IV Conference of Regional and Urban Planning International Conference of the Project Community Participation in Planning Participation in planning and public policy 23th/24th of February, 2017 http://www.ua.pt/conferenciapru

1. Participation in Planning and Public Policy Conference – University of Aveiro, February 23rd 2017
Planning as a Trading Zone
Alessandro Balducci
Department of Architecture and Urban Studies

2. Alessandro Balducci
• Land use planning and its limits
• What we learned looking at different decision
making models from political science
• The rational model and Planning as Technical
rationality
• Bounded political rationality and the opening
towards participatory planning
• Different historical forms of participatory planning
• Facing a growing complexity the “garbage can”
decision making model
• Planning and “trading zone”
• The need to develop different forms of interaction
and participation for different planning problems
Outline

3. Alessandro Balducci
• Planning is a young discipline the aim is to control the
spatial organisation of the human society
• the first chair in urban planning: Liverpool 1909
• For a very long time it has been based upon some form
of land-use planning
• Even if in Europe there have been many different roots
and traditions
Setting the scene

4. Alessandro Balducci
Planning tradition Countries
Regional Economic- Centralist France
Compreehensive integrated - Federalist Belgium, Germany, Switzerland
Comprehensive integrated -Municipalist Netherlands, Finland, Norway, Sweeden
Land-Use Management UK
Urbanism Grece, Italy, Portugal, Spain
Eastern “transitional” Poland, Check Rep, Bulgaria, etc.
Planning Traditions
Gualini, 2004

5. Alessandro Balducci
Land use planning
Land-use planning is concerned with the location, intensity,
form, amount, and harmonization of land development
required for the various space-using functions: housing,
industry, recreation, transport, education, nature,
agriculture, cultural activities
The assumption was that there was a general consensus
about the goals of planning and that even with different
approaches solutions were not uncertain

6. Alessandro Balducci
Land use planning
This heroic period lasted until when planning had to cope
with expansion and development
When problems started to change planning solutions
proved to be ineffective and even agreement about
goals was problematic
This became very clear in the 1980s under the attack of
neo-liberal policies (Tatcher/Regan) but it was already clear
in theory since the 1960s

7. Alessandro Balducci
Land-use planning , even if necessary, is static, extremely
detailed, passive, based upon analysis, comprehensive,
and is typically based upon a rational comprehensive
model.
Everything must be decided at once, in advance, before
the transformation, and every change must follow all the
same procedure adopted for the formation and approval of
the plan.
It is un-flexible, not open to change, it is limited to the
municipal boundaries, it is inward looking.
Land use planning and its limits

8. Alessandro Balducci
Emerging demands challenging the capacity of
land use planning
Urban regeneration
Regional urbanisation
Infrastructures and major projects
Shrinking cities
Re-vitalising economy
Urban competition
Attraction of investments, urban marketing
Urban sustainability
Urban quality
Mega Events
Urban social problems
PP Partnerships

9. Alessandro Balducci
Karen Christensen,
Coping with Uncertainty
in Planning, 1985

10. Alessandro Balducci

11. Alessandro Balducci

12. Alessandro Balducci
• What we have been discovering is that these problems
had been common problems for many public policies
and that already there had been a process of
“translation” in the past
• Translations have always been important especially from
political science about the roots of rationality
Translations

13. Alessandro Balducci
The Rational Model
Guided by problems well defined, preferences clearly
understandable, alternatives possible to enumerate,
capacity of calculation and choices:
Two conditions:
– complete information and
– unitary isolated actors
Planning as technical rationality

14. Alessandro Balducci
• The rational model has long been at the basis of an idea
of planning as land use planning capable to change the
society through a planning activity, giving the opportunity
of an equitable and rational use of space, being able to
attack spatial injustice, to solve emerging urban
problems through a rational and democratic process of
design.
• It has been the basis of the Technical Rationality
Planning and technical rationality

15. Alessandro Balducci
• Herbert Simon (already in 1940) and Charles Lindblom
(1959) attacked the two conditions of impracticability of
the rational model
– The first is the always incomplete information
– The second the impossibility to identify a unitary
decision maker
• Translations have been quite disruptive here for the
rational paradigm of planning on which land use
planning was based
Towards bounded political rationality

16. Alessandro Balducci
• Melvin Webber as a key figure in the process of
translation both from political science to planning and
from the US to Europe
• He has been in direct contact with Lindblom
• He conceived the idea of planning as a process rather
than an act of design
• “Dilemmas in a general Theory of Planning” written with
Horst Rittel planning problems are “wicked problems”
Towards reflective and participatory practices

17. Alessandro Balducci
1. There is no definitive formulation of a wicked problem
2. Wicked problems have no stopping rule
3. Solutions to wicked problems are not true-or-false, but good-or-bad
4. There is no immediate and no ultimate test of a solution to a wicked
problem
5. Every solution to a wicked problem is a "one-shot operation"; because
there is no opportunity to learn by trial-and-error, every attempt counts
significantly
6. Wicked problems do not have an enumerable (or an exhaustively describable)
set of potential solutions, nor is there a well-described set of permissible
operations that may be incorporated into the plan
7. Every wicked problem is essentially unique
8. Every wicked problem can be considered to be a symptom of another
problem
9. The existence of a discrepancy representing a wicked problem can be explained
in numerous ways. The choice of explanation determines the nature of the
problem's resolution
10. The planner has no right to be wrong
“Wicked” planning problems

18. Alessandro Balducci
This period of reflection and re-thinking of the foundation
of planning has been very important
 to question the technical rationality approach
 to consider uncertainty as constitutive
 to consider conflict as endemic
 to open up towards advocacy and participatory
planning
Planning as reflective and participatory practice

19. What the user wantedAs installed at the user's site
As proposed by the project sponsor As specified in the project request
As produced by the programmers
As designed by the senior analyst

20. Largo Barracche prima del Pic Urban di Napoli nel 1986

21. 2001

22. 2001

23. 2003

24. 2004

25. Alessandro Balducci
Scientific vs Ordinary and interactive
Knowledge
Lindblom and Cohen (1979):
 professional social inquiry and ordinary knowledge
 scientific analysis and interaction as alternative means
to understand and solve social problems
 in complex situations professional social inquiry and
scientific analysis can operate only as a support for
ordinary knowledge and interaction

26. Participation cycles (P. Fareri) ‘70: urban social movements
‘80: NIMBY
‘90: participatory planning
2000: self organisation

27. direction ideology relation with
the political
system
what we learn



+
demand
to do
to stop doing
_
_
selective
exclusive
instrumental
the output?
experts are not
always right
consensus is
relevant
methodology is
relevant
 to do without
asking
? ?

28. Participatory tools
(1) Public meetings
(2) Public happenings
(3) ‘Planning for Real’
(4) workshop
(5) Focus Group
(5) Brainstorming
(6) Scenario writing
(7) Charrette
(8) Visit to other cases
(9) Participatory survey
(10) Direct observation/shadowing
(11) Prticipant observation
(12) Lcal labs
(14) Incremental construction of things
(15) Exhibitions
(16) Local events
(17) Town Meeting
(18) Open Space Technology
www.peplenandparticipation.net

29. Alessandro Balducci
Advantages:
• The value of participation in providing qualitative and
detailed information for the planning process
• The value of involving directly affected citizens in the
search for good solutions to urban problems (probing)
Risks:
• To do participation but not what has been planned
• To apply the wrong tools (bargaining vs experimentation)
• To be suffocated by the strength of building
• Intractable conflictual wicked problems
The most important advantages and the
possible limits of participatory planning

30. Alessandro Balducci
March Olsen and Cohen 1978
The decision "is a collection of choices looking for
problems, issues and feelings looking for decision
situations in which they might be aired, solutions looking for
issues to which they might be the answer, and decision
makers looking for work".
4 ambiguities
1. Actors goals are unstable
2. Actors participation is fluid and inconstant
3. Limited opportunities to decide
4. There is not a search for solutions but “garbage can”
Facing a Growing Complexity:
the“garbage can model”

31. Alessandro Balducci
There has been the work of the “planning and complexity”
group of Aesop
The work of Jean Hillier, de Roo, at al.
Theory of “assemblages” (Latour, Beauregard, Sassen)
The new book of Amin and Thrift “Seeing like a City” in
which they emphasize the growing importance of the urban
space as an aggregate of human and non human decision
makes in which technologies are playing a growing role
No direct translation of the “garbage can” model

32. Model Who
decides
How decides Structure Planning
Translation
Rational Unitary
subject
Instititionally
competent
Problem solving
optimization
Central
coordination
Technical
Rationality
Bounded
rationality
Organisation
Instititionally
competent
Problem setting
satisficing
Central
coordination
Reflective
practice
Incrementalism Set of actors
with interests
Disjointed
incrementalism
consensus
Partisan
mutual
adjustment
Participatory
planning
Garbage can actants Casual
matching
problems-
solutions
casuality
?
Decision Making Models and Planning Translations

33. POLITICAL AMBIGUITY
SMALL
POLITICAL AMBIGUITY
GREAT
TECHNICAL
UNCERTAINTY
SMALL
Rational approach
Technical Rationality
Political rationality
Incremental model
Participation for Bargaining
TECHNICAL
UNCERTAINTY
GREAT
Bounded rationality model
Reflective practice (Schon)
Participation for
Experimentation
Wicked problems
– Rittel & Webber 1973
Garbage can model
Planning problems
(applying Christensen 1985)

34. Alessandro Balducci
If conflict is endemic and uncertainty constitutive, in
situations of extreme complexity we need to interpret
the situations according to these dimensions in order to
device innovative planning initiatives

35. Alessandro Balducci
Introduced by Peter Galison (1997, Image and Logic. A
Material Culture of Microphysics) to explain innovations in
science.
Studying the way in which paradigm shifts and disruptive
innovations had historically happened he discovered that
this was not because different groups of scientist agreed
about the need to change or innovate but rather because
groups with completely different values and objectives were
forced to work together and simplifying their jargon have
been able to create an environment of understanding – a
trading zone- that allowed the innovation to happen
“Trading zone” and Boundary Objects

36. Alessandro Balducci
Galison shows through empirical observation of how innovations
in science occurred historically – ranging from physics to
nanotechnologies – how these give rise to concrete spaces or
conceptual spaces where scientists belonging to different
disciplinary fields with completely different paradigms and values
are forced to find simplified and intermediate languages to be
able to work together.
It is from this essential communication, which requires partial,
contingent agreements, that innovations are born.
A platform where highly elaborate and complicated issues can
be transformed into “thin descriptions” for the purposes of
exchanging information – in a certain locality.

37. Alessandro Balducci
Analogy to anthropological linguistics studies of pidgin and
creole languages
Related to ’boundary object’ concept (Star & Griesemer
1989) but more dynamic.
Trading Zone and Boundary objects

38. Alessandro Balducci
“Boundary object is an analytic concept of those scientific objects which both
inhabit several intersecting social worlds and satisfy the informational
requirements of each of them.
Boundary objects are objects which are both plastic enough to adapt to
local needs and the constraints of the several parties employing them,
yet robust enough to maintain a common identity across sites. They are
weakly structured in common use, and become strongly structured in
individual-site use.
These objects may be abstract or concrete.
They have different meanings in different social worlds but their structure
is common enough to more than one world to make them recognizable, a
means of translation. The creation and management of boundary objects is a
key process in developing and maintaining coherence across intersecting
social worlds.”
- Star & Griesemer 1989, 393
Boundary Objects

39. Alessandro Balducci
SPONSOR
(Alexander):
Commitment to
conservation and
educational philanthropy
TRAPPERS:
Monetary pay-offs,
hunting information
UNIVERSITY
ADMINISTRATION:
Prestige,
national-class status,
external
funding
RESEARCHERS (Grinnell):
Extention to the theory of
evolution – The evolution of
the environment
COLLECTORS:
Preservation of
California’s fauna for
future generations
BOUNDARY
OBJECTS:
•Standardized forms
•Idealized maps
•Coincident
(geographical)
boundaries
•Repositories
Boundary objects in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Sociology, 1907-39
-> Boundary objects enable
the coordination of different
stakeholders’ activities
without the requirement of
shared objectives

40. Alessandro Balducci
Example: the Pedemontana Highway and the Greenway

41. Alessandro Balducci
Pedemontana and the greenway

42. Alessandro Balducci
What the Trading Zone concept adds to our reflection on
interactive participatory planning?
It tells us that there are situations of extreme uncertainty in
which rather than trying to organise the process to conquer
a consensus about future initiatives it is better to play in the
process searching for boundary objects, partial agreements
even in persisting disagreement about objectives and
values.
Participatory Planning and “Trading zone”

43. Alessandro Balducci
What are the consequences?
• never blaming other actors for not understanding
• never delay the action if it is possible
• never hide your position as a planner in the conflict
• never conceive conflict mediation as a single process of
coordination in a unified arena
• always try to make your position understandable to other
actors and lay people
• always look intensely for partial agreements
• always be open to divert your planned path
• always try to see if it is possible to change a pidgin in creole
Participatory Planning and “Trading zone”

44. Alessandro Balducci
For a long period planning has been mainly land use
planning
Facing the limits of this approach challenged by the
growing complexity of society we started to look at other
disciplines to translate concept that could orient our action
Decision making models of political science have been very
influential
We discovered that technical rationality is applicable only in
limited situation
That we need different forms of actors involvement either in
the form of organised participation or in the form of
searching for trading zones or boundary objects
Concluding

45. POLITICAL AMBIGUITY
SMALL
POLITICAL AMBIGUITY
GREAT
TECHNICAL
UNCERTAINTY
SMALL
Rational approach
Technical Rationality
Political rationality
Incremental model
Participation for
Bargaining
TECHNICAL
UNCERTAINTY
GREAT
Bounded rationality model
Reflective practice (Schon)
Participation for
Experimentation
Wicked problems
– Rittel & Webber 1973
Garbage can model
Interaction for the
creation of a Trading
Zone
Planning problems
(applying Christensen 1985)

46. Alessandro Balducci