Cities Strategic Planning Needs an Adaptive Strategy

            There has never been a more interesting time to live in a city. For the first time in human history, there are more people living in urban areas than in rural or suburban spaces. By 2050, 66% of the world’s population is estimated to be living in cities. In 1990 there were ten cities with over ten million residents, in 2014 there were 28 of those mega cities. Rural populations continue to decrease due to several factors including the technological advancements in the agriculture industry. This high degree of change has forced city planners everywhere to adapt to develop innovative and unique solutions to problems we have never experienced.

            In my role at the Department of City Planning at the City of Pittsburgh, I have seen how planning departments across the world are grappling with some of these issues. Smart Cities technologies, something CMU is starting to become known for, is one of the strategies cities are embracing to cope this these problems. While I agree embracing smart cities techniques is critical, there is another unique change in strategy I want to discuss. “Your Strategy Needs a Strategy” by Reeves, Love, and Tillmanns resonated deeply with me because of recent discussions our department has been having.

Planning departments historically have used the classic strategic development style when constructing comprehensive, district, and neighborhood plans. Planning departments often still plan in 15-30 year increments for their comprehensive plan. While these plans are often more visionary and generalized than some more localized plans, they do not adapt well to any changes in the city ecosystem. Let’s take Pittsburgh as an example. In the 1920’s, the City of Pittsburgh could reasonably make a comprehensive plan projecting large population growth because of the strong steel industry based here. And they would have been correct in that projection at the time. But globalization and the emergence of technology has increased the speed at which our world and even the local economy can change. Planners are starting to question if doing a comprehensive plan for 2020-2050 is realistic because the likelihood of us accurately planning for the year 2050 is low.

That is why I believe all planning departments, including my own, should move towards an adaptive strategic development strategy. Perhaps a hybrid between adaptive and classic. We need to plan long term for a high amount of future growth, while also understanding the need to adapt to global and technological changes. Our comprehensive plan of the future should function more as living set of ideals we wish to accomplish based on appropriate future projections. This would need to be a fine tuned balancing act between being flexible enough to adapt to change while still accomplishing the desired goals. Cultural mismatches are mentioned in the article and are vital when considering any sort of change at this magnitude. Cities have largely been planned using the same strategies for the last half a century, changing that to become more adaptive will be a significant cultural change.