The real-time city? Big data and smart urbanism

The real-time city? Big data and smart urbanism

For the past two decades urban analysts have been charting the evolution of cities during an era where information and communication technologies have been rapidly increasing. Wired cities are cities who have embraced this technology change and are using it to benefit their city, they are also labelled as cyber cities, digital cites. These cities fall under the category of smart cities, a term which describes cities in which smart devices are built into the fabric of the urban environment around it. These can be things like wireless technology, digitally controlled utility services and transport infrastructure etc. These smart cities have a rich stream of data that can be used to analyse people movements, popular places and more importantly be used to create a better urban lifestyle for the residents who live there. It can also be used to improve the delivery of public services and creating a more efficient city.    

Smart cities are becoming increasingly common, with greater access to technology and cheaper prices, cities can now afford to make a switch to becoming a smart city. Big data is seen as providing objective, neutral measures that are free of political ideology as to what is occurring in a city. However, the enormous, varied, dynamic and interconnected datasets are vulnerable to a range of different issues, already taking place in areas such as Israel.

In this reading, the data explosion that has occurred over the past decade, the role of cities as key sites in the production of such data, and how these data are being used to re-imagine and regulate the urban life are examined. In particular, the analysis concentrates on the new phenomena of ‘big data’ and the generation of enormous, varied, dynamic, and interconnected datasets that hold the promise of what some see as a truly smart city.

 Based on the reading ‘The real-time city? Big data and smart urbanism’ by Rob Kitchin, we will be outlining what big data is, real-time analytics and identifying five characteristics of a smart city.  

Big data and cities:

There has been long production of very large datasets, like census and government records. These data sets provide information about these cities and also the people that live in the cities.

Businesses have also collected data to analyse what the operations, markets and consumers they are dealing with. These data sets rely on samples and are non-continuous. Meaning that large data sets need to be accompanied with small data sets, e.g. surveys questionnaires.

This capturing a tightly focused sample for more specific results.

The hype and hope of big city data transformation thorough the creation of a data deluge will create a much more sophisticated wider scale, finer grained, real time understanding and controlled urbanity.

There is no academic or industrial definition of big city data but surveys that have been done give a number of key features:

·         Huge in volume

·         Huge in velocity

·         Diverse in variety

·         Exhaustive in scope

·         Fine grained in resolution

·         Flexible

There has been a transformation since the early 2000’s with the volume of data generated. With consumers, produces now being able to store data on disk drives, laptops etc.

Based on the review of data volume growth, many projected a growth of 40% of data generated per year globally.

Such data growth is due to new technology, new infrastructure etc.

Technology getting better has allowed people to access records and evaluate data easily.

Sources of big data: divided into three sections:

Directed- traditional forms of surveillance, cameras etc. it is based on a person or a place and operated by a human

Automated- Inherited automatic data, the data is generated as an inherent, automatic function of the devise or system

Volunteered- data is gifted by uses, these include things like interactions across social media, observations and the uploading of photos and videos.

Directed and volunteered data can be useful for planning urban cities it is automated data that has the biggest impact. It can record for longer and doesn’t need any assistance from humans

Urban places are also now full of automated machines and objects. These include automatic doors, security alarms, and Wi-Fi routers. These devices also transmit data between each other.

The data collections can be generated by local governments and state agencies, and some by private companies and they are not all open in nature.

These data collections provide an abundant, systemic, dynamic way of providing real time analysis for governance.

The Real Time City

Many city Governments use real-time analytics to manage aspects of how a city functions and is regulated. This is the use of, or the capacity to use all available enterprise data and resources when they are needed. An example of real-time analytics relates to the movement of vehicles around a transportation network. As this image shows, data from a network of cameras and transponders are fed back to a central control hub to monitor the flow of traffic and to adjust traffic light sequences and speed limits. They are also used to automatically administer penalties for traffic violations.

Data relating to environmental conditions might be collected from a sensor network distributed throughout the city. Examples of environmental data include air pollution, water levels and seismic activity. Similarly, the police may monitor a group of cameras and live incidents logs to direct appropriate resources to particular areas. Local governments often use management systems to analyse public engagement with the services that they provide and monitor whether things need to be adjusted or implemented. There has recently been an attempt to draw all of these kinds of surveillance and analytics into one single hub, supplemented by broader public and open data analytics. For example, a partnership between the city government and IBM in Rio, Brazil, has developed a city wide instrumented system that draws together data streams from 30 agencies. This includes traffic and transport, municipal and utility services, emergency services, weather feeds and information sent in by employees and the public via phones and radio.

A team of analysts then process, visualise, analyse and monitor the data, then investigate different aspects of city life that change over time and build productive models with respect to city development and management of disaster situations. This is then complemented by a virtual operations platform that enables city officials to log-in from the field to access the real time information. For example, police at an accident scene can use the platform to see how many ambulances have been dispatched and when to upload additional information. The overall aim of this platform was to knock down the silos between departments and combine each ones data to help the whole enterprise.

The Office of Policy and Strategic Planning in New York have taken this initiative even further by making their data available in open form, enabling developers to build apps that take the data and rework and repackage it for daily consumption by city dwellers.

Likewise, an initiative called DubLinked, provides operational data from Dublin’s four local authorities in an open format. This is an ideas and information sharing network which connects these authorities with universities, companies and entrepreneurs. The initiative was launched in October 2011, bringing people together to test new ideas using live city data and to develop new products and services using the city as a testing ground. Dublin’s brick lanes, lush parks and grey river banks have been linked with high-tech sensors capable of gathering a range of information. Dublin is a good ‘prototype’ city, being big enough to have complex city systems that could be scaled internationally but small enough so that big city problems become local and can be solved.

Over 250 datasets are available for download through the DubLinked data store, including planning applications, real time traffic information, environment and emergency services. DubLinked consists of data that is open to everybody and a research zone where data is shared among members. The city council hopes the futuristic network will attract interest from investors and companies looking to innovate the city. They also hope that tourists will eventually be able to move through the city, guided by an app and local businesses will be able to send out special offers to passers-by electronically. Although it has been recognised that there will be ethical and privacy issues, more than 94% of Dubliners surveyed said that they would like to see Dublin used as an experimental site for new technologies. In London, they have also developed a city dashboard, where the public can find information on the weather, air pollution, the stock market and even London’s happiness level.

For those developing and using integrated, real time city data analytics, these centres, apps and dashboards provide a powerful means for making sense of, managing and living in the city, while envisioning and predicting future scenarios. The use of large samples and the linking of diverse forms of data provide a deeper, more holistic and robust analysis.

 Five concerns about a real time city:

 Politics of big urban data:

Data within smart cities are portrayed as lacking political ideology. But data is simply data. Cameras or sensors have no political agenda. Big data presents an image of being politically benign, but it makes a city safer, more secure, efficient and more productive.

Technocratic governance and city development

The drive towards managing and regulating the city via information and analytic systems promotes a technocratic mode of urban governance which presumes that all aspects of a city can be measured and monitored and treated as technical problems which can be addressed through technical solutions. Through the use of real-time data, it is possible to model, understand, manage and fix a situation as it unfolds. However, it is suggested that big data urbanism suffers from datafication; the presumption that all meaningful flows and activities can be measured.

Employing an evidence based, algorithmic processed approach to city governance may seemingly ensure rational, logical and impartial decisions. Technocratic governance also provides city managers with a defence against decisions that raise ethical and accountability concerns by enabling them to say ‘it’s not me – it’s the data’. Technocratic forms of governance are highly narrow in scope, based on a limited set of data and failing to take into account the wider effects of culture, politics, policy, governance and capital that shape city life and how it unfolds. Technological solutions on their own are not going to solve the deep rooted structural problems in cities as they do not address their root causes. Further, control and command systems centralise power and decision making into a select set of offices, at the same time that they make elements of the data publicly available.

The corporatisation of city governance and technological lock-in:

Alongside the critique that smart city governance is a concern that is being shaped by corporate interests for their own gain.

The smart city agenda and associated technologies are heavily prompted by a number of large software companies who view city governance as a long term market potential.

The concern is threefold:

The first is that it actively promotes neo-liberal politics

It creates a technological lock-in

And the third is that it leads to a one size fits all

Buggy, brittle and hackable cities

The embedding and use of computer systems in city environments is creating city services and spaces that are dependent on software function. Therefore, if software fails a space may not be produced as intended as the old analogue system and associated knowledge has been entirely replaced. For example if the software used to control a subway system crashes, then the trains do not run. Also, if a supermarkets checkout tills crash, shoppers can no longer purchase products. As such, while potentially solving a diverse set of urban problems, the creation of spaces through smart city projects leaves cities vulnerable to other issues. In particular, it has the potential to create spaces prone to viruses, glitches, crashes and security hacks.

As systems become even more complicated, interconnected and dependent on software, the challenge of producing stable, robust and secure devices and infrastructure increases. For example, the Israel government acknowledges that its essential services such as water, electricity, banking and road infrastructure are the target of numerous cyber hacks, with Israel Electric Corporation reporting that it receives 6,000 attempted hacks every second. However, while the deployments of smart technologies have had many issues, they have been relatively robust despite their vulnerabilities. With more and more systems being established, the main questions asked have been ‘when will these smart cities fail and how much damage will they cause when they crash?’

The panoptic city:

Over the last couple of decades with increased surveillance and automated digital technologies, there has been increasing concern about this surveillance. Because it is now possible to track and trace any individual.

This increase in surveillance has been driven by a growing culture of control, which desires security. Big data control centres that integrate and combine data streams together are almost raising the spectre of a big brother society.   

Conclusion:

The notion of smart cities has gained much traction in recent years as a vision for stimulating and supporting innovation and economic growth, and providing sustainable and efficient urban management and development. One significant aspect of the smart cities concept is the production of sophisticated data analytics for understanding, monitoring, regulating and planning the city. As cities have become increasingly dependent on digital infrastructure and networks, devices and sensors, data available about cities and their citizens has grown exponentially.

For citizens, this data offers insights into city life, aids everyday living and decision making and empowers alternative visions for city development. For governments, big data and integrated analysis and control centres offer more efficient and effective city management and regulation. For corporations, big data analytics offers new, long term business opportunities as key players in city governance.

However, there are a number of concerns with the possibilities of technological lock-in, system vulnerabilities, ethical issues and concerns relating to data quality, security and the validity of analytics. There is a pressing need to interrogate the nature and production of urban big data, the composition and functioning of urban analytics and control centres, and the implications of technocratic, corporatized and real-time forms of governance.

 

Sassen, 2005, The Global City - Introducing a ConceptFile

The global city: Introducing a concept:

Each phase in the history of the world economy raises specific questions about the particular conditions that make it possible

Elements in new conceptual Architecture:

The globalisation of economic activity entails a new type of organisational structure. To capture this a new type of Architecture has been founded. In todays world most of the major global cities are world cities.

The global city model: Organising hypothesis

there are 7 hypothesis of the theory of global city model:

1. geographical dispersal of economic activity
2. Central function becomes complex that the head quarters for large global firms out source them
3. specialised services service firms engagement in most complex and globalised markets are subjected to agglomeration economies
4. Head quarters outsource their most complex, unstandardized functions, particularly those subject to uncertain changing markets
5. need to provide a global service which has meant a global network of affiliates or some other form of partnership
6. growing numbers of high level professionals and high profit making specialised services firms have effect of raising the degree of spatial and socio-economic
7. One result of the dynamics describes in hypothesis six, is the growing information of a range of economic activities which find their effective demand in these cities

World wide networks and central command functions:

The massive trends towards the spatial dispersal of economic activities at the metropolitan, national, global level which associate with globalisation have contributed to a demand of new forms of territorial centralisation of top-level management and central functions.

Impacts of new communication technologies of centrality:

cities have historically provided a national economies, policies, and societies, with something we can think as a centrality. Cities provide agglomeration economies. As earlier sections have indicated, centrality remains a key feature of today's global economy.     

Freestone, 2014, Progress in Australian planning history traditions themes and transformationsFile

Planning history is the historical study of all aspects of Urban and Regional planning. The growing body of work in this field since the 1980's has been reviewed by various authors. planning history has been portrayed as a regrettable fragmentation of historical interests in the city.

Why Planning History?

History can be useful, but can also be abused. Macmillion argues that we should distrust these who abuse history to justify unreasonable claims and unconscionable positions. At the same time an historical perspective can deliver more positive outcomes of scepticism.

An Australian planning history:

The drivers for Australian planning were the problems accompanying an accelerated scale of unplanned urbanisation from the late 19th century. In the first half of the 20th century, idealistic social reforms comprising progressive practitioners drawn mainly from Architecture, Engineering and surveying professionals.
The second half of the 20th century saw a return to the propaganda investment made in the first few decades. The major dividend came in the 1940's when planning was widely accepted as a legitimate activity of the state. Post war planning systems grew accretion in each jurisdiction.

Innovative discourse:

Throughout this section of the reading Freestone talks about how disciplinary concerns and methods have emerged as sources of innovation research in Australian planning history.

Canvassing the future of the past:

Over decades as electric cast of researches has filled in gaps of planning history, and injected new understandings and generated yet more avenues for arguing. Considerable evidence has been assembled to convey a small culturally specific paradigm.  

Freestone, 2004, The Americanisation of Australian Planning

America has been central to world power in the forms of military, diplomats, and cultural power. American planning is very well evident in Australian society with civic, retail, freeway and many other areas resembling American planning

The Australian-American Nexus:

America was the showcase for new technology, an inspiration for can do progress, and an influencing culture in the 20th century. Australia and America have been formed alliances since 1908 when the arrival of the American fleet in Sydney harbour took place. Therefore Australia as a young country looked towards America for inspiration instead of England as they had new and exciting ideas unlike England at that time.

Diffusion of planning Ideas:

Three recent texts synthesis the central concern of much architectural design, and planning history

• The first is Stephen Ward who had a central idea of innovation diffusion
• Jeff Cody and Joe Nasr also explore this same theme

A narrative of American influences:

Identifying a succession of American planning ideas throughout Australia in the 20th century is very evident. With the influx of inspiration from American planning really taking off during this period.

The Aesthetic City:

Australia looked to America to transform its uninteresting colonial cities into new and exciting ones. these encounters with the ideas of a city as a work of art set the scene for the 1911-1912 competition to design Australia's new capital city, Canberra. Walter Burley Griffin ultimately winning, creating an American design concept in Australia's capital. Griffin was born and grew up in Chicago. This further influenced the Americanisation of Australian planning.

The city functional:

After World War 1 an organised planning movement began assembling itself in Australia. America remained a source of inspiration throughout the Griffin experience. From the 1930's onward, a mix of planning ideas, models and experiments and prototypes became known in Australia from the American influence.

Post World War 11:

First set of post war plans for Australia reflected a growing Americanisation. The future of urban traffic planning lay from learning form the lake Chicago design in America.

Throughout Australia's history of planning we have looked to America for innovation and exciting ideas as we are a relatively new country. Australia is a lot different to America so it has been hard to make these ideas and plans be successful in Australia.     

  

"Anglo-American Town Panning Theory since 1945: three significant development but no paradigm shifts" - Nigel Taylor (1999)

Over fifty years there has been a number of important shifts in town planning theory. Throughout this paper Taylor offers a retrospective overview of the evolution of planning.

Two significant shifts in the way Town Planners have been conceived:

1. From the planner as a creative designer to the planner as a scientific analyst and rational decision-maker.

• Aster the second world war, Town Planning theory was considered essentially as an exercise of design.
• This continued until the 1960's as demonstrated because most Town Planners were architects
• shift from art to science 

     2. From the planner as a technical expert to the planner as a manager and communicator:

• 1960's Planners shifted to a rational decision maker, but the public had raised some question about these planners and if they were the right people to make these decisions.

Throughout history the role of a planner has been ever changing. as technology gets better and easier to access to role of a planner will continue on this path of evolution, however the paradigms will not be as large as the ones experienced on the past.  

The communicative turn in planning theory and it's implications for spatial strategy formation: P Healy

The context:
widespread consciousness these days that economic and political orders have changed substantially. According to Healy places have now seen to have fragmented into an amalgam of bits and pieces, niches and nodes. It reflects the disintegration of the economic and governance relations relied on past war.

Public policy making as commutative argumentation:
There are always new theories and interpretations, new policy provides and management tricks, but as Kuhn has shown us mainly small contributions add up to a change in our thinking. Producing what he called the paradigm shift. As he discusses a new wave of ideas focusses on how we get to discuss issues in the pubic realm.

A communicative approach to spatial strategy formation:
most of the spatial and environmental planning activity is focussed on managing the smaller finer grain of change in local environments. this presents some problems in certain projects as it may lock the flow of planning. they may also serve to enrich the power and interests of powerful groups making it harder for certain individuals. The planning literature already referred to is beginning to provide us with interesting ways of thinking. they are ordered in 5 headings:

1. Where is discussion to take place?
2. in what style should it take place?
3. how can ideas and arguments be sorted out?
4. how can a new strategy be sorted out?
5. how to get them to agree on a strategy?

Arenas for argumentation:
Traditional way of discussing where policy making takes place is to consider all arenas and allocate rights to be represented and heard in the arenas.

Scope and style of discourse:
Another set of considerations concerns what gets discussed and how. In planning we used to call this stage the survey stage. It involves opening out issues, explore what they mean to different people. This is a critical and delicate operation.

Creating a new discourse:
broadly based discussion takes place in defined stages, before or after strategies have been created.

Agreement and critique:
objective of strategic inclusionary argumentation on urban features is a rich policy discourse. But there will always be some people that will be unhappy.   

'Contested cities: Social Processes and Spatial form'. By Nick Jewson and Susanne MacGregor

Early this century there was no more than a dozen cities that would post a population of 1 Million or more people with just 7 per cent classified as urban. As time has past in 2000 there were more then 500 cities that posted a population of more than 1 Million people. If these trends continue soon nearly half the worlds population will be classified as urban.  

With this rapid increase in Urbanisation it posts some fundamental questions that need to be addressed.  

- why is it that the urban so frequently disappears from our discussions of broader political-economic processes and social trends?

- what has happened to the category ‘urban’?

These are just  few of the questions that have been created through this rapid increase of Urbanisation.

 

Some commentators are predicting that if this current trend continues we will be producing Marginalisation, Disempowerment, Alienation, pollution and finally degradation. In the past he capital has regarded cities as important places, we now find that they are no longer concerned about cities.

 

Throughout this reading Jewson and MacGregor make some very interesting points. These include:

• Re-conceptualise the urban as a production of space and spatio-temporality to a dialectical relationship between process and time
• Assumption that the 'community will save current city's mess
•  No mention of cities in ecological literature - therefore failure to account for over 50% of the world's population

 

 

We have to move the urban, and the urbanizing process, into a more central position in our debates and discussions about ecological, social, political and economic change

 

 

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A Ladder of Citizen Participation (Sherry R. Arnstein)

Arnstein starts off talking about how the topic of Citizen participation is a heated one, as she then goes on to compare citizen participation to eating spinach, 'no one is against it in principle because it is good for you', which is quit cleverly said as most things are good in principle but harder to implement to the citizens. The real question that Arnstein is trying to raise is what is Citizen Participation and what is its relationship to the social imperatives if our time?

Arnstein believes that citizen participation means citizen power, according to her it redistributes the power from so that the 'have not' citizens can have an input into what is happening in the future. Arnstein describes participation as, "citizen participation is arranged in a ladder pattern with each rung corresponding to the extent of citizens' power in determining the plan and/or program.". This is a clever way of describing her thoughts on the issue.

In the text there is a diagram of a ladder with rungs that perfectly sums up the whole text. each rung demonstrating the powers that are involved. These rungs are as follows:

8   Citizen Control

7   Delegated Power          Degree of citizen power

6   Partnership

5   Placation

4   Consultation                 Degree of tokenism

3   Informing

2   Therapy                        Non-participation

1   Manipulation

Arnstein then goes on to describe each one of these rungs on the ladder in detail, giving the reader a full understanding of the thoughts throughout the text.

   

Modernism and Early Urban Planning, Richard T. LeGates and Frederic Stout

This post is a summary of Modernism and early Urban Planning by Richard LeGates and  Frederic Stout. This covers early ideas about early Urban Planning.

Throughout this writing there are many things that are covered, these include: Nineteenth century urban crisis and reform, Ebenenzer Howard and the garden city ideal, Urban Aestheticism and Beautiful City Movement, 'Progressivism' and the city efficient, The Master Plan, New Towns and Regionalism, New Towns For America.

Nineteenth century Urban crisis and reform:
In 1884 one of the first movements to the dislocations of urbanism was the "Parks Movement". It started in Liverpool when Joseph Paxton designed Birkinhead park as the first urban garden. In 1845 and again in 1872 it was enlarged with extra features put into place, things such as gardens, walkways and many other things enhanced the design of these "garden cities". Another person that had a huge influence on the parks movement was Frederick Law Olmstead. He had his impact largely in america in 1822-1903. Olmstead and his partner are largely known for their work and design on central park after winning the design competition and they both began work on Central Park in 1857.

Ebenenzer Howard and the Garden City ideal:
Ebenenzer Howard believed that "the key to improved health was was an urban plan that eliminated congestion and kept the countryside close at hand'. This leading to him creating the Ebenenzer Howard garden plan (1850-1928). Which consisted of parks, gardens, and al of the land would be collectively owned with start-up loans retired over time from the yearly earnings.

Urban Aesthetics and Beautiful city Movement:
In the 1890's there was a focus put on civic design which resulted in " Municipal art, and making the city beautiful'. This was a result of L'Enfant's plan for Washington DC., but also there was an influence neomedievlism that was used in England was having a huge influence.

'Progressivism' and the city efficient:
Progressivism was a new movement experienced by the united states during and post World War 1, it was defined as 'grew out of good government'. they aimed to apply the best scientific thinking to the management of american cities.

The Master Plan:  
As planning departments in America started to grow in numbers and mature, they started to develop general comprehensive plans. What these plans should contain was  not clear until Edward Basset defined what these plans should contain and he also linked it to the relationship between processes and the city government.In 1935 Basset created "The Master Plan", it was a generalised document that was later adopted by the local planning commission. One of the most important things that Basset achieved was his concept of The Master Plan which was taken as the core document of city planning agencies. This was what lead to Planning becoming a profession.

New Towns and Regionalism:
Most of the early city planning was focused on the planning of the direct city, some people had other ideas. Such as Patrick Geddes. Geddes had a different perspective on planning, he had a wider view taking into consideration not only the city but the region. This influencing modern day urban planning as many more things need to be taken into consideration such as what goes on around the particular city.

New Towns for America:
Geddes attracted many workers in his life, none possibly as influential as Lewis Mumford. He carried many ideas from his co workers Geddes and Howard. He was mainly interested on 'how transportation and communication technologies could actually permit decentralisation population and industry throughout regions'. This leading to opportunities of smaller cites in the New York region being possible.

Throughout this writing it demonstrates how planning has evolved and where different ideas have come from that have significantly influenced modern planning in the modern era. It has also demonstrated who some of the key people are in the history of planning as well as discussing some of the different theories such as 'the Garden City'.

Thank you for reading, I hope to get some comments on your thoughts on the reading as well as who you thought were also influential on modern planning...          

Tom 

Fifty Theses on Urban and Regional Planning, Rapheal Fischler (2012)

The first post I am going to talk about is the Fifty Theses on Urban and Regional Planning and Urban Planners. Throughout this post I will summarise this essay and give my views on the topic.

Urban and Regional Planning is hard to define as Rapheal Fischler describes in his essay, He divides his fifty theses into 6 different categories. These include the General thesis, Theses on the meaning and origins of Urban Planning, Theses on the substance and uses of Urban Planning, Theses on good Planning and good plans, Theses on Urban Planners and finally Theses on planning education and research.

Rapheal Fischler describes Urban Planning as 'ill defined in contents and in scope'. he also describes how 'the public hardly knows what to expect of it's practitioners'. This painting a picture for the rest of the essay defining and giving a common understanding of what Urban Planning is.
In the first theses Fischler talks about 18 different contradictions or tensions that makes hard to define Urban Planning. This further complicates and demonstrates the troubles that Planners face when describing there field as some of the contradictions include things like Urban Planners and value-based advocacy and Urban planning and as unbiased advice, between Urban Planning as plan making for the future and for the community and Urban Planning as deliberation by the community, these are only a few of the eighteen tensions or contradictions that are faced with defining Urban Planning.

In Fischler's second theses on the meaning and origins of Urban Planning he talks about the what it means to be an Urban planner and also where planning came from, 'Urban Planning is the collective management of Urban development, the use of purposeful deliberation to give shape to the human settlements'. This quote I think gives the most meaning to what a Planner actually does, 'give shape to human settlement' The next theses is on the substance and uses of Urban Planning, Fischler talks about Urban Planning being a 'design activity', it is a 'political activity', Urban planning can be a 'force for good or a force for evil'. These are some of the ways that Fischler describes good planning and good plans. He also describes Urban Planners as, 'analysts, advisers, designers, facilitators, when these roles are played they are community builders they also help to give shape and meaning to social life in a given place. The last theses that FIschler talks about is on Planning education and research. Throughout this he says that Planning education is at its best when it enables students to acquire a good understanding of the process of Urban change.      

throughout this essay Fischler paints a good picture and in my opinion he demonstrates what an Urban planner actually does as well as describing the origins or Urban planning. It also gave me a clear idea of all the things that are associated with Urban planning...

Thank you for reading this post and I hope to get some comments of your thoughts,

Thanks

Thomas Ellwood

Introduction Post

Hi

My name is Thomas Ellwood I am currently studying a Bachelor of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Canberra and I am in my first year. so far I have learnt about the basics of planning theories and and have gained some skills through a range different subjects that I have attended. These have been Economics, Planning, Advocacy, Earth System Science and planning for cities and climate change. I plan to further my knowledge of Planning theory and Processes by creating a blog discussing some of the key ideas that I will come across throughout this cousre and in the future.
I hope that you can comment any ideas or opinnions that your may have or any topics that you think are worth a look at. This will be greatly beneficial to me as it will broaden my ideas and thinking. This course and particulalry this blog will help me understand how planners implement, adapt and mitigate, as well as helping me learn the key theories that support these planning theories.
Thanks for reading i hope to recieve your comments....
Tom