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2.1 Introduction

Since the late 1970s, neoliberalisation and market-friendly policies have been affecting the way cities develop and function. Neoliberal principles based on market reliance seem to take over or manipulate the decision-making powers in urban development and create uncoordinated state interventions (Peck et al. 2009). Increasing neoliberalisation and entrepreneurialisation cause serious problems in the governance of cities, while the responsibilities, tasks and developments of the public sector are decentralised or privatised; economic activities are deregulated, and welfare services are replaced by workfarist social policies that favour ­innovative and competitive economic development (Purcell 2009; Leitner et al. 2007; Harvey 2005; Jessop 1993). In this new system of sensitive balances, entrepreneurialism, consumerism and property-led development have been accelerated, turning actors in the urban land and property market into key players in urban development.

It is clear that the neoliberalisation of social, economic and political processes affects not only urban development and governance but also planning discourses and practices, which are pushed in more market-oriented directions. This leads to a ­fragmentation of the variety of planning approaches to the neoliberalisation of ­dominant economic policies in urban areas (Purcell 2009), and the forces of ­neoliberalisation slowly take over each planning subfield. Since the 1980s, it has been possible to observe uncoordinated and even chaotic actions of fragmented public policies, programmes and projects, as well as plans. Increasingly ­opportunity-led approaches of planning institutions and an unequal redistribution of benefits and welfare as a result of the deregulation of the property and land markets became the main facets of the contemporary period. This situation came about mainly due to the blurred boundaries between the public sector and private markets, and the resulting vague position of planning institutions (Alexander 2008).

There has been an increase in the number of disturbances that put significant ­pressure on urban systems. As urban systems become more open to global pressures, urban ecological systems are affected more by global growth dynamics. This not only increases their exposure to ecological pressures but also hinders the sustainability of economic and social development. The concurrent economic and environmental crises experienced in recent decades have enhanced the perceived sense of vulnerability and have “increased [the] sense of risk and the perception that processes associated with globalisation make places more permeable to the effects of what were once thought to be external processes” (Christopherson et al. 2010: 3).

Unfortunately, planning practice has been unable to satisfy the needs, and existing planning theories have failed to come up with a framework to deal with the increasing vulnerabilities of urban areas and cities and the insecurities of the public. There has been increasing criticism of the communicative planning approach, which is rooted in a Habermasian ideal of communicative action (Albrechts 2010; Fainstein 2000, 2005; Purcell 2009; Harris 2002; Young 1996, 1999; Mouffe 1999), with criticisms focused on the priority given to processes instead of substance and the limited attention to power relations and the underlying causes of inequalities.Footnote 1 It has also been suggested that communicative action tends, in the long term, to reinforce the current status quo and is “more likely to support the neoliberal agenda than to resist it” (Purcell 2009: 141), because it seeks to resolve conflict, eliminate exclusion and neutralise power relations, rather than embrace them as the very terrain of social mobilisation (p. 155).

These criticisms are not related to the essence of the theory but to how it has been put into practice and used. The very recent combination of environmental, economic and social crises, however, indicate the need for a rethinking and questioning of the basic assumptions of contemporary planning theories, since it has become increasingly evident that in order to tackle economic, social and ecological risks that increase the vulnerability of the urban systems, a new theoretical perspective in planning is a necessity.

Such a new planning perspective needs to consider the increasing weakness of cities with respect to economic, social and ecological pressures and threats; to pay attention to the growing concerns on risks in the globalised economic system; and to bear in mind the processes that misguided development under the hegemony of capitalism, which increased the vulnerabilities of urban spaces and communities and caused urban areas to be increasingly under the risk of losing adaptive capacity to deal with necessary changes.

Resilience thinking constitutes an alternative approach. “Planning for resilience” can find a home in planning theory as an analysis of the external dynamics that accelerate urban economic, social and spatial vulnerability and as an approach that helps to link social and economic processes with ecological processes, calling for a reconsideration of the “substance” of planning so as to enhance capacity to deal with slow and sudden changes of different forms. This can occur within a process that focuses on “building a self-organisation capacity” alongside a change in the value system that can overcome the unequal power relations.

This chapter opens a discussion on the contemporary dynamics of urban systems in the wake of different disturbances, with the aim being to evaluate the existing planning approaches and to discuss to what extent they are able to prepare urban systems to weather unforeseen disturbances. The major hypothesis of the chapter is that neoliberalisation accelerates the vulnerability of the urban systems and existing planning discourses and practice are not able to solve emerging problems. Therefore, there is need of a shift in planning paradigm, if we are seeking for more resilient cities. The main part of the chapter, however, offers a description of resilience planning and its principles in changing environments where the future is unpredictable and surprise is likely.

2.2 How do Global Economic Changes Affect the Vulnerability of Urban Systems?

In recent decades, cities and regions have endured significant changes under the ­dominance of the neoliberal agenda, which has eroded their resilience (Hudson 2009). Changes in production structures and labour processes under the pressures of globalisation, the rise of new technologies and the increasing role of knowledge and learning processes have brought about substantial changes in the built environment, lifestyles and patterns of consumption. This has affected cities and regions both directly and indirectly, while deregulation in different fields has eroded their self-regulatory capacities (Albrechts 2010). Increased incorporation into the new global economy has brought vulnerabilities that are amplified by the structural problems of cities, thus opening the door to external pressures.

While economic and social vulnerability have been the subject of broad ­discussions with reference to financial and economic crises and the domino effect among cities and regions all over the world, democratic deficits and vulnerability in governance have been widely disputed, with reference to the transfer of power from democratic citizens to corporations and the privatisation of the state (Albrechts 2010). In particular, the transfer of decision-making powers to the actors in the market has been the subject of much disparagement.

Moreover, ecological/environmental vulnerabilities have escalated with the movements of pollutants and hazardous wastes, as well as increasing numbers of disasters accelerated by the overuse or misuse of natural resources, besides the unforeseen effects of climate change.

Urban areas have responded to these issues in an awkward manner since they lack experience and preparedness. For this reason, it is not known if the responses of the recent past have enabled cities to endure under the new conditions, or whether they have provided and motivated them to create new opportunities. There is a clear need to discuss the ways in which different stakeholders have reacted to these changes and to assess the outcome of their responses, which is what this book sets out to achieve through an analysis of five case studies.

2.2.1 Increasing Economic and Social Vulnerabilities in the Neoliberal Era

Since the 1980s, major metropolitan areas in the world have seen a significant restructuring of their economies in order to adapt and compete in the newly emerging conditions and risks in the global economy. While the deregulation of the flow of goods, capital and people decreased the level of protection of local economies to external affects, the volatility of the global economy intensified the vulnerability of urban systems. Today, major cities all over the world are facing pressures that are forcing them to rethink the impacts of policies aimed at competitiveness and integration into global economy on their socio-spatial structures, following a period of entrepreneurial policies shaped by the notions of globalisation and competition (Fainstein 2001; Boddy 2002; Boddy and Parkinson 2004; Buck et al. 2002).

Competitiveness is expected to contribute to the economic performance and ­welfare of cities, firstly by enhancing attractivity for international capital; secondly, to enable local agents to export their products and services all over the world and join global value chains; and thirdly to acquire global functions that will allow them to benefit from the spillover effects of the global circulation of knowledge, information and technology. Previous literature offers a very broad list of the benefits of competitiveness that are grouped under several headings: increasing human capital (Porter 1990; Lever and Turok 1999; Huggins 2003), improving quality of technical infrastructure and the standard of living (Kresl 1995; Storper 1997; Begg 1999; Malecki 2002; Camagni 2002; Turok 2004) and boosting local institutional and social assets, including effective governance (Kresl 1995; Krugman 1996; Deas and Giordano 2001). Competitiveness can be attained through the use of different assets that define to what extent a particular city is able to integrate into the global economy. However, the existing assets of competitiveness can quickly be eroded, since their effects may differ from place to place. More importantly, the reliance on global conditions and the dominance of deregulatory measures make cities and regions vulnerable in economic terms. The financial crisis of the recent past has led to deep economic problems in many countries, which is just one example of how problems in local economies can easily disseminate within the global economy and can cause complications even in countries with relatively stable economies.

Moreover, the dependence on global markets and the conditions imposed by global capital has also very important implications on social resilience through the labour markets. Recent literature has underlined the importance of the characteristics of the labour market and consequently the social and institutional relations of different social groups, which define the social resilience of cities (Gordon 2005; Fainstein 2001; Turok 2005).

The labour force is an important competitive asset, as its size, characteristics and quality determine the level of competitiveness of a certain city and its integration into the global economy. Competitiveness, thereby, theoretically means demand for labour and increasing job opportunities; however, an increase in employment ­opportunities does not necessarily mean that all groups will benefit equally. The characteristics of the labour markets are important in the transfer of the positive outcomes of competitiveness to different social groups. Several issues that shape labour markets, such as education, gender division of labour and the social organisation of work, are important in redefining the impacts of competitiveness on different labour segments, since the skills and occupational composition of the new labour market define which groups will have an access to new job opportunities. Increasing competitiveness may support inclusionary processes with increasing social cohesion, but at the same time, it may encourage a widening of inequalities (Turok 2005). In general, there is near consensus in the belief that neoliberal economic restructuring has increasingly shaped policies to benefit capitalists rather than citizens. This has led to an increase in social vulnerabilities, exemplified by decreasing social cohesion and socio-spatial segregation in urban areas.

2.2.2 Increasing Environmental and Spatial Vulnerabilities Due to Changes in Property Markets

Similar to the effects of restructuring, the last three decades have also witnessed important changes in regulations defining the transfer of rights to private ­property (Newman and Thornley 1997). Beginning in the 1980s, during the systematic restructuring of the economic infrastructure of major urban regions in an increasingly neoliberal tradition, local governments began to mobilise new strategies of endogenous economic development to cope with place-specific socio-economic problems, to adjust to newly imposed fiscal constraints and to attract new sources of external capital investment (Brenner 2006, ref. Eisenschitz and Gough 1993). Territorial competitiveness becomes a new priority in metropolitan governance, resulting in the formation of new forms of governance with spatial interventions (project- or property-led development), such as policy instruments for social and economic development and redevelopment. As many studies explain (Swyngedouw et al. 2002; Salet and Guallini 2006; Salet and Majoor 2005; Albrechts 2006; Taşan-Kok 2008), the new modes of governance introduced into the property markets have brought substantial changes to the political, economic and social power relations in the city.

After a period of heightened entrepreneurialism in the 1990s, the dualistic nature of property rights regimes became more obvious, with the entrepreneurial mode of governance focusing on the transfer of land rents for productive purposes (new forms of capitalist development, commercial property development, etc.) and the social mode of governance endorsing property development for reproductive purposes (for households), and the clash of these two regimes, which have different socio-economic logics (Jager 2003), helped to increase fragmentation within urban areas. There are a number of studies that reflect upon the interaction between the social and entrepreneurial forms of governance via the land and property markets, as well as the socio-spatial fragmentation, as an outcome of the interplay among them (see Webster 2002; Edwards 2002; Delladetsima 2006). Webster (2002) claims that the property market reproduces more visible “clubs” in this respect when ­compared to the social forms of governance that constantly establish new sets of relations and dynamics in cities. These institutional relations and the dynamic ­interactions between the property market and urban government actors (public and private) define their new roles in the property markets through negotiations, written-unwritten or official-unofficial deals and agreements and strategies. This entrepreneurial logic, however, decreases the opportunity for public concerns and long-term strategies for the sustainable use of resources to be addressed, and without doubt degrades the resilience of cities.

2.2.3 Democratic Deficits and Vulnerability in Governance

In the neoliberal era, one of the most dominant changes has been the privatisation of the state through the transfer of its functions to semipublic or private bodies. Services have been contracted out to volunteer organisations, community associations, non-profit corporations, foundations and private firms and through the creation of different types of quasi-public bodies and public-private partnerships (Albrechts 2010). The growth in the number of organisations taking part in the decision-making mechanism has created the illusion of equal opportunities in decision-making processes, but only when the power relations are not considered in the analysis. However, there is increasing ­evidence of unequal power relations and transfers of power from the public to corporations, leading to criticisms that “what is introduced is only for the legitimation of the existing system and managing economic stability” (Albrechts 2010: 1115). There are also many arguments indicating that neoliberalisation produces important democratic deficits. According to Purcell (2009: 141), “the system introduced easily can turn to more authoritarian, although they use democratic rhetoric and practice and use them to legitimate neoliberalism”. This crisis in democracy is also mentioned by other scholars when focusing on the effects of politics and government on society. Innes and Booher (2010: 29) discuss the “the problems of the current practices and institutions that lead to disengagement and apathy of the society on democratic participation”.

The above debates are very important, since beginning from the 1980s onwards, the participatory practices and the new quasi-public bodies have been cited as key agents in increasing the level of democracy. However, in practice, the achievements have been far less than expected. In particular, the limited opportunities to resist the outcomes of the restructuring imposed by globalisation have received broad attention in the recent past, which has been indicated as the reason for the increasing vulnerability of the existing decision-making systems and institutions.

As can be seen in the case studies from four different countries featured later in the book, cities and countries with institutions that are not prepared to handle different forms of crisis are disproportionately vulnerable to external shocks, threats and disturbances. The World Bank Report 2011 emphasises the importance of i­nstitutional strength, together with the difficulties faced in transforming the existing institutions to allow them to cope with the global changes and economic crisis conditions. In this context, an institutional transformation that results in security, justice and jobs is suggested. Moreover, there is emphasis on the role of regional and international activities to reduce external stresses and specialised external support (World Bank 2011). It is obvious from recent global ecological events that institutional capacities are lacking, confirmed by the poor institutional performances in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in the USA in 2005 and the earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Japan in 2011.

Unequal power relations and the privatisation of the state through the transfer of functions to semipublic and private bodies make proactive measures to unexpected crisis and hazards difficult. Only in certain countries, where the threats are more obvious, such as the Netherlands, is it possible to initiate governance practices towards achieving resilient cities.

2.2.4 The Impact of Changes on Increasingly Vulnerable Urban Ecosystems and the Sustainable Use of Urban Land

The changes defined above clearly impose pressures on urban ecosystems by ­creating new demands for land and more ecological services. The different implications of the growth of cities and the growing demand for land are discussed under different headings. Air pollution that exceeds the carbon uptake levels of forests, the appropriation of green areas for development and traffic congestion are some of the issues that have received growing concern. Most empirical studies concentrate on the costs of sprawl, which are grouped by Ewing (1997) as more vehicle miles ­travelled, high energy consumption, air pollution, higher costs of infrastructure and public service provision and the loss of resource lands. In this respect, protecting the ecological balance (Wheeler 2007) and the efficient and sustainable use of land have become the main points of concern on the urban environment agenda, besides other environmental issues. That said, sustainable urban development and the sustainable use of land are not a new issue, having become a topic of interest when the appropriation of agricultural land for urban use began to be a problem for the ­sprawling cities. Sustainable urban development is used within the framework of preventing low residential densities, sprawl, leapfrog fragmentation of urbanisation, suburbanisation and rapid development at the urban edge, while compactness and urban intensification, high density living, mixed land uses, recycling of urban land and brownfield regeneration began to be seen as more sustainable ways of land use development in the cities (Dixon et al. 2007; Thornton et al. 2007). Literature on sustainable land development at the beginning of 2000s emphasised new land ­planning and management methods to minimise the impacts of agricultural land loss through sustainable land allocation (Yeh and Li 2002; Ligmann-Zielinska et al. 2008; Enemark 2004). Urban form is a widely discussed issue in literature. Theoretically, one urban form can be more sustainable than another, though empirical findings show that there is no complete agreement on which forms are more sustainable.

In recent years, the recycling of urban land (especially in brownfield zones) received strong emphasis in the attempts to reduce the urban sprawl that was accelerating to address the increasing demand for land in competitive urban areas (Dixon et al. 2007). In fact, brownfield regeneration (Thornton et al. 2007), the recycling or reuse of the urban vacant land, became the primary means of sustainable urban land use in literature around the worldFootnote 2 (Greenstein and Sungu-Eryilmaz 2004; Bowman and Pagano 2004; Brachman 2004; Shutkin 2004), alongside policies favouring compact cities.

The Compact City form was one of the recommendations of the Brundtland Commission Report, dated 1987, and a proposal of the UNCED Agenda 21 (UNCED 1993). In the European Charter II, which was adopted on 29 May 2008 by the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe, the Compact City was defined as an important international goal for the sustainable development of urban areas.

Recently, discussions on sustainability have been connected to those on global warming and climate change, with the growth of energy consumption of different forms and emissions, and their association with climate change, becoming a widely debated issue in urban environment literature. The new urban forms shaped under market dynamics have been considered inefficient and unsustainable due to their high energy consumption. In many cities, the increasing built-up areas in water basins, urban growth towards environmentally sensitive areas and the loss of areas with rich biodiversity are some of the consequences of neoliberal urban policies and their emphasis on prioritising entrepreneurial concerns.

The vulnerability and impact of already-foreseen threats to ecosystems are an indication of the seriousness of recent environmental problems. The impact of high rates of growth in land demand and urban sprawl on freshwater ecosystem/water resources are discussed with reference to uncontrolled built-up areas in protection zones of water basins, which leads to a loss of drinking water resources. Natural hazards, especially floods, and earthquake risk areas are under the pressure of ­property development, similar to forests and agroecosystems in many cities.

2.3 Urban Planning and Policy in the Era of Globalisation: How Far are they Able to Prepare the Urban Systems to Unforeseen Disturbances?

How do planning systems respond to increasing economic, social and ecological vulnerabilities intensified within the period of the neoliberalising economic system? In order to answer this question, first there is need to discuss the interconnections between the dominant mode of regulation and planning discourse in different economic regimes.

While the contemporary idea of planning is rooted in the Enlightenment tradition of modernity, in the twentieth century, Mannheim’s ideas on planning that attached systematised social scientific knowledge and techniques to the management of ­collective affairs in a democratic society became the source of inspiration for the Chicago school of rational decision making. Later, the attempts to systematise core areas of knowledge in urban development led to the rational planning model, which became a guide in the planning profession and an approach to problem solving in the public sphere, beginning in the 1950s. Instrumental rationality dominated planning theory for more than 20 years. By drawing on Keynesian economics and policy studies in political science, it highlighted planning’s role as being to correct market failures related to externalities, public goods, inequity, transaction costs and market power (Shiftel 2000). In this period, the rules were set out for welfarist redistribution, and governance mechanisms emerged to legitimise the distribution of welfare services among different social groups. Most of the existing literature has defined the governance practices of the Keynesian period as idealised forms that obscured the different mechanisms that have been used by the system to work under the pressures of different interest groups.

The Keynesian economic model, supported by the strong state and modernist ideas and rational decision making, faced important criticisms from the 1960s onwards. Literature on urban movements from the 1970s and early 1980s provides a clear indication that not everything was acceptable in the urban areas of the welfare states of the Western world (Castells 1983). Social movements were important in calls for participation, protest and the demand for a structural transformation of the urban system (Castells 1977). Due to conflicting interests and efforts to benefit more from the welfare delivery and transfer of rights in the property market, ­tensions and struggles grew among different groups. Struggles around collective ­consumption (i.e. the consumption of services produced, managed and distributed on a public basis) played a major role in shaping new planning theories, and were important in driving so-called reforms in planning systems.

Fainstein (2005: 124) explains that, “The reform movement was attacking the prevailing rational or quasi-rational model on two grounds: first, it was a misguided process; and second, it produced a city that no one wanted”. The reformers’ ­emphasis was on the roots of urban inequality and they sought ways to achieve democratic participation in urban planning. According to Outhwaite (1994: 6), the underlying theory of communicative rationality was the preoccupation with the idea that instrumental rationality, seen as a liberating force at the time of the Enlightenment, became a source of enslavement in the 1970s.

Problems in the Keynesian mode of regulation necessitated a change in the ­rationality on which planning was based. The Habermasian communicative action theory was explicitly intended as an alternative to the instrumental or strategic rationality of capitalism (Habermas 2001: 102 cited in Purcell 2009). Communicative action aims at creating “the ideal speech situation”, which constitutes “undistorted communication”, in which all participants affected by the decision participate in it meaningfully, and everyone has an equal chance to participate in achieving the good for all rather than their own particular self-interest (Habermas 1990, 1993). He claims that it may be possible to achieve the desired end because through mechanisms of interaction, which theoretically include all partners (Purcell 2009: 149).

There appeared different schools of thought under communicative rationality, varying between advocacy planning (Davidoff 1965); participatory planning with emphasis on negotiation (Susskind and Cruikshank 1987); communicative ­planning, rooted in communicative action and decision-making practice based on communication and consensus building (Susskind et al. 1999; Forester 1999; Innes 1995); transactive planning (Friedmann 2008); and collaborative planning (Healey 1997). All are based on consensus building among people with conflicting interests, and can be accepted as variegated forms of planning based upon a communicative rationality.

Today, the ideas of both communicative and collaborative planning occupy an extremely hegemonic position in planning theory (Purcell 2009; Tewdwr-Jones and Allmendinger 1998); however, there have been growing criticisms in recent years that can be grouped under three main headings: first, theories that are based upon a communicative rationality are focused more on the process but less on outcome, and fail to acknowledge and account for the influence that external forces have in ­shaping decisions and outcomes; second, in communicative planning, scientific information may be marginalised in collaborative decision-making processes as individual ­participants often lack technical expertise, and thus it depends upon socially constructed decisions that are not necessarily made for rational reasons (Hillier 2003); and third, they neglect the power problems in the communication process and fall short of adequately accounting for the role that power inequities play in shaping outcomes (Fainstein 2005; Murray 2005). According to Purcell (2009: 141), communicative action reinforces existing power relations rather than transforming them, and he claims that communicative action and planning is embedded with the problems of power, indicating that those with stronger power relations have the opportunity to look after their own interests.

At present, the criticisms on theories on communicative action are not against what it stands for but rather its position concerning the neoliberal political-economic agenda. Recent debates on the contemporary theory represent different positions. Firstly, communicative action planning is useful in harnessing the impacts of ­neoliberalism, and secondly although communicative action theory was not intended to serve the interests of the power, it provides a good ground for neoliberal practices to be legitimised.

Purcell (2009: 147) claims that “communicative planning offers an extremely attractive way for neoliberals to secure the democratic legitimacy they require, because it tends to reinforce the political-economic status quo while producing democratically legitimate decisions”. Comments have been made indicating that communicative action tends in the long term to reinforce the current status quo and suppresses the radical and transformative edge in practice (Harris 2002), favouring some social groups and not others (Young 1996, 1999; Fainstein 2000; Albrechts 2010). Flyvbjerg (1998: 209) also expressed “scepticism about the non-politicised processes of mediation and building consensus”, and further limitations of collaborative planning are defined by Gunton, Peter and Day (2006), such as the limited applicability to only those cases where all relevant stakeholders are motivated to participate and/or management agencies that are willing to delegate power. They claim that inequality in power gives some stakeholders an unfair advantage and a propensity to develop “­second best” or vague outcomes in order to achieve consensus.

Some changes have been introduced to counter this argument in the recent past. Healey (1997) argued persuasively that the challenges of urban development in the neoliberal era could no longer be handled effectively by government alone, but required the participation of all sectors of society in a form of planning that involved dialogue and negotiations among stakeholders to achieve an actionable consensus. She emphasises that communicative action aims not only at creating a cohesive “we” but also to generate an inclusive system in which nobody affected by a decision should be excluded from the decision-making process (Healey 1997). The problem with this ideal, critics argue, is that such inclusiveness can never be total, as every group that includes must always also exclude. However, there are yet newer discussions that favour communicative planning and governance, with claims that it can enhance the resilience of cities (Innes and Booher 2010).

A careful examination of the problems of urban areas in the contemporary period and the criticisms of dominant planning theories lead to a realisation of the need for a new mode of thinking in planning. While the problems of planning theory in terms of its use in the neoliberal era is one of the first points in the new thinking, decreasing the power of planning to harness unexpected economic, social and ecological problems constitute the latter. Christopherson, Michie and Tyler argue (2010: 3) that the “resilience debate can shake up our thinking and make us question some of our basic assumptions and measures of success and failure”. It can also can take “decision makers, planners, institutions, and citizens out of their comfort zones, and compel them to confront their key beliefs, to challenge conventional wisdom and to examine the prospects of breaking out of the box” (Albrechts 2010: 1115).

2.4 Resilience Thinking as the Basis of a New Paradigm in Planning Practice

In this book, it is claimed that it is possible to introduce a new planning paradigm based upon the concept of resilience. This section of the chapter attempts to identify the basic characteristics of resilience planning.

As discussed in Sect. 2.2, increasing economic, social and spatial vulnerabilities due to incorporation of urban areas into the new global economy and opening the door to external pressures necessitate building resilient urban systems. The entrepreneurial logic in property markets decreases the opportunity for public concerns, and unequal power relations and the privatisation of the state make proactive measures to unexpected crisis and hazards difficult. Moreover, increasing ecological vulnerabilities require connecting planning and science of ecology and enhancing ecological resilience of urban systems, and considering the impact of already-foreseen or unforeseen threats to ecosystems.

A resilient system is defined by its two main features: its ability to absorb change and disturbance, and the persistence of systems while retaining its basic functions and structure (Walker et al. 2006); together with the ability to survive, adapt and transform itself (Ludwig et al. 1997). The attributes above define a possible choice in building a planning framework: whether to follow conservative or radical constructs of resilience (Raco and Street 2012). The former view of resilience allows a return to the steady state that existed before the external shock threatened to bring radical and fundamental change, while in contrast the latter interpretation sees resilience as a dynamic process involving the rejection of the status quo, as there can be no return to the circumstances that actually caused the problem in the first place (Raco and Street 2012).

The latter definition, accepted here as the core of the resilience planning ­paradigm, can be defined with respect to three dynamic assets of the urban systems: adaptive capacity, self-organisation and transformability, rather than characteristics connected to the steady-state condition.

The adaptive capacity, which is at the core of a new paradigm for planning practice, aims explicitly at equipping urban systems to deal effectively with slow and radical changes. Its application so far has been limited since it should cover responses to multidimensional issues that vary from ongoing environmental/ecological concerns, changes to the urban built environment, movements of people, evolving socio-economic regimes and the interplay of political ideologies and collective imaginaries. The enhancement of adaptive capacity is a necessary condition for reducing vulnerability, and sustaining ecosystem services is vital for many urban areas, which are under threat of significant upheavals from a variety of different hazards and problems induced by climate change. Self-organisation, which is a ­process of internal organisation within a system without being guidance or management by an outside source (Heylighen 2002; Holling 1992), establishes the arena for evolutionary change. However, self-organisation is not always possible, and ­systems have had to undergo thorough change. Transformability in such cases is inevitable, being the capacity to create a fundamentally new system when ecological, ­economic or social (including political) conditions make the existing system untenable (Walker et al. 2004); and planning may play a vital role within this process.

Evaluating urban systems with respect to these assets enables one to determine the critical issues for resilience planning. First, it has to be dynamic, not seeking to return to stable equilibrium under external disturbances and changes due to local dynamics, but adapting and adjusting to changing internal or external processes. Secondly, it has to consider economic, social and ecological heterogeneity by concentrating on not only the form but also function and process of urban systems (Pickett et al. 2004). Thirdly, resilience planning needs to be based systems ­analysis, which will enable to define the points and issues of vulnerability of urban systems and to be focused on key issues, being those related to the adaptive and transformative capacities of urban areas in terms of determining strengths and weaknesses in the context of opportunities and threats.

What would be the main features of such a planning system? The basic ­characteristics of resilience planning can be defined in comparison to the two dominating planning paradigms, namely, rational comprehensive planning, which had been the basis of planning practice from the 1950s up to 1980s, and communicative planning, which has dominated new planning practices since the 1980s (see Table 2.1).

Table 2.1 The resilience planning paradigm and its major characteristics in comparison to ­rational and communicative planning paradigms
Full size table

One of the critical issues to be addressed when defining a possible framework for integrating resilience thinking into planning practice is its rationality. Rationality in planning can be defined as the guiding principle of the human mind in the process of thinking and the application of reason to collective decision making (Faludi 1987). Planning literature argues that different planning paradigms are based on different rationalities and that finding a variant of planning practice is way of integrating the various types of planning paradigms associated with different forms of rationality (Alexander 2000). Alexander (2006) proposes a system of classification of rationality associated with ­different planning paradigms. Briefly, he defines instrumental rationality, corresponding to the logic of choosing the best means to achieve a particular goal; substantive rationality, demanding consideration of the goals themselves, selecting between objectives and assigning priorities; bounded rationality, providing a context to decision making; strategic rationality, making the decision maker and other actors interdependent; and communicative rationality, shifting focus from decision making to social interaction.

Resilience planning, as discussed earlier, needs a systems approach, defining means but not ends and flexibility that enables urban systems not only to adapt to but also can benefit from expected and unexpected disturbances. Therefore, the instrumental rationality, which is the basis of comprehensive planning, or communicative rationality that leads to communicative planning based on socially constructed values and social interaction do not offer a sound basis for resilience planning. Neither the bounded and strategic rationality that are mainly focused on planning as frame setting is able to serve the needs for resilience planning that aims not to provide means for clear ends, instead means for undefined ends to make sure the loss from unexpected event is minimal.

Therefore, planning based upon resilience thinking has to have an integrative framework that combines rational and communicative planning (see Table 2.1); with rational planning based upon instrumental rationality and communicative planning resting upon communicative rationality. As Alexander summarises (2000: 247), an integrated rationality is “a complex construct, a recursive process deploying different forms of rationality at successive stages by various actors in changing roles”. Different than the two main planning systems, resilience planning that uses integrative rationality obviously necessitates not only actors as individuals but also individuals in interactive groups, in addition to interdisciplinary teams with ­technical experience, to be involved within the different stages of planning practice. While the interdisciplinary teams engage in the planning practice to analyse urban ­subsystems and define the key vulnerabilities of the systems, the involvement of social groups as learning agents of change, however, needs to be based upon a commitment to prepare urban areas for long-term changes and disturbances. This point is quite important in resilience thinking since most of the consensus generation processes in communicative actions of the contemporary era are based upon short-term expectations and socially constructed values, disregarding long-term horizons and long-term commitments.

The concern of resilience planning should not be merely about problem solving, as the classical planning approaches are already focused on, or reaching collective agreement/decisions, just as communicative planning does. What resilience planning targets is defining no-regret situations under uncertain conditions, in which the outcomes of the specific models that links structures and processes in urban systems defined within the instrumental rationality can be used as constraints in the process of decision making. In this framework, the definition of the critical issues and an analysis of these issues using different methods of analysis, and problem solving defined under the instrumental rationality should act as inputs when defining the problem areas in the collective decision-making process.

In this regard, the aim of resilience planning is not to define the most effective actions to achieve goals within a comprehensive framework but rather to define priorities that ensure a no-regret situation and create a system that is not only adaptive to slow changes (mostly defined by endogenous dynamics) but also to major expected and unexpected disturbances. Such a system has to follow a co-evolutionary path in defining the impacts of disturbances or endogenous changes to its different components, as well as the secondary and tertiary effects of the changes taking place on each other, by integrating the ecosystem functions and socio-economic dynamics of the urban systems. This issue is at the very core of the resilience approach.

This way of formulating the aim of planning necessitates the use of specific ­models to determine how to measure resilience and knowledge to specify linking processes between social, economic and ecological structures in searching for mutual agreement, which should not only lead to binding decisions in certain priority areas, but also readiness to adapt to any slow changes or sudden pressures. Obviously, it is the content or the substance that becomes the main issue in this approach.

In fact, the resilience planning paradigm calls for a reconsideration of the “­substance” of planning within a process, after several years of neglect. Bringing back substance and context based upon the vulnerabilities and adaptive capacities of urban areas, as the key goal of planning, is an important feature of resilience ­planning. It requires a definition of the substance and capacity (not end form and structure) defined with the help of red tapes and priorities as the bases for dealing with change. However, the wide variety of issues makes setting constraints and identifying red tape quite difficult, necessitating a critical analysis of the main processes and ­structural constraints shaping the urban areas, which obviously requires the use of methods of instrumental rationality. Moreover, defining substance and end-capacity also necessitates a process of inclusive decision making that covers different groups – in other words, not only interactive communication but also deliberation.

The priority areas within this context have to serve for the enhancement of local creativity, innovation and risk taking, taking into consideration both proactive as well as transformative assets. In building resilient cities, proactive issues are important. According to Hudson (2009: 17), emphasis should be on moving to a proactive approach and learning how to anticipate and cope with a range of externally generated shocks and disturbances. However, a proactive perspective alone is not enough, as capacities for transformation and self-organisation are also needed if one is to reach the envisaged end state, which should include “the way resources are used, (re)distributed, and allocated, and the way regulatory powers are exercised” (Albrechts 2010: 1117).

The second issue is related to the value system, which is at the core of planning paradigms. Planning involves making choices in contexts characterised by ­complexity and uncertainty, and these choices are connected to value systems and ethical issues. Since the 1980s, while rational comprehensive planning became increasingly discredited and replaced by communicative planning, socially constructed value systems became important. As Campbell (2012: 2) argued, “the technocratic premise was replaced by widespread acceptance of the ‘political’ and therefore value-based ­character of the activities with which planners engage”. Today, there are increasing criticisms on “the highly politicized nature of professional ethical frameworks and their tendency to support the status quo” as Marcuse (1976) pinpointed several decades ago. Interestingly, given the increasing market reliance of planning and hence the importance of judgement rather than technique, the debates on value systems and planning ethics are limited in the literature.

The use and redistribution of resources is not only a technical issue, in that it is directly related to the value system in which acknowledging the materiality of the economy and consumption, production and the division of labour are especially important. Moreover, establishing a new balance between private property rights and human responsibilities is the key issue in building a new value system in urban planning (Wheeler 2007). The critical issues are primarily the principles of sharing both burdens and benefits, and the problems in the provision of equal opportunities in circumstances characterised by competing interests and priorities. These issues are related to the major ethical concerns of planning, namely, equality, justice and public interest.

In recent sustainability literature, there is emphasis on defining planning ­principles for the more efficient use of urban land (Stallworthy 2002; Brachman 2004; Wheeler 2007) and calls for land-use control in both built-up areas and in the peripheral zones to help preserve farm land, ecological habitats and open spaces near cities, emphasising that the relations between people and the land should be altered. This type of individual calls for principles and many others and measures should be backed with clear ethical framework based upon the value systems not only socially constructed but also values that reflect more than normative concerns.

This shift is obviously not easy, in a period where market forces are the ­determining factors in urban change and transformation in a world of diversity and contested truths. However, thinking of resilience of the urban systems and increasing evidence and problems on the planning based upon short-sighted visions and normative indicate that the importance of technocratic premises and universal values built upon the technical and scientific knowledge. The resilience planning paradigm proposed in this chapter suggests the need for a consensus on certain principles and values at the global level, which can be over the power struggles at different levels of governance.

2.5 Concluding Remarks

This chapter offers a summary of thoughts on a new planning paradigm to be based upon resilience thinking. The key principles at the heart of resilience planning are introduced, highlighting a need for a radical shift in existing planning practice and definitely a new perspective.

How can these principles be formulated with respect to global economic ­relations? There are different perspectives providing different answers to this question, such as “greater intra-regional closure of the economy and greater self-reliance”, as Hudson (2009: 17) has suggested, or “relying on endogenous capacities”, as claimed by Simmie and Martin (2010: 45–58). However, how far it is possible to “create more self-contained regional economies, while securing successful transition to ecologically sustainable and socially just forms of regional organisation, economy and society” (Hudson 2009: 17) is still an important question.

Although the above proposals can be evaluated as reflecting a radical ­perspective, there is no doubt that resilience planning necessitates an approach that begins with ethical considerations, which should be more than a mere discourse on the “common good” (Purcell 2009: 153). Besides advocating equity, empowerment and environmentally sensitive economic development, there is need to encourage a new ethics that is based upon the responsibility of everyone to protect him/herself, with the right to protest those who do not comply with the basic ethical standards (Hudson 2009: 19), which is a crucial factor in the way urban land and urban services, including ecosystem services, are used or provided.

Moreover, building a value system is very important if antagonism and ­hegemony of power on urban systems is to be reduced. If there is no value system defining the expectations for the future, then every agreement will silence some and not others, and every decision will favour some over others (Hillier 2002; McGuirk 2001; Tewdwr-Jones and Allmendinger 1998; Purcell 2009). As discussed earlier, without value systems, consensus or agreement stabilises power (Mouffe 2000: 104), which may have very negative consequences in the long term for different resources and the way urban areas are used.

While mainstream planning theory has focused on the procedural side of ­planning, recent problems and external developments on the substantive side are increasingly pushing the profession in new directions and demanding responses. It is claimed that planning practice should be clear about not only the processes but also the substance if resilient cities are to be created. Moreover, planning practice has to find a balance between the rights and responsibilities of the different actors in order to create resilient cities for the future. Each actor, especially planners, has to confront their key priorities, beliefs and value systems carefully.

In this integrative framework, while a planning process that follows ­communicative rationality is to be used in shaping the planning process, the methods defined within the context of instrumental decision making can be used to define baselines or remove red tape so as to achieve no-regret conditions in the long term. The issues defined in the chapter necessitate a radical change in the approach to planning and in the principles not based upon problem solving or consensus building. The key task is to define the musts and the main attributes that the urban system has to achieve, which may be difficult, but is certainly not impossible.