News and Events
The Art of Planning
Now Online Presentation Slides
It is only a hundred years ago since the history of planning was established as an academic subject and a discipline at the Department of Civic Design at the University of Liverpool. The Town Planning Review journal was founded in 1910 at the same institution and was based on the idea of presenting theory and good practice. A third event at the same time was the start of a planning course at Harvard University.
The author has followed the development of theory and practice in planning for 50 years. He has been a professional planner, a researcher and university lecturer.
He argues that we have witnessed a change in making many examples of good practice into objective science. We are longing for facts, but the crucial issues are what we do with the facts and what types of action do these facts trigger. “We are all practitioners”, claims the author.
But what do planners really do? They listen, read, speak and write when working on theoretical issues in a university, at a municipal planning office or as a private consultant. They all work with language in different and very practical ways. They approach their profession by bridging the gap between theory and practice.
This brings us to the title of the book; The Art of Planning. This does not mean art like a painting in a gallery or art as a work in an auction. Rather art as performance, the good and meaningful use of language, art as understanding the context of time and place, and art as creative and innovative action. So just like the art of engineering or the art of downhill skiing, this book is about skill and excellence.
The first part examines theoretical issues such as
-- Wholeness and the fragment
-- Borders in mind and space
-- The art of rhetorics
-- And the risk society
This is written as a commentary upon on-going discussions in planning theory. The second part of the book presents a concept for teaching planning based on different approaches
by Sigmund Asmervik
Born in 1941, Sigmund Asmervik graduated as an architect and urban planner in 1966 at the Norwegian Institute of Technology (NTH) in Trondheim, Norway and was awarded a doctorate in traffic planning in 1976 by the same institution.
Since 1990, he has taught planning and planning theory at NTH and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, the Norwegian University of Life Science and the University of Stavanger. He has been active in different ways in the Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP) since the early 1990s.
Smart Informal Territories: Heliopolis Slum
Innovation for Inclusion Trough Design
Sao Paulo Megacity Sustainability Indicators, Brazil
Professor Carlos Leite will describe his two recent research projects, “Indicators of Sustainability on Urban Development” and "Smart Informal Territories Lab in Heliopolis Slum" which look at the challenge of the Sustainable Megacity through Sao Paulo’s experience as a city of 20 million people, with expansion that ranges from formal urban development to the informal context of huge slums. This work signalizes parameters for a city that is reinventing itself through eco-urbanism after the "expanding and exhausting" model of the 21st Century when the city grew by 27,000% in population and 40,000% in urban territory in a country, Brazil, that has the 6th world highest GNP.
Now Online Presentation Slides
by Carlos Leite, Professor, Mackenzie University, Sao Paulo
