Planning with difference - challenges, perspectives and practices

PhD Course Description - SPL-8004 Planning and Culture

Program

Registration Extended dead line: May 1 (conference only, not PhD course) 

Accomodation

Immigration, mobility and globalisation are three headwords for understanding the emerging multicultural and fragmented societies. Also changes in rural and urban life forms due to changes in production systems have given us a much more diverse and complex society. This represents new challenges and opportunities for urban and regional planning – both substantial and procedural. How do we understand and practice planning in a highly diversified society? How do we approach multiple epistemologies in producing knowledge to inform planning processes? How do planners and planning systems cope with these complex social and cultural situations? How do we create more inclusive urban spaces? How may planning be a tool for opening up for multicultural and diverse spaces of coexistence?

A weakness in several approaches to planning is its cultural blindness and the tendency to treat culture as a descriptive term. Culture and cultural differences is often stereotyped or taken at face value, without questioning the roots of dominance related to class, gender & colonial heritage that are underlying dimensions in today’s cultural differences. Lately the focus on planning as relational, understanding planning as a dynamic web of flows and relations could be seen as a more relevant response. To bring about dialogue between ethnic majorities and minorities, between private sector and public sector affiliated people is more complex than communicative planning theory until now has paid attention to. We need to think “beyond dichotomies” such as us/them, our/their culture, tolerance/integration etc. Issues about participation from civil society must handle the new cultural diversity and thus challenge different planning rationalities.

In this international Symposium researchers and PhD students within the field of planning are invited to reflect upon the relation between planning and difference. This Symposium aim at exploring the various approaches, dimensions and practices of planning and difference. It is an invitation to explore also the more interpretive, narrative and discursive approaches to planning.

PROGRAM

Thursday May 31

11.00: Introduction

11.15- 12.00: The treatment of place and culture in the planning tradition.
Professor Emeritus Patsy Healey, Newcastle University, GB.

12.00: Lunch

13.00-14.00: Differences between communicative planning theory and neo-liberalism: What is neo-liberal urban planning, and how can planners serve dialogical values instead? Professor Tore Sager, NTNU, Trondheim, Norway

14.00: Coffee break

14.30- 17.00: Paper presentation in parallel sessions

Friday June 1

09.15-11.00: Handling conflicts in compact cities. Urban planning and sustainable development.
Professor Inger Lise Saglie, University of Life Sciences. Ås, Norway

11.00: Coffee break

11.15-13.00: Contested planning practices
Simon Abram, Reader at Leeds Metropolitan University

13.00-14.00: Lunch

14.15: Methodologies in place analyses.
Associate Professor Anniken Førde, University of Tromsø

15.00-17.00: Paper presentations in parallel sessions

19.00: Social program

Saturday June 2

09.15-11.00: Pragmatism, value choices and compromises.
Patsy Healey

11.15: Coffee break

11.30: Dealing with difference: New challenges for planning
Associate professor John Pløger, Roskilde University, Denmark

12.30: Lunch

13.30: Fluid Planning; Metaphors, Ontologies and Practices
Professor Torill Nyseth, University of Tromsø

14.30:  Summing up

15.00: End

REGISTRATION

Registration form in the right margin

Registration dead line: May 1
Abstract dead line (for PhD students attending the course): April 1
Full paper dead line: May 15 

There is room for abstracts in the registration form, while the full paper
is to be sent to Torill Nyseth

Registration fee: 1500,- NOK. PhD students attending with paper: 500,- NOK (meals)

To be paid to:
Account number 47141001228,
Universitetet i Tromsø.
Bank: Sparebank 1 Nord-Norge
Boks 6800,
9298 Tromsø
Use registration number: 331500400122

For participants without a Norwegian bank account:
BIC/Swift: SNOWNO22
IBAN: NO 81 47141001228

ACCOMODATION

At Visit Tromsø you can find hotel accomodation at different price rates.