Pub Date : 2020-06-26DOI: 10.4337/9781786439185.00006
G. D. Roo
You have to know about it before you can see it. And only when you realize what it is, does it gain meaning. This also applies to concepts such as ‘complexity’. Complexity is everywhere, it is part of nature and culture and therefore an intrinsic part of our existence. Only, you must want to see it. And to be able to see it you have to know . . . Complexity is about ‘becoming’ and a world in flow. In a world in flow, change and transformation are constant factors. Complexity is therefore at odds with the world of ‘being’; fixed, frozen and unchangeable because it ‘is’. This idea of an unchanging world of ‘being’ is a perspective on reality that for more than 2000 years has dominated the philosophical and scientific debates in the West. As a result, it has become an almost insurmountable part of ourselves. Such a deeply grounded image of reality, which has been passed down from generation to generation, cannot simply be discarded. The world of ‘being’ reached its climax in the twentieth century, in which all-encompassing perspectives on our world, such as modernism, functionalism and materialism, were adhered to. The underlying science is based on certainty, causality and objectivity. This science has unmistakably produced knowledge, understanding and social progress. Undeniably, it also makes us blind to other realities, including a world in flow. How is it possible that science and society allow themselves to be framed by a world that ‘is’, while being blind to the rise and fall, trends and crises around us despite these being clearly visible? And how is it possible that the coming and going of evolution and revolution are dismissed as anomalies? Is it so difficult to imagine a world in which the evolutionary and revolutionary processes of change are pre-eminent? Apparently, it is . . . Spatial planning is the science of ‘purposeful interventions’ and traditionally intended to solve problems while controlling, managing and creating the daily environment. Planning is not the most obvious discipline to promote an alternative perspective on reality, which is about ‘complexity’, presenting a world of ‘becoming’ in which autonomous and spontaneous change are the leading processes. At first glance, there seems to be a conflict between what is envisaged with complexity and what planning stands for. A man-made, planned reality is miles away from a reality of autonomous and spontaneous change. Planning and complexity seem to represent an oxymoron. On the other hand, it was precisely the planning discipline that in the early 1990s dared to break ties with the positivist, exact and quantitative sciences. A genuine paradigm shift took place: the ‘communicative turn’ in planning. The communicative paradigm was inspired by Habermas’ philosophy of ‘communicative action’ (1981), which stressed that meaning lies not only in facts, but also in mental constructions of reality that people
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Pub Date : 2020-06-26DOI: 10.4337/9781786439185.00021
Claudia Yamu, A. Nes
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