The Ancestry of Regional Spatial Planning: A Planner’s Look at History

258 Pages·2019·3.88 MB·English

by  Louis C. Wassenhoven

Louis C. Wassenhoven
The Ancestry
of Regional
Spatial Planning
A Planner’s Look at History
The Ancestry of Regional Spatial Planning
Louis C. Wassenhoven
The Ancestry of Regional
Spatial Planning
A Planner’s Look at History
Louis C. Wassenhoven
Athens, Greece
ISBN 978-3-319-96994-7 ISBN 978-3-319-96995-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96995-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018953777
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To my daughter Maria-Evdokia
Foreword
This book looks to historically explore and unravel from the perspective of the first
decades after the Second World War some key ingredients of present day theories
and practice of what is known in the Anglo Saxon world as Regional Spatial
Planning or in Francophone countries as L’aménagement du Territoire Régional.
Contrary to established views, the author – Professor Louis Wassenhoven – argues
that the roots of regional spatial planning may be traced back to long before the
twentieth century. On this basis, he contends regional spatial planning is entitled to
have its own history, as in the case of urban planning, which the planning literature
has so far neglected to provide, and looks to his book offering a contribution to this.
I have been mindful in my preparation of this contribution of the views presented
by Carl Shan, co-author of Decision-Science Handbook (2015)1, who suggests that
essentially there are three main purposes of a Foreword to a book: to establish the
importance of the publication relative to others, to establish the credibility of the
author(s), and to briefly explain the value of the book to the reader. I have also been
mindful that where a Foreword is written by a person that has had past interactions
with the author (as in my case), and some association with the theme of the publica-
tion, it is beneficial these relationships be explained to better contextualise the
Foreword.
In light of the above, I wish to mention that I had the great privilege of having
Professor Louis Wassenhoven as an academic colleague and friend when a lecturer
at the Development Planning Unit (DPU) at University College London (UCL)
from 1976 to 1984. Sharing a common Greek heritage and with us both very inter-
ested in urban and regional planning in Europe and in the developing world, we
retained contact intermittently over the decades after each of us left the DPU: he in
1983 (to take up the post of Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the
University of Athens) and I in 1984 (to return to international consultancy practice,
1 Carl Shan, William Chen, Henry Wang and Max Song (2015) The Data Science Handbook:
Advice and Insights from 25 Amazing Data Scientists Paperback, The Data Science Bookshelf,
New York
vii
viii Foreword
before going back to academia in 1986 at the University of Hong Kong, and subse-
quently to UCL in 1998).
Professor Wassenhoven’s academic credentials and professional advisory and
research roles in architecture and spatial planning make him eminently qualified to
write the book for which this Foreword has been written. He and I have been fishing
in the same intellectual and professional waters for some decades now, albeit from
different river banks/coasts so to speak. For while my writing, professional practice
and research have predominantly focused in the past on the role of transport and
infrastructure in moulding cities, regions and nations in the developing world, since
returning to UCL in 1998, I have become much more engaged in European contexts.
As Director of an international research team based at the OMEGA Centre, UCL, I
helped critically examine the planning and appraisal of some 30 mega transport
projects (MTPs) in ten countries of the developed world of which six were European.
An important lesson of this research (see OMEGA Centre, 2012)2 that particularly
resonates with the thesis and conclusions of Professor Wassenhoven’s book con-
cerns the identification of the critical significance of the “Power of Context’ on
decision-making in the planning and appraisal of major transport infrastructure
projects and corridors that traverse cities, regions, nations and sometimes even
international borders. Such investments, it was found, spawn impacts (both intended
and unintended) that all too often dramatically alter the territories, communities and
economies they were intended to serve.
The term “power of context” here, it should be explained, alludes to the spatial,
political, administrative, technological and/or cultural changes that over time his-
torically emerge, are released, and/or are exerted on a particular locality/region/
nation of which many are directly or indirectly alluded to in Professor Wassenhoven’s
book. Driven by a variety of forces and dynamics (some new and some old) these
generate new contexts that inevitably impact decision-making environments and
outcomes of major projects and the territories they traverse and serve. Drawn from
the narratives of numerous senior stakeholders, the OMEGA Centre case study
research concluded that “context awareness” and “sensitivity to context” on the part
of project decision makers are vital to the successful planning, appraisal and deliv-
ery of MTPs, as indeed they are also in the case of the suitable treatment of their
contextual risks, uncertainties and complexities. Framing these conclusions in the
analytical terms offered by Professor Wassenhoven’s book offers a refreshing new
insight and understanding of the OMEGA Centre work. I am convinced that this
finding is not exclusive to an international examination of MTPs as agents of change
of the kind undertaken at UCL and may be found elsewhere in many other planning
studies.
Given the above, and my familiarity with academic and professional writing
regarding the theories and practice of regional spatial planning, I can without hesita-
tion confirm that the perspective adopted by Professor Wassenhoven in his book is
2 OMEGA Centre (2012) Mega Projects: Executive Summary – Lessons for Decision-makers from
an Analysis of Selected Large-Scale Transport Infrastructure Projects, OMEGA Centre, Bartlett
School of Planning, University College London, London
Foreword ix
not only unique but invaluable to expanding insights into the history, development
and future of regional spatial planning. As far as I am aware, the book stands alone
in the field. For while I can make mention of excellent work in the history of urban
planning, such as for example the seminal writings of Anthony Sutcliffe (1981)3 and
the subsequent work of Josef Konvitz (1985),4 neither provide the kind of intriguing
and innovative analysis offered by Professor Wassenhoven of the history/origins of
regional spatial planning. In this sense alone, his book is invaluable. The author
should be congratulated on his efforts. Being a pioneering (and lonely) contribution
to the field, however, Professor Wassenhoven’s publication is by the author’s own
admission a partial analysis that warrants further development and review, and will
no doubt attract challenges and debate that hopefully will further progress much
thinking and practice in the field.
Director of OMEGA Centre, Bartlett School of Planning Harry T. Dimitriou
University College London,
London, UK
3 Anthony Sutcliffe (1981) The History of Urban and Regional Planning: An annotated bibliogra-
phy, Mansell, London
4 Josef Konvitz (1985) The Urban Millennium: the city-building process from the early middle ages
to the present, Southern Illinois University, Chicago
Preface
After several years of teaching, research and consultancy work on various aspects of
regional planning, especially its spatial dimension, I realized that its roots had been
totally ignored in the literature of planning history. My parallel study of history, as
an amateur, helped me to discover that a great deal of the action of states in antiq-
uity, the middle ages and the modern era, was in fact changing social and territorial
geography, as modern regional spatial planning does. It is not labelled “planning”
but that was what it amounted to. State action was undertaken by a variety of deci-
sion makers and made use of more or less the same instruments familiar to us today:
city-building, land use change, infrastructures, opening of trade routes, or exploita-
tion of natural resources. Why is it then that planners and planning historians had
never turned their attention to this rich planning past? Why did they neglect it, in
sharp contrast to purely city and urban planning history? Having been taught from
very early on about the first regional planning experiments of the interwar and post-
Second World War periods, I decided that it was worth travelling back in history to
discover more about the ancestry of regional spatial planning. This book is the prod-
uct of this journey.
I am not an expert in historical studies and do not claim to be. I am also aware
of the fact that among the vast range of past examples which could lend support to
this argument I could single out only a small number, either because of my limited
knowledge of world history or due to the limitations of a single study. However, I
decided that I should not be deterred and that perhaps others might fill the gaps of
the broad picture I have tried to paint. I was convinced that a sort of history of
regional spatial planning deserved to be written and this effort would be appreci-
ated not just by planners and students of planning, but also by those keen to look
at a particular aspect of the past and those interested in a planner’s personal glance
at history.
During my work for the book I was greatly helped by Dr. Maria-Evdokia
Wassenhoven, particularly in terms of bibliographical assistance. Ioannis Daskalakis,
xi
xii Preface
geographer and planner, provided valuable support with the base maps, which I then
used to draw in-text sketch-maps to help the readers follow the presentation of his-
torical events. They both have my thanks, but the responsibility for any mistakes is
mine alone. Thanks are due to Margaret Deignan, Publishing Editor at Springer,
whose continued support was invaluable, and to Professor Harry T. Dimitriou for
providing the Foreword.
Athens, Greece Louis C. Wassenhoven