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Framing the Planning Game: A Cognitive Understanding of the Planner’s Rationale in a Differentiated World

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Book cover Complexity, Cognition, Urban Planning and Design

Part of the book series: Springer Proceedings in Complexity ((SPCOM))

Abstract

“Framing the Planning Game ” discusses four cognitive features—realism, relativism, relationalism and idealism—and their mutually supportive relationships. When taken together, these help understand a multitude of realities: a factual reality (realism), an agreed reality (relativism) and combinations of these two realities (relationalism) between the two extremes. An endless variety of combinations results in a differentiated reality, allowing the planner to consider every situation generically as well as specifically. We call this a differentiated world view. These various realities can be seen as a-temporal as well as directly related to desired futures (idealism), meaning that a differentiated understanding of the ‘planning game’ includes transformations caused by both time and non-linear processes. Such a flexible imaginative frame enhances the planner’s vision, allowing them to embrace contemporary planning ideas while including a non-linear understanding of situations as inherently unstable and dynamic, a reality that all planners recognize but few integrate in planning.

Gert de Roo is also Visiting Professor at Newcastle University and President of Aesop, the Association of European Schools of Planning (2011–2015), the world’s leading association for planning schools.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Spatial Sciences, Department of Spatial Planning and Environment, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands

    Gert de Roo

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  1. Gert de Roo
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Correspondence to Gert de Roo .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Environmental simulation lab (ESLab), Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel

    Juval Portugali

  2. Department of Urbanism, Delft University of Technology, Delft, Zuid-Holland, The Netherlands

    Egbert Stolk

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de Roo, G. (2016). Framing the Planning Game: A Cognitive Understanding of the Planner’s Rationale in a Differentiated World. In: Portugali, J., Stolk, E. (eds) Complexity, Cognition, Urban Planning and Design. Springer Proceedings in Complexity. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32653-5_9

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