No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
Vision Dissonance: Conflicting Conceptions of Bus Sariri
Abstract
This article discusses how communication in planning processes can be disrupted by dissonance between stakeholders’ Visions, or mental models of a policy situation. The Vision dissonance framework is used to analyze how frames, paradigms, and theorizations act in concert to shape a stakeholder’s problem definition and problem-solving processes. I examine how Vision dissonance between planners and community stakeholders in El Alto, Bolivia, contributed to the failure of an attempt to introduce high-quality bus service. Because the municipality declined to include meaningful opportunities for public participation, incompatibility between Visions remained submerged until it was too late to reconcile them.
... First is professional capacity, which distinguishes amateur from professional participants and whose claims to legitimacy and knowledge of planning processes are significantly different (Bickerstaff & Walker, 2005;Negev et al., 2013;Tauxe, 1995). Second are varied knowledge gaps, which refer to the know-how to navigate the bureaucratic world and understand how the system works (Barnes et al., 2003;Carr & Halvorsen, 2001;Chaskin et al., 2012;Hendriks & Tops, 2005;Kash, 2019;Taylor, 2007). Knowledge gaps also come from the networks and the social capital of participants because participation occurs not only during official participation events but also during interactions within formal and informal networks (Morgan-Trimmer, 2014;Scott et al., 2012). ...
Problem, research strategy, and findings
The current focus on power relationships in planning processes emphasizes socioeconomic characteristics of the general public, whose participation is often portrayed as one-time, idiosyncratic, nonprofessional, and relatively powerless. To shift attention to the understudied repeated participation in the general public, we distinguish serial participation as a distinct participation pattern by focusing on an underexplored group, referred to as natural joiners or usual suspects. Our analysis focuses on Jerusalem and draws on interviews with serial participators (N = 13) who participated in at least three different planning processes and with city planners (N = 19). Becoming a serial participator emerged as an evolutionary process, during which knowledge gained triggered transitional learning, manifested by a broader perspective on planning and a transition toward locality-oriented participation. Serial participators’ influence varies; it can extend beyond specific planning outcomes to the process itself and the discourse among city planners. Although it does not mitigate imbalanced power relations within the public, serial participation contributes to more balanced power relations between ordinary citizens and paid participants in planning.
Takeaway for practice
Serial participators can provide planners with valuable historical perspective, local knowledge, and participation recommendations while serving as intermediaries to the local community capable of mobilizing others and activating civic networks. Planners can nurture serial participation by encouraging repeated involvement of individuals engaged in additional community spheres or passionate “anecdotal” participants. Seeking influence and not recognition, serial participators may not always fully cooperate. Planners should invest in long-term relationships that allow for reconciling inevitable disagreements.
... The divide in expectations between residents and Transmetro planners we identified is referred to by Kash (2017) as "vision dissonance." This dissonance is an important signal that eventually travelers are likely to seek out more flexible and convenient modes such as personal vehicles or illegal paratransit. ...
In this article, we describe how the travel experiences of residents of Barranquilla, Colombia have changed since a new bus rapid transit system was deployed in 2010 along with changes to pre-existing private transit services. We recruited interview participants using intercept methods at more than fifteen locations, conducted dozens of semi-structured interviews, and used collaborative and iterative coding to analyze the data.
Interviewees expressed mixed feelings about the transition from private transit to the hybrid BRT-private transit system. Many were pleased about reductions in travel time, the air conditioning on BRT vehicles, and an increased sense of safety from crime. But most interviewees also identified significant drawbacks, most notably overcrowding, the insufficiency and complexity of BRT feeder routes, and the elimination of several private transit bus routes. While the free transfer between BRT trunk and feeder routes reduced some users’ out-of-pocket costs, some interviewees, expressed disappointment at losing the ability to bargain over fares.
Our findings raise questions about equity in access and affordability, as well as issues of system legibility that emerged with BRT implementation. Another critical lesson from our research points out to a potentially significant problem: while BRT planners tended to focus on safety improvements and mitigating environmental damage, such goals seem to have come at the expense of other aspects that users see as more important, such as reducing improving travel times. Finally, our interviews revealed a complex interaction among transport services, in which some private transit lines complement BRT services while others compete with them.
... By the beginning 38 of this study in 2015, TransMilenio transported approximately two million passengers each 39 weekday 2 . However, in recent years, quality of service, operating speeds, and user satisfaction 40 have declined precipitously, primarily due to severe crowding (Kash 2018). In 2016 and 2017, 41 ...
This mixed-methods study uses surveys and interviews with transit users to document the prevalence and effects of transit sexual assault in two Latin American transit systems: Bogotá, Colombia’s TransMilenio BRT and informal transit in El Alto, Bolivia. Transit sexual assault is common in both systems, but more prevalent in the overcrowded TransMilenio system; 37% of female TransMilenio users reported experiencing unwanted sexual contact while using transit. Transit users in general are found to respond to the risk of transit crime by engaging in defensive behaviors such as avoiding travel at certain times of day, traveling in groups, taking more expensive modes, or avoiding travel altogether. Transit sexual assault victims are more likely to engage in these behaviors, and also engage in victim-specific defensive behaviors: selecting defensible positions within a carriage, standing near “safe” people (typically other women), or using objects to shield themselves. These habitual behaviors allow some victims to regain a sense of safety on transit, but others continue to struggle with hypervigilance, anxiety, and other responses to sexual trauma. It is imperative to prevent future transit sexual assaults, but many women have already been assaulted, are already traumatized, and need additional help to recover freedom of movement. Crowding reduction, improved reporting, bystander intervention, and women-only carriages are discussed as potential tools for ensuring that public transit is safe and welcoming for people of all genders.
This study examines planners’ views of transit sexual assault in two transit systems where sexual assault is widespread, but little action has been taken: TransMilenio Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system in Bogotá and Soacha, Colombia and informal transit in El Alto, Bolivia. In both cases, many planners lack information about transit sexual assault in their city, and the agencies do not systematically measure its frequency. Additionally, planners’ views of transit sexual assault are shaped by five widespread deproblematizing beliefs: (1) victims of sexual assault on transit are often mistaken or lying; (2) groping and sexual rubbing do not seriously harm victims; (3) victims brought the attack on themselves; (4) assault is natural and unchangeable; and (5) planners should not be responsible for addressing sexual assault because they did not create the problem.
These beliefs, which were more common among male planners, pose a significant barrier to action because they support an attitude that sexual assault on transit is not a problem to which planners should devote resources; either there is no problem to solve or attempting to solve it is so difficult as to be futile. Additionally, deproblematizing beliefs reduce openness to new data about transit sexual assault. The belief that women are likely to mistake innocent actions for sexual assault renders some planners dismissive of survey data based on the self reports of (ostensibly) unreliable narrators.
The results indicate that in the long term, a gender mainstreaming approach that includes training for planners is needed. In the short term, one critical task is to convince reluctant reformers that transit sexual assault is a problem on which planners can and should take action.
How grassroots women's organizations mobilized to change public transportation policies in Toronto; implementation and impacts on the public transit agency; impacts of political changes on gender planning and equal opportunity initiatives. Draws upon the author's personal stories of urban activism.
Urban development and the politics of dissonance. Territory, Politics, Governance. A major reason for the peripheral treatment of political conflict in established theories of urban development derives from the tendency to underplay questions of territory and spatial governance. In this paper, we examine the implications of territorial discrepancy amongst governance arrangements and introduce the notion of ‘urban political dissonance’ in order to engage sustained patterns of conflict or incongruity. This focus implies examination of strategic action on the part of competing urban interests which may result in policy incoherence, institutional manoeuvring in pursuit of divergent objectives and difficulties in finding workable compromise, with potentially significant implications for economic development outcomes. An illustrative case study is presented of growth politics in Oxford, UK, where a central and unresolved dilemma over the physical expansion of the city has effectively defined the nature of development politics for a generation, leading to ongoing political conflict and policy incongruity.
In this article we argue that the mobilities turn and its studies of the performativity of everyday (im)mobilities enable new forms of sociological inquiry, explanation and engagement. New kinds of researchable entities arise, opening up a new or rediscovered realm of the empirical, and new avenues for critique. The mobilities paradigm not only remedies the academic neglect of various movements, of people, objects, information and ideas. It also gathers new empirical sensitivities, analytical orientations, methods and motivations to examine important social and material phenomena and fold social science insight into responses. After an outline of the mobilities paradigm, this article provides a wide-ranging review of emergent `mobile methods' of studying (im)mobilities. We discuss some of the new researchable entities they engender and explore important implications for the relationship between the empirical, theory, critique, and engagement.
While studies undertaken by communicative planning theorists provide valuable insights into everyday planning practice, there is a growing debate around the need for greater acknowledgement of relations of power and inequality. In particular, communicative planning theory has tended to obscure planning's problematic relation to the state. This paper opens for debate conceptions of public discourse in planning that, on the one hand, draw on Habermas's notions of communicative rationality, but on the other, fail to critically examine his positioning of these in opposition to state and economy. It is argued that the implications of critiques of Habermas's ideas may involve questioning the very possibility of communicative planning itself.
Urban planning in many parts of the world reflects an increasing gap between current approaches and growing problems of poverty, inequality, informality, rapid urbanisation and spatial fragmentation, particularly (but not only) in cities of the global South. Given past dominance of the global North in shaping planning theory and practice, this article argues that a perspective from the global South can be useful in unsettling taken-for-granted assumptions about how planning addresses these issues. The article takes a first step in this direction by proposing a ‘clash of rationalities’, between techno-managerial and marketised systems of government administration, service provision and planning (in those parts of the world where these apply) and increasingly marginalised urban populations surviving largely under conditions of informality. It draws together theoretical resources beyond the boundaries of conventional planning theory to understand the nature of this conflict, and the nature of the ‘interface’ between those involved, where unpredictable encounter and contestation also open the possibility for exploring alternative approaches to planning.
Information is a source of power in the planning process. This article begins by assessing five perspectives of the planner's use of information: those of the technician, the incremental pragmatist, the liberal advocate, the structuralist, and the “progressive.” Then several types of misinformation (inevitable or unnecessary, ad hoc or systematic) are distinguished in a reformulation of bounded rationality in planning, and practical responses by planning staff are identified. The role and ethics of planners acting as sources of misinformation are considered. In practice planners work in the face of power manifest as the social and political (mis)-man-agement of citizens' knowledge, consent, trust, and attention. Seeking to enable planners to anticipate and counteract sources of misinformation threatening public serving, democratic planning processes, the article clarifies a practical and politically sensitive form of “progressive” planning practice.
This article examines several methodological issues associated with combining qualitative and quantitative methods by comparing the increasing interest in this topic with the earlier renewal of interest in qualitative research during the 1980s. The first section argues for the value of Kuhn’s concept of paradigm shifts as a tool for examining changes in research fields such as social science research methodology. The next two sections consider the initial rise of the “metaphysical paradigm” that justified the renewed interest in qualitative research and the subsequent problems that have encouraged efforts to replace that paradigm. The final section of the paper advocates a “pragmatic approach” as a new guiding paradigm in social science research methods, both as a basis for supporting work that combines qualitative and quantitative methods and as a way to redirect our attention to methodological rather than metaphysical concerns.
If the new fin de siècle marks a recurrence of the real, Bent Flyvbjerg’s Rationality and Power epitomizes that development and sets new standards for social and political inquiry. The Danish town of Aalborg is to Flyvbjerg what Florence was to Machiavelli: a laboratory for understanding the real workings of power, and for grasping what they mean to our more general concerns of social and political organization. Politics, administration, and planning are examined in ways that allow a rare, in-depth understanding. The reader witnesses, firsthand, the classic and endless drama which defines what modernity and democracy are and can be.
This article undertakes a discourse-centred investigation of the underlying rationales of European Union (EU) transport-sector investments. Its central contribution is the 'Conflicting-Storylines Proposition', stating that EU transport investments lack consistence and sustainability due to the existence of partially complementary, partially competing EU development objectives which are in turn expressed through four key storylines: 'cohesion', 'polycentricity', 'missing links' and, most recently, 'bottlenecks'. EU decision-making remains deeply conflicted and contested. Transport sector investments have to satisfy different aims related to growth, competitiveness, cohesion and sustainability. The Trans-European Network priority projects violate cohesion and sustainable development goals by concentrating investments in already privileged areas.
The article argues that while certain recent planning theories have attempted to take account of social difference and multiculturalism, there is not yet sufficient recognition of just how deep difference can be, and how planners can frequently find themselves in situations characterized by conflicting rationalities. The article draws on a case of an attempted informal settlement upgrade in Cape Town, South Africa, to illustrate the gap between the notion of 'proper citizens' and 'proper living environments' espoused by the municipality, and the nature of the rationality guiding the actions of certain of the other parties involved. This understanding, it is suggested, has important implications for both planning theory and ethics.
What counts. In work, as in other areas of life, it is not always clear what standards we are being judged by or how our worth is being determined. This can be disorienting and disconcerting. Because of this, many organizations devote considerable resources to limiting and clarifying the logics used for evaluating worth. But as David Stark argues, firms would often be better off, especially in managing change, if they allowed multiple logics of worth and did not necessarily discourage uncertainty. In fact, in many cases multiple orders of worth are unavoidable, so organizations and firms should learn to harness the benefits of such "heterarchy" rather than seeking to purge it. Stark makes this argument with ethnographic case studies of three companies attempting to cope with rapid change: a machine-tool company in late and postcommunist Hungary, a new-media startup in New York during and after the collapse of the Internet bubble, and a Wall Street investment bank whose trading room was destroyed on 9/11. In each case, the friction of competing criteria of worth promoted an organizational reflexivity that made it easier for the company to change and deal with market uncertainty. Drawing on John Dewey's notion that "perplexing situations" provide opportunities for innovative inquiry, Stark argues that the dissonance of diverse principles can lead to discovery.
What is the role of planners in the planning process for new transit modes? By documenting transit-planning processes in Curitiba and Bogota from 1955-95 and 1986-2001, respectively, this work demonstrates that in both cities planners had important roles in system design, the inventive adaptation of new technologies to local conditions, the integration of newly proposed systems with existing service and, above all, mediation between political leadership and strong vested interests. Both cities put planners' roles in special context, however. First, the mayors had a firm appreciation of planning services and understood that planners needed to interact with stakeholders and politicians. Second, the mayors were strong leaders who offered planners a benchmark from which to understand the implications of stakeholders' demands. Third, these cases were framed by new technologies such as Bus Rapid Transit, which competed against rail alternatives. Fourth, because of the novelty of BRT planners had difficulty producing credible forecasts. This uncertainty forced planners to interact more with stakeholders and politicians to build credibility. Fifth, BRT offered the advantage of being highly flexible, particularly when compared to rail proposals. This flexibility allowed planners to adjust the plans in response to the feedback produced by the interaction with stakeholders and politicians. Adjusting the plans often forced planners to innovate. Within this context, planners' main role was to interact with politicians and stakeholders. The interaction was above all a source of feedback for all parties involved. Planners used this feedback, first, to mediate between politicians and stakeholders by reducing power differentials. If either actor
The interest in analysing urban transport problems in developing countries emerged in the 1960s and evolved at a fast pace as problems became increasingly severe. Conditions remain highly inadequate for most: low accessibility, poor public transport supply, accidents, discomfort, pollution and congestion are all negative features.
Several cities in the developing world are transforming decentralized bus transit services into integrated transit systems. These programs aspire to improve service quality and mitigate negative impacts such as pollution and traffic injuries and fatalities. However, implementation processes in Santiago, Chile and elsewhere have proven difficult. One contributing factor has been a lack of integration of community concerns in the planning process. In this paper, we provide a framework for direct identification of user needs and apply it to an ongoing transit reform process in Bogotá, Colombia. Bogotá is integrating its bus rapid transit system with reorganized bus services throughout the city. Using expert interviews and a semi-structured community survey, we identify awareness, expectations and aspiration gaps between transit users and planners, as well as equity concerns. These gaps are part of a conflict we refer to as vision dissonance. We suggest specific actions to mitigate these problems in Bogotá and actions that may help reformers in other cities avoid encountering similar problems. A key lesson is that user consultation is valuable for identifying incompatibilities between users’ self-identified needs and project goals. If such consultation is conducted early in a planning process, planners of future projects may be able to prevent rather than correct unanticipated incompatibilities. The methods developed for this research can help planners in other large-scale transit integration processes conduct effective user consultation.
Scitation is the online home of leading journals and conference proceedings from AIP Publishing and AIP Member Societies
This article argues that regional planning is dominated by two conflicting discourses that have different principles of involvement: the discourse of partnerships and the discourse of broad participation. These discourses and principles are not easy to reconcile in practice. On the basis of studies in the literature and a comprehensive case study, this article discusses how these conflicting discourses in regional planning challenge democratic norms, and how this problem is dealt with by the regional political leadership. The article shows that the use of meta-governance strategies and broad arenas of participation might be used in this respect, for example, by constantly having a focus on maintaining democratic anchorage when partnerships are used in regional planning processes.
This paper addresses the notions of communicative and participative planning through an examination of some empirical difficulties in the case of a British planning process. It focuses on the different understandings found amongst participants to a local plan process in terms of the aims and methods of planning and of the future. Two particular problems are considered: the notion of representativeness required for participants to achieve legitimacy, and the disconnections between process and outcome. The paper further considers the rituals of planning as a form of institutionalized thought that supports a particular sort of governance and lends weight to certain epistemologies and technologies. This also challenges the Habermasian notion that participants can somehow set aside their own interests or power during discussions, since this assumes that power and interests are attributes that can be shed, rather than flowing from intrinsic ways of thinking and being in the world.
Thirty years ago, Alan Altshuler, in a devastating critique that has never been effectively answered, challenged the legitimacy of comprehensive planning and of planners' expertise. He called on the field to reinforce its theoretical arsenal. This article takes up his challenge, contending that not only have practices now arisen that make comprehensive planning possible, but also political and social theory has evolved to provide its intellectual grounding. The article argues that consensus building with stakeholders offers a model for planning that responds to each of Altshuler's critiques. Consensus building is shown to be founded on assumptions about the nature of knowledge, about the organization of interests, and about the nature of the public interest that differ from those Altshuler applied. Evidence is taken from eight in-depth case studies of consensus building over growth and environmental issues in California, and from a study of the New Jersey state planning process. The article concludes with a discussion of how consensus building may be used for local comprehensive planning.
The heated controversy over “citizen participation,” “citizen control”, and “maximum feasible involvement of the poor,” has been waged largely in terms of exacerbated rhetoric and misleading euphemisms. To encourage a more enlightened dialogue, a typology of citizen participation is offered using examples from three federal social programs: urban renewal, anti-poverty, and Model Cities. The typology, which is designed to be provocative, is arranged in a ladder pattern with each rung corresponding to the extent of citizens' power in determining the plan and/or program.
From 1969 to 1979, under three administrations which could not have been more different, the Cleveland City Planning Commission worked in a highly visible way to achieve equity objectives. During this period, advocacy planning became less of a hortatory theory than a tangible effort undertaken within the system and directed toward, and achieving, real ends. On given issues, the Cleveland planners publicly challenged some of our favorite urban nostrums, and they not only survived, but prospered.
This article discusses that period and estimates the impact that the work of the Cleveland planners had on various issues and on the mayors they served. Its conclusions may be useful for planners and others interested in applying their own models of responsible planning and redistributive justice.
The importance of public consultation and participation in local planning is acknowledged by the planning profession in the United States, yet anthropological research on the practice of planning in western North Dakota boomtowns during the 1980s reveals that the institutional procedures and formal apparatus of planning work to enforce dominant bureaucratic forms of organization, ideology, and discourse in ways that marginalize other ones. Although efforts and mechanisms to involve residents in planning were in place, local voices were accorded less authority when they used local conventions of negotiation and rhetoric. This paper argues for greater cultural sensitivity in matters of power and communication in planning practice.
One of the defining characteristics of the “communicative turn” in planning is the rejection of technocratic instrumental (means-ends) rationality as the principal source of legitimacy for planning procedures. Procedural quality is now seen as grounded equally in the tenets of participatory democracy: inclusiveness, reciprocity, good communication, empowerment, mutual learning. Such ideals have become widely accepted (even if they are not always well implemented in practice). However, this trend seems to have had little effect on the products of strategic planning processes—plans—which, in the public sector, seem mostly to present recommendations as the logical (instrumentally rational) response to conditions.This article discusses the step from “collaborative” process to “logical” product as a problem of translation, drawing on actor-network theory and social linguistics to activate this concept. The discussion is informed by two case studies from Australia. Though the translation problem was dealt with in a very different way in each case, the (perceived) need to produce a conventional plan negatively affected both processes' adherence to participatory ideals. In conclusion, the paper asks whether the conservativeness of the plan as a genre might have conservative effects on the practices of public planning agencies, and whether alternative modes and/or translation processes might be found to mitigate these effects.
Much social scientific inquiry seeks to specify the conditions and mechanisms underpinning the flow of social practices among actors within some larger system. Sociology, rural sociology, anthropology, geography, economics, and communication studies all have rich traditions of diffusion research. 1 Virtually everything seems to diffuse: rumors, prescription practices, boiled drinking water, totems, hybrid corn, job classification systems, organizational structures, church attendance, national sovereignty. Whether viewed as a hindrance to structural-functional analysis, 2 the deposited trace of social structure, 3 or a fundamental source of social control and change, 4 diffusion seems critical to social analysis.
The search for scientific bases for confronting problems of social policy is bound to fail, becuase of the nature of these problems. They are wicked problems, whereas science has developed to deal with tame problems. Policy problems cannot be definitively described. Moreover, in a pluralistic society there is nothing like the undisputable public good; there is no objective definition of equity; policies that respond to social problems cannot be meaningfully correct or false; and it makes no sense to talk about optimal solutions to social problems unless severe qualifications are imposed first. Even worse, there are no solutions in the sense of definitive and objective answers.
Recent work on 'collaborative planning' has concentrated on applyingHabermas's work on communicative action to the realm of urban and regional governance. This work has its parallels in other disciplines, notably geography, where institutional capacity building has been considered as part of local systems of governance. Both bodies of work are premised to a degree on the rationality of communication. Habermas contrasted his ideas on the possibilities for communicative action with the widespread presence of 'strategic behaviour' in social relations. The dual nature of governance as both an institutional and a political activity means that consideration of such strategic forms of behaviour is essential to a deeper understanding of the nature of collaborative and associative forms of governance and their outcomes. What social scientists refer to as 'teleological/strategic action', 'normatively regulated action', and 'dramaturgical action' together with communicative action are all integral to collaborative governance. In this paper, we consider examples of the manner in which institutional capacity has been exercised in attempts to attract a major inward investment project into the United Kingdom. The example illustrates the range of social actions that are present beneath the surface of collaborative and associative governance. More specifically, our example highlights the structuring of institutional and organisational interactions through the strategic behaviour of a dominant local organisation.
Under the prevailing contract between science and society, science has been expected to produce 'reliable' knowledge, provided merely that it communicates its discoveries to society. A new contract must now ensure that scientific knowledge is 'socially robust', and that its production is seen by society to be both transparent and participative.
Communicative rationality offers a new paradigm for transportation planning. Drawing on the literature and lessons from transportation planning practice, this paper describes the characteristics of a “communicative” form of transportation planning and compares them with conventional practices. A communicative rationality paradigm would place language and discourse at the core of transportation planning. The paper argues that it would lead to greater attention to desired transportation ends (goals), better integration of means and ends, new forms of participation and learning, and enhanced deliberative capacity. The paper explains the implications of this paradigm for the role of the transportation planner, the purpose of planning, the planning process, communicative practices, problem framing, and the nature of planning analysis. The paper concludes with an assessment of communicative rationality's ability to promote more effective transportation planning. It seeks to create a dialogue that will support the investigation of new transportation planning processes. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 2001
Top-Down Bottom-Up: Seeking Solutions in Highly Urbanized Latin America
- Thomas Bassett
Estudio Sobre El Impacto Social Y Económico Del Actual Sistema de Transporte Público En El Área Metropolitana de La Paz
- Pando Solares
Mobile Methods and the Empirical
- M Buscher
- J Urry