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Collaborative planning in practice: The Nicosia master plan

This paper examines how informal communication occurs in the context of planning in divided cities, with a case study of Nicosia. There is an extensive body of literature that investigates how planning is based on deliberation (Davidoff, 1965; Barrett & Fudge, 1981; Harvey, 1985; Friedmann, 1987; Hoch, 1994; 1996; Sager, 1994; Flyvbjerg, 1998). It generally emphasises the political nature of planning, focusing on the relationship of knowledge to action. The work of the authors listed above is rooted in the idea that planning is a social process and the understanding of communication draws on the social construction of meanings. It builds on the recognition that knowledge forms do not only have an objective existence to be discovered by scientific methods. Rather, they are actively constituted through social interactive processes in which planning plays a part. More recently, theoretical approaches to planning have come forward which have become known in the United Kingdom (UK) planning literature as ‘collaborative planning’ (Healey, 1997) and in the United States (US) as ‘communicative planning’ (Forester, 1989; Innes, 1998). They seek to democratise planning practice and empower communities through communication. Two key ideas emerge from these approaches. The first is that planning, as a social process, is interaction in which individuals organise their ideas. The second is concerned with shared meanings, in which individuals move away from competitive interests towards practices of collectively transforming their knowing. A normative dimension of planning is assumed, in which no affected party is excluded from discourse and its premise is arriving at collaboratively chosen decisions. The above strengths are said to give collaborative planning both local rigour and universal validity. However, critics of collaborative planning point out that it does not reflect reality; that is, collaborative planning takes insufficient account of power differences expressed in diverse interests and relations of domination, and in which planning practices are embedded (see Richardson, 1996; Allmendinger & Tewdwr-Jones, 1997). To the extent that interests are diverse and plans are uncertain, compromises are inevitable and differences in the structure of power