ABSTRACT
The small Finnish town of Lempaala produced a “narrative introduction” to its town centre plan, distributed to all households, in 2007. In the case of the plans for Helsinki’s waterfront, leading members of the Helsinki City Planning Department have on several occasions described urban planning and development in terms of storytelling, arguing that the city should be seen as story. Different planning theorists have argued for planning theory to “dig deeper into the learning processes where the tacit dimension of knowledge is involved” and for planning to move from “grand narratives” to small narratives; from narratives of dominant voices to narratives of the underprivileged; and, more generally, towards an “epistemology of multiplicity” in planning. The schooling and conceptual apparatus available to urban planners, however, seem to have left this profession singularly ill-equipped to embark upon the kind of work of “city story-writing” envisioned by Healey.
