Dislocation: Awkward Spatial Transitions

Today, the world is in the most serious turmoil it has experienced for many centuries. These multiple crises arise from the fundamental mistreatment by capitalist competition of the carrying capacity of the planet. Even before coronavirus, evidently morbid symptoms of over-development led many spatial planners to write of the threat of a new Dark Age. Many advocated a return to policy decentralisation as the Covid-19 crisis demonstrated once again the failure of ‘global controller’ mindsets to manage complex systems successfully.

Dislocation: Awkward Spatial Transitions is a critical exploration of where spatial development processes and rules have gone wrong across many economies. The chapters lay out which mindsets have been responsible for this and gives pointers to new practices that aim to ameliorate the effects of past failings. In the first nine chapters, a mapping of key elements of the prevailing omni-crisis are summarised. These range from an exegesis of the Anthropocene, the rise of populism, the transition to neoliberalist anti-planning, and migration as planning issues with pleas for evolutionary change in spatial policy and process dynamics. Finally, a group of chapters explores the flailing as territorial governances tried to plot the rise of creative cities, 4.0 era industry and services, and in the built form, the role of 'starchitects' in city renewal. In the last part, attention is devoted to territorial innovation, knowledge recombination, sustainable mobility and, finally, green entrepreneurship, as necessary elements of a post-coronavirus, climate change mitigation and sustainable mobility set of survival strategies.

The chapters in this book were originally published in the journal European Planning Studies.

Philip Cooke is Professor in the Mohn Center for Innovation and Regional Development at the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Bergen, Norway, and Editor of the journal European Planning Studies. He is the author of 250 academic papers and author/editor of over 30 books and holds honorary doctorates from the University of Lund (Sweden) and the University of Lappeenranta (Finland).