OHJELMA planning as persuasive storytelling¤ntysalo-presentation.pdf · Presentation of workshop...

© ACADEMY OF FINLAND1

“Artefactual anchoring” of strategic spatial

planning as persuasive storytelling

Raine Mäntysalo, Kristian Olesen & Kaisa Granqvist

Millaisia ovat tulevaisuuden kestävät kaupungit?

RE-DEFINE

OHJ ELMA

Opening

Keynote: Urban 3.0 – a tool for envisioning Joe Ravetz, Universit y of Manchester

Beyond MALPE coordination: Integrative Envisioning 2016-2019

Short int roduct ion on the goals and

act ivit ies of the BeMInE project

BeMInE hypotheses

1. Trajectories of urbanisat ion and regional development

2. Cit y- regional governance

Lunch

Parallel workshops: realit y check on BeMInE hypotheses (in Finnish)



Coffee

Presentation of workshop results and discussion

Closing and next steps

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Tervetuloa keskustelemaan näistä kysymyk-

sistä RE- DEFINE- seminaariin 31.0 8 .20 16 Tieteiden talolle Helsinkiin. RE- DEFINE- se-

minaari käynnistää BeMINE- tutkimushankkeen

ja tarkoit taa aitoa keskustelua hankkeen läh-

tökohdista ja lähestymistavoista: määritellään

yhdessä uudelleen, mitä pitäisi tutkia kaupun-

gistumisen, kaupunkisuunnit telun ja strategisen

kehit tämisen käytännön kysymyksien kannalta.

BeMInE on kansainvälisest i arvostet tujen tut -

kijoiden ja yliopistojen sekä kaupunki- seutujen

suunnit telun ja innovat iivisen yhteiskehit te-

lyn ammat t ilaisten yhteenliit t ymä, joka tulee

tutkimaan suomalaisen MALPE- suunnit telun

toimintaympäristöä, lähtökoht ia, tulevaisuu-

dennäkymiä ja vaihtoehtoja avoimessa kes-

kusteluyhteydessä yhteiskunnan eri tasoilla.

Pääset mukaan keskustelemaan ilmoit tautu-

malla

Tilaisuus on englanninkielinen iltapäivän työpa-

joja lukuunot tamat ta.

Mikä jää huomiotta MALPE-suunnittelussa?

Miten hallita monitoimijaista yhteist yötä?

Osaammeko luovia suunnittelun monimutkaisuudessa ja epävarmuudessa?

Millaista on suomalainen kaupungistuminen?



RE-DEFINE

OHJ ELMA

Opening





BeMInE hypotheses



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• In previous studies, persuasive storytelling and related metaphors and spatial imaginaries have been perceived as instrumental in strategic spatial planning, in complexity reduction and meaning-making, as well as in framing planning issues, conveying particular ways of conceiving space, and providing guidelines for action.

• Furthermore, their role in coordination and coalition building has been emphasized.

• In their selective illustrativeness and interpretative flexibility, the storylines, metaphors and imaginaries host multiple meanings and viewpoints.

• Thereby they can cross disciplinary and lifeworldly boundaries and arrange multi-actor framings of diverging interests.

Persuasive storytelling in strategic spatial planning


Communicative and coordinative capacity in

strategic spatial planning

• Persuasive storytelling (e.g. Throgmorton 1996; Sandercock 2003) and associated

metaphors and spatial imaginaries (e.g. Davoudi 2018) are powerful media of

strategic spatial planning.

• How can their mobilizing force be explained?

• SSP is integrative: it aims to bring different sectors and scales of

governance, as well as private actors and NGOs, within its strategic frame.

• This makes it challenging in terms of communication and coordination.

• Such forms of storytelling, metaphors and spatial imaginaries are needed

which:

• enable communication across the boundaries of expertise and scale,

• create settings of mutual interdependencies that enable joint

coordination between the actors with diverging interests.


RE-DEFINE

OHJ ELMA

Opening





BeMInE hypotheses



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Hypothesis

• Storytelling and associated spatial imaginaries and metaphors need to be,

not only conceptually flexible, but also “artefactually anchored”, in order

to achieve mobilizing and coordinative force towards realization of the

strategic plan.

• This means that with the unfolding of the strategic plan, sufficiently robust

spatial objects have to be identified and generated as tools and targets for

the joint coordination of the stakeholders involved.

• In order to perform as coordinative media at the ‘inter-actional’ level,

beyond being communicative at the ‘inter-conceptual’ level, the metaphors

and spatial imaginaries that are utilized in persuasive storytelling need to

perform as boundary objects.

• With this association, we draw attention to the artefactual dimension of

metaphors and spatial imaginaries: are they instrumentalized in inter-

linguistic socio-material practices and shared artefactual planning tools and

targets, and how?


RE-DEFINE

OHJ ELMA

Opening





BeMInE hypotheses



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Aim

• To develop a theoretical approach for future case

research on the coordinative capacity of persuasive

storytelling and associated metaphors and spatial

imaginaries in strategic spatial planning.

• Do the studied metaphors and spatial imaginaries of

storytelling involve, or are they connected to,

appropriately concrete planning objects and targets, in

view of the planning process at hand?

• If there is such artefactuality to the metaphors and

imaginaries, do they perform in the sense of boundary

object, providing a shared, yet differentiable, object to

the different stakeholders involved, thus enabling their

joint coordination?


RE-DEFINE

OHJ ELMA

Opening





BeMInE hypotheses



Lunch




Coffee



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In boundary objects, the inter-conceptual flexibility of interpretation is combined with

the robustness of artefactuality. They:

”[…] are both plastic enough to adapt to local needs and the constraints of the

several parties employing them, yet robust enough to maintain a common

identity across sites. […] They have different meanings in different social worlds

but their structure is common enough to more than one world to make them

recognizable, a means of translation.” (Star and Griesemer, 1989: 393)

flexibility of interpretation

in different social worlds

robustness of

artefactuality


Metaphors and spatial imaginaries

as boundary objects

• The constitutive and transformative role of metaphors and spatial imaginaries

depends on their performativity in the form of boundary objects (cf. Carlile, 2017: 24;

Marjanovic 2016: 5037; Engels & Münch 2015).

• Here, their artefactual anchoring is crucial. Products of storytelling may offer a

‘mechanism, in the form of a meaningful artefact that can help transfer knowledge

through complex, pragmatic boundaries (Bowman 2016:83).

• Engels and Münch (2015): the transformative success of the studied imaginary (micro

smart grid of energy supply) resulted from its performativity as a boundary object.

• ‘Artefactual anchoring’ does not necessarily mean reference to concrete physical

objects (Carlile, 2002: 452). It is the nature of the planning problem at hand that

determines the appropriate concreteness of a given boundary object. At a certain

stage of strategic spatial planning, a certain spatial vision may appear as sufficiently

concrete to gain coordinative momentum, while at some later stage it may appear as

uselessly abstract and vague.

• Artefacts have different functions as goals or tools for joint action. It is the

constellation of the activities involved that determines the use of the artefact. (Kangasoja,

2017.)


RE-DEFINE

OHJ ELMA

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BeMInE hypotheses



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The Kuopio Three Urban Fabrics Model

Walking City

Transit City Car City

• A spatial imaginary of the city. It describes the city as a system of three

overlapping urban fabrics: the walking city, the transit city and the car city,

and, through this description, also prescribes a more sustainable spatial

planning strategy – that of hindering the expansion of the car city fabric and

promoting walking and transit city fabrics.

• It is also a coordinative boundary object, unfolding into further boundary

objects (physical, data, plan and model artefacts). (Mäntysalo & Kanninen 2013.)


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Contrary example:

Helsinki City Plan• In Helsinki city region, the spatial imaginary of polycentricity had

been used as a vague, politically pacifying concept among the local,

city-regional and regional governance organs, each of which had

different meanings given to polycentricity in terms of scale of

reference, the status of centres vis-à-vis each other, and the

transport system interconnecting them.

• The lack of shared spatial target of the spatial imaginary was

revealed, when the City of Helsinki made its City Plan proposal,

fostering its own interpretation of polycentricity and imposing severe

impacts to the broader city-regional centre structure and transport

system.

• It shattered the superficial political status quo between Helsinki city

government and its neighbouring local and upper-scale

governments and public agencies, and revealed the discordance

between them in how each interpreted polycentricity in the Helsinki

city region in spatial terms.

• Thus the imaginary did not manage to perform as a target for joint

coordination, as the artefactual dimension with associated boundary

objects was missing. (Granqvist et al. 2019.)


RE-DEFINE

OHJ ELMA

Opening





BeMInE hypotheses



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“Pilot” case study

• Reflections through a preliminary case

study of Aalborg ‘knowledge city’ and

‘growth axis’, which has already been

studied in terms of storytelling and spatial

imaginary approaches (e.g. Popescu 2016;

Kidmose & Kristensen 2018; Sharff 2018).

• Interviews, discussions, document

analysis.

• Our intention is not to make definitive

empirical claims of the Aalborg case itself,

as further case research is needed.

• The aim is to show the feasibility and

relevance of our theoretical approach in

future case studies regarding the

coordinative capacity of strategic spatial

planning as persuasive storytelling.


RE-DEFINE

OHJ ELMA

Opening





BeMInE hypotheses



Lunch




Coffee



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Preliminary findings from

the Aalborg case (1)Millaisia ovat tulevaisuuden kestävät kaupungit?

RE-DEFINE

OHJ ELMA

Opening





BeMInE hypotheses



Lunch




Coffee



10 :30

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• The basic story ‘from industrial city to

knowledge city’ and the associated growth

storyline have been translated into a spatial

imaginary of ‘growth axis’, connecting the

main hubs of related activity: the main

university campus and the hospital, the

airport, the harbour and the city centre with its

cultural “lighthouse” attractions.

• The gradual artefactual anchoring of the

growth axis, with the LRT/BRT line and its

key stops, conceived as station-like urban

nodes, each with a different character, seems

to have been crucial in this coordination, in

interconnecting transport and service

networks, attracting the investors and

developers and in engaging them in projects

of detailed urban planning and design.


• Several metaphors in the strategic framing of

the story, the spatial imaginary and the

associated projects: the key metaphor of

‘knowledge city’, the ‘North Denmark’s

Growth Dynamo’ metaphor of the growth

storyline, the metaphorical presentation of the

growth axis as ‘dynamo’ and ‘spine’, the BRT

line as ‘driving force’, ‘catalyst’, ’growth

engine’ and ‘life nerve’ of urban development,

the bus stops as ‘stations’.

• The effectiveness in the coordination of the

different stakeholders’ activities (joint and

coordinated plans and designs, negotiated

investment decisions, public-private project

development etc.) is achieved by the

generation of boundary objects.


RE-DEFINE

OHJ ELMA

Opening





BeMInE hypotheses



Lunch




Coffee



10 :30

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Preliminary findings from

the Aalborg case (2)

”Then we created our own proposal for

a housing programme with different

projects in order to talk ourselves into

the [growth axis]. All these dots are our

project proposals, marked with these

circles here and articulated in relation to

the growth axis.”

(Buch, cited in Sharff, 2018)



RE-DEFINE

OHJ ELMA

Opening





BeMInE hypotheses



Lunch




Coffee



10 :30

9:30

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OHJELMA planning as persuasive storytelling¤ntysalo-presentation.pdf · Presentation of workshop...

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