Questioning Planning, Connecting Places and Times: Introduction to the Special Issue

• Main Authors: Simone Tulumello, Patsy Healey
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: AESOP Association of the European Schools of Planning 2016-12-01
• Series: PlaNext
• Online Access: http://journals.aesop-planning.eu/volume-3/article-18/

Let us open this editorial introduction in an unusual way, made possible by plaNext’s innovative approach to peer-review. Let us quote a paragraph from one of the reviews to the articles of this issue, namely the review by Marco Allegra to Ignacio Castillo Ulloa’s article. One might suspect that this is a simplistic account of the functioning of the planning process: planners, after all, might be creative in their work; take risks (or not); simply rely on their professional expertise, but also use it in a strategic way to negotiate their role in the policy process; display a number of alternative, ‘non-planning strategies’; follow a private, particularistic or political agenda (rather than planning handbooks) in doing their job; cheat, lie, manipulate their clients, colleagues or the stakeholders in general. In sum, what the author presents as a dispute between two irreconcilable logics – between the rational, positivistic planner and the hysteric residents – might be part of a broader interaction between a ‘planner- actor’ and all the other participants to the planning process