From Public-Private-People Partnerships to Trading Zones in Urban Planning

Abstract

The chapter reviews critically the complexities involved in the idea of Public-Private-People Partnership (4P) in urban planning. The 4P idea, formulated by Majamaa and his colleagues, reaffirms the domination of the economic communication mode, familiar from Public-Private Partnerships, despite its aim of engaging the “people” in the partnerships. It thus undermines considerations on, e.g., political accountability, legal status, and scientific validity that may emerge in such partnership arrangements. Following Luhmann’s social theory, each of these considerations has its own rationale that cannot be subjected to the economic mode of communication. The political, legal, and scientific considerations stem from their own communication modes, each with their own rules. This raises the question of how the coexistence of the different communication modes can be managed in 4Ps, without losing the partnerships’ capability to perform. In discussing this challenge, the chapter focuses on the possibility of co-coordination between the communication modes, through the development of tools and platforms for boundary-crossing communication. For this purpose, the concepts of “boundary object” and “trading zone” are examined. Sociological studies in the history of science, by Galison and others, have revealed that different groups of scientists and experts have been able to co-coordinate their activities locally, by developing boundary objects and trading zones for exchanging information and services – despite not sharing their goals and conceptual understandings. A tentative analogy is drawn to “urban living labs.” They are conceived as local semifixed platforms that combine spatial facilities and mapping, monitoring, and visualization technologies for the development of boundary objects and trading zones – in co-coordinating different views and understandings on urban planning issues. In this regard, an innate resource of planning is its storytelling approach to communication. In the conclusion, a reconceptualization of the 4P in urban planning is suggested, as a local trading zone of urban planning. Finally, some issues requiring further theoretical work are addressed.