Collaborative planning: Who writes the city script?

Abstract

This paper reports on a 4 year project that explored six exemplars of collaborative planning undertaken in post-quake Canterbury. There, many of the longstanding substantial and procedural debates of urban planning have played out but, due to the disaster recovery context, they received more public attention than might be expected during ‘peacetime’. Indeed, the question of Who writes and who decides the narrative for (re)making the city was fiercely debated. While our research highlighted the role of some extremely powerful actors in the recovery drama claiming ‘we have a plan’, we also saw that the recovering city script was often improvised and constantly challenged. At one point the city of Christchurch was described as an NBIC: No Bugger In Charge. We present the results of our research as an exploration of theoretical framings through which our findings and experiences might be explained, whilst contributing to a better understanding of the ‘authorship’ of urban narratives. These framings include Social Practice Theory (infrastructuring), Socio-Ecological Systems (the ecology of dissent is more than the sum of its parts), and Tactical Urbanism (a methodological framing). In all three cases, the ‘author’ stays dead. We conclude our paper with some comments on the role of planners and planning in light of these developments. The research used a range of qualitative methods including interviews, observations, participant action research, and analysis of secondary data. We find that no ‘one’ writes the re-making of cities or unilaterally decides ‘the’ narrative. Instead, multiple narratives are constantly being negotiated and enacted. Planners are important actors in these socio-material relationships but they are neither author nor editor; indeed at times they are simply part of the multitude of support actors. So, to carry the analogy to its extreme, a new role for planners may be that of ‘curator’. Some key challenges arise from the diversification of ‘the’ profession that now must accommodate highly technical information and affective awareness in a variety of settings. Planning schools have an important part to play in shaping what the profession becomes and skills needed to navigate the scriptless city.