“We kept on believing we could control growth … by building elegant neighborhoods,” said Gert de Roo of the University of Groningen in The Netherlands, in a session I dropped in on called “Complexity, Planning, and Fuzzy Responsibilities.” Just consider urbanization in China, far outpacing anything anyone could ever plan, with instant neighborhoods of 1 million or more. “We have to rethink concepts of planning,” de Roo said.

For a planner,1 a simple problem is a traffic jam. You build a new bridge to alleviate the congestion, and do some follow-up observations to see if it worked. Urbanization today is so much more complicated, it requires an approach far beyond trying to make sure the world is nicely dealt with and comfortable, de Roo said. In a future with great uncertainty, planning must be more versatile, adopting multiple methodologies. This involves funky concepts of ground-up, crowd-sourced “self organization” and “spontaneous order,” according to de Roo and other presenters in the session.

I was in Prague participating in the European launch of Planning for States and Nation States, published by my employer, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. The book compares planning regimes in five U.S. states (Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, and Oregon) and five EU nations (Denmark, France, Ireland, The Netherlands, and the U.K.). Europe has been a lodestar for the U.S., though in land use like many other things, the very idea of compact development excites some “freedom fries” retorts and suspicions of socialism. While running for president in 1988, former Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis was pilloried for having the book Swedish Land Use Planning as beach reading (which he later denied).

But smart growth, whether urban growth boundaries or compact transit-oriented development, is essentially European. And now the Europeans are saying the command-and-control approach doesn’t work so well. European nations are actually adopting more of an American stance—a decentralized agenda, pushing down remaining responsibilities to local jurisdictions, and counting on local planners to engage the citizenry much more.

• 1. Flint's discussion of the evolution of planning follows his attendance of the annual Association of European Schools of Planning conference, where "there was no little soul-searching about the practice of the craft." Rather, Flint writes, planners there were wondering whether, "despite the grand efforts, planning wasn’t really paying off."

  As for why: "Global urbanization carries multiple complexities, with loads of unintended consequences and unanticipated outcomes, whether in Cleveland or London or Bogota. If the future is not linear, planning in a linear fashion is the equivalent of banging one’s head against the drafting table."

  The article focuses on the exchange of ideas between European planning and American planning, which, already complicated by American political concerns about socialism and Agenda 21 fear mongering, could now be further complicated by European rejection of Smart Growth and other ideas exported by continental planers. According to Flint, "smart growth, whether urban growth boundaries or compact transit-oriented development, is essentially European. And now the Europeans are saying the command-and-control approach doesn’t work so well. European nations are actually adopting more of an American stance—a decentralized agenda, pushing down remaining responsibilities to local jurisdictions, and counting on local planners to engage the citizenry much more."

  Source: http://www.planetizen.com/node/79764/how-planners-are-responding-more-complex-world