Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
instrumental rationality in planning, dating back to the 1960s, which assumed that
cities were physically integrated places amenable to local land use and develop-
ment policies. The physically integrated structure was presented as a surface upon
which economic and social activity took place, with the planner's task being to
manage the structure to remove economic, social and environmental problems.
Traditionally, the tools of spatial representation which planners use (master
plans, development plans, etc.) are two-dimensional and purported to offer single
and (seemingly) objective representations of space in Euclidean terms (Graham
and Healey, 1999). The area on the plan is depicted as a 'jigsaw' of adjacent,
contiguous land use parcels, connected through infrastructure networks and laid
out within a bounded, Euclidean, gridded plain. The use of object-oriented and
Euclidean depictions of space often implicitly supports the idea that single, unbi-
ased representations of places are possible, even desirable. However, it is
increasingly recognised that the cartographic illustration of spatial policies is a
partial perspective, chosen through 'treacherous selective vision' (Shields, 1995:
245), which focuses on certain parts of a territory and spatial development whilst
inevitably neglecting others (Harvey, 1996). In these traditional representations,
time tends to be either ignored completely in planning practice and theory, or is
assumed to be a single universal container for events which flow in a linear, one-
directional way. Often, conceptions of space thus remain divorced from concep-
tions of time, even though it would be necessary to consider the multiple,
overarching and interlacing webs of space-time in a territory (Thrift, 1996).
Graham and Healey (1999: 627) have claimed that planning practice 'remains
unable to respond to the now widespread recognition that spaces and times are
effectively produced and created through social actions within and between
places'. Friedmann (1993) even argued that the 'conventional concept of planning
is so deeply linked to the Euclidean mode that it is tempting to argue that if the
traditional model has to go, then the very idea of planning must be abandoned'
(Friedmann, 1993: 482). He therefore advocated that planning must explicitly
strive for 'non-Euclidean' forms of planning which recognise the existence of
time-space geographies, centring on open-ended processes and dynamics rather
than static normative forms.
The discussion about what Castells (2000) has called the 'network society' is
increasingly reflected in the planning literature, and planners have begun to apply
these ideas to planning policy and practice. The concept of the network society
acknowledges that social arrangements stretch across space, and in comparison
with 'traditional' networks operate with a substantially different sense of time and
distance. One indicator of this change in socio-spatial relationships is the rise in
mobility, and the most direct consequence for planning is that in a network struc-
ture 'proximity' is less relevant for social organisations than connectivity. Techno-
