Planning Regional Futures
Edited By John Harrison, Daniel Galland, Mark Tewdwr-Jones
Planning Regional Futures is an intellectual call to engage planners to critically explore what planning is, and should be, in how cities and regions are planned.
This is in a context where planning is seen to face powerful challenges – professionally, intellectually and practically – in ways arguably not seen before: planning is no longer solely the domain of professional planners but opened-up to a diverse group of actors; the link between the study of cities and regions, which traditionally had a disciplinary home in planning schools and the like, steadily eroded as research increasingly takes place in interdisciplinary research institutes; the advent of real-time modelling posing fundamental challenges for the type of long-term perspective that planning has traditionally afforded; ‘regional planning’ and its mixed record of achievement; and, the link between ‘region’ and ‘planning’ becoming decoupled as alternative regional (and other spatial) approaches to planning have emerged.
This book takes up the intellectual and practical challenge of planning regional futures, moving beyond the narrow confines of existing debate and providing a forum for debating what planning is, and should be, for in how we plan cities and regions. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Regional Studies.
More about this book can be found here.
About the Series
In today’s globalised, knowledge-driven and networked world, regions and cities have assumed heightened significance as the interconnected nodes of economic, social and cultural production, and as sites of new modes of economic governance and policy experimentation. The Regions and Cities book series brings together incisive and critically engaged international and interdisciplinary research on this resurgence of regions and cities, and should be of interest to geographers, economists, sociologists, political scientists and cultural scholars, as well as to policy-makers involved in regional and urban development.
Book Discount for RSA members:
RSA members benefit from a 30% discount on all subject-related Taylor and Francis Books including Routledge. To get this discount, please log in to RSA Lounge and click on “Member Discounts” for more details.
Forthcoming Webinar to launch the Book
Regional Planning is Dead: Long Live Planning Regional Futures
23rd February 2022, 12.00 GMT, 13.00 CET
This webinar is part of the RSA’s Regions Cities Industry Webinar Series and will discuss the recently published Planning Regional Futures special issue and book, along with the new book project Regions in Evolution: A History of Regional Planning.
Since Regional Studies was founded in 1967, planning and planners have been central to understanding regions. In the first issue the opening four papers all had “regional plan” or “regional planning” in their title. Yet as Regional Studies celebrated its 50th anniversary planning is facing powerful challenges – professionally, intellectually, practically – in ways arguably not seen before. Recent developments and trends are raising fundamental questions about the ‘p’ word in academic and policy circles. Rather than defend or try to reclaim that which has been lost with the decline of institutionalized forms of regional planning, our motivations centre on forging new ways of planning regional futures. For us, this is about recovering the very essence, purpose and values of planning. It is about bringing these to bear on the wicked problems affecting regional futures. We argue that many traditional regional planning skills are no longer unique to planning (there being no reason why some of the individual skills cannot be done – indeed are already being done – by actors other than planners) but the ability to understand these skills simultaneously and deploy them when required in regions is a unique planning skill.
Speakers: John Harrison, University of Loughborough, UK
Daniel Galland, Aalborg University, Denmark
Mark Tewdwr-Jones, University College London, UK
Chair: Tuna Tasan-Kok, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Registration: The webinar is free and open to all. Register here.