There's a problem in laying out a plan when your topic is, in a sense, how plans never quite lead to what you expect they will. But in my mind, at least at this point, that doesn't mean you throw out the idea of a plan entirely. I suppose the term "urban planning" will be one that I throw out at that point ("urban anti-planning"?), which, believe me, is a move I've considered before, and I know I'm not the only one on that, by a long shot. But so I digress. I'm setting up this space because I have a question or two, and I wanted a fresh-slate public venue, away from the scattershot of places I've written before and continue to write for. These questions arise out of the basic assumption that the course of human history--on the macro world-historical level down to the most micro, do-I-turn-right-or-left level--is unpredictable. I don't think this will serve as an astounding revelation to anyone. Now, this doesn't mean that there aren't certain patterns of behavior, certain structures, certain biological laws--or, in summation, certain governing forces that we can analyze and learn about, and thus from which we can derive predictive power. That is, of course, an aspect of social science's underlying project. No, what I'm saying is that even with the best anthropological analysis, the best empirical data sets, the fastest computers using the best emergence-based models, we can't predict--or, to say differently, we can't envision--the precise effects of any one action or set of actions.I've belabored this point to highlight the basic state of contradiction that planners operate within. The best of intentions can meld with a mess of historic circumstances to produce horror, and even with this idea in your head as an operating principle--which I'd wager is more often the case than not with planners in the post-high-modernist era of planning (we can debate how "post" we are, of course)--yeah, even with this in your head, the force of the idea isn't exactly rendered moot. But viewed differently, this unpredictability can be a boon, because unexpected conjunctions also give rise to human innovation (if you'll pardon the questionable progress laden in that word), in ideas, art, technology, the economy, and so on.
What I want to explore here, then, is the meeting point of planning and the unexpected, and to explore how better forms of the former can create a more fertile ground for hopefully constructive forms of the latter. I don't really believe in "best practices" (for whom, you know?), but incomplete, situational tool kits of what work. So I suppose you, reader, could view this blog as an exercise in expanding my own personal tool kit, drawing from the research and theoretical work of others to cobble together methods and practical devices to help me surf planning's contradictions. We'll see, of course, what happens from here.
