Descodificando la planificación urbana contemporáneaHacia una alternativa metodológica para una planificación colaborativa, abierta a la incorporación tecnológica

Resumen

Cities are growing at an unprecedented speed, integrating and facing various novel issues and complexities as well as grappling with the shift towards an increasingly technology-dependent society. These constantly changing contexts lead to new challenges that classical planning, relying on conventional methods, has not yet learnt to comprehend and embrace which has thus led to a systematic failure in its responses from the last century. Faced with this situation, our research question is: How can contemporary urban planning improve its results through urban technologies? This is a question that we aim to address by going in depth in a learning process that aims to review the past – its errors, successes, techniques and methods – to be able to understand the path forward. We rely on a literature review of planning methods used to address urban complexity where we can find one the main causes of the failures of urban planning, both historical and current: the oscillation between two distinct positions. On the one hand, there is the humanist position that views the city as a complex system associated with urban complexity and, thus, with the obligation of relying on collaborative processes that are essential to planning. On the other hand, there is the technocratic position that considered that planning can resolve the problems of the city through mathematical logic, relying on computers. The oscillations of this planning dilemma have led to different results and practices that are enforced until today, which made planning more focused on its method rather than on the suitability of its results. Nonetheless, both methods have always had the same objective: address the urban complexity. Throughout time, a third movement emerged, that argues for the convergence between the two poles, thus resolving the planning dilemma. This movement defines the city as a complex system and combines the two methodologies civic collaboration and technologies to address complexity. The foundations of this position have been laid by Portugali (2011); his work represents the originating point of this thesis as well as in the theory (humanist more than technocratic) that represents the basis of the proposed methodological alternative. The urban technologies that help achieve this theory of convergence are concretized in three elements: Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Visualization Tools (VT) and Urban Simulation Models (USM). The three are grouped under the concept of Planning Support System (PSS). Following a critical reflection on the use and usefulness of each element, we focus on USM to illustrate the capacity to support both in modelling as a simulation as well as in the verification of scenarios in a collaborative manner. In this thesis we further narrow the focus on the Agent-Based Model (ABM) technique, referring to a specific technique used to explore complex systems and to offer the option of having a modelling process that can work together with the collaborative processes needed in the simulation. Faced with the lack of use of these technological tools as well as based on the theory of convergence (between humanists and technocrats), the proposed methodological alternative defines, in ten steps that are based on the actual steps followed by professional practice in general, how these tools can lead to a collaborative planning process that is open to technological integration. The aim of this alternative is to enrich current processes and not to break away from them, thus striving towards a peaceful renewal of contemporary planning that includes the methods and tools needed to cope with urban complexity. The testing of the alternative in order to begin to visualize its applicability is done in the case study named “Intramurals” – the central area of the city of Jerez de la Frontera (Andalusia, Spain) – that represent a typical case of an abandoned historical centre characterized by depopulation (as a global challenge) or gentrification (in a local context). Intramurals deals with complexity through the use of collaborative planning combined with technological implementation, as part of a process that recreates the universal scheme of information, diagnosis and proposal, doing so in key topics through the modelling of the specific complexity of Intramurals. In doing so, we move closer to the validation of its [who?] results, configuring different scenarios with actions that aim to reverse depollution, and understanding the behaviour of agents. This thesis concludes by proposing the aforementioned test as an example or inspiration for other tests or for finding new ways of improving the alternative, thus intending to enhance the latter’s validity as a planning method that aims to better its current context and help the shift towards a more collaborative, transparent and contemporary process. The tools that were used do not represent the solution; the solution is the knowledge on how, when and with whom they were used. The intelligence is thus not of or in the tool (nor in the development of new tools), but in the way in which we make use of the tool.