This section explores the range of cultural and planning theory and goes beyond the theory to propose actions of relevance to professionals involved in the planning and design of the public realm and the public and private infrastructure that constitute our cities and towns.

This will include exploring terms that are often used interchangeably such as “Cultural Planning”, “Planning Culture” and the focus of this discussion, “Planning Culturally”. In addition, this section considers what we mean by “Cultural Literacy” and explore the elements of Intercultural knowledge and dialogue as prerequisites of becoming culturally literate.

In order to gain cultural literacy and deliver culturally rich urban outcomes we need to build the skills required to practice as culturally competent built environment professionals. There are critical skills involved in being culturally literate, such as; cultural awareness, cultural knowledge and cultural competency. There are a range of existing models that can aid an individual to gain and practice these skills.

The reality is that planning and design practitioners are often constrained by their local planning system which may be influenced by neoliberal policy agendas, plus economic and environmental imperatives. Therefore, in Australia’s culturally diverse society, while working within the existing planning systems, urban planners and designers need to gain the skills and competencies required to navigate and mediate culturally diverse community expectations. It is also critical that there are mechanisms, such as Cultural Impact Assessment tools, to assist in identifying the positive and negative outcomes of planned developments on the local cultural life of the community.

the practice of Planning & Designing Culturally

urban practices

CREATIVITY & CITIES

In this section we will investigate the origins and context of a range of urban planning concepts that have gained prominence in cities around the world. During the late 1980s and early 2000s a range of new urban development and placemaking ideas gained prominence alongside the growing focus on Urban Design as a professional practice. There was a new focus on “Urbanism” and issues of: “Quality of Life”; addressing the social and cultural needs of communities; the recognition that cities were becoming more diverse as global migration increased; and the growing importance of the Knowledge Economy and the Creative Industries.

Among the different concepts relating to urban development, city planning and place management are the “Livable City”, the “Creative City”, the “Creative Class” and the “Smart/Digital City” sometimes called "Wired Cities" or "Intelligent Cities" and the “Opportunistic City”. Jane Jacobs’s book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), introduced ground-breaking ideas about how cities function. She proposed that planners and designers needed to learn from the real world and theatre of everyday life that existed on sidewalks and public space in the city.

The Discussion paper will investigate the origins and context of a range of urban planning concepts related to cultural and creative city theories and programs, that have gained prominence in cities around the world.

Discussion Paper 1:

Creativity & Cities

CULTURAL LITERACY

Cultural literacy has been defined as ‘the ability to read, understand, find significance and decode cultural values and meaning’ (Wood, P. and Landry, C. 2008). In order to gain cultural literacy and deliver culturally rich urban outcomes we need to build the skills required to practice as culturally competent built environment professionals. These skills include; cultural awareness, cultural knowledge and cultural competency. There are a range of existing models that can aid an individual to gain and practice these skills.

Planning Culturally highlights the need for cultural awareness and competencies to encode and decode cultural values and behaviours, that are inherent in the concept of cultural literacy. The concept of encoding and decoding (Hall, E. 1973) relates to the process of extracting and embedding meaning and behaviours. A culturally literate planner would possess the skills to decode a community’s cultural frames of reference, for example, as proposed by John Ogbu (1992), to inform planning decisions and outcomes that are culturally relevant, sensitive to, and supportive of diversity and First Nations Peoples’ culture.

This Discussion Paper explores issues associated with understanding and gaining the Cultural Literacy skills and Cultural Awareness and Knowledge competencies required in order to Plan Culturally.

Discussion Paper 2:

Cultural Literacy

PLANNING CULTURALLY

Key to the notion of Planning Culturally, is understand the relationship between cultural diversity and the built environment. For example, Fincher stated that the ‘increasing ethnic and racial diversity of contemporary cities challenges urban planners who are charged with managing the built environment to promote social order and harmony’ (2014: 5).

In Australia it is not just the need for planners to be more aware of Interculturalism in planning Australian cities, but also an awareness of the relationship between Aboriginality and urban planning in Australia. This requires an awareness of the Aboriginal relationship to the land and specific cultural frames of reference that need to be considered when planning with and for Aboriginal communities.

The Discussion Paper headings include: Urban Planning & Design Context; The Concept of Planning Culturally; The Practice of Planning Culturally; and Planning with Cultural Literacy.

Discussion Paper 3:

Planning Culturally

CULTURAL IMPACTS ASSESSMENT

It is reasonable to assume that every urban development intervention in the built environment will have an impact on the community’s cultural life. It is also important to remember that cultural differences influence perception by creating lived experiences that teach certain beliefs, values, behaviours, and communication styles. These differences influence the way that people view the world around them and therefore perceive potential impacts. These impacts, both positive and negative, may be small incremental effects or major life changing effects. Therefore, it is critical that the planning and design teams involved undertake some form of impact assessment both during the project inception stage and during the various planning and designing stages to ascertain potential impacts.

It is important to remember that impacts may be experienced positively by some and negatively by others and therefore we must consider how the identified impacts are distributed differently between different social groups, and each group’s capacity to respond to these. This includes impacts on First Nations communities, with consideration of livelihood and wellbeing of those communities as well as traditional cultural impacts.

Discussion Paper headings include: Cultural Impact assessment Models; Potential Cultural Impacts in the Built Environment; A CIA model for Urban Planning & Design; Cultural Impact Assessment (CIA) Guidelines; and Possible Cultural Impact Evaluation (CIE) Guidelines.

Discussion Paper 4:

Cultural Impacts Assessment