Planning, Governing, and the Image of the City

Abstract

Historical changes in planning and its theory in the last century show planners and theorists turning away from the physical plan and its image of the city in favor of analytical modes of planning in the 1960s and 1970s and of discursive modes since the 1980s. In this article, I analyze those changes in the context of another historical change that has affected planning: the shift from government to governance. Until recently, urban planning was seen as state control over cities by governing institutions. As cities and governments experienced successive crises since the 1960s, planning underwent changes that enabled cities to administer their fortunes better. Planners invented new methods and institutions that brought in new actors. Planning was no longer government acting on the city. Now it is governance acting through the city. The role of planning and the use of images and plans in precipitating this move is explored. Three questions are posed. Why have images and plans, historically important carriers of planning knowledge and tools for urban change, gotten the short stick in current theories? What does this neglect have to do with the current state of theory? Is this neglect related to the epistemological split between knowledge and action?

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