The world between crisis and hope
Over the past decade, planning practice and theory have evolved in significant ways. The need to rethink the relationship between the artificial and the natural, or the human and the non-human world in a more symbiotic way has led to new ways of thinking and experimenting:
There is much to celebrate and hope for.
But at the same time, the world is undergoing complex and interlinked social, environmental and economic crises that increase inequalities, disrupt communities and destroy environments at local and global scales.
These crises manifest themselves spatially in dramatic ways: floods and wildfires that devastate landscapes and lives every year; housing shortages that turn cities into places affordable for the elite only; global production chains that claim more and more space for transportation routes and infrastructure; or economic difficulties that place great pressure on local infrastructure maintenance and development.
What can planners do?
Maria Kaika
This hiatus between academic debate and political praxis in the face of intensifying socio-environmental challenges places new demands on the academic vocation and invites a more reflexive attitude with respect to the focus and purpose of academic labour. I suggest that this gap can be addressed through the pursuit of a scholarship that would put as much effort in documenting alternative localised socio-environmental practices as in abstracting from these practices, making global connections, and producing new visions to address mounting socio-environmental challenges.
Kaika, M. (2021). Between the frog and the eagle: claiming a ‘Scholarship of Presence’for the Anthropocene. In Dislocation: Awkward Spatial Transitions (pp. 14-27). Routledge.
Planners as agents of change and hope: the creation of new imaginaries for the future
Planners are at the forefront of efforts to address the causes and consequences of these processes. From water and energy to transportation and housing, planners have the methodological and conceptual tools, and the institutional capacity, to address these issues to and find solutions.
However, as the world is changing, planning and governance practices also need to evolve in order to understand, assess and find new solutions. The Urban Planning team at UVA understands planning as a practice that continuously evolves through reflection on past failures; a practice of failing forward.
We understand, teach and advocate planning as a means of developing new imaginaries and actions for creating better futures.
Anna Nikolaeva
Given climate change, congestion, air pollution and persistent inequalities in mobility and accessibility, the need for societies to transition to low-carbon, fairer mobilities … A key aspect of decision-making in this context, which has only recently received some attention in mobility scholarship, is the role of knowledge in just mobility transitions.
Nikolaeva, A. (2024). The politics of non-knowing, smart technology and just mobility transitions: A case study and research agenda. Environment and Planning F, 0(0).
Jan Willems
The emergence of new discourses demonstrates that ageing infrastructure assets are increasingly regarded as not solely a technical affair for operators, but that more strategic and political discussions on the future of waterway corridors and their surroundings are required. While typically strategic objectives are translated by policymakers into new transport demands, the ageing condition of infrastructures also offers a window of opportunity to incorporate wider strategic aims. Thus, the existing transport network itself also offers a context for action, which marks the need for a more two-sided interaction between strategic and operational stakeholders.
Willems, J. J. (2018). Beyond maintenance: Emerging discourses on waterway renewal in the Netherlands. Transport Policy, 72, 1-12.
Students as agents of change
We believe that planners have the power to change the world. In our courses, we focus on giving our students the conceptual and methodological tools and skills to do precisely this.
Together with our students, we develop conceptual and methodological innovations to reach transformative and imaginative practices for planning that can address the demands of the present and future.
Luca Bertolini
Current efforts to remake the city seem an indication that what might be needed is not so much a shift to planning for a different mobility but rather one altogether to planning beyond mobility… These initiatives suggest that the core challenge might be that of altogether rethinking the role of mobility in a city that first and foremost promotes core human values such as individual well-being and social cohesion, and reconciliation between humans and the rest of the natural world.
Bertolini, L. (2023). The next 30 years: planning cities beyond mobility? European Planning Studies, 31(11), 2354–2367.
urban planning vision
The world between crisis and hope
Engaging with concrete issues that invite theory
Reading institutional contexts
Maintaining a critical yet constructive scholarly attitude