A new spring for urban planning? Will new technology change its fortunes and destiny?

The last time I had a conversation about urban planning and its virtues, I had a - rather small - group of faithful friends nodding and showing admiration for the great importance of what we do. And most others simply yawning away and secretly thinking that it is all obscure bureaucracy anyways.

What it is true, even for the most passionate urban strategists like me, is that the formal side of planning is a real dinosaur, or even a sloth: archaic and with a slow metabolism. Stubbornly pairing innovation down and burying it in procedures. Have you ever wondered how come that a football game (the European version) is still relying on the spot judgement of the referee, when all spectators and coaching teams can access instantaneous analytics? And millions of ££ are involved in those judgements?

Well then, urban planning is not alone! Lots of money is involved in construction, and all is based on old systems and outdated concepts.

A new spring

But this spring, some signs of sudden change are clearly showing. It feels like the sloth is suddenly coming out of sleep and there is movement at last! All this is quite exciting, and very humbling to see ideas and initiatives coming out in the light, from all corners of the planning world...

Maybe the time has really come for radical change at last.

Just last week, I took part in a great round table discussion organised by Future of London and @LisaTaylor, an independent policy network of adventurous local authorities of London and leading consultants. The discussion was what needs to change first in planning consent procedures to make sure people are better served and officers have more time for what matters. Obviously, plenty of ideas had to do with pushing technology beyond being just an online version of stacks of paper work. Working groups are being formed – with a firm mandate to look ahead but with feet on the ground. In two weeks, I will be at the Academy of Urbanism, also launching its own thinking group.

Just a month before, still in London, the Future Cities Catapult has achieved the first real successes in the Future of Planning campaign: their call for ideas for transforming planning attracted 87 responses from all corners of the planning world: local authorities, traditional planning companies, leading and small consultancies, tech firms and one developer! Unfortunately funding allowed only 10 ideas to progress – but still there is the determination to keep evolving the remaining ones too.

Outside of London, this month, the  World Council on City Data published a declaration aiming for better standardisation of urban metrics, an essential tool for comparative planning and learning from each other, but also a key tool for performance based future planning.

Next week in Hannover (Germany) the International Society of City and Regional Planners International Society of City and Regional Planners (a knowledge sharing group of which I am a proud member) hosts a debate: Beyond Smart Cities - Towards Smart Urbanism focused on how cities can use technology to develop more effective strategies, rather than being dictated by it. The event will be followed in October by the annual conference in Portland, Oregon on Smart Communities.

The verdict

Well, this spring is really promising – like a slow wake up from slumber. The most encouraging thing is that it is not just the professionals waking up, it is also the local authorities that want something more and better.

There is no doubt now that technology can be used to do better things in planning, and there is a nagging impression that change has happened already, with a variety of applications to resolve single issues: an online portal to upload planning information, PDFs of policy documents available on line, internet based consultation webpage and so on. But the real transformative change is about to come.

I strongly believe that the change has the potential to be profound and at the very foundation of the role of planning. The key question is: will it be organic and progressive, coming nearly by stealth? Or there will be great innovator cities that will experiment and bring the future forward to today?

This will only happen if cities are willing to look at one or two challenges at the time, and seek ideas to resolve them in a new way as the foundation of a new line of thought – a new creation for urban planning.

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Martina Juvara is the director of urban strategy company URBAN Silent and a passionate innovation explorer