Transformative Planning

1. Research Article
Practicing transformative planning:
The territory-landscape plan as a catalyst for change
Louis Albrechts, Anglea Barbanente and Valeria Monno
University of Santo Tomas
The Graduate School
Manila, Philippines
2020147583 ARCH 724 Regional Planning Fundamentals (Tue 6:00-9:00)
MAYANI, LLOYD D. Antonio L. Fernandez, D. Eng.
MS ARCHITECTURE March 22, 2022

2. Practicing transformative planning:
the territory-landscape plan as a catalyst for change
Name of the Publisher:
Author’s Names & Affiliation:
Louis Albrechts
- Professor of Planning at the
Department of Architecture,
Urbanism and Planning in
Catholic University of Leuven,
Belgium
Valeria Monno
- Professor in the
Department of Civil,
Environemntal, Land,
Construction and Chemistry
in Politecnico di Bari, Italy
Angela Barbanente
- Professor of ‘Tecnica e
Pianificazione Urbanistica’,
Department of Civil,
Environmental, Territorial,
Building Engineering and
Chemistry in Politecnico di Bari,
Italy
Date of Publication: Published online on January 14, 2020

3. Claiming change: planning ambitions and contextual
conditions
 Globalized and urbanized society faces the combined crises of climate
change and intensifying socio-economic inequality and global economic
disruption.
 Current challenges are central and structural and hence cannot be tackled by
means of traditional approaches.
 Society as a whole has to accept that it lives in a world in which much of what
it does and it does it simply cannot continue.
By this conditions, the proactive response seems appropriate, as it calls for
the transformative practices that are needed to cope with the continuing and
unabated pace of change driven by (structural) problems and challenges.

4. What is Transformative Planning/ Practices?
 A changing vision and concepts, discourses and practices, and planning
approach and instruments.
 Transformative practices must be imagined as differing radically and
structurally from the present reality.
 It focus on new concepts and new ways of thinking that change the way
resources are used and allocated, and the way the regulatory powers are
exercised.
 As a concrete socio-historical practice aimed at socially producing a radical
change, transformative planning – within an intrinsically changing, fluxing,
and transforming social ang physical reality – is called upon to recognize the
forces of change and to look for visions, means and instruments to produce
alternatives.

5. What is Transformative Planning/ Practices?
 Transformative planning has been conceptualized in different ways:
 for reconsidering the absolute faith in economic growth
 for living interculturally
 for creating a more sustainable society
 for social mobilization
 for an urban political ecology
 for recapturing democracy
 for radical planning
Planners have to recognize the situated nature of processes, knowledge and
values which guide both urban and regional planning approaches and
transformations at the local level

6. What is Transformative Planning/ Practices?
 The primary objective of transformative planning is the recovery of political
community and, with it, an active public life.
 The transformative agenda is a modern term for structural change that has
been discussed by many in the past in the context of planning theory.

7. A framework for grasping the transformative in
Territorial-Landscape Plan (TLP)
 The TLP is a spatial plan that applies to the whole regional territory.
 It was part of the cultural ang political change occurring in Apulia and
related efforts to support an alternative vision of regional spatial
development.
 Its concept , content and process challenged the ‘urbanism tradition’
characterizing the regional planning system.
 Generally centered on the principles that are difficult to reconcile such as
sustainability, competitiveness, and territorial cohesion.

8. Apulia Region in search of a different way of leading
with structural ‘underdevelopment’ problems
 Located in Southern Italy
 A peninsula of 19,347 𝑘𝑚2 and approximately 900
km of coastline.
 Total population of around 4.1 million having a
population density of 210/𝑘𝑚2
.
 The region is characterized by a long-term economic
gap that in 2016 the unemployment rate (19.4%) was
well higher that the national average (11.7%).

9.  The problem in Apulia makes the regional government envisioned a
development focused on the enhancement of social capital that the culture
and environment will be considered as a common goods.
 This opened the opportunity for planning to find a new role in regional
development policies, centered on the protection and enhancement of the
territory as the historical product of long-lasting cultural processes in
coevolutive relationship with the natural environment.
 And this challenge which required a new planning ethic and the design and
implementation of different planning instruments is the so called TLP –
Territorial-Landscape Plan
Apulia Region in search of a different way of leading
with structural ‘underdevelopment’ problems

10. The Territorial-Landscape Plan as a catalyst for
change
 The TLP was intended as a support to change the culture and practices of
territorial transformation, and start the construction of a new history in the
collective interpretation ang production of a new history in the collective
interpretation and production of the regional territory.
 The TLP is a statutory spatial planning instrument legally required by the
national Cultural Heritage and Landscapes Code.
 It combined a long-term vision, a selective range objectives and issues, an
open , proactive approach to plan-making and implementation, with statutory
legal certainty and clear rules for the transformation of protected areas.
 The TLP vision was based on the concept of ‘self-sustainable local
development’ in which the goal is to reconnect dwellers and producers in the
protection and enhancement of territory values as foundations for an
alternative development.

11. The Territorial-Landscape Plan as a catalyst for
change
The general aims and objectives of territorial projects at the regional scale are
as follows:
 The regional ecological network aiming to improve the overall connectivity
of the regional ecosystem
 The city-countryside pact aiming to improve the quality of life both in rural
and urban areas by combining urban and agro-silvo-pastoral policies
 The infrastructural system for soft mobility aiming to support new ways of
enjoying the regional territory-landscape
 The integrated protection and improvement of coastal landscapes aiming to
assure the general public enjoyment of coastal areas and create synergy
with inland areas
 The systems of cultural heritage aiming to overcome the logic of protection
of single point of expert interest, and to make tangible and intangible
qualities of place known, usable and accessible both to inhabitants and
tourists

12. What could we learn from and about practicing
transformative planning?
 The Territorial-Landscape plan making process as being part of the
transformative planning started from taking a critical distance from the
pressure for ‘economic competition’ dominating the development discourses
across Europe.
 The process and process and concept of self-sustainable local development
were experienced in practice, within a process that took extensive time and
showed only some immediate results. This highlighted how problematic was
turning the concept of ‘self-sustainable local development’ pursued in
academic research.
 But the concept gave the TLP political support in moving towards, even if not
achieving, the desirable structural change.

13. Conclusion
 In promoting new visions and concepts in attaining sustainable development,
it is required a proactive role of the public sector, as a promoter or
supporter of new projects and actions.
 It is important that the government is willing to take risks of promoting a
radical change.
 Private & public sector should be open to new imaginary and joining the
unthinkable possibilities of the experts/ professionals in making the
impossible be possible.
THANK YOU!!!

14. REFERENCE
 Albrechts L. et. al. (2020). Practicing transformative planning: the territory-
landscape plan as a catalyst for change. Springer. Retrieved from
https://cityterritoryarchitecture.springeropen.com/track/pdf/10.1186/s4041
0-019-0111-2.pdf