Local Cultures – Global Spaces

Abstract

This paper presents a critical point of view of the contemporary urban planning system. Looking back, human settlements at the agriculture-revolution developed as “bottom-up” planning, alternating during the Industrial-revolution to a “top-down” planning. Historically, urban planning defined as the dynamic between the needs and the essence of development. While the present-day identified as part of the Data-Revolution still the current process reveals disconnection between the city planner and the user. Surprisingly, the planning act includes a lot of layers but not a social-human perspective. The paper claims for an urban essence which is not only a functional term but basically contains and constructs social human identity. As part of the applied proposal the research integrates new contemporary ways of interpretation to the classical planning definitions, in a sociological perspective. Using professional and users’ interviews as well as study case test-mapping data, the research offers a new planning tool, the “human parameter mapping” that creates a human-social data map that reflects city-user relations. This mapping tool, together with existing tools, enables the identification of needs and values, and promotes a fundamental change to the existing urban planning process. The new planning process proposed in the paper (bottom-up) is highly sensitive to changes in urban renewal, both in the transparency of the data (for the individual and the planners) and in social-environmental value planning. The new process creates reciprocity and dependence between the city and the user and they react to each other as one holistic system.