Urbanism as a strategy
Introduction
Through the processes of strategic urban planning (PEU), it is generally desired to clarify the desired city model and advance in its achievement, coordinating public and private efforts, channeling energies, adapting to new circumstances and improving the living conditions of citizens.
Strategic planning is a technique that has been applied in multiple facets of human activity; It is enough to remember Sun Tzu, Arthur Thomson or Henry Mintzberg; However, the application of strategic planning to urban reality, to cities and regions or metropolitan areas, is relatively recent and its beginnings are eminently practical and artisanal: a mixture of thought, techniques and art or good work.
15 years of practice were enough for the technique to spread and the first “Meeting of European and American cities for the exchange of experiences in strategic planning” to be organized. This meeting, held in Barcelona in 1993, had the collaboration of the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank, the European Community Commission and the Ibero-American Cooperation Institute. The cities of Amsterdam, Lisbon, Lille, Barcelona, Toronto and Santiago de Chile participated, among others.
In this meeting, it was revealed, among other relevant aspects, that if collaboration processes are addressed in large cities to carry out strategic planning processes, and if a reasonable understanding is achieved between administrations, companies and a broad representation of social agents, then organizational synergies are generated that, in the medium term, improve the application of resources and the quality of life of citizens.
Origin
The processes of strategic urban planning (PEU) emerged at the end of the century. The city of San Francisco "San Francisco (California)") (USA) conducted its process between 1982 and 1984.
The main motivation for initiating urban strategic planning processes has been the attempt to react adequately to problematic situations (mainly stagnation or economic crisis); At the beginning of the century this organizational form was not adopted reactively but rather proactively; Referring to Spain, crisis situations are not the main triggers of these processes, but rather the motivations are found in the search for public-private collaboration, in the desire to coordinate actions, in continuous improvement, in the desire to launch revitalization processes and even to follow examples .