The concept of "regulated self-regulation" and of planning the

PLANNING THE NON-PLANNING IN THE NEW TYPE OF AN “AMALGAMATED CITY” OF
CREATIVE MILIEUS
Frey, Oliver
Assistant Professor at Vienna University of Technology, Department of spatial development, infrastructure- and
environmental planning, Centre of Sociology
[email protected]
Planning is increasingly confronted with the task of including the variety of all what might happen into its considerations.
Since the 1980s, planning theory has taken up these new ways of understanding and has developed a variety of different
aspects of spatial steering models. Since then, terms and concepts such as uncertainty, nonlinearity, deviation, complexity,
diversity, instability, and self-organization must be integrated into the way of understanding planning control.
The concept of an “amalgamated city” aims at a mixture of different places to form the urban spatial space of use, perception,
and living. The “amalgamated city” names a) the melting into one of places (physically-materially) and the social (at least for
the moment) and b) the interdependencies of places due to actors moving around among them (also information, images,
streams of money and goods). The author will present his research results of the amalgamated creative milieus in Vienna.
For the use of regulations and the setting of norms, making flexibility and diversity possible for spatial development means
keeping open every possible future of use and development, city development not clearly determining how every possible
future should be regulated. In order of pushing through the various concepts of social and cultural life in an amalgamated
city, city development must also invent tools of “non-planning”. “Planning the non-planning” allows more flexible reactions
to social and group-specific or also individual change of needs and situations in life. The actors within the “creative milieus”
may themselves design, organize, and utilize the thus resulting leeways – supported by tools of “non-planning”. The actors
within the “creative milieus” have tried out several strategies of urban spaces controlling and managing themselves and
depend on open structures for their search process within the urban space. Research results from the past two to three decades
by the natural sciences (physics, microbiology, neurophysics) and cognitive science (neuronal networks, self-generating
systems) as well as linguistics have shown that in most cases the interaction among humans and with their environment does
not happen according to objective, linear, rational, and deterministic rules. Self-regulation, co-regulation, self-organization,
and self-control name processes of regulation making and the content of these regulations which are only applied within an
institution or organization. Jurisprudential innovation research uses the term of “regulated self-regulation” for forms of an
“allowing law”. If refered to city development, this means the setting of frames within which ways of behaviour and
utilization may develop by themselves and are not regulated for every single case.
References:
[1] Dangschat, Jens S.; Frey, Oliver (2005): Stadt- und Regionalsoziologie. In: Kessel, F./Reutlinger, C./Maurer, S./Frey. O.
(eds.): Handbuch Sozialraum, VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, pp. 143 - 163.
[2] Frey, Oliver (2006): Places.Networks.Milieus. On the Governance of Creative Milieus in an Amalgamated City. In: RTN
UrbEurope Working-Papers; http://www.urban-europe.net/working_papers.htm, forthcoming
[3] Frey, Oliver (2006): Ein neuer Stadttypus in der Wissensgesellschaft: Die amalgame Stadt der kreativen Milieus. In:
Karsten Borgmann, Matthias Bruhn, Sven Kuhrau, Marc Schalenberg (Hrsg.): Das Ende der Urbanisierung? Wandelnde
Perspektiven auf die Stadt, ihre Geschichte und Erforschung, Berlin: Clio-online und Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 2006.
http://edoc.hu-berlin.de/e_histfor/8)
[4] Frey, Oliver; Smetana, Kurt (2006): Vienna`s „Gentle Renewal“ while being confronted with „Robust“ challenges by the
Present. In: ISOCARP-Review 2006.