Rethinking Planning Theory and Practice: A Glimmer of Light for Prospects of Integrated Planning to Combat Complex Urban Realities

Abstract

Throughout the past half century, there has been a growing and persisting demand towards developing more integrated approaches to planning as a way to combat the notoriously complex and chronic urban problems. Cognizant of this need, this paper, while offering justification for such a planning approach, discusses problematic aspects of current planning practice and highlights key lessons and parallels from past experiences regarding the idea of planning comprehension, rationality in planning, and the role of power and politics in plan-making and plan implementation. Drawing upon recent debates in planning theory, this paper further presents an agenda for building a new integrative approach to planning, discusses major issues that planning theorists need to address in terms of functional integration, decision-making processes in planning, and political and institutional challenges to such integrated planning approaches, and offers a series of propositions to remedy these challenges. The adaptive sustainable planning model is suggested and amply delineated as an effective overarching normative framework for the development of an integrated planning approach that provides organization to the field and guides practitioners towards realizing their role as effective decision makers. The key contribution of this paper is not its reliance on the typical notion of sustainability per se but rather its unique and thorny approach of how it ought to be used as a way of moving forward with planning and policy-making to ultimately enhance a better urbanism.

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