Systems Approaches to Planning: From Control, Self-Organisation and Power to Normal Accidents

Abstract

I distinguish four systems approaches to urban planning with analytical foci on control, self-organization, power and normal accidents. I elaborate on the last of these approaches, noting its salience to a world in which statutory urban planning continues to expand but also to disappoint in its outcomes. This organizational systems approach speaks to normative questions of: whether urban planning could or should be reduced to project management; how smart smart city-related interests in complexity will be in practice; the limits of muddling through; and the contribution of intermediation and discretion to urban planning’s normal accidents.