Summary literature Urban Future Lab
Contents
Week 1: Friedmann (2000). The Good City: In Defense of Utopian Thinking.........................................3
Week 1: Broman, Goran Ingvar and Karl-Hendrik Robert (2017). A framework for strategic sustainable
development..........................................................................................................................................9
Summary...........................................................................................................................................9
Further explanation.........................................................................................................................13
Week 1: Wiek, Arnim and David Iwaniec (2014). Quality criteria for visions and visioning in
sustainability science............................................................................................................................17
Week 2: Aumann (1985). What is Game Theory trying to accomplish?...............................................26
Week 2: Samsura, van der Krabben, van Deemen (2010). A grame theory approach to the analysis of
land and property development processes..........................................................................................31
Week 2: John Bryson (1988). Strategic planning: Big wins and small wins...........................................41
1. Introduction.................................................................................................................................41
2. Strategic Planning Process...........................................................................................................41
3. Big Wins and Small Wins..............................................................................................................43
4. Conclusion...................................................................................................................................44
Week 3: Te Brömmelstroet (2013). Preference of planning support systems: What is it, and how do
we report on it?....................................................................................................................................45
Week 3: Pelzer & Geertman (2014). Planning support systems and interdisciplinary learning............52
Week 4: Geurts, Richard and Vermeulen (2007). Policy Gaming for Strategy and Change..................58
Week 4: Gugerell, Zuidema (2017). Gaming for the energy transition. Experimenting and learning in
co-designing a serious game prototype................................................................................................69
Abstract................................................................................................................................................69
1. Introduction......................................................................................................................................69
2. Co-designing games as learning and experimentation environments..............................................70
2.1 Co-design processes..................................................................................................................70
2.2 Environment for learning and experimenting............................................................................71
3 Co-design process and methods........................................................................................................72
3.1 Conceptual phase......................................................................................................................72
3.2 Exploratory co-design phase......................................................................................................72
4 Finding and discussion.......................................................................................................................73
4.1 Embedding in the regional context............................................................................................73
4.2 Consolidated civic learning in co-design processes...................................................................74
,5 Conclusion.........................................................................................................................................74
Week 5: Karl-Hendrik Robèrt, Sven Borén, Hendrik Ny, Göran Broman (2017). A strategic approach to
sustainable transport system development – Part 1: attempting a generic community planning
process model......................................................................................................................................76
Week 5: Hand-out of professor Robèrt. A Powerpoint with additional explanatory text: ‘ABC of
Strategic Sustainable Development for Radboud.................................................................................84
Week 6: Blog: Bucknell (2019). Learning from Susan Fainstein: Do planners have a responsibility to
fight for social equity?........................................................................................................................103
Week 6: Davoudi, Brooks (2014). When does unequal become unfair? Judging claims of
environmental injustice......................................................................................................................106
Week 6: Maarten Hajer & Wytske Versteeg (2019). Imagining the post-fossil city: why is it so difficult
to think of new possible worlds?........................................................................................................113
Abstract..............................................................................................................................................113
1. Introduction....................................................................................................................................113
2. Imagining through discourse..........................................................................................................114
3. The concept of ‘Techniques of Futuring.........................................................................................115
4. Imagination as politics....................................................................................................................117
5. The role of the academy: Towards a transdisciplinary practice......................................................118
6. Conclusion......................................................................................................................................119
,Week 1: Friedmann (2000). The Good City: In Defense
of Utopian Thinking
Aim of the paper
The paper is about so called utopian thinking, which can be seen as a political discourse
which changes over time, which also change our view on what a 'good city' entails. The
author also proposes a number of pillars to what a good city should include.
Conclusion
The good city, as I imagine it, has its foundations in human flourishing and multipli/city. Four pillars
provide for its material foundations: housing, affordable health care, adequately remunerated work
and adequate social provision.
The protagonist of my visioning is an autonomous, self-organizing civil society, active in making
claims, resisting and struggling on behalf of the good city within a framework of democratic
institutions. Utopian thinking is an ongoing, time-binding discourse intended to inform our striving. It
is no more than that, but also nothing less.
Key terms
Utopian Thinking = The capacity to imagine a future that departs significantly from what we know to
be a general condition in the present. Most of the time presenting the ‘best image’ of the future, can
be unrealistic.
Summary
The utopian Impulse
Utopian thinking: the capacity to imagine a future that departs significantly from what we know to be
a general condition in the present. It is a way of breaking through the barriers of convention into a
sphere of the imagination where many things beyond our everyday experience become feasible. All
of us have this ability, which is inherent in human nature, because human beings are insufficiently
programmed for the future. We need a constructive imagination that we can variously use for
creating fictive worlds.
There are other ways of deploying this capacity than in the imagining of utopias. Religion is one of
them, and for many people religious faith satisfies their thirst for meaning. Belief in hegemonic
ideologies is a secular counterpart to religion. American ideology, repeated ad nauseam by our
leaders and reinforced by the media, incorporates the idea of bliss in a consumer society, so that a
better world is seen to be chiefly one of greater material affluence for individuals This is the ideology
we are selling around the world. Along with belief in a never-ending abundance of material goods, it
includes the rhetoric of representative democracy, and blind trust in the powers of technology to
overcome whatever problems that might be encountered along the way to a ‘free society’.
Beyond the alternative constructions of religion, ideology and nationalism, there are many good
reasons why we might wish to engage utopian thinking. For some of us, it is merely an amusing
pastime. For others it serves as a veiled critique of present-day evils.
But most important of all, utopian thinking can help us choose a path into the future that we believe
is justified, because its concrete imagery is informed by values which are precious to us. Utopian
thinking has two moments that are inextricably connected: critique and constructive vision. The
critique is of certain aspects of our present condition: injustices, oppression, ecological devastation.
It is precisely an enumeration of these ‘evils’, however, that implies a code of moral values that is
being violated. The code may not be written out, or it may merely be suggested symbolically by
, invoking slogans such as ‘freedom’, ‘equality’, ‘solidarity’. But it is there nonetheless. The moral
outrage over an injustice implies that we have a sense, however inarticulate, of justice. And so on, for
each of our terms of condemnation.
Differences about social justice are ultimately political, not philosophical arguments. In any event,
they are unavoidable, because if injustice is to be corrected (or, for that matter, any other ‘evil’), we
will need the concrete imagination of utopian thinking to propose steps that would bring us closer to
a world we would consider ‘just’.
Such visionings are always debatable, both in their own terms and when measured against
alternative proposals. That is why I call them political. Where the uncensored public expression of
opinions is allowed, they should become the substance of political argument. Utopian thinking is thus
not at all about fairytales but about genuine futures around which political coalitions may be built.
There are always limitations on purposive action — of leadership, power, resources, knowledge. But
if we begin with these limitations rather than with images of the desirable future, we may never
arrive at utopian constructs with the power to generate the passion necessary for a social movement
that might bring us a few steps closer to the vision they embody.
The utopian tradition in planning
With considerations of this sort, we find ourselves back on the familiar ground of planning. City and
regional planning (or spatial planning) has an enduring tradition of utopian thought.
In a recent essay, Susan Fainstein poses the question of whether we can make the cities we want
(Fainstein, 1999). In her account, the important values that should inform our thinking about cities
include material equality, cultural diversity, democratic participation and ecological sustainability in a
metropolitan milieu.
The central focus of radical planning in this sense is political action by organized groups within civil
society (which is the more familiar ‘community’ of planning discourse but situated in a different
theoretical setting). Its radicalism derives from actions that, with or without and even against the
state, are aimed at universal emancipation. ‘A key principle in radical, transformative practice’, I
wrote, ‘is that no group can be completely free until freedom [from oppression] has been achieved
for every group. Thus, the struggle for emancipation leads to results that will always be partial and
contradictory, until the final and possibly utopian goal of a free humanity is reached’. I then went on
to examine what planners, who opt for emancipatory struggles, do. Among the many things I
considered are elaborating a hard-hitting critical analysis of existing conditions; assisting in the
mobilization of communities to rectify these conditions; assisting in devising appropriate strategies of
struggle; refining the technical aspects of transformative solutions; facilitating social learning from
radical practice; mediating between the mobilized community and the state; helping to ensure the
widest possible participation of community members in all phases of the struggle; helping to rethink
the group’s course of action in the light of new understandings; and becoming personally involved in
transformative practice. I wanted it to be understood that utopian thinking, at least so far as planners
are concerned, is historically grounded in specific emancipatory struggles.
Rather than talk about political struggles to resist specific forms of oppression, my aim is to delineate
some elements for a positive vision of the ‘good city’.
Fifty years from now, the world’s urban population will be roughly double the existing numbers of 2.9
billion. We can thus look ahead to a historically unprecedented age of city-building. And city-builders
need not only blueprints for their work, but guiding, normative images.
Imagining the good city 1: theoretical considerations
Before proceeding, however, some preliminaries must be considered. First, in setting out an account
of the good city, whose city are we talking about? Can we legitimately assume the possibility of a
Contents
Week 1: Friedmann (2000). The Good City: In Defense of Utopian Thinking.........................................3
Week 1: Broman, Goran Ingvar and Karl-Hendrik Robert (2017). A framework for strategic sustainable
development..........................................................................................................................................9
Summary...........................................................................................................................................9
Further explanation.........................................................................................................................13
Week 1: Wiek, Arnim and David Iwaniec (2014). Quality criteria for visions and visioning in
sustainability science............................................................................................................................17
Week 2: Aumann (1985). What is Game Theory trying to accomplish?...............................................26
Week 2: Samsura, van der Krabben, van Deemen (2010). A grame theory approach to the analysis of
land and property development processes..........................................................................................31
Week 2: John Bryson (1988). Strategic planning: Big wins and small wins...........................................41
1. Introduction.................................................................................................................................41
2. Strategic Planning Process...........................................................................................................41
3. Big Wins and Small Wins..............................................................................................................43
4. Conclusion...................................................................................................................................44
Week 3: Te Brömmelstroet (2013). Preference of planning support systems: What is it, and how do
we report on it?....................................................................................................................................45
Week 3: Pelzer & Geertman (2014). Planning support systems and interdisciplinary learning............52
Week 4: Geurts, Richard and Vermeulen (2007). Policy Gaming for Strategy and Change..................58
Week 4: Gugerell, Zuidema (2017). Gaming for the energy transition. Experimenting and learning in
co-designing a serious game prototype................................................................................................69
Abstract................................................................................................................................................69
1. Introduction......................................................................................................................................69
2. Co-designing games as learning and experimentation environments..............................................70
2.1 Co-design processes..................................................................................................................70
2.2 Environment for learning and experimenting............................................................................71
3 Co-design process and methods........................................................................................................72
3.1 Conceptual phase......................................................................................................................72
3.2 Exploratory co-design phase......................................................................................................72
4 Finding and discussion.......................................................................................................................73
4.1 Embedding in the regional context............................................................................................73
4.2 Consolidated civic learning in co-design processes...................................................................74
,5 Conclusion.........................................................................................................................................74
Week 5: Karl-Hendrik Robèrt, Sven Borén, Hendrik Ny, Göran Broman (2017). A strategic approach to
sustainable transport system development – Part 1: attempting a generic community planning
process model......................................................................................................................................76
Week 5: Hand-out of professor Robèrt. A Powerpoint with additional explanatory text: ‘ABC of
Strategic Sustainable Development for Radboud.................................................................................84
Week 6: Blog: Bucknell (2019). Learning from Susan Fainstein: Do planners have a responsibility to
fight for social equity?........................................................................................................................103
Week 6: Davoudi, Brooks (2014). When does unequal become unfair? Judging claims of
environmental injustice......................................................................................................................106
Week 6: Maarten Hajer & Wytske Versteeg (2019). Imagining the post-fossil city: why is it so difficult
to think of new possible worlds?........................................................................................................113
Abstract..............................................................................................................................................113
1. Introduction....................................................................................................................................113
2. Imagining through discourse..........................................................................................................114
3. The concept of ‘Techniques of Futuring.........................................................................................115
4. Imagination as politics....................................................................................................................117
5. The role of the academy: Towards a transdisciplinary practice......................................................118
6. Conclusion......................................................................................................................................119
,Week 1: Friedmann (2000). The Good City: In Defense
of Utopian Thinking
Aim of the paper
The paper is about so called utopian thinking, which can be seen as a political discourse
which changes over time, which also change our view on what a 'good city' entails. The
author also proposes a number of pillars to what a good city should include.
Conclusion
The good city, as I imagine it, has its foundations in human flourishing and multipli/city. Four pillars
provide for its material foundations: housing, affordable health care, adequately remunerated work
and adequate social provision.
The protagonist of my visioning is an autonomous, self-organizing civil society, active in making
claims, resisting and struggling on behalf of the good city within a framework of democratic
institutions. Utopian thinking is an ongoing, time-binding discourse intended to inform our striving. It
is no more than that, but also nothing less.
Key terms
Utopian Thinking = The capacity to imagine a future that departs significantly from what we know to
be a general condition in the present. Most of the time presenting the ‘best image’ of the future, can
be unrealistic.
Summary
The utopian Impulse
Utopian thinking: the capacity to imagine a future that departs significantly from what we know to be
a general condition in the present. It is a way of breaking through the barriers of convention into a
sphere of the imagination where many things beyond our everyday experience become feasible. All
of us have this ability, which is inherent in human nature, because human beings are insufficiently
programmed for the future. We need a constructive imagination that we can variously use for
creating fictive worlds.
There are other ways of deploying this capacity than in the imagining of utopias. Religion is one of
them, and for many people religious faith satisfies their thirst for meaning. Belief in hegemonic
ideologies is a secular counterpart to religion. American ideology, repeated ad nauseam by our
leaders and reinforced by the media, incorporates the idea of bliss in a consumer society, so that a
better world is seen to be chiefly one of greater material affluence for individuals This is the ideology
we are selling around the world. Along with belief in a never-ending abundance of material goods, it
includes the rhetoric of representative democracy, and blind trust in the powers of technology to
overcome whatever problems that might be encountered along the way to a ‘free society’.
Beyond the alternative constructions of religion, ideology and nationalism, there are many good
reasons why we might wish to engage utopian thinking. For some of us, it is merely an amusing
pastime. For others it serves as a veiled critique of present-day evils.
But most important of all, utopian thinking can help us choose a path into the future that we believe
is justified, because its concrete imagery is informed by values which are precious to us. Utopian
thinking has two moments that are inextricably connected: critique and constructive vision. The
critique is of certain aspects of our present condition: injustices, oppression, ecological devastation.
It is precisely an enumeration of these ‘evils’, however, that implies a code of moral values that is
being violated. The code may not be written out, or it may merely be suggested symbolically by
, invoking slogans such as ‘freedom’, ‘equality’, ‘solidarity’. But it is there nonetheless. The moral
outrage over an injustice implies that we have a sense, however inarticulate, of justice. And so on, for
each of our terms of condemnation.
Differences about social justice are ultimately political, not philosophical arguments. In any event,
they are unavoidable, because if injustice is to be corrected (or, for that matter, any other ‘evil’), we
will need the concrete imagination of utopian thinking to propose steps that would bring us closer to
a world we would consider ‘just’.
Such visionings are always debatable, both in their own terms and when measured against
alternative proposals. That is why I call them political. Where the uncensored public expression of
opinions is allowed, they should become the substance of political argument. Utopian thinking is thus
not at all about fairytales but about genuine futures around which political coalitions may be built.
There are always limitations on purposive action — of leadership, power, resources, knowledge. But
if we begin with these limitations rather than with images of the desirable future, we may never
arrive at utopian constructs with the power to generate the passion necessary for a social movement
that might bring us a few steps closer to the vision they embody.
The utopian tradition in planning
With considerations of this sort, we find ourselves back on the familiar ground of planning. City and
regional planning (or spatial planning) has an enduring tradition of utopian thought.
In a recent essay, Susan Fainstein poses the question of whether we can make the cities we want
(Fainstein, 1999). In her account, the important values that should inform our thinking about cities
include material equality, cultural diversity, democratic participation and ecological sustainability in a
metropolitan milieu.
The central focus of radical planning in this sense is political action by organized groups within civil
society (which is the more familiar ‘community’ of planning discourse but situated in a different
theoretical setting). Its radicalism derives from actions that, with or without and even against the
state, are aimed at universal emancipation. ‘A key principle in radical, transformative practice’, I
wrote, ‘is that no group can be completely free until freedom [from oppression] has been achieved
for every group. Thus, the struggle for emancipation leads to results that will always be partial and
contradictory, until the final and possibly utopian goal of a free humanity is reached’. I then went on
to examine what planners, who opt for emancipatory struggles, do. Among the many things I
considered are elaborating a hard-hitting critical analysis of existing conditions; assisting in the
mobilization of communities to rectify these conditions; assisting in devising appropriate strategies of
struggle; refining the technical aspects of transformative solutions; facilitating social learning from
radical practice; mediating between the mobilized community and the state; helping to ensure the
widest possible participation of community members in all phases of the struggle; helping to rethink
the group’s course of action in the light of new understandings; and becoming personally involved in
transformative practice. I wanted it to be understood that utopian thinking, at least so far as planners
are concerned, is historically grounded in specific emancipatory struggles.
Rather than talk about political struggles to resist specific forms of oppression, my aim is to delineate
some elements for a positive vision of the ‘good city’.
Fifty years from now, the world’s urban population will be roughly double the existing numbers of 2.9
billion. We can thus look ahead to a historically unprecedented age of city-building. And city-builders
need not only blueprints for their work, but guiding, normative images.
Imagining the good city 1: theoretical considerations
Before proceeding, however, some preliminaries must be considered. First, in setting out an account
of the good city, whose city are we talking about? Can we legitimately assume the possibility of a
