Читать книгу The Urban Planning Imagination - Nicholas A. Phelps - Страница 17

By way of simplifying the story, I refer to three sets of urban planning actors: citizens (as individuals or households), clubs (e.g. multinational enterprises (MNEs), associations of mutual interest, private enterprises) and modern nation states (their local governments and the international interstate system). Recognition of the different actors central to urban planning throughout history implies nothing essential of the motives, the substantive interests or expertise, the wisdom, the geohistorical sensibilities, the sophistication of the methods involved, or the outcomes achieved. The motivations that lie behind acts of urban planning can be obscure both at the time and afterwards and are rightly open to scrutiny, debate, argument, objection and protest. It should also be clear that the urban planning of clubs and states is hardly any less varied in its motives and outcomes than that of myriad citizens. There is as much variety within each category of urban planning actor as there is between citizens, clubs and states. There is yet more variety to uncover in the ‘experimental’ overlaps in the imagination, substantive interests, wisdom and methods of actors – as depicted in figure 2.1. Much of this experimental variety has yet to be recognized, let alone unlocked, as I discuss further in chapter 8.

Figure 2.1 Urban planning actors and mixes of actors

Our settlements are the collective creations of citizens, clubs and states. They are triumphs (Glaeser, 2011) but they are not free from the significant conflicts and imperfections I discuss in chapter 4. Cities are made in our own image and are the physical expressions of both our better and our darker nature. The damage done to the indigenous peoples of Australia and the Torres Straits Islands is testimony to the brutal power of urban planning to deny ancient ways of being-in-place in the process of colonial settlement (Jackson et al., 2017). Elsewhere, in China, planning has been more positively connected to the preservation of ancient urban civilization (Morris, 1994).

One set of these actors can predominate in the planning of cities. The earliest cities of Mesopotamia might be considered concentrations of many citizens. In Europe the city emerged as a club – a municipal corporation – to shield citizens from the powers monopolized by new nation states (Frug, 2000). Cities continue to emerge within the nation-state system in many privately developed new town clubs across the global north and south. Finally, cities have manifested as states. Minus some of the civic ideals, the ancient city states of Athens and Rome have their modern-day counterpart in Singapore.

The balance of these actors in the making of individual cities has varied over time. The historical evidence of a mix of actors notwithstanding, I suggest that new combinations of actors may become the defining feature of urban planning as it is emerging, and we will need to better understand the possibilities for these combinations rather than be led by prejudice regarding the motives or capacities of citizens, clubs or states.