Category Archives: Narrative Planning

New publication: DATUTOP 34 / Re-City. Future City – Combining disciplines

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The new DATUTOP (issue 34) has been published under the title “Re-City. Future City – combining disciplines”. The Datutop series was founded in 1982 at the School of Architecture at Tampere University of Technology, Tampere, Finland. The central themes of the Datutop publications are architectural theory and urban planning theory. The latest volume is in part based on last year’s Re-City conference. The publication is open-access:

https://tutcris.tut.fi/portal/files/6896312/DATUTOP_34.pdf

DATUTOP 34 also features my latest article “Emplotting urban regeneration: Narrative strategies in the case of Kalasatama, Helsinki”, part of my ongoing research of narratives in urban planning. Abstract below:

Ameel, Lieven 2016: “Emplotting urban regeneration: Narrative strategies in the case of Kalasatama, Helsinki.” DATUTOP 34. Re-City. Future City – combining disciplines. 222-240. 19 pages.

ABSTRACT

Recent decades have seen an increasing interest in the narrative and rhetorical structure of urban planning. Urban districts take shape based on words as much as on concrete. Narrative elements such as rhetorical figures, storylines and plot structures are relevant not only for the way in which a particular planned area is presented to the general public or framed within local policy discourse, but also for the way in which larger visions of an urban future translate into concrete developments within the built environment.

This paper examines the planning of Kalasatama (Helsinki), an ongoing case of urban regeneration, by applying methods and concepts from narrative and literary theory to the analysis of planning documents, marketing, and media narratives. A key concern is the manner in which planning documents “emplot” a new area, both literally singling out an area within a geographical setting, and framing the development within a “plot”, a story with a specific dynamics and morality. Character, plot and metaphor will constitute the key narrative concepts. This paper draws on the burgeoning field of narrative planning theory, with the specific aim to make concepts from narrative and literary theory more compatible with existing theoretical frameworks from planning theory.

Keywords: emplotmemt, Kalasatama, narrative, urban planning

 

Narrating the Waterfront in Crisis – Florence 27-28.6.

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Presenting today a paper on narrating the waterfront in crisis at the University of Florence, at the conference “cross-disciplinary perspectives on urban space”. Full programme can be found here. Abstract below:

Narrating the Waterfront in Crisis

Juxtaposing Narratives of New York’s waterfront under threat in Literary Fiction and Planning
Lieven Ameel
dr., docent, university lecturer in comparative literature
University of Tampere, Finland
lieven.ameel@uta.fi

Urban studies has recently seen the emergence of a new paradigm: that of the resilient city, with its focus on urban readiness for disruptive change. The crisis-awareness in urban theory is aptly mirrored in contemporary city narratives, from literature to the big screen, in which urban dystopias as well as more subtle depictions of a city in crisis proliferate, attuning the public to unsettling possible futures and alternative storyworlds. Narrative is a key concept for how people make sense of the possibility of future threats, and for how urban policy projects action in the face of such threats. Following what has been called a ”narrative”, ”deliberative” or ”communicative” turn, city planners are increasingly making use of techniques from literary fiction, projecting scenario’s, and acting as curator’s of sorts between different story lines (Ameel 2014; Cohen 2008, 111-115). This paradigm shift in urban planning simultaneously highlights the importance of incorporating local voices and cultural stories into planning and policy, as well as foregrounding the communicative aspect of planning for the future.

In my paper, I will examine narratives of the New York waterfront from two distinct, but intermingling perspectives. First, I will look at how narrative fiction frames the experience of a waterfront in crisis, and how it presents the possibility of alternative futures. Ben Lerner’s novel 10:04 (2014) and Nathaniel Rich’s Odds against tomorrow (2013) are particularly revealing texts, but I refer also to other relevant novels such as Jonathan Lethem’s Chronic City (2009). Second, I will examine how, in the department of city planning’s comprehensive waterfront plans (1992, 2011), the simultaneous possibility of alternative storyworlds structures the way policy is shaped. I am interested in particular in the concept of temporal orchestration, which organizes the elements of the plot around the reader’s interest in alternative storyworlds (Dannenberg 2008).

Sources:

Ameel, Lieven 2016 (forthcoming): “Emplotting urban regeneration: Narrative strategies in the case
of Kalasatama, Helsinki.” In Rajaniemi, Juho (ed.) DATUTOP.
Cohen, Philip 2008: “Stuff Happens: Telling the Story and Doing the Business in the Making of
Thames Gateway.” In Cohen, Philip & Rustin, Michael J. (eds.): London’s Turning: Thames Gateway: Prospects and Legacy. Aldershot: Ashgate, 99–124.
Dannenberg, Hilary P. 2008: Coincidence and Counterfactuality. Plotting Time and Space in
Narrative Fiction. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Narrating the Waterfront in Crisis – Helsinki & New York

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How is the waterfront in crisis narrated in urban planning documents and in literature? What kind of alternative storyworlds are described in narratives, how are the decisions leading up to particular storyworlds framed, and how is agency presented in narratives of the urban waterfront?

These are some of the questions I address today, at the literary studies seminar in Turku/Finland, and which I examine at more lenght in my current research project, which juxtaposes narratives of Helsinki’s and New York’s waterfront under threat in literary fiction and planning.

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[source: http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/131724/apocalyptic-visions]

I presented part of this research first a few weeks ago, at the Finnish urban studies days (Helsinki, 28-29.4.2016) and I was not a little bit surprised that a similar theme was taken up just a week later, at an event at Columbia University (May 4). Entitled ”Waterfront Dialogues”, the event presented ongoing waterfront development in Helsinki and New York city, with the goal ”to foster cross-city dialogue and learning between the cities New York and Helsinki”. At the background: the fact that ”urban waterfronts are facing significant transformations world-wide and are among the most pressing urban design challenges of the next century”. Present, ao Meri Louekari of the City of Helsinki and Aalto University, and Thaddeus Pawlowski from Columbia University and the city of New York.

Given the challenges of the urban waterfront, not only in terms of socio-economic changes in the urban fabric of 21st-century cities, but also in the face of growing concerns over ecological crises, how to assess what lies ahead, and the possibilities for mitigation, adaptation or – indeed – action?

I look at these questions by analyzing a range of contemporary novels (including Ben Lerner’s 10:04 and Nathaniel Rich’s Odds against tomorrow; Antti Tuomainen’s The Healer/Parantaja and Annika Luther’s De hemlösas stad) and planning documents (including New York city’s comprehensive waterfront plans). What is the role given to agency? What choices do we have? And what are the odds against stormy futures?

Questions that are also moving onward from my (still ongoing) research on narratives in urban planning.

Agency, crisis and possible worlds in city novels and urban planning

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Speaking today at the Urban Studies Days (Helsinki) about the waterfront in crisis in literary fiction and urban planning, with a focus on Helsinki’s waterfront development and New York pre and post-Sandy.

What alternative worlds are visible, how are readers guided towards specific possible worlds, and what role is given to a sense of agency in describing possible turning points?

Amongst others, in addition to urban plannign documents, Nathaniel Rich’s Odds against tomorrow, Ben Lerner’s 10:04, Antti Tuomainen’s Parantja (The Healer), Annika Luther De hemlösas stad (City of the Homeless).

 

http://www.kaupunkitutkimuksenpaivat.net/tyoryhmat/narraatiot-ja-nimeaminen-arjen-toimijuutena/

http://www.kaupunkitutkimuksenpaivat.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Kaupunkitutkimuksen-p%C3%A4iv%C3%A4t-2016_OHJELMA_valmis1.pdf

 

Emplotment in urban planning

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Teaching today on literary tropes in urban planning- metaphors and emplotment in New York’s waterfront development, as part of my course “Space, the City and Literature” at the University of Tampere.

Below, some thoughts on emplotment, taken from my forthcoming article “Emplotting Urban Regeneration” (Datutop 2016).

“Emplotment is proposed here as a first central concept for approaching narratives in urban development, not in the least because of the concept’s semantic double-entendre, encapsulating the meanings of both spatial “plot” (location) and narrative “plot” (narrative intrigue). The use of “emplotment” as a narrative concept outside the field of literary studies is primarily associated with the work of Hayden White and his examination of historiography in terms of their narrative. White used “emplotment” to denote the processes by which events are contextualized into meaning-making totalities, receiving “the formal coherency that only stories can possess” (White 1981, 19). Drawing on the work of Northrop Frye, White distinguishes four “modes of emplotment”: romance, tragedy, comedy and satire. In planning theory, Hayden White’s examination of narrative tropes within historiography has been applied in re-examining planning histories (Kramsch 1998), and its usefulness for an analysis of urban planning has been illustrated by Mareile Walter’s examination of narratives of Karlskrona (2013).

What interests me here most is emplotment as narrative strategy that situates a specific event or events within a larger narrative framework, giving sense, structure, coherency and causality to what otherwise would remain a mere enumeration of actions. Especially when considering non-fictional texts that bear little resemblances to literary narratives, such as policy documents, the analysis of a text’s emplotment strategies – in other words, of how narrative elements direct the reader towards a coherent plot – would seem to be a particularly beneficial method. Unlike texts of literary fiction, few planning documents have strong authorial voice, explicit plot lines or distinct character dynamics. All planning narratives, however, will exhibit some thematic, linguistic and stylistic features that situate the planning area on a geographical map and within a narrative intrigue. These narrative strategies carry out what the literary theorists Paul Ricoeur has called the “mise en intrigue” or “situating into plot”, an “operation that draws a configuration out of a simple succession” (Ricoeur 1984/1990, 65, see also Kaplan 1993, 172).”

Source:

Ameel, Lieven 2016 (forthcoming): “Emplotting urban regeneration: Narrative strategies in the case of Kalasatama, Helsinki.” DATUTOP.

Digital Cities and the Digital Humanities

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In sunny Oslo for the first conference of the Digital Humanities in the Nordic Countries, with a wide range of approaches to the digitalising humanities. I’ll present today (15.3.) on narrative approaches to public participation geographic information systems (PPGIS) in urban planning, a paper co-authored with Maarita Kahila, Jenni Kuoppa, and Marketta Kyttä. One of the key arguments is that digital humanities should also comprise humanities approaches to the digitalising society, not only digital approaches to humanities sources. A second argument is that a more integrated and more narrative use of PPGIS could open up experiential knowledge – with considerable consequences for the legitimacy claims of current planning practices.

Very interested to see to what extent the digital humanities live up to (mixed) expectations. What to make of Franco Moretti’s statement that the “digital humanities” mean “nothing”? How to integrate a sense of closeness to “distant reading” (Moretti, again)? And what can digital humanities add to urban studies and digital cities? I haven’t managed to get my hands on Benjamin Fraser’s Digital Cities, but it would appear some answers to the challenges of the “urban geo-humanities” could be found there.

The full program of the conference Digital Humanities in the Nordic Countries can be found here. The abstract of our paper below:

 

Narrative Approaches to the Digitalization of Participatory Urban Planning:

Bringing Plot and Metaphor to PPGIS methods

Lieven Ameel

University of Tampere, Finland

Maarit Kahila, Jenni Kuoppa, Marketta Kyttä

Aalto University, Finland

 

The last decades have seen a distinct “narrative” turn in urban planning practices and theory (Ameel 2016, Sandercock 2010). At the same time, planning has become increasingly reliant on digitalization in the way it carries out the participation of citizens. In planning practices, digitalization appears as a set of various instruments that can be understood as ecosystem of digital tools (Wallin et al 2010; Saad-Sulonen 2014). Amongst the most established methodologies developed to communicate with local participants and to gather information as part of participatory planning are public participation geographic information systems (PPGIS) (e.g. Brown & Kyttä 2013). These methods tend to result in a wide range of place-related information, often structured in the form of stories. The digitalization of planning processes, and the view of planning as a form of “persuasive story-telling” (Throgmorton 1996) have resulted in a number of challenges. How to aggregate the data gathered through PPGIS into meaning-making knowledge that can have effective impact on planning and policy? How to develop PPGIS that incorporate and activate story-telling mechanisms? In our paper, we will examine the potential of narrative approaches from literary and narrative studies for developing new methodological frameworks for digital participatory planning practices. The relevance of this paper lies not only in its interdisciplinarity, but also in the way it addresses key questions concerning the status of different kinds of knowledge (experiential and “soft” knowledge, in particular), as well as, more implicitly, the issues of democracy and inclusion in planning and policy.

We will focus on two specific concepts from literary and narratives studies: plot and metaphor; i.e. the causal chain of events that drives narrative, and the rhetorical tropes used to describe these changes. These concepts could further enrich the analysis and development of PPGIS in two distinct ways. First, by providing a framework with which to systematically evaluate the material gathered in PPGIS methods, drawing on a long expertise within narrative studies in analysing narrative topographies. And second, by offering new narrative approaches with which PPGIS methods could be developed in ways that strengthen the narrative characteristics of both the methods themselves, the responses given, and the way these feed into the overall planning practices in a particular project. This includes reconsidering the questions asked and responses elicited in PPGIS, as well as linking responses to broader narrative frames and the way in which metaphorical language (city as “body”; district as “oasis”) is used to describe a planning area.

We will examine narrative approaches in the context of PPGIS in two specific case study: “Enjustess” (http://www.syke.fi/projects/enjustess) and “Hanko of Memories and dreams” (http://maptionnaire.com/en/393/). The first case, which studied the use and management of aquatic environments in the Helsinki region, could be considered as a more traditional approach to PPGIS. In the case of Hanko, the traditional PPGIS was enlarged and participants were invited to provide information in a variety of forms: written texts, structured answers, and audio material (using PPGIS methods including an innovative media-installation) as well as photographs.

Sources

Ameel, Lieven (2016) (forthcoming): “Emplotting urban regeneration: Narrative strategies in the case of Kalasatama, Helsinki.” In Rajaniemi, Juho (ed.) DATUTOP.

Attili, Giovanni (2003): “Beyond the Flatlands. Digital Ethnographies in the Planning Field.” In Sandercock, Leonie & Attili, Giovanni (eds.): Multimedia Explorations in Urban Policy and Planning: Beyond the Flatlands. Springer, Dordrecht, 39-56.

Brown, G., & Kyttä, Marketta (2013). ”Key issues and research priorities for public participation GIS (PPGIS) for land use planning: A synthesis based on empirical research.” Applied Geography 46 (1), 122-136.

Saad-Sulonen, Joanna (2014): Combining Participations. Expanding the Locus of Participatory E-Planning by Combining Participatory Approaches in the Design of Digital Technology and in Urban Planning. Espoo: Aalto University Publication Series.

https://aaltodoc.aalto.fi/bitstream/handle/123456789/13352/isbn9789526055435.pdf?sequence=1

Sandercock, Leonie. (2010): “From the campfire to the computer: An epistemology of multiplicity and the story turn in planning.” In Sandercock Leonie & Attilli (eds.): Multimedia Explorations in Urban Policy and Planning: Beyond the Flatlands, Giovanni, Springer, Heidelberg, 17-37.

Throgmorton, James A. (1996): Planning as persuasive storytelling: The rhetorical construction of Chicago’s electric future. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Wallin et al (2010):Digital Tools in Participatory Planning. Espoo: Centre for Urban and Regional Studies Publications.
https://aaltodoc.aalto.fi/bitstream/handle/123456789/4832/isbn9789526032603.pdf?sequence=1

 

 

 

 

New Publication out: “Changing Helsinki?”

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The recent book fair in Helsinki saw the publication of an exciting book about culture, planning, architecture and community in changing Helsinki. Proud to be part of the group of outstanding authors, who provide eleven insights into how Helsinki is being transformed at the moment, and what new directions could be taken in the future. Great job of the editors Eeva and Cindy, and the team at Nemo, who have created a beautiful book in three languages (Finnish, English, Swedish).

My own contribution considers the use of narratives in the planning of Jätkäsaari, Helsinki.

uusi-helsinki-LO-RGB-200x262

What is Helsinki’s future and are there alternatives?

This book is written by professionals who love Helsinki. Each writer has chosen an element of the city that has inspired delight, disgust, sorrow or enthusiasm. The book looks not only at the pasts of the Finnish capital but at what its future might be.

Could vacant office space be transformed into homes? Does building within city limits have to mean clearing away its forests? What might the authorities learn from the residents who have occupied buildings, set up meeting places and worked as volunteers to protect cherished built heritage? What is it that is unique about Helsinki?”

http://www.nemokustannus.fi/kirjat/uusi-helsinki/

“Emplotting Urban Change” at the Annual Meeting of Finnish Geographers

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Presenting a paper on Emplotting Urban Change: Turning Soft Knowledge into the Built Environment at the Annual Meeting of Finnish Geographers, University of Tampere, 29.10.2015.

The paper is part of a session on soft and hard planning, with Vesa Kanninen, Pia Bäcklund and Simin Davoudi.

Abstract below:

“This paper examines the importance of narrative concepts – emplotment, in particular – for the understanding of contemporary urban planning practices. Planning has increasingly been understood in terms of narrative, as a form of “persuasive story-telling” (Throghmorton 1996). Drawing on narrative and literary theory, however, has been rare in planning theory to date. Narrative emplotment (White 1981) can
provide an analytical framework with which to analyze planning narratives and rhetorics, and the dialogue between planning narratives and stories told by local stakeholders. One of the key arguments made is that narrative theory may constitute a key to examine and adapt cities’ and citizens’ soft knowledge, which is largely encoded in sets of stories (including literature, media narratives, biographies).”

Narrative and Planning – Special Issue of Articulo “Tales of the City”

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As readers of this blog know, I’ve been working for some time now on narratives in city planning, and storytelling as a concept for understanding layers of meaning in the city, as well as the rhetorics underlying urban development.

In planning theory and urban studies, a range of scholars are working with these issues, but the efforts are somewhat scattered -narrative theory in planning or urban studies is anything but an established field of study, and there are various assumptions of what this discipline should be about – discourse analysis? poetics of architecture? participatory planning? urban history?

Nevertheless, it would seem that this field of study is gathering steam and critical mass – and I hope my own work, as well as the work done at the Helsinki Literature and the City Network, the Ghent Urban Studies Team, and other groups, will contribute to this growth in depth and latitude.

New publications dealing with these issues give evidence of the richness of this burgeoning discipline – the latest I came across being “Tales of the City“, a special issue of the journal Articulo.

couverture_articulo_si7-small480

Strangely enough, and regardless of the journal’s title, the introduction does not explicitly refer to Ruth Finnegan’s seminal “Tales of the City”, which certainly should act as one possible point of departure of any study dealing with narratives in urban planning.

The intro, by Christophe Mager and Laurent Matthey, would seem to understand urban narratives first of all as the production of rhetorics in city planning, something aloof from the actual built environment – dealing, in other words, with an “urbanism that tends to substitute narrative production for real production of cities and territory” (Mager & Matthey 2015). The result may, intriguingly, in their point of view be a democratic deficit:

”storytelling is supposed to have led democratic communication off track through a pronounced concern for a good story, storytelling applied to the field of urban production may have led to an increasing preoccupation with staging and showmanship in projects to the detriment of their real inclusion in political debate” (Mager & Matthey 2015).

My own point of view of how narrative permeates current urban planning is quite different – of course, some of the narrative activities is primarily bound up with rhetorics, grand visions, the “good story”, marketing and branding newspeech, as separated from the drudgery of actual planning practices. But those planning practices are also informed by continuous processes of storytelling, and they are very much part and parcel of the “real production of cities and territory”, as Throgmorton, Van Hulst, and others have shown.

Reading “Tales of the City”, I can’t help but think that there continues to be a need for a narrative theory that distinguish between the various kinds of naratives used in the context of urban planning (cf. my 2014 article in the Finnish Journal for Urban Studies).

To be continued.