ABSTRACT
Complexity, complex systems and complexity theories are becoming increasingly important within a variety disciplines. While these issues are less well known within the discipline of spatial planning, there has been a recent growing awareness and interest. As planners grapple with how to consider the vagaries of the real world when putting together proposals for future development, they question how complexity, complex systems and complexity theories might prove useful with regard to spatial planning and the physical environment. This book provides a readable overview, presenting and relating a range of understandings and characteristics of complexity and complex systems as they are relevant to planning. It recognizes multiple, relational approaches of dynamic complexity which enhance understandings of, and facilitate working with, contingencies of place, time and the various participants' behaviours. In doing so, it should contribute to a better understanding of processes with regard to our physical and social worlds.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|79 pages
Theoretical Reflections Bridging Complexity and Planning
part II|169 pages
Complex Systems and Planning, in between the Real and the Relative
chapter 6|36 pages
Spatial Planning, Complexity and a World ‘Out of Equilibrium'
chapter 9|22 pages
Climate Adaptation in Complex Governance Systems
chapter 11|16 pages
Considering Complex Systems
part III|81 pages
Assemblage and a Relational Attitude to Planning
chapter 15|20 pages
Coevolving Adaptive and Power Networks
part IV|59 pages
Simulating in between the Real and the Ideal