Abstract
Urban transformation towards sustainability requires deep systemic change in economic, social, environmental, cultural, organisational, governmental, and physical terms. Considering this challenge, this paper aims to explore the potentials and limitations of urban planning to incorporate an urban transition management approach that strives to enable such deep transformation processes.Taking the Integrated Sustainable Urban Development (ISUD) Strategy for district regeneration in Valencia (Spain) as a case study, the analysis and discussion elaborate on the main barriers and enablers for urban planning to incorporate a transition perspective when tackling urban sustainability challenges. Four main fields of tension emerge as particularly relevant: 1) Democratic representation versus involvement of forerunner innovators, 2) Formal decision-making procedures versus reflexivity and social learning, 3) Standardised project formats versus open processes of searching and experimentation, and 4) Fragmented policy agendas and budget lines versus integrated and multi-sectoral interventions.The case study illustrates how urban planning struggles to align its rationale with requirements for managing complex sustainability transformations. The findings point to a paradox inherent in planning for transformation: although urban planning necessarily incorporates the values and rules of the currently dominant urban systems, it also has the potential to create windows of opportunity for niche innovations to emerge at district or even city level. Therefore, urban planning processes form an arena in which conflicts between niches and regimes are negotiated.
Highlights
Sustainable urban transformation has been used to emphasise the structural dynamics of transformation processes involving radical and multi-dimensional change to reorient urban development towards sustainability (McCormick et al 2013)
In enabling the innovation of urban actors, increasing their visibility, and anchoring them in the urban context while supporting strategic alignment, the mediation of knowledge and creation of opportunities for developing initiatives become crucial for transition management approaches (Hölscher et al 2018)
The socio-technical systems transition approach emphasises the tension between emerging niches and stabilised regimes as being the specific conflictive dynamic that has the potential to bring about sustainable change
Summary
Transformative planning focuses on actors’ agency, disruptive initiatives, reflexivity and social learning. Transformative initiatives activated through democratically inclusive urban planning depend on actors’ power relations and their strategies to increase agency. Administrative procedures may compromise the reflexivity and social learning elements of planning for transformation. Revisiting the conception of project’s quality criteria become crucial to enable searching and experimentation processes through urban planning. Transformative planning requires holistic and integrated approaches anchored to specific urban management instruments. Policy and practice recommendations Make the governance of planning processes open and inclusive to enable effective transformation Adapt administrative procedures to open and exploratory methodologies Incorporate intangible results such as reflexivity and social learning as criteria of projects’ quality Develop specific management instruments to address holistic and integrated approaches
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