1st Edition

Creative Approaches to Planning and Local Development Insights from Small and Medium-Sized Towns in Europe

    280 Pages
    by Routledge

    280 Pages
    by Routledge

    This book project highlights creative approaches to planning and local development. The dynamic complexity, diversity and fluidity which characterize contemporary society represent challenges for planning and development endeavours. While research and policy work has extensively focused on large cities and on metropolitan regions, there has been relatively little work on ‘smaller places’.

    This book shows that if these new challenges affect all places and regions, small and medium-sized towns (SMSTs) are suffering many specific problems that call imperatively for the design and implementation of very imaginative, creative approaches to planning and local development. What could enhance creativity in local development and planning? Is it possible to talk about creative capacity building at the level of a town that might release imaginative and innovative activities? Under what local and non-local conditions is creativity being initiated and flourishing? What are the major obstacles and in what way can these be contained in order to safeguard pockets of creative action?

    Interdisciplinary and with case studies from France, Norway and other European countries, this volume presents a wide range of approaches and territorial contexts of small cities and towns in which spatial dynamics and the consequences of the city-region for urban planning theory and practice in Europe are highlighted, with a special focus on the challenges for - and understanding of - planning and development of SMSTs. It provides a significant body of critical, comparative and contextual perspectives on the quest for urban sustainability and resilience in SMSTs, therefore emphasizing collaborative and potentially innovative approaches that can be detected, but also the shortcomings, pitfalls and 'traps' that can lie behind the approaches aimed at concerting ecological, economic, and socio-cultural concerns, and the discourses promoting them.

    Introduction, (Christophe Demazière, Anniken Førde, Abdelillah Hamdouch, Torill Nyseth,
    José Serrano, Nils Aarsæther),
    Part I: Approaches to Planning and Local Development: Analytical Landmarks and Methodological Challenges, 1. Perspectives on Creative Planning and Local Development in SMSTs (Torill Nyseth, Abdelillah Hamdouch, Christophe Demazière, Nils Aarsaether, Anniken Forde, José Serrano), 2. Small and Medium-Sized Towns: A Research Subject at the Margins? (Christophe Demazière) , 3. Levers of Socio-Economic Development: Insights from European Small and Medium-Sized Towns (Abdelillah Hamdouch & Ksenija Banovac), 4. Governing Place Reinvention: The Quest for an Integrative Approach (Torill Nyseth & Anders Tønnesen), Part II: Can Place Transformation be Planned? Challenges to Creative Planning in SMST`s, 5. Creative Industries as a Base for Local Development: The Challenges of Planning for the Un-known (Anniken Førde & Britt Kramvig), 6. Innovative Actions for Local Development in Small and Medium-sized Towns: The Case of the Region Centre-Val de Loire in France (Christophe Demazière, Abdelillah Hamdouch & Ksenija Banovac), 7. Inter-Municipal Cooperation as a means of Creative Territorial Planning (Abdelillah Hamdouch & José Serrano), 8. Potential and Obstacles to Creative Planning in a Crisis Context: The Case of the City of Patras in Greece (Pavlos Delladetsima & J. Loukakis), 9. Planning for Site Conversion: The Fornebu Experiment (Nils Aarsæther & Halvard Vike), Part III: Social Innovation, Participatory Governance and Collective Learning as Levers of Creative Planning, 10. Envisioning the Appearance of New Urban Landscapes: Transformative City Dialogues in Nuuk (Kjerstin Uhre & Knut Eirik Dahl), 10. The Role of Social Cohesion Policies in the Local Development of SMSTs in France and Quebec (Abdelillah Hamdouch & Leïla Ghaffari), 12. A Reflexive, Critical and Committed Approach to Renewed Sustainable Planning in the Artic (Gisle Løken & Magdalena Haggärde), 13. Quality of Life and Attractiveness Sssues in SMSTs: Creative or Commonplace Policies? (Hélène Mainet & Jean-Charles Edouard), 14. Postscript: Pathways Towards a Critical and Comparative Approach to Creative Planning for Local Development (Nils Aarsaether, José Serrano, Anniken Forde, Christophe Demazière, Torill Nyseth, Abdelillah Hamdouch)

    Biography

    Abdelillah Hamdouch is Professor of Urban and Regional Planning and Head of the Spatial Planning & Environment Department at the Polytechnic School, University of Tours, France.

    Torill Nyseth is Professor of Community Planning at the University of Tromsø, the Arctic University of Norway.

    Christophe Demazière is Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the Spatial Planning & Environment Department of the Polytechnic School, University of Tours, France.

    Anniken Førde is Associate Professor of Community Planning at the University of Tromsø, the Arctic University of Norway.

    José Serrano is Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the Spatial Planning & Environment Department of the Polytechnic School, University of Tours, France.

    Nils Aarsæther is Professor of Community Planning at the University of Tromsø, the Arctic University of Norway.