ABSTRACT
As planners, urban professionals, decision makers, political and community leaders, urban designers, builders, architects, engineers, developers, social policy makers and all those whose remit is the city, it is our task to ensure that the city works as effectively as it can for all its citizens, human and non-human. Planning is about making great places, but great places are doomed to fail if they aren’t planned and experienced ‘together’ with the people who live in cities and with the consequences of planning decisions. The task of bringing people, and indeed all who inhabit the city, human and non-human, together and remaking existing cities is fraught. Mainly because planners are rarely in control of what happens in cities and constantly have to respond to factors beyond their control such as economic, political and environmental factors. This chapter reflects on and responds to our concern with the increasingly capitalistic, consumerist and profit-motivated focus of city development and planning. It explores how cities can be created and managed in ways that are in essence ‘caring’ and ‘kind’ and considers ways to think and plan more positively by having the well-being of people and nature as the primary concern in developing our cities.
