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The cultural reinvention of planning

Culture is expanding and has greater weight and explanatory potential in our culturalised age. Following the earlier literature of the ???cultural turn???, culture is now perceived as ubiquitous in society, the economy, and theory, and with the capacity to intervene on itself. Further, it may be seen to characterise both the nature and the progressive potential of a range of contemporary social and intellectual technologies such as planning, education, health, and organisational development. While this general process of ???culturalisation??? proceeds apace, the capacity of culture to act as an organising idea and category for sectors such as planning is still largely underdeveloped, most particularly in planning itself. A new Culturised Model for planning that is reflexive and ethical is proposed. Differentiated from the trend to culturalisation and its association with commodification, ???culturisation??? has true sustainable and transformational potential. The thesis consists of three main parts ??? each of three chapters - with a substantial scenesetting Introduction and a Conclusion. Part One examines culture and planning, Part Two develops a new Culturised Model for planning, and Part Three illustrates the Model. In Part One the grounds of culturisation are prepared by: 1) describing our culturalised age; 2) developing a new positionality for planning; 3) presenting a critical analysis of neomodern and postmodern planning theory; and 4) outlining an original history of culture and planning in the 20th and 21st centuries. In Part Two a practical Culturised Model for planning is developed, based on the three elements of 1) principles for culture; 2) a planner???s ???literacy trinity???; and 3) a methodology. The Model employs an integrated concept of culture and an integrated approach to research, and is applicable to the full spectrum of planning forms, scales and purposes. In Part Three the Culturised Model is illustrated in principle through a range of global examples, and in specific terms, for two major Australian places. The first study illustrates culture and urban and regional planning for metropolitan Sydney, NSW, at four nested geographical scales. The second illustrates strategic planning in its aspatial form for the Port Arthur Historic Site, in Tasmania, a major international convict heritage site proposed for UNESCO World Heritage listing. The thesis represents an original multi-dimensional synthesis on culture and planning. It also presents a ???breakthrough??? paradigm for the sustainable integration of culture in planning, previously only foreshadowed in the planning literature, and developed in randomised practices internationally.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/215669
Date January 2005
CreatorsYoung, Gregory, Built Environment, Faculty of Built Environment, UNSW
PublisherAwarded by:University of New South Wales. Built Environment
Source SetsAustraliasian Digital Theses Program
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
RightsCopyright Gregory Young, http://unsworks.unsw.edu.au/copyright

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