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Building with Nature

The most urgent challenge of planning in our time is finding a new balance between the self-regulating potential of society and the intelligent use of regulation. Economic stagnation and austerity have challenged the authority of supply-led planning agencies that determined the post-war spatial expansion of city regions in Europe. Rather than delivering promising perspectives for a better future in this time of crisis – at the moment of truth – the planning machine itself is now being subjected to austerity and is being considered part of the problem rather than the solution. New planning practices have to be invented, based mainly on the self-regulation potential of society. Obviously, one may hardly call this a new message, but it differs highly from the established practices of planning: the planning authorities have to return to their roots from time to time in order to stay in touch with reality. In search of successful solutions, urban planners in Europe might learn a lot from the experiences of the adjoining discipline of nature development. Coping with the uncertainties and self-guiding forces of nature might be even more challenging than dealing with self-guidance in social systems, yet it is the similarities of the two different systems that we may learn from.