ABSTRACT

The observation that in Makasiinit the material space had such importance in the formation of a point of urban centrality leads to the concluding discussion about planning, urban design and architecture. Much of what I have said so far has been critical towards planning, its means, practices and possibilities. I have claimed that urban design and planning, as we know them, cannot proceed without the self-contradictory double illusion of the simultaneous transparency and opacity of space. Thereby, any plan, and any professional representation of space in fact, by necessity entails simplification, distortion, omissions and violence against the dominated, lived space. All too often, this representation, the Concept City, is substituted for the complex urban reality. Will this set of critical ideas lead to ‘planning nihilism’? Will it lead to a position that nothing should be planned? To a position that, if practised, planning can only do evil? I hope not.