Planning of undefined becoming: First encounters of planners beyond the plan

Abstract

Since the 1980s and due to the ongoing complexity and diffuseness of global networked societies, planners have tried to move beyond classic technocratic and/or sociocratic ideas of planning towards new approaches, which address the multiplicity and fuzziness of our perceptions and actions in time and space. Innovative ideas have been developed concerning discursive, collaborative, informal and post-policy planning, as well as relational geography, multi-planar, non-linear and actor-relational approaches. Nonetheless, techno- and sociocratic approaches remain dominant conceptions for much teaching and practice in Europe and elsewhere. This is partly because these innovative contributions of the past 20 or 30 years have been fragmented and isolated. However, they can also be regarded as the beginning of a bigger transition towards what we call a movement of ‘planning of undefined becoming’. In this article, we will sketch a framework in which these innovative ideas about the planner’s perceptions of fuzzy, complex and co-evolving space and time will in some way be interrelated. From this background, we will also critically reflect on some planning experiments in practice inspired reciprocally and incrementally by these ideas, developing applications for practitioners along the way.