FW: Strategic Planning message Adrian Atkinson
Sara Hoeflich
As he could not post his message, I am herewith copypasting it to make
it available for your reading. Adrian, besides being profesor for urban
planning at Berlin UNiversity, is consultant to International Labor
Organization and others and works a lot in Asian countries.
Thank you Adrian!!
Best regards
Sara
-----Original Message-----
From: Adrian.Atkinson
Sent: viernes, 22 de octubre de 2010 22:14
To: uclgcongre...@googlegroups.com
Cc: Sara Hoeflich
Subject: Re. Strategic Planning
ADDRESSING GAPS IN THE STRATEGIC PLANNING PROCESS
1 There are gaps in what currently are the central themes of strategic
planning in the context of a realistic view regarding the kind of future
we can expect to be unfolding in the coming decades.
2 Whilst there is a growing awareness of the potentially catastrophic
impacts of global warming, there is little serious focus on what this
might mean for cities that are lookimng to plan strategically for their
future.
3 Every urban authority should develop a scenario of how the city might
be affected by climate change and sea level rise in the coming decades.
3 Worse is the avoidance of consideration of the impacts of rising
energy
prices in the coming decade. There is often a realisation that this
will
be happening but little recognistion of what this means for planning and
particularly for plan realisation. Much of the optimistic thinking
about
what might be achieved in future years assumes the resources will be
available to carry them out. Rising energy prices means everything
becomes more expensive and eventually unviable.
4 This implies that cities will need to think more clearly and take
effective action to recover aspects of their economies that have been
lost
in the process of globalisation. Things made for export will fail to
find
markets and the expectation of being able to import even basics
including
food is likely to become increasingly in vain as produce and products
fail
to arrive or are too expensive for significant sections of the
population
to afford.
5 Already urban farming is on the increase as tactics and strategy to
address growing urban hunger (in Africa over 30% of the population is
now
undernourished, affecting particularly the young and the urban
population).
6 But this attitude of recovering urban economic activity - and with it
employment - needs to extend to other parts of the economy, asking the
question: what does the urban population need that they are not getting
-
so how can we initiate enterprise to satisfy these needs?
This would be true forward thinking and a correctrion of current missing
elements in strategic planning.
Adrian Atkinson