Spaces & Flows: Ninth International Conference on Urban and ExtraUrban Studies

Abstract

A lot of researchers and urban planners, especially in the global north, promote notions like participation, inclusion, and integration as the virtues for planning. But since such values require certain cultural and political structures to fit in to, this makes the practice of urban planning contested in the global south. This formulates how planning is taught in planning schools worldwide, which has led some planners in the global south to become political activists rather than technical planners in an attempt to change the top-down regimes they were raised in. Over the past decades, this paralyzed both, urban planners, and the planning process. Urban planning is not a science that is studied inside a laboratory, disconnected from reality. Rather it is the reality we all interact with and live in every day. This presentation aims to contextualize planning concepts through initiating a debate over how the different concepts like integration, inclusion, and participation are theorized and practiced differently between the east and west. This is done to redefine planning through a broader lens which in turn shall influence its theory and practice in the different contexts. This is investigated through a mixed methods research combining qualitative interviews with quantitative surveys to analyse planning practice in Germany and Egypt.