Content uploaded by Daniel Galland
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Daniel Galland on Jul 24, 2019
Content may be subject to copyright.
Tri m Si ze : 17 0m m x 244mm Orum eurs0308.tex V1 - 07/26/2018 8:24 P.M. Page 1
❦
❦ ❦
❦
Spatial Consciousness
DANIEL GALLAND and MARIUS GRØNNING
Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Norway
CONSCIOUSNESS AND SPATIAL
CONSCIOUSNESS
Consciousness may refer to any mindful
experience or awareness of the self and the
world. Reective thought about conscious
awareness is as old as humanity: some degree
of it can be traced back well before literate
culture, for instance in the exposition of
spiritual beliefs by Neolithic burial practices
(Clarc and Riel-Salvatore 2001). While the
nature of human consciousness is an intricate
and volatile matter of philosophical con-
cern, the notion of spatial consciousness has
attracted scholarly attention in recent years,
particularly within academic disciplines deal-
ing with space, such as urban and regional
planning. Spatial consciousness may refer
to the awareness about one’s own spatial
presence, as an individual or a community,
and about real-world spatial phenomena
and processes. Hence, for the sciences and
professions dealing with space, the notion
of spatial consciousness provides intellectual
means to bridge the gap between the spatial
and aspatial dimensions of their concerns.
In his classic work on metropolitan spatial
structure, Donald L. Foley (1964, 23–24)
identies this gap by dening “spatial” as the
“direct concern f or spa tial pa tter n, i.e. , the
pattern in which culture, activities, people
and physical objects are distributed in space.”
Correspondingly, Foley means by “aspa-
tial” “no direct concern with spatial pattern
at whatever scale is being focused upon.”
Planning is concerned with the experience
and organization of space, and thus raises
Wile y Blackw ell Ency clo ped ia of Ur ban and Regio nal S tudies .EditedbyAnthonyOrum.
©2019JohnWiley&SonsLtd.Published2019byJohnWiley&SonsLtd.
the question of how space is represented,
according to whose experience and whose
intentions. In this light, spatial conscious-
ness may be viewed and understood as a
backdrop of a planning process, but also as
aconstructthatemergesfromit.Inorder
to highlight the role of spatial consciousness
and reect upon what is at stake, a concep-
tual articulation based on three distinct but
interrelated perspectives on consciousness is
herein proposed.
What we refer to by spatial conscious-
ness may be claried with reference to how
the principal features of consciousness are
discovered, described, and modeled within
contemporary philosophical literature. “Phe-
nomenal organization” is a key concept
which “covers all the various kinds of order
and structure found within the domain of
experience, i.e., within the domain of the
world as it appears to us” (Van Gulick 2018).
However, phenomenal structure involves
intentional and representational organization
and content (Siewert 1998). In order to build
an operational framework that allows the
association of the features of consciousness
with space, this distinction between phe-
nomenal, representational, and intentional
theories of consciousness here provide the
main conceptual tools. First, phenomenal
organization and content may relate to the
concrete experience of a particular phe-
nomenon. Experience relies on perception,
and thus relates to the sensorial and cognitive
faculties. ese faculties require a mental
reconstruction, located in the realm of ideas,
amentalimageofthephenomenaandthus
also the possibilities of projection of the
idea back into the real world. eideaof
aphenomenonreects its properties, and
therefore implies judgment and expectation,
and by extension a tension between tradition
Tri m Si ze : 17 0m m x 244mm Orum eurs0308.tex V1 - 07/26/2018 8:24 P.M. Page 2
❦
❦ ❦
❦
2SPATIAL CONSCIOUSNESS
and innovation. Second, representational
organization and content relates to the pos-
sibility of identication, with the idea of
recognizing a pattern as a phenomenon, and
to distinguish it from others. It has to do with
tangibility, imagination, and the possibility to
represent, to transfer the experience of a phe-
nomenon to an image of it. In this sense, what
allows the image to be identied with the
phenomenon is either its isomorphism – that
is, its realistic reproduction of the “same
structure” as its real-world model – or vari-
ous processes of symbolic abstraction, which
open the realm of concepts, text, linguis-
tic mechanisms, geometries, numbers, and
gures. erepresentationalperspectiveis
thus a necessary means to absorb and share
information about real-world phenomena.
Finally, intentional organization and content
has to do with conscious action, and inter-
vention in the state of things. is type of
consciousness is dealing with models, that
is, with pattern arrangements that can be
reorganized according to a scheme.
From a planning perspective, these three
types of organization and content associated
with consciousness can be summed up with
adirectreferencetospace.Referencesto
spatial concepts and archetypes, or common
denominators of experienced spatial phe-
nomena such as “city,” “region,” “country,”
or “place,” are forms of phenomenal con-
sciousness. Representational consciousness
is based on particular themes of interest,
drawing our attention to specicaspectsof
space, which may be functional, symbolic,
or structural (Foley 1964). epossibilityof
communicating, deliberating, and deciding
on space relies on a representation of space,
whether in the form of reconstruction of
an existing situation or the anticipation of
afutureone.Drivenbyanideologicalor
utopian mentality, intentional consciousness
refers to the dynamics associated with spatial
patterns in time, and to space through a
will to maintain the existing spatial order
or to emancipate and disrupt it. Arranging
things in space hence deals with the realm
of government and politics, with power and
collective action in present time.
SPATIAL CONSCIOUSNESS FROM A
PLANNING PERSPECTIVE
An account of spatial consciousness from a
planning perspective may take as a point of
departure the early experiences of modernity,
and the reections, ideas, and practices that
started emerging more than a century before
planning consolidated as a distinct theoretical
eld. eFrenchhistorianFrançoiseChoay
has identied the foundations of planning
with the early critical reections around
the eects of modernization on community
and human settlement (Choay 1965), exem-
plied by utopian socialists like Henri de
Saint-Simon or Robert Owen, and by cultur-
alists and Pre-Raphaelites like John Ruskin
and William Morris. Out of these cultural and
intellectual currents grew conceptions and
thoughts about the possibility of full mastery
of the urban phenomenon. Ildefons Cerdà’s
plan for Barcelona, Ebenezer Howard’s
metropolitan scheme for garden cities, or
Rudolf Eberstadt’s proposal for Greater
Berlin display matrices of spatial organiza-
tion, conceived as basic geometrical gures,
like the orthogonal or radio-concentric
grid. ese schemes contrasted with the
labyrinthic character of the historical urban
core, and exposed experiences of the city as
aspatialobjectdrivenbyutopianintentions,
conveying at the same time a critique of
the current condition of urban space and a
promise of its improvement.
Another preliminary current is exemplied
by Baron Haussmann’s public works in Paris,
Reinhard Baumeister’s invention of zoning
techniques for the expansion of Frankfurt
Tri m Si ze : 17 0m m x 244mm Orum eurs0308.tex V1 - 07/26/2018 8:24 P.M. Page 3
❦
❦ ❦
❦
SPATIAL CONSCIOUSNESS 3
am Main, or New York’s rst zoning plan
from 1916. As put by Choay, this current
“doe s not see k to furt h er cha nge so c iety,
but more modestly to regulate and organize
the most eective growth and uctuations
in the demographics, as well as a modied
scale in the building industry engendered
by the Industrial Revolution” (Choay 2006,
169–171, our translation). emoreprag-
matic and technical concerns of this current
were driven by a need to control development,
shiing the mode of spatial representation:
from the traditionally iconic and isomorphic
representations of the city to an Euclidean
use of conventionalist cartographic sym-
bols, with its land-use classes and regulation
boundaries, which required abstract legends,
ensuring the unambiguous denition of
juridical regulation (Gabellini 1996).
With the main body of concepts and
means of representation already constituted,
planning as an autonomous theoretical eld
emerged in the context of post-World War II
rational planning. In this context, the notion
of comprehensiveness is closely associated
with a positivist conception of space, in the
sense that space is depicted as a container
in a Euclidean form, conceived as “absolute
and xed” (Davoudi and Strange 2009, 225),
based on reductionist and naturalized rep-
resentations of urban phenomena in terms
of functions and technical standards. e
principles of spatial organization embedded
in traditional rational-comprehensive plans
and policies, advanced by post-World War
II national and subnational governments
in Europe, provide clear evidence of such
conception of spatiality. During the 1960s
and 1970s new spatial paradigms emerged,
as the scope of planning encompassed ever
larger elds of policy and management.
Coping with complexity, urban and regional
space was increasingly portrayed according
to a systems perspective, informed by an
essentialist treatment of scale imagined as a
nested hierarchy with demarcated boundaries
(Healey 2004, 48). In this frame, planning
reected a desire to tame space via spatial
organizing principles that applied to dier-
entiated spatial and scalar orders (Davoudi
2012, 432). In the political context of Western
Europe, characterized by ideologies of state
interventionism, liberal democracy, redistri-
bution, and equal development, reforms at
the level of planning legislation and adminis-
tration, as well as structural reforms of local
and regional government, led to the founding
of national spatial planning systems during
those decades. Inuenced by positivist spatial
planning perspectives, many countries went
through territorial recongurations based on
sharp administrative divisions (counties and
municipalities), a hierarchical positioning of
cities and towns, and a continuity of access
to public and private services throughout
national territories, which would have oth-
erwise remained concentrated in just a few
urban areas.
In the 1990s, the comprehensive-integrated
spatial planning tradition of Western Euro-
pean countries entered a process of transition.
However local this phenomenon might be,
from a global perspective it is oen referred to
as the strategic spatial turn in planning (Salet
and Faludi 2000), characterized by a stress
on local distinctiveness (Davoudi 2012), as
well as a reorientation toward spatial dier-
entiation, which gradually substituted equal
development as the key planning orienta-
tion. Alternative perspectives on space and
consciousness of spatial phenomena and
processes were embedded in strategic spatial
plans at both national and subnational levels,
which replaced positivist spatial organization
principles with relational spatial concepts
that treated territorial scales more uidly,
implying the latter’s redenition. As stated
by Davoudi (2012), the conception of spa-
tial and scalar order moves away from the
positivist tradition that seeks to “tame space
Tri m Si ze : 17 0m m x 244mm Orum eurs0308.tex V1 - 07/26/2018 8:24 P.M. Page 4
❦
❦ ❦
❦
4SPATIAL CONSCIOUSNESS
and create order” (2012, 432), toward an
interpretive tradition where both scale and
space are regarded “as socially constructed
with contingent boundaries which are con-
stantly territorialized and open to political
contestation” (432–433).
econtrastingplanningparadigms
illustrate the constructive nature of spatial
consciousness. Positivist concepts, such as
Walter C h r i s t a l l e r’s nested scalar hi e r a rchies,
sought to emphasize spatial organization
and proximity. Relational concepts, on the
other hand, underscore spatial connectivity.
elatterisaconceptionofspatialitythat
implies an interpretive spatial representa-
tion founded on a vocabulary comprising
dynamic concepts (e.g., corridors, networks,
hubs, gateways, nodes, webs, ows, etc.),
commonly depicted by arrows on policy
maps. euseofsuchconceptsinspatial
strategies, advanced at national and subna-
tional levels, is also a reection of European
spatial planning discourses (e.g., polycentric
development, dynamic zones of integration,
urban corridors, urban networks, etc.), where
scales are conceived as nodes in relational
settings, thereby acquiring dierent positions
in dierent networks (Healey 2004). e
intentionality behind the use of these con-
cepts hence becomes to visualize/promote
the development of targeted areas.
Patsy Healey (2006) has made reference
to the notion of spatial consciousness as a
variable to assess how spatiality is imagined
in episodes of planning activity. She applies
it analytically in relation to spatial strate-
gies that are generated within the frame of
diverse planning contexts, which became a
particular issue of the 1990s European con-
solidation policies, treated by many scholars,
in aspects ranging from the European Union
and national levels to subnational ones and
particularly urban regions (e.g., Healey 2004).
emainissueofthisliteratureisthetrans-
formative capacity of spatial strategies, as a
means of governing the spatial development
of European city-regions through a variety of
policy frames. In Healey’s understanding of
spatial consciousness, it is portrayed as a
construct of spatial strategies, and equated
to the awareness of sociospatial relations.
In this respect, she qualies spatial con-
sciousness in terms of either strong or weak
spatial articulation of such strategies. e
Dutch planning doctrine, for instance, has
strong spatial consciousness vis-à-vis specic
English planning episodes whose spatialities
are weakly articulated. Drawing on examples
of such experiences, Healey examines how far
these imaginations reect a relational under-
standing of spatial dynamics and governance
processes. Spatial imaginations are hence
assessed in terms of “the nature of the spatial
consciousness expressed in a strategy, the way
the multiple scales of the social relations of a
place are conceived, and the extent to which
relational complexity is understood and
reected in a strategy” (Healey 2006, 527).
From a planning perspective, we may
thus distinguish between implicit and explicit
spatial consciousness, as well as strongly or
weakly articulated spatial consciousness.
ese distinctions are similarly relevant to
the question of scale. As Healey notes (2008,
865), “the spatial dimension of public policy
has been given a strong national priority, to
produce an overarching epistemic conscious-
ness across dierent policy sectors.” Planning
doctrine in the Netherlands exemplies the
articulation of scale (Faludi and van der Valk
1994), as spatial consciousness is embedded
in national and subnational policy maps and
spatial strategies which intrinsically relate
to the use of both traditional/positivist and
relational spatial concepts.
eshito a strategic and relational plan-
ning paradigm has led to a proliferation of
new concepts with reference to space. Spatial
concepts can be understood as the combina-
tion of words and images used by planners
Tri m Si ze : 17 0m m x 244mm Orum eurs0308.tex V1 - 07/26/2018 8:24 P.M. Page 5
❦
❦ ❦
❦
SPATIAL CONSCIOUSNESS 5
and urban designers to express visions, repre-
senting selected features of a given area. ey
are descriptive and normative constructs
of place and space (Rein and Laws 2000),
expressing realities of spatial structure or
land use of an area, and visions of desired
futures through which it should develop.
As such, images are relevant because they
capture phenomena and convey intentions
that are dicult to express within planning
practice (e.g., land-use classes and zoning
regulation vs. polycentric metropolis, edge
cities, peri-urban interface, etc.). Planning
imagery and spatial concepts reect the
(positivist or strategic) consciousness that
emerges from the framing of policy maps and
spatial plans, and make it spatially explicit
(Faludi 1996). As Rein and Schön comment
(1986, 4), framing entails “a way of selecting,
organizing, interpreting and making sense
of a complex reality so as to provide guide-
posts for knowing, analyzing, persuading and
acting.”
To illust r a te the paradig m a t i c aspect of
spatial concepts, we may choose a concept
like powerlines – that is, lines on a map that
decide “who gets what, when, where and
how” (Neuman 1998). erst considera-
tion is how the emergence of such concepts
reects the interpretive conceptions of space
typical of the paradigm they are part of
and underpin. Powerlines uctuate between
schematic lines (aiming at seeking consensus)
and “blueprint” lines (e.g., those appearing
in zoning maps or site plans, which generate
controversy as the conict is made evident).
Asecondconsideration,then,istheinter-
pretive role of such concepts in capturing
aphenomenonorconstructingvisionand
intentionality. Donald Schön (1983) contends
that spatial visions should not be considered
as theories that predict or explain urban phe-
nomena, but rather as metaphors from which
planners and politicians can build their own
records of unique and dynamic situations.
SPATIAL CONSCIOUSNESS AT STAKE:
A REFLECTION
In the canon of academic planning literature,
spatial consciousness as a theoretical concept
has emerged in accordance with interpretive
conceptions of space – that is, emphasizing
representational and intentional forms of
consciousness. Literature within the elds
of human geography or development stud-
ies, on the other hand, typically focuses on
monitoring and mapping spatial phenomena,
drivers, and processes, as well as sociocul-
tural aspects of spatial experiences. Spatial
design disciplines are mainly concerned with
intentionality, and instrumental represen-
tation by means of spatial grids, reference
models, and schemes. However, when mod-
ifying existing structures, real-world spatial
phenomena are addressed and modelized by
means of cognitive-explicative perspectives
such as urban morphology, or relational and
interpretive ones that are embedded in con-
cepts like place or landscape.is variation
in perspective is structured by the articial
and institutionalized boundaries between
academic disciplines and professions. In the
processes of globalization, urban and regional
studies (including planning) are expanding
their canons, and thus the notion of spatial
consciousness has implications beyond the
academic organization of knowledge.
In spatial plans and policies advanced by
national and subnational governments, the
explicitness or implicitness of spatial con-
sciousness depends on the articulation of the
dierent forms of consciousness at various
scales, usually via concepts and images, when
attempts are made to reect on how national,
regional, metropolitan, or local spaces should
be conceived by other actors. eformsof
spatial consciousness thereby vary over time
in function of government styles and political
ideologies. On the one hand, national and
Tri m Si ze : 17 0m m x 244mm Orum eurs0308.tex V1 - 07/26/2018 8:24 P.M. Page 6
❦
❦ ❦
❦
6SPATIAL CONSCIOUSNESS
subnational plans advanced in dierent West-
ern European contexts during the post-World
War II decad e s ( les Trente Glorieuses)repre-
sent space explicitly through spatial concepts
that emphasize spatial organization and
spatial proximity. National planning reports
of the time provide evidence of how some
European nation-states attempted to institute
“territorial synchrony” intentionally in their
pursuit to attain “equal development” via the
creation of classical-modernist institutions.
Moreover, post-World War II regional plans
(e.g., the 1944 Greater London Plan or the
1947 Copenhagen Finger Plan) allude to an
intentionality of steering urban expansion
through spatial proximity principles with a
corresponding vocabulary of spatial concepts
(e.g., zones, new towns, central business
districts, neighborhood units, etc.). On the
other hand, spatial representations associated
with national and subnational plans pub-
lished during the late 1990s and early 2000s
make use of an alternative spatial vocabulary
comprised of more dynamic concepts (e.g.,
corridors, networks, hubs, gateways, nodes,
webs, ows, etc.) that replace the former
notions of spatial organization and proximity
with ideas about spatial connectivity. is
new representational consciousness, which
Manuel Castells (1996) relates to real-world
phenomena through the metaphors of “net-
work society” and “space of ows,” not only
implies a loss of territorial synchrony but
also infers a new intentional consciousness
that relies on a neoliberal political ideol-
ogy that favors a development orientation
emphasizing dierentiated growth.
In her work on the transformative role
of imagination in spatial strategies, Healey
(2006) problematizes the presence or absence
of explicit spatial consciousness. Healey’s
concern is to identify not only the forces and
values that enhance spatial consciousness in
policy matters, but also the forces and values
that seem to inform an explicit spatial con-
sciousness in strategy-making. In this frame,
the capacity to “see” a region or a state in
spatial terms is ultimately an issue of democ-
racy and justice: spatial consciousness is not
only a question of the experience of space;
it is also one about intentions toward space
as well as how it is represented according
to whose experience and whose intentions.
Healey’s argument thus raises the need for a
more systematic framing of the topic.
Scholars and practitioners address spa-
tial issues with exactness or discretion, but
nonetheless with an emphasis on experience,
intention, or representation. However, these
perspectives are interdependent, and the
question is whether they are made explicit
or remain implicit in the study of spatial
phenomena or in policy matters. In his work
on meaning and action, Paul Ricoeur (1986)
places the initiative as a fundamental link
between the past and the future, which has
some theoretical and methodological impli-
cations for the dierentiation of forms of
spatial consciousness. Between experience
and intention there is a dierence in tempo-
ral orientation: experience is based on lived
space and thus the past, while intention is
shaped out of expectations and thus refers
to future horizons. Representation of space
plays a role as a means to organize the rela-
tionship between experience and intention,
dening the present and constituting a basis
for taking the initiative.
In relation to spatial planning, Ricoeur’s
account of the initiative and action in the
present brings us to the problem of public
action and governance. What is at stake is
spatial consciousness as a necessary condi-
tion for territorial governance, and thus also
for urban and regional planning. In an eort
to assess the potential of spatial planning as
agovernmenttool,LuigiMazza(2010)pro-
vides a conceptual means to grasp what this
implies. enotionofgovernanceconcerns
Tri m Si ze : 17 0m m x 244mm Orum eurs0308.tex V1 - 07/26/2018 8:24 P.M. Page 7
❦
❦ ❦
❦
SPATIAL CONSCIOUSNESS 7
the relationship between the individual and
society, or individual rights in relation to
public action. is relationship is structured
by a state and based on a constitution. While
governance in itself is aspatial,Mazzapoints
out that, in contrast, territorial governance is
spatial, as it involves the relationship between
society and the environment. erepresen-
tation of a spatial pattern may be provided
by a plan, by means of a grid or diagram of
spatial organization, enabling an articulation
between the representational consciousness
and intentional and phenomenal types of
consciousness: on the one hand, the intention
of changing or preserving the existing spatial
order; on the other, with reference to an object
that the spatial community has a shared expe-
rience with – a city, a region, a public space,
arecreationalasset,andsoforth.Spatial
planning hence makes an explicit association
of individual rights and the norms and values
of public action with a spatial representation
at the service of political decision-making.
Weste r n E urope has l a r gely served as a
terrain for the advancement of a planning
theory canon over the past century, which
has been underpinned by the continent’s
liberal democracies, planning systems, ideo-
logical reorientations, and shiing planning
paradigms. However, this sole and contextual
geography of theory can hardly nd validity,
let alone applicability, elsewhere beyond its
sociopolitical reality. is is fundamentally
aquestionabouttheextenttowhichspatial
planning is used as a government tool, and
also how it is ultimately employed and for
what purposes. While contextualizing the
planning perspective in the processes and
situations of globalization implies losing
some of the autonomy it acquired through
the institutionalization of planning systems
and its deriving theorizations, it also allows
for reection upon planning thought and
institutions as a social construct: on how it is
constituted as a thought and organizational
eld within dierent sociocultural, insti-
tutional, and political contexts. Types and
categorizations of spatial consciousness
necessarily refer to the realm of ideas and ide-
ology, and therefore a global overview needs
to relate to the discussions on postcolonial-
ism and modernity. emainreferences
here are the sociological and anthropologi-
cal discussions on ideology and modernity,
which, in the contemporary context of glob-
alization, have been consolidated around
conceptualizations like liquid modernity,
reexive modernization,andmodernity at
large (treated by scholars like Zygmunt Bau-
man, Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens, Arjun
Appadurai, among others). eissueatstake,
then, is how modernity, as a question of
how society tries to resolve the problem of
self-description by means of a time line (Luh-
mann 1992), is addressed in dierent contexts
of globalization. Indeed, the question of how
episodes of planning have invested or pro-
duced consciousness of phenomena and
processes in a spatial dimension is a promis-
ing horizon for political ideas, knowledge,
ideology, critique, and utopian mentality in
relation to the processes of territorialization.
As Ananya Roy notes (2009, 828), “[w]hile
much of urban theory has managed a trac
of ideas that routes concepts from EuroAmer-
ica to the global South, there is an urgency
and necessity to chart more intricate roots
and routes.” In this respect, it is worth
acknowledging that spatial consciousness
is not contained within urban and regional
theory or planning theory: it is foundational
to both, and in a global perspective they are
both expanding canons. With the study of
the twenty-rst-century metropolis being
inevitably a study of modernity (Robinson
2006, in Roy 2009), alternative conceptu-
alizations of urban modernity contend the
relevance of pondering the emergence of “the
modern” outside the geography of the West
(Mitchell 2000). In this light, planning as an
Tri m Si ze : 17 0m m x 244mm Orum eurs0308.tex V1 - 07/26/2018 8:24 P.M. Page 8
❦
❦ ❦
❦
8SPATIAL CONSCIOUSNESS
academic eld stands alongside the range
of disciplines within the social sciences that
have begun challenging “the world economy
of knowledge structured by the history of
colonialism and current north–south global
inequalities” (Connell 2014, 210). With emer-
gent planning theorizations challenging the
universalizing assumptions of theory gener-
ated in the Global North as well as the limi-
tations of such universalized theory in terms
of its use of situated knowledge (Roy 2009;
Wats on 2009 ) , t h e r e is increasin g a g r e ement
about the need to foster alternative concep-
tual approaches that acknowledge deeper
sociospatial and sociopolitical dierences via
the development of new planning epistemolo-
gies to better understand the world’s realm of
current planning practices (Roy 2001, 2009).
A“GlobalSouth”perspectiveonplanning
hence not only implies an understanding of
the processes of colonialism, postcolonial-
ism, imperialism, and capitalism (Watson
2009), but also a recognition of the notion
that planning holds conicting rationalities
driven by divergent logics (Watson 2003). In
this challenging situation, the organization of
knowledge may be reconsidered, the bound-
aries between academic disciplines redrawn,
in a reality of sociospatial and sociopoliti-
cal dierences, as may the ideological and
political implications of coexisting planning
epistemologies. Spatial disciplines may nd
their foundations in critical reection around
the eects of modernization on community
and the human habitat, carefully observed
by Françoise Choay as preliminary to plan-
ning – historically and logically. Based on
forms of individual or collective awareness
of one’s own spatial presence,asindividual
or community, and of real-world spatial
phenomena and processes,explicitspatial
consciousness may provide the intellectual
means to bridge the gap between spatial
and aspatial dimensions of social processes,
governance, and participation.
SEE ALSO: Regional Governance; Space; eurs0262
eurs0305
Spatial Analysis; Territory/Territoriality; Urban eurs0306
eurs0339
eurs0386
Planning
REFERENCES
Castells, M. 1996. eInformationAge:Economy,
Society and Culture, vol. 1: eRiseoftheNet-
work Society.Oxford:Blackwell.
Choay, F. 1965. L’Urbanisme, utopies et réalités: Une
anthologie.Paris:ÉditionsduSeuil.
Choay, F. 2006. Pour une Anthropologie de l’ espace.
Paris: Éditions du Seuil.
Clark, G., and Riel-Salvatore, J. 2001. “Grave Mark-
ers, Middle and Early Upper Paleolithic Burials.”
Current Anthropology, 42 (4): 481–490.
Connell, R. 2014. “Using Southern eory: Decol-
onizing Social ought in eory, Research and
Application.” Planning eory,13(2):210–223.
Davoudi, S. 2012. “eLegacyofPositivismand
the Emergence of Interpretive Tradition in Spa-
tial Planning.” Regional Studies, 46 (4): 429–441.
Davoudi, S., and I. Strange (eds.) 2009. Conceptions
of Space and Place in Strategic Spatial Planning.
London: Routledge.
Faludi, A. 1996. “Framing with Images.” Environ-
ment and Planning B: Planning and Design 23:
93–108.
Faludi, A., and A. van der Valk, 1994. Rule and
Order: Dutch Planning Doctrine in the Twentieth
Century.Dordrecht:Kluwer.
Foley, D.L. 1964. “An Approach to Metropolitan
Spatial Structure.” In: Explorations into Urban
Structure (ed. M.M. Webber). Philadelphia: Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania Press.
Gabellini, P. 1996. Il disegno urbanistico.Rome:
Carocci editore.
Healey, P. 2004. “eTreatmentofSpaceand
Place in the New Strategic Spatial Planning in
Europe.” International Journal of Urban and
Regional Research 28 (1): 45–67.
Healey, P. 2006. “Relational Complexity and
the Imaginative Power of Strategic Spatial
Planning.” European Planning Studies 14 (4):
525–546.
Healey, P. 2008. “Knowledge Flows, Spatial Strat-
egy Making, and the Roles of Academics.”
Environment and Planning C: Government and
Policy 26 (5): 861–881.
Luhmann, N. 1992. Beobachtungen der Moderne.
Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag.
Tri m Si ze : 17 0m m x 244mm Orum eurs0308.tex V1 - 07/26/2018 8:24 P.M. Page 9
❦
❦ ❦
❦
SPATIAL CONSCIOUSNESS 9
Mazza, L. 2010. “Limiti e capacità della piani-
cazione dello spazio.” Territ orio 52: 7–24.
Mitchell, T. (ed.) 2000. Questions of Modernity.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Neuman, M. 1998. “Does Planning Need the
Plan?” Journal of the American Planning Associ-
ation 64 (2): 208–220.
Rein, M., and D. Laws. 2000. “Controversy,
Reframing and Reection.” In: eRevivalof
Strategic Spatial Planning,editedbyW.Salet
and A. Faludi, 93–108. Amsterdam: Koninklijke
Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen.
Rein, M., and D. Schön. 1986. “Frame-Reective
Policy Discourse.” Beleidsanalyse 15 (4): 4–18.
Ricoeur, P. 1986. Du Texte à l’action: Essais
d’herméneutique,vol.2.Paris:ÉditionsduSeuil.
Robinson, J. 2006. Ordinary Cities: Between Moder-
nity and Development.London:Routledge.
Roy, A. 2001. “Traditions of the Modern: A Cor-
rupt View.” Trad it ional D wel li ng s and S et tle me nt
Reviews 12 (2): 7–19.
Roy, A. 2009. “e21st-CenturyMetropolis:New
Geographiesof eory.” Regional Studies,43(6):
819–830.
Salet, W., and A. Faludi eds. 2000. eRevival
of Strategic Spatial Planning.Amsterdam:
Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van
Wete n s chap pen.
Schön, D. 1983. eReective Practitioner: How
Professionals ink in Action. London: Temple
Smith.
Siewert, C.P. 1998. eSignicance of Conscious-
ness.Princeton,NJ:PrincetonUniversityPress.
Van Gu l l ick, R . 2 0 1 8. “C o n sciou s n ess.” I n e
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring
2018 ed.), edited by E. N. Zalta. Accessed June
12, 2018, at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/
consciousness/.
Wat s o n, V. 20 0 3 . “Con icting Rationalities: Impli-
cations for Planning eory and Ethics.” Plan-
ning eory and Practice 4(4):395–407.
Wat s o n, V. 20 0 9 . “See i n g f rom t h e S o uth: Re f o-
cusing Urban Planning on the Globe’s Cen-
tral Urban Issues.” Readings in Planning eory:
Fourth Edition,46,(11):2259–2275.
FURTHER READING
Webb e r , M .W., e d. 1964 . Explorations into Urban
Structure.Philadelphia:UniversityofPennsylva-
nia Press.
Tri m Si ze : 17 0m m x 244mm Orum eurs0308.tex V1 - 07/26/2018 8:24 P.M. Page 10
❦
❦ ❦
❦
Please note that the abstract and keywords will not be included in the printed book, but are
required for the online presentation of this book which will be published on Wiley’s own
online publishing platform.
If the abstract and keywords are not present below, please take this opportunity to add them
now.
ABSTRACT
Spatial consciousness may refer to individual or collective awareness about real-world spatial phe-
nomena and processes. is entry begins by framing the “spatial” while linking it with the realm of the
“consci ous” by p rop osin g a con ceptual ar ticu lati on that diers between three distinct but interrelated
perspectives on consciousness in relation to space, namely phenomenal, representational, and inten-
tional. eentrythenelaboratesanaccountofspatialconsciousnessfromtheperspectiveofplanning
as a spatial discipline, departing from the early experiences of planning as a modern project, followed
by contemporary understandings and illustrative examples. On the basis of these respectively con-
ceptual and applied accounts, the entry nally reects on the role of spatial consciousness in practice
and in the expanding canon of academic planning literature, from its Western tenets to a postcolonial,
global perspective, and considers a series of theoretical and practical implications.
KEYWORDS
experience; intention; planning; representation; spatial pattern
