KIMMO LAPINTIE
yhdyskuntasuunnittelun professori
WEB-JULKAISUT
Denaturalised or Re-activated: the Professional Construction of the Urban Green Areas. Paper delivered at the Habitus Conference, Perth, Western Australia 8.11.2000
Kimmo Lapintie
Institute of Urban Planning and Design
Department of Architecture
Helsinki University of Technology
1. Introduction
The Urban Green Areas (parks, recreational areas, urban forests, water elements, nature conservation areas, etc.) have become the objects of intensive study during the last decades, both in research and in planning and design practices. This is related to the emphasis on sustainability and ecology in planning discourse, which has suggested a new conceptualisation of the environment as a more “active” and positive element of the urban fabric. In this connection, the multi-functional role of the urban green areas in producing various urban qualities has been recognised. Development of the urban green structure – the new term that is meant to capture these various qualities - has become an important substantive issue in the turn-of-the-Millennium urban planning.
Another contemporary challenge is related to the so-called communicative turn in planning, which can be seen in both theoretical discussion and new practices, often enforced by new legislation. The communicative perspective challenges the traditional role of planning expertise and its knowledge basis, as well as the traditional understanding of planning as decision-making or preparation for it. Instead, it suggests a more dynamic and interactive view of planning as a communicative and political process.
This change is related to the corresponding developments in urban governance in general. The transition from a formal bureaucracy to more open and self-organizing forms of governance, where the boundary between the public and the private sector has become less rigid, has created a new situation for planners and other public sector officials. The policy instruments typical of this new type of governance, such as public-private-partnerships, are not only new tools for the use of local authorities for their traditional purposes, but they also open up and enforce new types of integration and interaction, which in turn create new practices and new regimes. This has in many cases been connected to a new rising of the civil society or communitarianism, but one should resist the temptation to give these changes a too romantic or Utopian interpretation. There are at the same time both empowering and disempowering features inherent in the new forms urban governance.
In the following I shall discuss the issue of the urban green, and the problems directly related to it, from the point of view of planning as a professional activity, and the new concepts and instruments that are used – or could be used – in governing urban growth and green. This is by no means an easy task, since, as I see it, we are not witnessing an era of “normal practice”, comparable to what Kuhn called “normal science” (Kuhn 1973), but rather an era of great challenges and an obvious re-identification of the planning practice. You may call it a crisis, if you will (of legitimation, of education, or of expertise), but I would like to suggest a more positive approach.
Utilising the Kuhnian metaphor of normal science suggests that there is, in addition to distrust in normal practice and paradigms, a possibility for a creative leap in the production of new conceptual frameworks, knowledge base, and the practical engagement of planners. However, as the Kuhnian analysis also points out, this does not concern all practitioners, but it may also entail conflicts and inner contradictions in the organisation and practice of local authorities.
This is all the more likely, since the possible widening of the scope of planning, as an intellectual discipline, as well as a working practice, also demands a new and wider perspective for the self-understanding of planners. This will not only mean new options, however, but it will also force the reflective practitioner to open some of the “black boxes” in his or her conceptual apparatus. Among them there is, of course, planning itself, but also such innocent-looking concepts as “common” or “national” interests, “general objectives”, “political will”, “cultural and natural values”, “common strategies”, etc. We shall also have to question the age-old dichotomy between substantial and procedural issues in planning – a dichotomy that many practitioners and even theorists would still like to cherish.
This last point is related to the difficult position of planning at the crossroads of different scientific disciplines. The traditional contributions of technology and architecture are well known, as well as the social sciences of the 1960s, when systems-theory arrived the planning scheme. The strengthening on the natural scientific paradigm has followed the rise of environmental concerns and sustainable development. What is new, however, is the contribution of the new generation of social sciences, where reality is seen more or less socially constructed, where discourses are taken seriously as part (and not only descriptions of) reality, and where the traditional dichotomy between objective knowledge and subjective opinion or perception have been dismantled.
My intention in this article is, in brief, to discuss the new interest in the urban green, and its relation to the traditional theme of urban growth, in the light of the professional situation described above, as well as the theoretical perspective opened by the new generation of social and cultural studies. I shall first discuss the contemporary issues of new urban governance and the role that governing and power are given in this context. Then I shall address the self-image of the urban planner, by discussing what I shall call the ‘shamanist' conception of planning, representing the self-reflectivity (or the lack of it) of the ‘older' generation of planners that have established their position in a close connection to the welfare-state model. My reference in this case is partly to the Finnish situation, but the conclusions are, mutatis mutandis , also relevant to other countries. Next I shall reflect on a possible alternative to this view, which I shall call a ‘reflexive' conception of planning, using the term suggested by contemporary sociologists (Beck, Ginddens, Lash). Finally I shall return to the concept of urban green, and discuss how old and new conceptualisations and planning and policy instruments might be related to the ways of governing urban growth and green.
2. The Governance Debate and its Implications for Urban Planning
The word ‘governance' has in recent decade come to mean a new type of political activities that, instead or in addition to formal representative government and its controlling and service-providing functions, strives to build up new types of interaction, partnerships and community activity. According to Stoker (1997, 38), the baseline definition of governance is that it refers to the action, manner or system of governing in which the boundary between organisations and public and private sectors has become permeable. It is related to the contemporary situation, where the governing of global or local development can no longer be mastered from the point of view of a sovereign authority (even relative to a restricted area or sector responsibility). That is, governance refers to ‘managing a nobody-in-charge world' (Ibid. 37).
But this baseline definition, according to Stoker, opens the possibilities of two different interpretations, the managerial and the systemic (ibid. 38). The former is related to the adoption of new tools by the formal authorities and the emergence of less radical new processes, whereas the latter refers to new practices, new cooperative ensembles, and the emergence of self-governing networks. This dichotomy corresponds to the multiplicity of theoretical traditions behind the governance debate, and also to the various motives that have given rise to the new formations of governance, such as public-private partnerships.
These are no longer uncommon in urban planning, management and development. For instance, the city of Utrecht in the Netherlands has made up to 850 contracts with non-governmental organisations and even private citizens for the development and maintenance of urban green areas. Similarly, the city of Lahti in Finland is developing its central areas by using real-estate contracts between land-owners, entrepreneurs and the city council. These two examples also reveal the two types of governance used in urban development, namely those where the role of the civil society and the initiatives of local residents are encouraged, and those where the partnership is rather based on the cooperation between those actors who have the access to important economic or political resources. This latter type is also related to the possible emergence of new urban regimes, in the sense defined by Stone (1989), and it also gives rise to the often expressed doubts on accountability in such arrangements (Peters 1997, 30).
The roots of the literature on governance is varied and partly eclectic, ranging from New Public Management (Hood 1991; Rhodes 1995) to Foucault-inspired theories (Miller 1987, Rose & Miller 1992). This will make it difficult to focus our attention to what is new and relevant in this discussion, but, on the other hand, it will enable an in-depth discussion of the political nature of these changes. One of the corollaries of the concept is, namely, that political agency is no longer fixed or well-defined, whether it is related to professional expertise or representatives of the state or municipal authorities. If governance entails borders becoming permeable, it also entails that the usual professional and political strategies of withholding and controlling information, using specific expert-language, and distinguishing the responsibilities and accountability of each actor, no longer hold. This is what I meant by saying that the situation of urban planning and development is no longer in its ‘normal phase', and that this new situation is putting the legitimacy of different actors at stake. Hence the different strategies by various actors and professions to defend the original borders (e.g. Lapintie 1996), as well as more progressive strategies of others to widen and re-justify their role in planning and urban policy (such as ecological planning or the communicative turn in planning).
The complexity of this situation is illustrated in the discussion of political and planning subjectivity and the policy instruments that are used in planning and urban governance. If we use, for instance, Christopher Hoods´s classification of the ‘tools of government' in terms of the acronym NATO (Nodality, Authority, Treasure, and Organisation) (Hood 1986), we can see that the political role of the government is still very much based on its nodal point in the flow of information, its legal basis, its economic resources, and its employees and their dispersion throughout society. These resources are also put to use in new forms of governance, when the city authorities, for instance, give financial resources to community activity, or when they collect and give access to information. It would thus seem that the new forms of governance could be seen as new policy instruments of the local government, necessary or useful because they combine the resources of the public and private sectors (Peters 1997, 21).
The problem with this approach is, however, that by concentrating on the role of government it does not address the original formation and re-formation of political subjectivity. The key role of the public sector and public officials like planners is connected to the understanding of the city and the state as unified agents, ‘the political bodies', and the belief in the possibility to govern the development of a restricted area of concern. This basic understanding, which is inherently connected to the process of modernisation, is analysed by Foucault with the concept of governmentality (Foucault 1979). This means that the basic rationality of governance is not related to the strategic action of specified social groups, but rather to the formation of the social subject, the general interest, and the multitude of technologies for the control and development of the ‘population', that is, bio-power. In this context, the role of planning as a special expertise connected to the welfare state and its strategies and technologies is quite straightforward. What is far from evident is, however, the real challenge that the new forms of governance present to this traditional subjectivity. Is the ‘king finally decapitated', and have ‘welfare of the citizens', ‘functionality of land-use', and ‘good environment' etc. lost their rhetorical power?
4. The Shamanist Conception of Planning
Whether the conceptual black boxes mentioned above turn out to be Pandora´s boxes for the planning profession, only time will tell. It is evident, however, that by keeping the boxes closed the planner has, during most of the twentieth century, been able to retain much of his or her authority. The physical presence of the planner has been ensured by his social role as the interpreter of the good environment and the synthetic general interest. Planning practice, as a mystical way of access to this general interest, has, thus, been the central legitimising basis of the planning profession. It is thus no wonder that the profession hesitates to open the central concepts, the boxes, in the fear that they would be found empty.
But the other option is equally problematic. In a special issue of the Finnish Journal of Urban Studies, professor Kaj Nyman points out that the concept of planning (as the professional activity aiming at functionality, the good environment, or the synthetic general interest) seems to be disappearing from the conceptual toolkit of recent legislation in Finland, even the much waited for Land Use and Building Act (1999). Nyman wants to defend the role of traditional planning practice, in contrast to the more judicial land-use zoning, or the more economy-based property development, which are both emphasised in the new act (Nyman 2000). However, I have some doubts about the credibility of this traditional concept of planning practice that could, as Nyman suggests, serve the welfare state with its economic and social institutions, as well as the individual citizen, at the same time. This mysterious activity, if not given any new formulation for its legitimacy, may indeed be in danger of disappearing from the scene. The age of the “shaman planner” seems to be history.
An important corollary of this shamanist conception of planning is that the planner has detached himself from both the political and the public debate. Planners consistently present themselves as a-political: they are careful not to present any political statements, even if planning is often clearly connected to the welfare-state and even, as in the Nordic countries, to social democracy. At the same time they often see political short-sightedness and bargaining as a major threat to the quality of the environment.
Similarly, this traditional planning expertise is not considered to gain much from the civil society or citizen participation, although these are not necessarily found suspect in the same sense as local politics. This is because traditional planning practice is seen to be essentially substantive , and participation, political debate, bureaucratic processing are all, in contrast, seen to be procedural . Since citizen participation or judicial deliberation cannot replace “planning itself”, they only spend the already scarce resources allocated for the whole endeavour. Despite the additional local knowledge gained by communicating with the citizens, the “laymen”, the traditional planner feels that he or she is still alone responsible for the ethical and aesthetical quality of the resulting built environment or its deterioration. The introduction of communication and participation as more and more crucial elements of contemporary planning, which seems to be happening all around Europe , will thus be received with suspicion and frustration by the traditional planner.
The shamanist conception of planning is well rooted in both professional ethics and traditional trust in expertise. It is also consistent, but it seems to have difficulties in maintaining its legitimacy in the changing cultural, social, and political environment. Although critical towards both representative politics and civil society, planners are not able to give alternatives: They do not turn their critical eye towards their own key concepts.
This inability to be reflexive does not only concern practitioners but planning theory as well. In the same sense as practitioners seem to have difficulties in confronting with the politicians and the citizens, planning theory seems to be unbalanced when trying to contextualise planning practice and the planning professions in the wider social and political environment. An illustrative example is Bent Flyvbjerg´s famous analysis of the local politics around the planning of Aalborg (Flyvbjerg 1998). Flyvbjerg manages to detect brilliantly the power relations and local regimes that determine the actual implementation of the so-called Aalborg project, but he is clearly unable to use the same armature against planning as a social and political activity. As a result, planners appear to be politically weak (as compared to the Chamber of Industry and Commerce for instance), but still inherently rational and benevolent, devoid of any self-interest. They would have known how to develop Aalborg into a better urban environment, if only they had been listened to. But they were not, since “rationality yielded to power.” It is no wonder then that, although mentioning both Nietzsche and Foucault as his theoretical roots, Flyvbjerg never really addressed the basic Foucauldian conception of productive power, where planners are clearly among the producers.
3. The Reflexive Conception of Planning
It is only by seeing planners as a profession that is socially and politically embedded in the modern society that the changing role of planning and its future options could be addressed. However, from the point of view of planning theory, the detatchment typical of the sociology of professions is not quite appropriate for our present purposes. Reflexivity in planning does not mean sociology of planning, but rather a conscious effort to address the issue of professional knowledge and expertise and the respective professional power in the actual political context.
I want to point out three key contributions from recent philosophical, political and planning theory, that seem to me most relevant in this context. The first is the Habermasian critique of the Cartesian philosophy of consciousness, which forms the basis of his theory of communicative action. This critique will seriously question concepts like “the common/general interest”, “common objectives”, and above all, any use of the passive voice in planning discourse.
The so-called communicative turn in planning theory is strongly informed by Habermas´s conception of communicative rationality. However, one of the original motivating factors behind Habermas´ thinking that has received less attention is his critique of the Cartesian philosophy of consciousness, which has in a sense pervaded modern philosophy and sociological theory for centuries. The basic corollary of this philosophy is our attempt to see collective entities (like cities, communities, areas, etc.) as individuals, with their own will, interests, and needs. Respectively, we tend to see experts and politicians as interpreters of this generalised will or collective interest.
If, on the other hand, we give up this imagined subjectivity of the collective, we are immediately led to conceive collective action in terms of communication and co-operation. This is what Habermas attempted to do with his theory of communicative action, but one is not dependent on only this theory to respect the innovative potential of his critique.
This is, in my opinion, one of the key findings of the communicative turn in planning theory: we can no longer see the expert as the interpreter of the general will, but only as one of the players in the communicative game resulting in the development of the planned territory. In the case of the problematic of growth versus green or open areas, this understanding is essential, since we are dealing with areas that are already multifunctional and multifaceted. Instead of a “right” interpretation of the meanings and potentials of prospective compaction areas or protected green areas, we should focus on the communicative processes that actually construct these meanings.
The second theoretical contribution that I find essential is the social constructionist critique of the seeming invisibility of language. It is typical of institutionalised discursive practices like planning to view the language that is used as neutral or objective. Instead, it should be openly seen as a way of constructing the object of discourse. By describing the green areas as “recreational areas” or again as “green structure”, we are conceptually constructing our planning objects.
Critique of the invisible language is by no means a novelty in contemporary research; instead it can be seen as one of the central themes of 20 th Century philosophy and social theory. In his book “The Order of Things”, Michel Foucault quotes Borges, according to whom “a certain Chinese encyclopaedia divides animals into (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from the long way off look like flies.” (Foucault 1985: xv)
The message that we can get from this “taxonomy”, after the first laughs, is that we become less certain of the necessity of our usual ways of distinguishing different types of objects. If this way of dealing with both real and fictitious animals, their number, their belonging to somebody, etc. sounds so absurd to us, are we really so sure that our own way of using taxonomies is less absurd, is seen from another cultural perspective.
After all, these are all animals. And we could even, without trying very hard, use the very same taxonomy for distinguishing between different green areas of the city, for instance, “belonging to the Emperor”, i.e. privately owned gardens, “embalmed”, i.e. historical parks that are not allowed to change, “tame”, i.e. parks and children's playgrounds, “sucking pigs”, the ones that we try to duplicate and feed, “sirens”, the dangerous ones that feed our imagination but also our fear, “fabulous”, the mythical ones that have more to do with our cultural understanding than with their physical appearance, “innumerable”, as the non-identified green patches, ‘spaces left over after planning' often are, “drawn with a very fine camelhair brush” as the green oevres of architects and landscape architects, “having just broken the water pitcher”, as the shores that we wish to utilise by land-filling, “that from a long way off look like flies”, i.e. the areas that are important places for local residents but “peanuts” for planners and politicians.
Thus we can easily see that far from being only funny the Chinese taxonomy is culturally very rich and many-faceted – something that our own “rational” taxonomies (i.e. recreational area, park, playground, urban forest) are lacking.
What this amounts to is that we have to start seeing planning and planning communication as not based on self-evident concepts that try to describe the planning object as such, but rather as a conscious attempt to reflect upon our own conceptual apparatuses, and design of new concepts and ways of describing, and thereby constructing new realities.
This is clearly related to the third point that I would like to point out, that of productive power. The major contribution of the Foucauldian political philosophy is that power can no longer be seen as a sort of commodity owned or captured by certain social groups, but rather a continuous production through a multitude of social practices. According to this view, the subjects and the objects of power are not assumed to be independent individuals, but they are rather defined and continuously re-defined by these practices. This also entails that knowledge and power are inherently interlinked: instead of trying to describe the planning object “for what it is”, we should consciously develop our discursive practices towards policy instruments.
4. Constructing the Urban Green: Tools or Weapons?
But if planning and policy concepts provide, in principle, a multitude of different ways of constructing the planning object, even if it is as ‘natural' as the urban green, we shall have to return to the actual practices where these concepts are developed and used. The fact is, namely, that even if a number of possibilities exist, we are not entitled to use anything like the Chinese taxonomy in our actual governing of the urban green. What we usually meet in analysing the conceptual framework of planning practice is a rarity of conceptual options, and a rather slow historical change. It is probably no coincidence, for instance, that concepts like ‘the green belt' or ‘the green heart' have never played any significant role in Finland , although they are of vital importance in countries like Britain or the Netherlands . On the other hand, ‘green fingers' seem to be more suitable to the Finnish and the Scandinavian ethos. These basic structures seem to be even more important than fashionable terms like ecology or sustainability, since ecological planning solutions seem to depend heavily on more traditional premises, like green fingers that are first presented in aesthetic or recreational terms and then translated into the ecological language. (Lapintie, ibid.)
There are, traditionally, two ways of trying to explain this phenomenon. We may assume that cultural features and differences provide the general, tacit framework where planning and policy options must be embedded. Although by no means absolute, the cultures of respective countries would form a slowly moving context that planners and policy makers have learnt to respect; thus it would be foolish to apply similar planning solutions and environmental policies in different national and local cultures. Thus for instance urban compaction will be received very differently by citizens of different cultures. This is crucial in cultural contexts like Finland where the relationship to nature is seen as elementary for cultural identity.
Another possible way to explain the rarity of discursive formations is to analyse the conceptual frameworks as instruments used by urban professionals, in their distinctive role in welfare-provision and control, and through their expertise and nodal position in the information flows. Changes in these conceptual tools is not as innocent as it may seem: for instance the ecological features of the urban green (such as biodiversity, the water cycle and the access for wild animals) that followed the public environmental concerns and the rise of environmental policy, did not only mean new knowledge for planners, but the access of new experts and a challenge for the traditional experts. Governing the urban green does not, therefore, only mean governing of the natural processes, but also, and more importantly, governing definitions of this green, the access of other experts to this domain, and the construction, maintenance and proper use of it. The dominant taxonomies that are used in this context, such as the functional differentiation of different ‘green' land-uses (parks, recreational areas, areas for agriculture and forestry, nature conservation areas, etc.) and the classifications for different levels of maintenance, clearly reveal the relevance of concepts like governmentality in understanding the production of power relations in urban governance.
From this perspective, the idea of introducing new conceptual and policy instruments for urban practitioners is not as straightforward as it may seem at first. The breaking up of ‘normal practice' entails that these instruments are not only tools but also weapons, serving the purposes of defence and conquer for old and new urban professionals.
References
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This paper is based on the theoretical work related to the project “The City and Planning Professions”, financed by the Academy of Finland, and “Communicating Urban Growth and Green”, financed by the European Union Fifth Framework Programme. This contribution is carried out at the Institute of Urban Planning and Design in Helsinki University of Technology, in co-operation with the Centre for Urban and Regional Studies.