Urban development

TL;DR: Urban development is characterized by uncontrolled growth, unsustainable fuel inputs, and social exclusion. Planning processes are often focused on charity work rather than systemic change. To address these issues, participatory planning processes and a shift in collective consciousness are needed.

Abstract: ‘Perhaps the planning process is inherently “out of control”’, writes Adrian Atkinson in this article (see City 8(1), pp.89–108 for a related discussion). A refusal to take responsibility for our settlements as they grow in uncontrolled ways, alongside unsustainable inputs of non‐renewable fuels sets the tone for this deeply questioning article. Atkinson laments that in our ‘post‐modern’ world we ‘avoid looking at the larger picture and thus the causes of worsening conditions’, but also urges us to ‘return to more strategic thinking’ embedded in participatory planning processes. Atkinson focuses on the global south where increasing social conflict and insecurity and degraded environmental conditions are a universal accompaniment to urbanization. More worryingly, current urbanization is not associated with industrialization, and leaves huge swathes of the population disconnected. Drawing on case studies from local initiatives in the global south, Atkinson concludes that planning processes are tolerated in the global South as long as they focus on charity work amongst the poor. Transforming local initiatives into systemic change requires’a shift in our collective consciousness and taking hold of the means to determine how our future will be organized’.