ABSTRACT

This chapter looks at how a narrative approach to planning can inform future planning practices. It considers how a narrative approach to site survey can prepare the ground for planning practices that are more thoroughly grounded within local narratives for planning. The outlines of existing buildings and streets, the coordinates of accessible locations, height differences and soil properties, patterns of land ownership – all these things can be readily examined with the help of maps and quantitative place data. Narrative mapping adds complementary forms of knowledge to such quantitative data by providing information on spatial experiences, place-based habits, as well as the kinds of imaginative association and spatial interaction linked with particular places. Planning is concerned with bringing order to the city by reconciling contradictions, fixing borders, designating specific functions to the exclusion of others. In planning theory, there is a similar turn away from rational planning theory, “great narratives”, and comprehensive end plans, towards more incremental planning practices.