An anatomy of time explicit planning behavior for urban complexity

Abstract

Planning has long been perceived as intervention in a complex spatial system that tends toward equilibrium. In this perspective, time is implicit and dynamic details do not matter. As a result, little has been said in the literature about planning behavior that takes into account time and dynamic details. Exploration into planning behavior is important in the face of complex systems that are path dependent and far from equilibrium. The purpose of the present paper is therefore to model normative planning behavior based on Savage’s ( 1954 ) utility theory, Marschak’s ( 1974 ) theory of teams, and Hopkins’s (1980) definition of plans (i.e. planning is an activity of information gathering and producing to reduce uncertainty), to interpret the planner’s behavior on plan making, implementation, and revision. This model fits well the emerging perspective of the city in that urban development is non-equilibrium. We first define a simplified planning environment in which there are only one planner and one actor with three worlds: the grand world, the planner’s world, and the actor’s world, the latter two being small worlds. The notion of small world was first proposed by Savage ( 1954 ) and provides a useful way of explaining planning behavior. In the small worlds, the planner and the actor simultaneously select optimal actions among a set in order to maximize their expected utilities. Due to the mathematical property of the small world notion, planning behavior thus defined can be formulated analytically so that the planning process can be depicted in a precise, concrete language. The model proposed in the present paper is normative in nature, emphasizing on how planning behavior should take place and providing insights into how that behavior actually does come about in reality. In its current formulation, the model is only a preliminary approximation of normative planning behavior, but prompts some research questions worth pursuing, such as how multiple planners and actors make and use plans in a more complex situation and what planning procedures would be effective through computer simulations in the face of complexity.