Critical Realism, Urban Planning and Urban Research

Abstract

The paper discusses key meta-theoretical presuppositions for urban planning to be possible and meaningful, pointing at critical realism as a fruitful philosophical position for research within urban planning and urban studies. For ontological reasons, critical realism considers that interdisciplinary integration is necessary to arrive at valid knowledge, whereas competing positions such as positivism and poststructuralism tend to neglect important parts of reality. Critical realism acknowledges the independent causal powers of both agents and structures and thus provides a suitable platform for investigating causal relationships between social conditions, spatial urban structures and the actions of agents (including those of planners). Moreover, a critical realist view on the possibilities of research-based predictions squares well with the qualitative impact assessments of alternative solutions and the modest, context-adapted estimates of magnitudes of effects typical within urban planning.

Changes, Problems, and Challenges in Swedish Spatial Planning—An Analysis of Power Dynamics

“…Naess [8] describes a problem within the collaborative planning literature in that it focuses almost solely on actors within planning, and he argues that different structures also influence the outcome of urban planning, or in the case of this paper, spatial planning. This is also why we chose to include neoliberal planning-as a theoretical point of departure for this paper.…”

“…Naess [8] directed a relevant critique towards the view of power in literature on collaborative planning which has inspired our work. Naess argues that the view that power cannot be possessed but is only relational is problematic, especially in urban planning.…”

“…Since this article deals with spatial planning, a stamp has to be made within planning theory. As Naess [8] suggests, to bridge the gap between collaborative and neoliberal planning, we chose to use both in our analysis to better understand the empirical data and the power relations at play in Swedish spatial planning.…”

“…In theory, the Swedish planning system grants far-reaching power to public actors such as local-level governments (which control key land-use planning instruments), the state through the National Transport Administration, and regional governments that are responsible for transport infrastructure planning [6]. However, evidence from a broad body of literature (e.g., [7][8][9][10]) shows that the formal characteristics of the planning system only provide limited insights into how spatial planning is conducted and do not address the forces and power relations that are at play within the decisions that influence the development of urban land use and transport system structures. In order to create more sustainable cities, it is important to analyse how these power relations affect the outcome of spatial planning and what challenges might be connected to the changes of power dynamics.…”

Built Environment, Causality and Travel

“…They typically conduct statistical analyses controlling for a host of demographic, 1 Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, becoming, existence, or reality, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations. 2 Critiques of understandings of causality prevailing among planning academics are given in separate papers (Naess, 2015;Naess, forthcoming) socioeconomic and even attitudinal variables. What researchers do when making multivariate analyses is basically to make a thought experiment to identify which correlation remains between each built environment variable in question and the relevant travel behaviour variable when all other investigated variables are presumed to be held constant.…”