Self-organization in urban development: towards a new perspective on spatial planning

TLDR

To date, participatory spatial planning has produced disappointing results. The study seeks to understand how citizens can be motivated to contribute to urban development from their own initiative. The authors propose an outside‑in approach that introduces self‑organization, where autonomous community‑based networks of citizens develop the urban fabric independently of government control. Examples of self‑organization are presented, and preliminary conclusions suggest the concept is useful for both spatial planning theory and practice.

Abstract

To date, participatory spatial planning has produced disappointing results. We argue that one reason is that time and again participatory planning proposals remain controlled by public government, and that public government seems not to be very adaptive to initiatives that emerge from the dynamics of civil society itself. To find out why and how citizens could and would be motivated to contribute out of their own motivation to urban development, we propose turning the focus outside-in, instead of inside-out. In this article, we therefore introduce the notion of self-organization, referring to initiatives that originate in civil society itself, via autonomous community-based networks of citizens outside government control which participate in developing the 'urban fabric' too. We discuss some examples of self-organization and draw preliminary conclusions of the concept's usefulness for the theory and practice of spatial planning.