The Holistic Evolution Of Planning Thinking During The 40-year Human Settlements Movement

With the advocation of pluralism by the trend of postmodernism,the development of urban planning theory presents a state of fragmented “everything”: with the complexity of the relevance of practical problems,and the diversification of knowledge sources in solving problems,the scope of planning theory is constantly expanding.A variety of planning empirical observations also obviously found that the solution to practical problems is still limited,and that the existing path to solve the problem is inefficient.Theory of Holism developed based on planning research thinks that people misunderstand and underestimate the nature and complexity of the real dilemma,which is the seemingly correct “everything” and its implied general epistemology and methodology.Behind the stagnation of holistic efficiency improvement caused by internal contradictions is the solidified atomistic thinking of “correct” linear superposition.Therefore,this thesis decided to carry out an empirical study on this theory in the field of planning.Forty years of UN-Habitat is the largest planning movement in the world,and the reports of the three UN-Habitat Conferences provide extremely important systematic examples that can be used as representatives of global planning.Based on the explanation of the outcome texts of the three UN conferences on human settlements,this thesis summarizes the holistic evolution of planning thinking and proves that the 40-year planning of the human settlements movement is moving towards an ineffective “everything”approach.Firstly,it explains the whole text,that is,the symbol-meaning system of the concrete visible text,including two aspects.Firstly,it analyzes the language and symbol of the text,which means the frequency of the key words.The second is the logic and structure of the text,that is,the city elements and the holistic structure contained in the text,which is mainly organized around the four main points of “problems and challenges,goals and visions,realistic conditions,actions and implementation”.It is found that “Habitat I” regards material space planning as the core to establish limited relationship and simple structure,“Habitat II” becomes the expansion of the goal-action relationship and the generalization of planning in the framework of sustainable development,and that “Habitat III” has been unable to make larger expansion in the overall structure,with only some additions or changes in the branch structure.Simplified concepts and structures encompass all sorts of “goal-action” contradictions and conflicts that are not yet sorted out.Secondly,beyond the connotation and logic of text symbols,this thesis shows that the global human settlement planning movement becomes “everything” based on the same structure,from three aspects: the logical structure abstracting from the core content of the text,the planning connotation understood by the text,and the planning practice based on the index system of sustainable development.In terms of the core logical structure,from the one-dimensional arrangement of “goals and intervention elements-action means”,the cross of two-dimensional matrices,and the mechanism black box of simplifying relations,“Habitat III” finally became “enabling all people,using all means and solving all problems”.The definition of planning is expanded to all future arrangements for action in spatial and non-spatial dimensions aimed at achieving development.In terms of sustainable development planning practices,new indicators are constantly being incorporated through the establishment and recombination of sub-goals,based on a methodological basis and policy framework that has been proved ineffective by past practices,and are in danger of falling into the simple pursuit of intelligent technologies.It goes on to show that the issue of “planning becomes everything” is full of contradictions and conflicts.First is the contradictions with reality and the unsatisfactory practical effect.The limitation of real resources and intervention determine that it is impossible to comprehensively take actions.Second,there is a large amount of fuzzy and drifting conceptual space within “everything”,resulting in ineffective oversimplification or complexity.Take the concepts of “sustainable development” and“public interest” as example,which are commonly used in the text of the Conference and in planning practice.In the process of transferring and transforming the concept of expediency,the fuzziness space which may produce contradictions is constantly enlarged.From the concept of sustainable development into the practice of sustainable city construction,there are distortions and deviations to the essence of the realistic relationship of “society-economy-environment”.The negative compromise of private interests and the convergence of excessive pluralism have highlighted the antagonism and contradiction.However,due to the lack of understanding of the whole,the possibility of coordination and unification of public interests and personal interests has not been seen.Inefficient oversimplification and overcomplexity make planning go round and round in its own role perception.Finally,a general explanation is given that the issue of “planning becomes everything” is essentially due to the dominant priori,independent and solidified atomism.In the process of derivation from known to unknown,atomist thinking regards known correctness as fixed “points”(atoms)which is independent of other factors,and constantly piles up new “correct” points on the basis of the original“correct” contents,so more and more “correct” points are piled up.It tries to expand a more specific mechanism explanation based on the main line of planning “external context--internal logic”,but it can only be found that the uncertainties and complex relations contained in external context and internal logic are expanding and tangled indefinitely.And the derivation from general meaning to specific situation is again caught in the trap of atomism thinking.This is beyond the scope of this thesis,but also explains the necessity of reconstructing the fundamental world outlook and methodological logic from the side.The whole thesis contains about 51 000 words,31 pictures and charts.