Making Planning Popular

[Image: Making Planning Popular on display at the RCA in London].

For those of you near London, you have one more day to see David Knight’s Making Planning Popular on display in a group show called GRIST at the Royal College of Art. I’m a huge fan of Knight’s work—an ongoing research project on the strange terrains both encouraged and required by local planning ordinances—and he’s thus become a regular referent here on the blog.

[Image: The manifesto from Making Planning Popular].

Specifically, Making Planning Popular “aims to encourage greater popular knowledge of how the built environment is, or could be, produced.” Accordingly, “David is showing a manifesto, recent articles and essays, and a series of case studies chosen from his growing database of arcane, marginalized, or forgotten planning practices. This work will in time form a popular history of planning”—publishers, take note!—”one in which such practises are brought back to life to explore their relevance to today’s environment, in the belief that putting planning knowledge back into popular culture will lead to a more democratic built environment.”

[Images: Excerpts from David Knight’s “growing database of arcane, marginalized, or forgotten planning practices,” part of Making Planning Popular].

Above are some examples of these case studies; but stop by the RCA before the end of the day on Monday, February 6, to see more. Here’s a map.

3 thoughts on “Making Planning Popular”

  1. I never really thought much about planning as bad or good prior to this post. I am certain that you have spent a lot of time on the subject because I have watched and liked this site for a long time.
    Interesting in that I realized that planning is the the loss of freedom.
    Look at any planned community and you find something repulsive. I prefer ugly chaos to planned anything. I live in Phoenix which should give you a clue.
    Anyone else ever rethink your thoughts on something bland and walk away a changed person? I find the fact you have done this with this post somewhat humorous.

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