Planning Theory & Practice

Engaging with the Multiple Temporalities Inherent in Participatory Planning Despite growing recognition of time in planning research, few studies explore the role of time in participatory planning contexts. Drawing on critical temporal scholarship, this paper develops an a...

Multiple temporalities and planning. Planners often deal with conflicting spatial conceptions, but have we under-recognized the role of differing notions of time? Check out this new article by Miriam Holst Jensen and David Laws to read more: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Organising Everyday Planning Practice for Reduced Residential Segregation: Understanding the Strategic-Operational Gap from the Inside This paper discusses how everyday practices within a municipal organisation contribute to the gap between strategic and operational spatial planning. We use reduced residential segregation as an ex...

What causes gaps in strategic and operational planning? Check out this new article that analyzes the experiences of planners in Sweden, using residential housing segregation reduction as an example. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Realizing the Transformative Potential of Experimentation in Planning Experimentation allows planning to explore ways of “thinking, doing, organising” beyond the status quo, as if the world was a radically different one. However, there is limited evidence of its impa...

In this new article, Luca Bertolini connects "prefigurative planning" to ideas of experimentation, thus, addressing critiques that experimental urbanism fails to result in lasting change while also attempting to engage the utopian imagination. Open Access here: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Mind the Gap: Planning, Plans and Not so Much Progress I examine the use of prior plans for reflection and learning when developing new comprehensive plans in selected U.S. communities. Using a conceptual framework of plan influences, survey data, and ...

Are planners learning to improve their plans over time? A new article by Maria Conroy connects the need for planners to incorporate reflection with the ability to learn how to improve plan quality, but shows how constraints limit reflective practices. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Reflections on Post-Growth Planning: Practices of ‘Undoing’ (De-Urbanisation and Deconstruction) and Methodology for Eco-Social Transition Published in Planning Theory & Practice (Vol. 26, No. 3, 2025)

#Post-Growth Planning. How can planning efforts disrupt the growth system and initiate a just eco-social transition? New article from Romero-Martinez, Romero-Padilla, and del Castillo-Sanchez. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Between Fixed and Flexible. Soft Planning and Informality in the Regeneration of Kalasatama, Helsinki This paper analyses the practices of soft planning in the regeneration of Kalasatama, Helsinki, by asking how and why informal planning approaches have been used in the planning and development of ...

💡Soft planning. In a newly published article, Tuomas Ilmavirta analyzes how "soft planning" (discursive planning, temporary uses of space, and cultural planning) are used in regeneration practices in Helsinki, Finland. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

“What Can I, and Others, Do to Change Things?” Patsy Healey (1940–2024): In Her Own Words Published in Planning Theory & Practice (Vol. 26, No. 2, 2025)

💜 "What Can I, and Others, Do to Change Things?" Patsy Healey (1940–2024): In Her Own Words. Heather Campbell and Theo Lim have selected extracts of Patsy's writings in Planning Theory & Practice over the years. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Social Value Creation Through Bottom-up Urban Development: Mechanisms of Self-Organization This article examines how bottom-up urban development initiators create social value through self-organization in a market-dominated context. Using a multiple case study and a framework combining c...

In their newly published research article, Mens et al use three Dutch cases to illustrate how bottom-up urban development initiators create social value through self-organization in a market-dominated context. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Bioregionalism and Degrowth: Addressing the Urban-Other Divide Scale and spatial politics are central to degrowth research, yet scholars often overemphasise the (limited) potential of local practices. This paper proposes a bioregional spatial planning approach...

In "Bioregionalism and Degrowth: Addressing the Urban-Other Divide" Johanna Waldenberger and Federico Savini propose a degrowth planning framework consisting of five dimensions that move us beyond both growth-based urbanization and the urban-other divide. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

In their article, "On the Cognitive Mechanics of Planning Judgment" authors Dan Milz, Meaghan McSorley, Shannon Thayer, and Curt Gervich illustrate how heuristics characterize judgments in planning by describing two examples from a planning process in NY State. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

🥳 Congratulations to Harriet Dunn for receiving the Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP) 2025 Best Published Paper Award for her article "Populism, Planning, and the Politics of Discontent," published in Planning Theory & Practice!! www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

In their new article, Cai, Gerrits, and Edelenbos analyze China's Multi-Plan Integration Reform (MPI) effort, which began in the 1990s. The article contains useful information about China's complicated planning structure, as well as the MPI policy implementation. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

The Essential Tension: Patsy Healey’s Conception of Democracy in Planning and Public Policy Patsy Healey was a major democratic theorist. Although often implicit, it is easy to discern in her work a normative-empirical theory of democracy that is characterized by a focus on improving stat...

Democracy as Lived Experience. In his article "The Essential Tension: Patsy Healey's Conception of Democracy in Planning and Public Policy" @hendrikwagenaar.bsky.social reflects on two major themes in Patsy Healey's work: democracy and epistemology. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

YouTube video by Theo Lim John Forester on "Inspirations in Planning" (2025)

We have created a video abstract of Prof Forester giving a brief overview of the Interface, here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwFu...

Inspirations in Planning Published in Planning Theory & Practice (Vol. 26, No. 1, 2025)

A new Interface collection edited by John Forester includes contributions from twelve planning practitioners, researchers, and educators, each reflecting on where they draw their inspiration. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Revisiting Structure and Agency: The Perception and Materialisation of Risk in Property Development and Investment This commentary revisits Patsy Healey and colleagues’ 1980s–1990s work on property development within the context of urban change, examining its relevance to contemporary property-led urban plannin...

Structure and agency in property markets. In another contribution in our SI honoring the impact and legacy of Patsy Healey, Andre Legarza picks up on "Healey’s call for a robust framework to understand the character of property markets and urban change." www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

As part of the Planning Research Matters series on housing, a collection of papers explores how community-led housing can help solve the unaffordable housing crisis on both sides of the Atlantic:
www.rtpi.org.uk/policy-and-r...
Interface is a free-to-access section within @planningtheory.bsky.social

Patsy Healey: A Tribute Published in Planning Theory & Practice (Ahead of Print, 2025)

"Here, we knew her as the 'can-do academic,' " writes David Bull, retired Director of Planning and Transportation in Wooler, UK, on Patsy Healey. Bull remembers Patsy in our special issue dedicated her life and contributions to the planning field www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

PATSY HEALEY IS DEAD: Long Live Contingent Universalism Published in Planning Theory & Practice (Ahead of Print, 2025)

As part of a special issue of Planning Theory and Practice remembering and reflecting on the life and work of Patsy Healey, Prof Bish Sanyal @mitdusp.bsky.social has contributed a reflection on how Healey saw the universal and the contingent in planning theory: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Looking for sessions to attend at the International Conference on Urban Affairs @uaanews.bsky.social next week April 15 - 19 in Vancouver, BC? Check out the sessions of these recent Planning Theory & Practice authors!

Pragmatic Spatial Planning: Practical Theory for Professionals Published in Planning Theory & Practice (Vol. 25, No. 5, 2024)

📖 Pragmatic Spatial Planning. Nicolas Paquet reviews Charlie Hoch's 2019 book Pragmatic Spatial Planning: Practical Theory for Professionals, which is an update to the pragmatist ideas of Dewey, James, and Pierce. Paquet describes the book's contributions here: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Regulate or Be Regulated: The Institutional Entrepreneurship of Developers Zoning is one of the key roles of land use regulation by the state. In engaging with this land use regulation, developers do not stay put and passively await rules to be imposed upon them. Instead,...

Buitelaar, Lebbing, van den Hurk, and van Karnenbeek show how through zoning, developers engage in ‘institutional entrepreneurship,’ shaping the complex and mutual relationship between planning decisions and developers’ strategies in Utrecht, Netherlands. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

A city skyline image (of London) is shaded blue, with nodes and icons overlaid to represent data extracted from the urban environment

Does urban science -- using computational methods & data analysis to address urban planning challenges -- perpetuate historical racial inequities & if so, how could we realize a reparative urban science? Wonyoung So explores in an article for @planningtheory.bsky.social. More: bit.ly/soReparative...

Characterising the Ultimate Ends of Municipal Land Policy: An Analysis of Land Policy Aim Setting in Finnish Municipalities Municipalities engage in solving local to global policy problems. Yet it remains poorly understood how they reconcile and prioritize policy problems when formulating sectoral policies such as munic...

Examining Finnish municipalities, Pauliina Krigsholm shows how higher-level national aims in land policy, such as sustainability agendas, may appear in local policies, but how ultimately, locally-embedded motives tend to be operationalized more fully. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Micropolitics in Participatory Processes: The Impact of Ableism and Other ‘Hidden’ Power Structures on Equitable Participation and Outcomes Theoretical understandings of micropolitics and ableism provided a framework to analyze power relations and their impacts in a participatory design process. Micropolitics allowed a focus on small s...

How can planners address ableism in participatory processes? The authors of this new PTP article suggest: (1) identifying communication norms; (2) considering processes of identity formation; and (3) recognizing and disrupt dominant narratives. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Establishment of a New Planning System in Ukraine: Institutional Change Between Europeanization and Post-Socialist Path Dependence Most research on planning systems in Europe focused on North and West Europe, with limited interest in Central Europe and even less attention to ‘post-socialist’ Europe. This study examines the rec...

A new planning system in Ukraine. Anisimov, Smirnova, and Dulko document changes in Ukraine's planning system leading up to a critical juncture in 2020, which moved Ukraine away from post-soviet path-dependence, changing the functioning of their planning system. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Words and Meaning in 2024 Published in Planning Theory & Practice (Ahead of Print, 2025)

With the rise of generative AI tools and the use of words in brazenly untruthful ways by rising right-wing ideologues, what does the production of words mean today? @chaolim85.bsky.social muses on this question in his editorial for Planning Theory & Practice: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Industrial Lands and Development Published in Planning Theory & Practice (Ahead of Print, 2025)

A new Interface collection considers how planners can/should view industrial lands: "attention to industrial land and activity is often missing from planning, which is striking given the role of industry on climate change and social equity." www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Populism, Planning, and the Politics of Discontent The article provides an analysis of contemporary localist-populist movements’ understanding of, and approach towards, spatial planning and urban development. This is achieved through an in-depth ca...

In her article "Populism, Planning, and the Politics of Discontent" Harriet Dunn shows how the state is reframed as a "guardian" of the public interest to redefine planning as supporting conservatism, rather than as a means for transformative change. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Just Energy Transitions Published in Planning Theory & Practice (Vol. 25, No. 4, 2024)

Wondering about what makes a 'just' energy transition? Check out this Interface collection, edited by Fayola Jacobs, Elise Harrington, and Ward Lyles: #OpenAccess. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... extraction-dependent communities, informal settlement, debt/finance, AI, benefits capture and more!