New Silk Roads (NSR) is a multi-faceted urban research project that explores the nascent urban conditions emerging in rapidly expanding and transforming Asian cities and regions. Through a nomadic practice, Kyong Park has conducted a series of sequenced expeditions through transitional regions and cities between Istanbul and Tokyo, documenting his encounters of the people and landscape through photography, video, and audio/video interviews of local and international experts. The project is an examination of territorial conditions that constructs the interconnected system of the contemporary Asian landscape. Approaching urban cities as an ecology of built systems, structures and institutions, NSR presents alternate understandings of urban research and theory through artistic practice.

[via email] Urban theorist and architect Kyong Park is speaking at a special event on March 2nd at the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (REDCAT) in downtown Los Angeles. Be there or be elsewhere.

The harsh, almost geological angularity of the parking garage shears through Lapidus’s easy informality, yet with its open structure and its canted and V-shaped columns there is a faint echo of playful MiMo. The developer, Robert Wennett, has used Miami Beach’s parking shortage to smuggle in a layer of retail for which he otherwise would have struggled to get permission. Boutiques and bookshops at ground level establish a pattern of (upmarket) retail for (the now mid-market) Lincoln, while four condos on a new street at the side help with profits, leaving Wennett’s own penthouse and a restaurant to occupy the top floor. There is even a shop halfway up the ramps, isolated and intriguing.”

[Source: FT.com / Arts / Design & Architecture] After malls and big lot retail stores, parking garages are the new target for smart revitalization.

Street parking, driveways and home garages are generally forbidden in this experimental new district on the outskirts of Freiburg, near the French and Swiss borders. Vauban’s streets are completely “car-free” — except the main thoroughfare, where the tram to downtown Freiburg runs, and a few streets on one edge of the community.

An innovative experiment is current in progress in Vauban, Germany where residents of an upscale community, no less, are learning to live without cars in a suburb.

[An] holistic approach to illuminating cities has come to be known as a lighting master plan. While few cities outside Europe have a plan currently in place, the steps involved in creating one help officials evaluate how the layers of lighting – street-level, marquees and directional signage, and monuments or cultural landmarks – should work together and be energy efficient.

An interesting look at how lighting is stepping out from the shadows of historic preservation and being used by urban planners to help improve a city’s character and livability.

An interesting talk by Jaime Lerner who reinvented urban space in his native city, Curitiba, Brazil leading to a new worldview for urban planners to see what’s possible in the metropolitan landscape.

Presenting five designs for sustainable and urban farm towers that might revolutionize agriculture.

Compact housing taken to the limits. More here. This is recycling at its best; using old containers to build housing.

Several of my grandchildren were raised in Costa Rica, the children of an American mother (my daughter) and a Costa Rican father. A few years ago they moved to Pittsburgh and at the end of the first week of school, my granddaughter Miriam came home and asked my daughter: ‘People keep calling me “Hispanic.” What do they mean? I tell them “No, I’m Costa Rican.”’ My daughter, a social historian by profession, but also a mom, knew she had to answer the question seriously, and she replied: ‘“Hispanic” is how North Americans refer to people whose parents came from Latin America.’ ‘Oh,’ asked Miriam, ‘is Daddy Hispanic?’ ‘Yes,’ replied my daughter. After a pause, Miriam asked: ‘Are you Hispanic?’ and my daughter replied ‘No.’ After a much longer pause came Miriam’s inevitable question: ‘Am I Hispanic?’ ‘That’s a difficult question, isn’t it?’ replied my daughter.

In a increasingly globalized world and with the leveling of the playing field that Friedmann mistook for the flatness of the world, gated communities are making a foray in Indian cities. Expats are returning home and wish to duplicate the good life of their U.S. experiences. The market obliges and provides them with their own haven. Welcome to Palm Meadows:

It is a gated community of about 600 single family homes, with 10 or more security guards manning the gates at any given time. Some houses are big and some are small, but most houses have at least three bedrooms each. Residents of Palm Meadows are a mix of original owners, returning Indians and expats [source: Blogpourri].

Heck, even the name is U.S.-centric and trust me, I have never seen a meadow of palms. But leaving that aside, it does appear to provide all you could wish for to eke out a luxurious living. Of course, considering the clients and homeowners are considered to be rich and ‘earning in dollars’, prices are steep and as Sujatha mentions, collusion among the real estate agents have hiked up the rents further. Of course, some of that wealth trickles down to the domestic help. In India, it is quite common to have domestic help, even the middle-class families have them. The only difference is in the price.

Of course, you can enjoy all you want while you are inside Palm Meadows but once you cross the gates, not even God can help you navigate through that dreaded Bangalore traffic.

Of course, the people that worked in those establishments didn’t follow the path of the retreating industries either because it wasn’t feasible or affordable to but largely because the industries no longer needed them. They found themselves to be out of a job and the poverty status wasn’t too far behind. Crime and poverty are often unwilling partners in these neglected parts and soon everyone else including the government writes them off and let them remain in these godforsaken parts of inner cities.

But things don’t remain the same as economy changes and so does attitudes and perceptions of people. It once again became hip to live in cities. At first, certain sections of the seemingly middle-class started moving back in the city. They spruced up their neighborhood a little, tried fitting in with the neighbors and soon got their friends interested in moving next door to them. The neighborhood, as they say, started gentrifying. Homes that once housed low income residents slowly began to be occupied by higher income people who moved to the city owing to low rents or property prices long suppressed either by crime, dilapidation, or simply due to the fact of being where it was.

People who moved in didn’t just move in but they fixed up their houses, cleaned the yards, and even got the government to cleanup the nearby brownfields. It doesn’t take long for the laws of economics and real estate to notice such changes. Prices start rising and so do the property prices. Unfortunately, the ones that had always lived there enduring years of poverty, crime, dilapidation suddenly find their homes to expensive to live in as the state comes calling for the increased property taxes. If you can’t afford your property taxes, why don’t you sell your homes to those nice people who would love to fix it up, says the state (or the market). Economically it makes sense but do they really want to leave? Probably they have lived there all their life, went to school there and built their childhood memories in the neighborhood. But the calling of the market is strong enough to stifle such sentiments.

The city isn’t complaining. It can finally look at the neighborhood without feeling sorry for its residents; after all they seem to have gotten a new lease of life. And of course, there is that little matter of increased tax revenue through property taxes for the city coffers. Everyone loves the new folk and like what they are doing to the neighborhood. Soon there is a Starbucks to cater to the new clientele and a wine bar is opening shortly. You hear faint music and laughter on Friday nights.

Where are the erstwhile residents, you ask? Who knows. Probably in some old-age home living their last days in peace or some other ignored neighborhood that hasn’t yet been gentrified. You never know they just might have to move once again when it is the turn of that neighborhood to be gentrified. The gentrified neighborhood sports a new look but where are the people that made it a neighborhood in the first place? Should we care about the place or the people?

Technorati Tags: gentrification, redevelopment, planning, neighborhood, community, revitalization

The theory of construction of scientific knowledge has been examined traditionally through positivist lenses. The empirical background of scientific knowledge is based in quantitative analyses and evidentiary based studies that rely on human observations to prove or disprove theories or statement of facts. Developed by Auguste Comete, the logical positivist influence molded much of scientific knowledge right until the early twentieth century and was bereft of normative aspects of associated disciplines of science. The natural sciences wielded much influence over the methodological supremacy of knowledge construction. Positivism focused on the measurable aspects of science and relied on the cumulative or progressive nature of building theories as a measure of constructing scientific knowledge. The core belief was constituted by the verifiability of facts by empirical observation of reality.

Initiated by Hume and furthered by Karl Popper, the standards for scientific knowledge veered from verifiability to falsifiability. This departure from having to prove facts to having to withstand disproving facts was initiated by the problem of induction. Scientific knowledge until then was based on inductive methods that relied on observations. The inherent logic of induction was cyclical and observation of a single anomaly rendered the entire approach invalid. Thus, logically speaking, no amount of positive outcomes or verifiable observations can confirm a scientific theory especially when a single counter observation can disprove the theory thus constructed.

According to Popper, scientific knowledge is inherently conjectural and hypothetical that can only be subjected to rigorous scientific tests [in reference to their implications] but can never be accepted as disprovable fact. Thus, Popper used the test of falsifiability as a measure for setting scientific standards. He used this test as a ‘criteria of demarcation’ between scientific knowledge and metaphysical hypothesis. According to Popper, any theory or statement that aspires to be scientific shall also incorporate disproving statements along with proof statement within its construction i.e. their formulation shall be such that “to verify them and to falsify them must both be logically possible.”

The method of observation was also discounted as being fallible to our sensory limitations and prejudiced perceptions of the subject matter. Objective examination of scientific knowledge termed as critical rationalism called for the distinguishing system to be different from the one that represents our world of experience. Subjective experiences and “feelings of conviction” should be clearly differentiated from the logical relations of the scientific statements. Thus, the focus was shifted from inductive reasoning to deductive analysis. The deductive method of testing is not intended to establish or justify the statements that are being tested thus it does not suffer from the infinite regress problem that plagues induction. The standard for scientific knowledge, according to Popper, was not in the actual implementation of testing of any scientific fact but rather in the capability of being tested thus.

On a related note, although Popper’s departure from empiricism to falsification and critical rationalism was noteworthy, subsequent contributions by Lakatos and Thomas Kuhn greatly clarified the methods by which standards for scientific knowledge are set. Using the criticism of Duhem-Quine thesis that it doesn’t help to discard the set of theories when in fact only one element of the theoretical package has been falsified, Lakatos clarified Popper’s ‘naïve falsification’.

The Lakatosian standard for scientific knowledge emphasized that research programs rather than universal statements are falsified. The body of statements that envelope a core truth-statement are subjected to tests of falsification before the core is tested. Only when the supporting research programs fail to live up to the tests, is the core universal statement challenged and subsequently changed if falsified. Thomas Kuhn relied on the use of paradigms to explain the progress of scientific standards rather than a falsificationist methodology that he said was not typical of the scientific community.

This was a brief summary of the epistemological approaches of scientific knowledge and establishment of standards that constituted science. I shall now explore the suitability of such standards for planning and policy inquiry.

Scientific Standards in Planning

Planning is generically described as a top-down process that attempts to reallocate spaces and resources for maximization of utility not just on economic terms but also in terms of socio-economic implications. This dichotomy of objectives – facts and values – makes planning contextual and makes its definition among empirical sciences highly controversial. Since planning has been traditional associated with government, it also overlap policy inquiry which in its history has undergone several transformations; right from PPBS (Planning-Programming-Budgeting-System) to MBO (Management by Objectives) to ZBB (Zero-based budgeting) to GAA (goals-achievement analysis) (Hudson, 1979). Planning, briefly defined as “”foresight in formulating and implementing programs and policies,” establishes it as a form of science attempting to craft theories and statements to explain or ameliorate social conditions. In the planning literature, five traditions – synoptic, incremental, transactive, advocacy, and radical (SITAR) – dominate the theory-building exercises with their own epistemological underpinnings for constructing knowledge.

But every stream of planning concerns itself with reinforcing public interest and offers a range of legitimate interventions in social, political, and economic scenarios to better the status quo. We shall examine the influence of scientific standards as described above in the purview of planning and policy inquiry and comment on the appropriateness of these standards on different kinds of planning problems.

In the Popperian tradition, planning is not seen as an operation separated from other forms of social action, but rather as a process embedded in continual evolution of ideas validated through action (Friedmann, 1973).

However, the emphasis contrary to Popper remains on validation and not falsification. This anomaly can be explained by use of social tools rooted in reality rather than formulating conjectures that may be subject to refutations at a later date. Traditional planning often constitutes as a problem-solving measure rather than an explanatory tool and hence relies primarily on validation that can be cited in the short-term as a public interest goal. Taking a step back and examining planning theories on basis of logical empiricism, we must first define the goals of planning. Planning basically relies on the normative goals of defining public interest, furthering social justice, and incorporating the human dimension of examining intangible outcomes. Planning departs from traditional science that assumes a neutral and objective look at the facts and makes a logical decision based on observations.

Adhering to normative values is akin to incorporating subjective prejudices that science is expected to distance itself from. Planning processes are often not amenable to separation of distinct observations and independence of fact statements primarily due to its interconnectivity with and strong ties with social and environmental conditions. Unhindered neutrality is often impossible due to political leanings and influences of planning methods.

For most forms of planning, the centrality or vesting power in the state regarding decision-making for the publics was criticized. Planners however function in the public sphere and are held to a higher standards of accountability than natural scientists. Logical empiricists often have the luxury, for lack of a better word, to conduct experiments in isolation bereft of environmental influences in order to discount for interference but planners although also expected to anticipate the future work in a social context and thus, their expectations and subsequent results can never be scientifically based (Faludi, 1986).

Certain problems in planning like examining cost-benefit analysis for a specific site can somewhat be based in logical empiricism but often such methods too incorporate the human element unintentionally which doesn’t have a fixed value under all circumstances and therefore must be explained with relevant social conditions present at that time. The shift from goal-oriented to problem-solving approaches in planning theory also distanced methods of empiricism from planning due to focus on specific solutions to solve problems in the short term instead of broad-based societal ameliorating goals that usually occurred in the long run.

Synoptic planning or the rational comprehensive approach in planning was rooted in the post-WWII era from the application of scientific method to problem solving and decision-making. Planning was construed as creating an imagery of the future in order to postulate future actions. In order to achieve the desirable future, actions would be formulated with intended levels of probability of their success. Thus, Popper’s approach toward rationality in planning highlighted a key difference between logical probability and ‘verisimilitude’. The latter merely represents the idea of approaching comprehensive truth by combining truth and content whereas probability on the other hand, combines truth and lack of content (Chadwick, 1978). Such kinds of social engineering, as opposed to technical engineering is an unbounded process and seemingly limitless in options and alternatives.

Planning, as opposed to natural scientific methods have little control over their environment due to real-world placement and are chronically short of reliable information. To correct the lack of information available upfront, the planning process actually can be iterative and piecemeal that has a distinct normative component instead of a comprehensive all-inclusive approach.

Planning processes often are evaluated at the process level and appropriately modified by tweaking the methods in order to achieve the intended results. This can be likened to continually developing the hypothesis, if it can be referred to as thus. If this revised hypothesis stands up to the test and is not falsified, it will replace the original hypothesis. This is a distinct departure from the scientific method wherein hypothesis and assumptions are stated upfront and any deference is construed as invalidation of the study. At the same time, such incremental approaches also cannot fully explain the planning methodology to problem solving.

Sometimes, in order to approach an upcoming field such as sustainability or environmental-friendly planning, a Kuhnian paradigm shift is necessary to realign our previously held beliefs to a new order. This approach can effectively require practitioners to abandon previously held notions and rethink planning approaches yet remain faithful to their theoretical constructs.

Planning experiments often change the status quo and hence the system or social condition cannot be reset to its default state in order to repeat the process. The planning experiment must be modified and readapted to suit the changed social construct. The traditional Geddesian approach of “survey-analysis-plan” was strictly based on the positivistic scientific method but in reality, planners begin with formulating their ideas and assumption about the given problem and then go about working their analysis around the problem to achieve a desirable outcome. The subjective prejudicial component that is abhorred in traditional scientific pursuit is actually encouraged and pursued in planning methodology.

However, that does not discount the need for scientific criteria for testability against predetermined measures that usually are in line with social and cultural norms. Thus, effectively even though the subjective angle is not excluded, planning statements, if expected to be chosen as acceptable theory, still need to be expressed in terms such that they can be falsified. Specific planning statements however should be distinguished from broad-based theoretical statements.

In Popperian (and Simon’s) terms, unbounded nature of planning is unacceptable due to man’s limited ability to do so. Yet some form of planning approaches like cost-benefit analyses, comprehensive planning, and environmental planning continue to be pursued in this direction. A middle ground would be to distance plans as a form of formal hypotheses that would be tested in isolation and instead place them in specific context and subject them to continual monitoring (Reade, 1983). This would investigate the extent to which it produces intentional effects and also allow for unintended effects that would allow planners to modify methods to produce knowledge.

As Rittel and Webber (1974) elaborate, there are no true or false answers in planning but in fact, good or bad answers. That decision is often subjective to the public that planning solutions are directed towards. In fact, there can be a mixed reaction depending on the different value-judgments of stakeholders. Planning problems can be differentiated according to their intended consequences and thus, planning methodology has been adequately suited to their purposes. The higher the level of a problem’s formulation, the broader and more general it becomes, and more difficult it becomes to do something about it, and subsequently, the less applicable the scientific methods are to resolve it. The larger problems in planning literature can be likened to a Lakatosian ‘hard core’ surrounded by flexible ‘research programs’ that continually shift in time and context and thus can be amenable to change before actually addressing the ‘hard core’. The ‘emerging trends’ in planning can similarly be likened to Kuhn’s ‘anomalies’ that can cause a dramatic shift in perception comparable to a ‘paradigm’ (Zonneveld, 1991).

References:

Chadwick, G. (1978), “A System View of PlanningTowards a Theory of the Urban
and Regional Planning Process.” Oxford: Pergamon.

Faludi, A. (1986) “Critical Rationalism and Planning Methodology”, London: Pion
Press.

Friedmann, J. (1973). “Retracking America: a theory of transactive planning”,
Anchor Press.

Hudson, B. M. (1979). “Comparison of Current Planning Theories: Counterparts
and Contradictions.” Journal of the American Planning Association 45(4): 387–98.

Kuhn, T. S. (1963). “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.” Chicago, IL.

Lakatos, I. (1970). “Falsification and the methodology of scientific research
programmes.” Criticism and the growth of knowledge: 91–195.

Popper, K. R. (1992). “The logic of scientific discovery.” London: Routledge.

Rittel, H. W. J. and M. M. Webber (1973). “Dilemmas in a general theory of
planning.” Policy Sciences 4(2): 155-169.

Zonneveld, W. (1991) “Conceptvorming in de Ruimtelijke Planning: Patronen en
Processen” [Conceptualization in Spatial Planning: Patterns and Processes]. Amsterdam: Planologisch en Demografisch Instituut, Universiteit van Amsterdam.

Technorati Tags: Empiricism, planning, theory, scientific knowledge, Comte, Popper, Objectivity, Lakatos, standards,

Suburbanization – and even ever greater sprawl – must be accepted as the future. Attempts to stomp out or control outward movement, as Portland tried, have not only failed but have driven settlement even further out beyond the areas of control.

I have been an avid proponent of ‘smart’ growth and continue to believe in the ‘evils’ of suburbia but Joel Kotkin makes a reasonable argument for accepting suburbia and in fact for making it better. Yup! if you can’t beat it, join it.

This certainly gives a new twist to their tourism slogan – what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Jokes aside, the casino business is proving to provide decent and non-strenuous [physically] jobs as compared to driving the toy train in the hot summer sun at Disneyland. Las Vegas apart from being the fastest growing city is also attracting a wide demographic of people other than elderly folk and this certainly gives a filip to housing demand. As the housing bubble in neighboring California continues to grow, senior citizens with a fixed income prefer the equally warm climate of Vegas to settle down.

And what’s more? With a great air link, the children have no excuse not to visit.

Technorati Tags: Las Vegas, senior citizens, elderly, housing, Nevada, city, growth

A street plan of Opolis, an imaginary city, has been laid out on the floor of the Flux main space. Individual city blocks have been claimed by individual artists. They have designed the buildings and environments that fill the city blocks (apartment buildings, libraries, factories, parks, junkyards, skyscrapers, bars, office buildings, theaters, etc), and have invented characters to populate these environments. The artists have created the work in such a way that as the viewer walks around the block, the buildings (or images in or on the buildings) function as comic strip panels that resolve into a story.

Opolis: A Comix Flucture is trying out the age-old idea of placing the viewer in a Lilliputian city, letting him walk the streets, touch the buildings and basically get a sense of the place that you wouldn’t by staring continuously at a plan drawing for a few hours. The man on the street has always related better to real stories and images than abstract conceptions that architects often resort to. Winning awards is one thing but building an experience-rich place requires taking all those inane and otherwise-mundane stories and weaving them into a conceptual storyline. An interesting experiment, I might say.

It is fine to juxtapose the old Greenwich Village against the gargantuan planning of the corrupt Robert Moses. Few other social scientists of her time grasped the idea of spontaneous order. But what to do if a city grows from one million to ten million people, as has happened many times in the Third World?

To be sure, favelas and shanties work far better than their reputations. Drug gangs aside, they embody many of the best qualities of Jacob’s analysis, or for that matter Hayek’s. But surely it is a problem when there is no piped water or reliable electricity. How can you get those services into new areas without some serious planning? You can call for private sector involvement but it is planning nonetheless and it probably will involve some use of eminent domain. Or how about new roads?

I believe he straddles an important middle-ground that has plagued much of planning literature. Planning, everyone agrees is important and necessary but they differ on how much planning or control is required. Libertarians argue that the market should be allowed to let a city organically grow according to the economic needs of the people. But then, we have a resulting city like Houston that you definitely wouldn’t pride living in. Complete top-down approach, like that empowered Le Corbusier gave rise to Chandigarh which I believe, failed to connect with the people and still remains a mystery even to the people who live there. Jacobs may have leaned a wee bit too much toward the left but her opposition to Moses, who built much of New York’s infrastructure, was well-intentioned. Moses’ creations may have helped New York be the city that is today but at the same time, social injustices cannot be overlooked in the name of progress. Equal representation to all sections of the society must remain planning’s overarching objective.

Times are much different from when Moses and Jacobs practices their professions and it may not be possible to adhere to simply one process of planning. Globalization and urban agglomeration has made Jacobs’ idyllic sense of a community redundant whereas the global melting pot of cultures and ethnicities in any metropolis worth its salt has refocused attention on social justice.

Is it time to develop a new theory for planning that focuses on changing times, social and economic, as well as keep an eye on sustainability? Or does one already exist that needs a little tweaking?