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Strategic Spatial Planning and Urban Transition: Revaluing Planning and Locating Sustainability Trajectories

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Urban Sustainability Transitions

Part of the book series: Theory and Practice of Urban Sustainability Transitions ((TPUST))

Abstract

Despite often stated sustainability goals, much of traditional planning practice remains concerned with facilitating the market and maintaining the status quo rather than challenging and transforming it. In this chapter, the planning system is the focus of a sociotechnical systems perspective analysis. This chapter examines strategic spatial planning at regional and city scales through the lens of sociotechnical transitions concepts to provide insight into the role and capacity of spatial plans and planning processes to challenge the status quo and achieve sustainable urban transitions. We present two cases of strategic planning during the first decade of the 2000s at a national and metropolitan scale in Ireland and Melbourne (Australia), respectively – two cases where strategic spatial plans aimed to achieve sustainable land-use outcomes but where planning failed to act as a brake on booming housing markets and related urban sprawl. This chapter also reflects on the lessons from spatial planning processes to inform sociotechnical systems research pointing to the need to incorporate conceptualisations of space, place and context-specific governance in problem framing particularly in considering the challenges of long-term sustainable land-use transitions. We query whether the prevailing planning system common in most developed contexts can be treated as a stable regime, and if so, what benefit this perspective may provide to planning practitioners.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Sustainability transitions are inherently political, and as encompassing, long-term processes of multiple changes in sociotechnical systems, they require broad understandings of the political (Avelino et al. 2016).

  2. 2.

    The papers by Ghavami et al. (2016) and Merrie and Olsson (2014) provide deeper insight into the agency of planners for urban land use planning and marine spatial planning contexts, respectively.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Geography, School of Natural Sciences and Psychology, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, L3 3AF, UK

    John E. Morrissey

  2. Centre for Urban Research, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia

    Susie Moloney

  3. Sustainable Building Innovation Laboratory, School of Property, Construction and Project Management, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia

    Trivess Moore

Authors
  1. John E. Morrissey
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  2. Susie Moloney
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  3. Trivess Moore
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to John E. Morrissey .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Property, Construction and Project Management, RMIT University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    Trivess Moore

  2. Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute and Melbourne School of Design, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    Fjalar de Haan

  3. College of Design and Social Context, RMIT University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    Ralph Horne

  4. Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute and Melbourne School of Design, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    Brendan James Gleeson

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Morrissey, J.E., Moloney, S., Moore, T. (2018). Strategic Spatial Planning and Urban Transition: Revaluing Planning and Locating Sustainability Trajectories. In: Moore, T., de Haan, F., Horne, R., Gleeson, B. (eds) Urban Sustainability Transitions . Theory and Practice of Urban Sustainability Transitions. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-4792-3_4

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