmental and climate challenges, the topic of energy increasingly finds its way into spatial planning through emerging concepts such as Spatial Energy Planning or Integrated Energy Planning (e.g. De Pascali & Bagaini 2018; Stoeglehner & Abart-Heriszt 2022; Stoeglehner et al. 2016). These approaches include specific tools for analysing energy data,...
Digital twins are enjoying widespread and growing success in both theoretical and practical applications. A recent development that is gaining increasing traction is the application of digital twins to cities. The aim of this paper is to discuss the potential and limitations of city-scale digital twins. The scientific literature on digital twins is dominated by โtechnicalโ approaches. Critical...
In an era of intersecting environmental, social, and economic crises, the theory and practice of planning must evolve to address the complexities of contemporary urbanization processes. This paper introduces Linear Research as both a theoretical and methodological framework for conceptualizing and comparatively analyzing urbanization processes at a planetary scale. Building on Brennerโs (2014)...
โWe only see what we look atโ (Berger, 1972 p8)
In his classic work, Ways of Seeing, John Berger (1972), drawing on the work of Walter Benjamin, questions how modern reproductions of art and images have changed their power and our relationships with meaning. He argues for the primacy of sight over language in the knowing of the world, but because the meanings of what we see are so regulated...
The spatial dimension, distribution, and organization of property significantly influence urban dynamics and the political capacity to implement regenerative programs as well as their types. Beyond abstract planning concepts and strategic intentions, property owners of buildings and land ultimately hold direct power and control over the built environment. From this perspective, ownership...
Over recent decades, urban design has been consistently critiqued for its growing disparity between its theoretical aspirations and practical outcomes, with the process often failing to deliver the high-quality results it promises (Elrahman and Asaad, 2021). This persistent disconnect raises a pivotal question: can theories transcend their prescriptive frameworks to act as transformative...
In the last decades, a spatial dimension of the transformation of the new production model has been observed as a function of technological development. The latter, as early as the 80s, created a new network of global city-poles (mainly in the Global North) allowing the instant transfer of economic and social capital flows (mainly in the Global South). Thus, the geographical dispersion of...
- Introduction
In a society with a declining population, significant changes are required in the large metropolitan areas that have been consistently expanding since the end of the Second World War. Optimizing the scale of conurbations is an urgent issue to ensure that our living environment is safe, secure, and sustainable (Dunham-Jones & Williamson, 2011). In this context, there is much...
In contemporary settings characterized by rapid urbanization, environmental degradation, and limited access to natural resources and food, numerous countries face many challenges. A salient issue in Turkey is the sustainability of urban governance, which impedes resilience. The nascent implementation of participatory processes and democratic active participation and the discordance between...
In the context of global crises, 21st-century cities face numerous challenges. The impacts of climate change and economic tensions at all scales necessitate a more resource-conscious urban development while putting human needs at its centre. At the same time, the complexity of urban systems challenges planning, pointing to inevitable connections among geographic scales and action domains of...
In Auckland, the dream of owning a house may now be entirely out of reach for some people as housing prices continue to be severely unaffordable. One of the key factors to which Aucklandโs housing unaffordability is often attributed is the housing shortage. This research challenges the way in which the housing affordability problem is perceived. This research contends that for housing-related...
This research aims to tease out some of the potential or โnewโ theoretical directions from the mainstream of communicative/collaborative planning theory which predominates the academic field of planning study through the 1990s to 2010s. It takes a perspective of skeleton phylogeny of human mtDNA which has been revealed by Dr Vincent Macaulay and his colleagues in their study on statistical...
As the world confronts pressing issues such as climate change, social inequality, and resource depletion, there is a critical need to engage with both traditional and emerging planning theories. This necessitates a re-evaluation of the core concepts and assumptions that have historically shaped planning practices. Ancient Chinese urban planning, rich in cultural heritage and historical wisdom,...
Planners and policymakers face significant challenges in designing policies that address the myriad planetary crises of the Anthropocene. These challenges arise from the unpredictability and uncertainty of political action (Chakrabarty, 2015; Davoudi, 2016) and the pressing need to tackle the climate crisis and environmental degradation (Davoudi et al., 2013). The United Nations (UN)...
The relationship between the economic cycles inherent in capitalist systems and technological innovations, including digital platforms, is a critical topic in both classical and political economic approaches to urban economics and planning. Digital platforms, such as those involved in sharing economies (e.g., Airbnb, Uber), remote working platforms, and recently AI platforms, have become...
Barcelona's innovation district 22@Barcelona, shaped by the discourses of 'public-private partnership', 'public participation', and 'planning flexibility', has been promoted as an ideal template for neo-liberal practices in global cities around the world. Over the past 25 years, numerous literature critically examined 22@Barcelona(Pirรณ, E. E. , 2016; Lรณpez, J. A. M. , 2018; Martรญn-Gรณmez, A., &...
The balancing of economic, environmental and social goals is widely discussed in planning theory and practice. It could have been expected thus that sustainability, which also seeks to balance these goals, would be at the center of planning practice and theory, and that planners will play a central role in advancing sustainability world-wide. Yet this is not the case. Plannersโ role in the...
This paper examines the roles of 'opening' and 'closure' in planning theory, arguing that systemic change aimed at addressing deep-seated inequalities requires both the creation of political space for dialogue and its subsequent consolidation to enable meaningful decisions. Drawing on Laclau and Mouffeโs hegemony theory, the paper proposes a framework that balances these dynamics by fostering...
The question of what constitutes a waterfront presents significant ambiguities in urban studies. Existing definitions often oversimplify the waterfront as either the boundary between land and water or as a narrow extension of this line, underestimating the complex reciprocity between the waterfront and the inland built environment. This reductive framing leads to fragmented terminologies and...
Modern spatial planning faces increasing complexity due to the relational dynamics of the network society and the pressures of neoliberalism. Traditional top-down or bottom-up planning approaches are insufficient to address cross-sectoral challenges, as sector-specific plans often prioritise economic competitiveness over broader spatial equity. To avoid reinforcing uneven development, spatial...
Trauma-aware planning has emerged as a promising approach to addressing the spatial impacts of adverse events and processes, including climate change, natural disasters, war, and urban renewal. Theoretically rooted in equity planning, emotionally engaged planning, and reflective practice, it offers a transformative planning orientation aligned with the ethic of care. However, the concept...
