Fall 2023
Cities, Master-planning and Urban Governance

The aim of this course is to familiarise students with central concepts and approaches of urban planning, policy and governance. Planning is key to the urban process, by determining land use, providing infrastructure and circulation, and by situating facilities in a way that it might support efficient and sustainable development of urban space. Contextualised within the modern history of planning, regulatory instruments have been developed and applied in much of the industrialised world, such as general land-use plans, particular building plans or more comprehensive, strategic framework plans. Informal instruments and procedures such as participatory planning also play a role.

However, the rationale of planning to steer development (and the related belief of planners to master that) is challenged by a variety of events, both originating from changes within the planning system and, even more so, the outside world. The great constraint to spatial planning in modern societies is mastering complexity and to become entrenched in the system of politics. The problem of complexity arises from a vertical perspective; that is, there are different, and sometimes competing, spheres of interests and validity prerogatives at a global, national, regional and local scales that claim power and responsibility for themselves. Also, there is complexity in a horizontal sense, with regard to the sectoral dynamics, e.g. in the concurring cases of housing, transport, open space, commercial, infrastructure etc. (sectoral vs. overall planning), but also as concerns the different and often competitive logics by which spatial units, such as neighbouring municipalities, function.

While the course gets started with a historical overview of planning in the industrial world, we will particularly apply two major practical exercises in certain detail: plan analyses and evaluation. These tasks will be subject to group work.