Changing Cultures of Planning

• Changing Cultures of Planning intends to collect and exchange knowledge about recent innovative large-scale urban transformation processes in Europe, by investigating five urban developments.

  Throughout Europe, urban planning has evolved from a regulatory practice to a more ‘project-based' transformation of the urban territory. This evolution of urban planning practice has led to new policies, intended as an alternative to the existing, generic, ineffective regulatory planning practice (zoning, etc).

  However, these policies are now coming in for some criticism, as they have turned into a new set of rigid bureaucratic 'recipes' (procedures and rules). Recent developments such as the Zuidas Development in Amsterdam or the Euratlantique development in Bordeaux show signs of having resulted from urban development projects of this - rather generic - kind. Such ‘generically developed' urban projects often fail to produce pertinent and specific responses to societal challenges and to truly engage with complex social and urban contexts.

  In a response to these ‘development recipes', this publication features a study of five alternative 'urban transformation processes'. Each of these projects has, in its own way, in its own specific context of place and time, generated innovative methods of conceiving urban policies, visions and participatory processes, which have led to inspiring urban transformations:

  · AIR Kop Van Zuid, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

  · Ile de Nantes, Nantes, France

  · Atelier Zuidvleugel, The Netherlands

  · Zürich West, Zürich, Switzerland

  · 50000 Dwellings, Bordeaux, France

This book received the Fernand Baudin Prize 2012.