scholarly journals Planning by intentional communities: An understudied form of activist planning

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 449-471 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tore Sager
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
External Support ◽  
Planning Theory ◽  
Intentional Communities ◽  
Intentional Community ◽  
Planning Processes

The article is about intentional communities choosing a lifestyle outside the mainstream. It is explained why their planning is a sort of activist planning and often a case of radical planning. Planning by intentional communities differs from most activist neighbourhood planning by closer relation to a deviating worldview or ideology. The permanent insistence on non-conformity makes planning processes involving both government and intentional community cases of agonist planning. Activist planning theory has not studied how the thousands of dedicated activists living in intentional communities plan the development of their area. The article starts such an investigation by studying Svartlamon in Trondheim, Norway. It is an urban intentional community for social change, housing some 240 individuals. The activists have used planning strategically to mobilize and build external support, to frame the cooperation with the municipality and to establish a legal underpinning of the intentional community. The following questions are answered: Are the goals of the activists clearly reflected in the plans? How are the activists involved in the planning? Are the planning ideas of the intentional community well received by the municipality?

Intentional Communities of Practice, the Challenge of Interactivity

2012 ◽  
pp. 305-325 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron Wiatt Powell
Keyword(s):  
Online Learning ◽  
Social Interaction ◽  
Literature Review ◽  
Online Community ◽  
Cultural Barriers ◽  
Design And Technology ◽  
Intentional Communities ◽  
Intentional Community ◽  
Community Portal

This chapter examines the support of social interaction in a cooperative, situated online learning environment, and the cultural barriers that hinder such intention and interactivity. The findings of a literature review suggest that the greatest challenge to intentional Community of Practice (CoP) is a sense of interdependence among CoP members, the authenticity of the practice or purpose, and a trajectory for the CoP’s future. This case study attends to these issues with a cohort of practicing teachers. It explores an initiative to nurture CoP with cooperative projects and with the support of an online community portal. The case challenges CoP theory from an intentional or instructional standpoint, and informs design and technology in support of CoP.

Examining Change

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Whitney Sanford
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Social Problems ◽  
Raw Milk ◽  
Intentional Communities ◽  
Historical Overview ◽  
Risk Regulation ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Us ◽  
Social Tensions ◽  
Community Ties

Examining change explores some of the social tensions around aging, food, and consumerism that contemporary intentional communities address. The chapter offers a brief historical overview of social change in the US, but focuses on contemporary anxieties that have motivated the formation of more recent intentional communities. While independence is a critical American value, many people crave stronger community ties, especially as they age. Similarly, a newly food-aware U.S. public wants the freedom to experiment with foods such as raw milk, but demands the safety that accompanies regulated foods, demonstrating tensions between risk, regulation, and authority. This chapter outlines why some people want change and how intentional communities are testing solutions to social problems.

Participatory planning in a low-income neighbourhood in Ontario, Canada: building capacity and collaborative interactions for influence

2018 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 622-642 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tessa F Nasca ◽  
Nadine Changfoot ◽  
Stephen D Hill
Keyword(s):  
Low Income ◽  
City Planning ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
Participatory Planning ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Planning Theory ◽  
Collaborative Interactions ◽  
Quality Of Urban Life ◽  
Planning Processes ◽  
Planning Experts

AbstractThis research evaluated a community-led participatory planning process that sought to involve citizens who are often marginalized within planning processes. Participatory planning – which is theoretically informed by communicative planning theory – may shift the legacy of power and marginalization within planning processes and improve planning outcomes, foster social cohesion, and enhance the quality of urban life. The two-year Stewart Street Active Neighbourhoods Canada (ANC) project aimed to build capacity among residents of a low-income neighbourhood in Peterborough, Ontario and to influence City planning processes impacting the neighbourhood. The project, led by a community-based organization, GreenUP, fostered collaborative interactions between residents and planning experts and supported residents to build and leverage collective power within planning processes. The participatory planning approach applied in the Stewart Street ANC transformed – and at times unintentionally reproduced – inequitable power relations within the planning process. Importantly, we found that GreenUP was a vital power broker between marginalized residents and more formal power holders, and successfully supported residents to voice their collective visions within professionalized planning contexts.

scholarly journals The social and political realities of marine spatial planning: some land-based reflections

2014 ◽  
Vol 71 (7) ◽  
pp. 1535-1541 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sue Kidd ◽  
Dave Shaw
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Planning ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Planning Theory ◽  
Marine Spatial Planning ◽  
Planning Systems ◽  
Plan Implementation ◽  
Social Nature ◽  
Planning Processes

Abstract This paper highlights the value for marine spatial planning (MSP) of engaging with terrestrial planning theory and practice. It argues that the traditions of reflection, critique, and debate that are a feature of land-based planning can inform the development of richer theoretical underpinnings of MSP as well as MSP practice. The case is illustrated by tempering the view that MSP can be a rational planning process that can follow universal principles and steps by presenting an alternative perspective that sees MSP as a social and political process that is highly differentiated and place-specific. This perspective is discussed with reference to four examples. First, the paper considers why history, culture, and administrative context lead to significant differences in how planning systems are organized. Second, it highlights that planning systems and processes tend to be in constant flux as they respond to changing social and political viewpoints. Third, it discusses why the integration ambitions which are central to “spatial” planning require detailed engagement with locally specific social and political circumstances. Fourth, it focuses on the political and social nature of plan implementation and how different implementation contexts need to inform the design of planning processes and the style of plans produced.

E-Planning and Public Participation

2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 38-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mhairi Aitken
Keyword(s):  
Public Participation ◽  
Critical Reflection ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Planning Theory ◽  
Planning Systems ◽  
Participatory Processes ◽  
Planning Methods ◽  
Planning Processes ◽  
Opening Up ◽  
New Inequalities

The challenging nature of public participation in planning has been well-documented and there are frequent observations that this does not go far enough. Accordingly, since the turn of the century attention has turned to the ways in which public participation might be strengthened and improved through e-participation methods. This article aims to explore the extent to which e-planning methods address the long-standing challenges of traditional participation approaches. The article discusses some key themes within the planning theory literature relating to public participation and focusses on two important challenges which are summarised as: 1) Whose voices are heard within participatory processes, and how can less articulate voices be supported? And 2) Who controls participatory processes and to what extent, and in what ways can power be devolved to public participants? Developments in e-planning go some way to addressing these challenges; for example in opening up new channels for public participation and removing barriers to participation. However, e-planning certainly does not represent a panacea and requires critical reflection to ensure that it does not aggravate, rather than alleviate, these problems. For example, reliance on ICTs may risk leading to new inequalities in access to planning systems. Furthermore, questions relating to who participates, and who controls participation in planning processes remain relevant and pressing.

Traditions and the Imagined Past in Russian Anastasian Intentional Communities

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 25-42
Author(s):  
Julia Andreeva
Keyword(s):  
Traditional Culture ◽  
Local Culture ◽  
Intentional Communities ◽  
Intentional Community ◽  
Book Series ◽  
Russian People ◽  
Goods And Services

Abstract This article* deals with the concept of tradition and the interpretation of the Vedic past in Russian intentional communities. The movement is based on the book series The Ringing Cedars of Russia (Zvenyashchiye kedry Rossii) by Vladimir Megre published in the 1990s. The main heroine of these books is Anastasia, who shares with the author her knowledge of the ancient ancestors. Some readers take her advice and build a new kind of intentional community – ‘kin domain’ settlements (rodovyye pomestiya). The Anastasians tend to restore lost traditions, which are usually associated with Russia’s pre-Christian past. Traditional culture is understood as a conservative and utopian lifestyle that existed in the Vedic Age during the time of the Vedrus people. The commodification of local culture and tradition is one of the resources that ecovillagers try to use. The ‘traditional’ and ‘organic’ labels increase the price of many of their goods and services. One of the most popular products made by intentional communities is Ivan-chay (‘Ivan tea’), declared an indigenous and authentic beverage of the Russian people.

Sustainability in Community

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Whitney Sanford
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Restorative Justice ◽  
Participatory Democracy ◽  
Social Equity ◽  
Intentional Communities ◽  
Governance Structures ◽  
Nonviolent Communication ◽  
The Individual

This chapter explores the role of participatory democracy in sustainability-oriented intentional communities. These communities share goals of social equity and nonviolence and have created a variety of governance structures and practices to enfranchise all residents, ranging from consensus to sociocracy, incorporating nonviolent communication and restorative justice circles. Residents echo Gandhi’s assertion that inner change must precede social change, and communities such as the Possibility Alliance stress integral nonviolence, that nonviolence must permeate all aspects of life. Intentional communities demonstrate multiple patterns for interweaving lives, resolving tensions, and creating balance between their obligations to communities and maintaining integrity of the individual.

scholarly journals Bridging sanitation engineering and planning: theory and practice in Burkina Faso

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 205-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer McConville ◽  
Jaan-Henrik Kain ◽  
Elisabeth Kvarnström ◽  
Gunno Renman
Keyword(s):  
Burkina Faso ◽  
Service Provision ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Comprehensive Approach ◽  
Planning Theory ◽  
Sanitation Services ◽  
Global Challenge ◽  
Planning Processes ◽  
Procedural Planning

The global challenge of providing sanitation services to the un-served underlines a need to change the way in which sanitation planning and service provision is approached. This paper offers a framework for categorizing sanitation projects planning processes based on planning steps and procedural planning theory to help engineers and sanitation planners gain a deeper understanding of the dynamics of these processes. The analysis identifies and discusses trends in both guidelines and actual sanitation programs. The results show that contemporary sanitation planning guidelines and field projects utilize patchwork processes of different planning modes, although the step of designing options is dominated by an expert-driven, rational-comprehensive approach. The use of planning theory can help engineers to ask critical questions about the objectives of the planning process and to develop context-appropriate planning processes that will make a difference for improving sanitation service provision.

Participatory planning in Israel: from theory to practice

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 213-239 ◽  
Author(s):  
Batel Eshkol ◽  
Alon Eshkol
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Spatial Planning ◽  
Third Sector ◽  
Secondary Data ◽  
Participatory Planning ◽  
Planning Theory ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Theory To Practice ◽  
Planning Processes ◽  
Neighborhood Level

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the gap between the declarations regarding participatory planning and its actual implementation in practice within the Israeli spatial planning context. Design/methodology/approach The paper explores the gap between theory of participatory spatial planning and its implementation in practice by a comparative analysis of three participatory case studies in the Israeli planning context. The data collected to analyze the case studies is secondary data, including previous research on the three case studies and their re-evaluation on the basis of indicators for participation. Findings Participatory spatial planning processes are not often implemented in the Israeli context, as they are not required by law. All the three case studies explored in this paper deal with local spatial plans at the neighborhood level, but each expresses a very different participation mode: one is a national, government-led program; the second is a residents-led opposition to a municipal plan; and the third is a third-sector initiative offering an alternative plan to an existing one. The findings suggest that there is a correlation between the initiating body, its commitment to participation and the level of success of the participatory process. Research limitations/implications This paper focuses on three specific participatory spatial planning projects in Israel. Further exploration of additional participatory projects may prove useful to verify or refute the conclusions reached in this paper. Originality/value There is very little exploration and evaluation of participatory spatial planning processes in Israel. This paper provides a valuable, although limited, analysis, linking participatory planning theory to practice within the Israeli context.

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