Stories of Pasts and Futures in Planning

Abstract: Societies are constantly changing, facing new challenges and possibilities generated by innovative technologies, sociospatial re-structuring, mobilities, migration and virtual networks. This has been associated with new forms of regional competitiveness, institutional networks and constellations of power in the global economy. For example, several European programmes and policy documents have been interpreted into national and local policy documents in the different EU member states. At the same time, global migration and integration have challenged nation states to remain open and interact in other markets whilst retaining control over their own identities. Consequently, struggles over values, identities, legitimacies and powers are growing in several societies, and nation states face the dilemma of whether to enhance the democratic representations of their diverse social groups and their plural pasts or to sustain the highly selective political project of nation and national identity (Germundsson, 2005).While challenges such as for example the focus on economic performance at the expense of social inclusion and the unequal distribution of resources are well known, they are often overlooked. Many scholars have suggested that planning practices have been promoting stories of increasing competitiveness, which has polarised rather than balanced the development, supporting growth in the most competitive regions (Racco, 2007). Others have blamed planning practices for silencing the voices of minorities (Sandercock, 1998) and/or enforcing stories that reinforce the interests of elites (Swyngedouw, 2007). Others have spelt out the apathy or post political condition in politics mirrored in planning practices (Allmendinger & Haughton, 2012). This apathy in politics derives from consensual ideas that are rooted in the homogenisation of societal values.This research approaches these challenges by exploring the role that stories about pasts, presents and futures play in planning. It sees stories as interlinked spaces of struggle over meanings, legitimacies and powers through which “our” valuable pasts and “our” desirable futures become re-constructed, framed and projected. It argues that powerful stories might consciously or unconsciously become institutionalised in policy discourses and documents, foregrounding our spatial realities and affecting our living spaces. These arguments and assumptions are investigated in relation to three cases. First, the Regional-Pasts case concerns the uses of stories about the pasts in the regional planning of the Mälardalen Region, Sweden, as a means to sustain the binary between ‘progress and tradition’, disregarding intrinsic conflicts between the objectives of regional authorities of ‘developing’ against those of the heritage authorities of ‘preserving’. Second, the SeGI-Futures case uses scenarios to explore the different futures of Services of General Interests in Europe 2030 and the associated tensions between the political legacies of the EU member states and the EU political frame for unification. Third, the ICT-Futures case discloses struggles involved in combining ICT efficiency while sustaining natural resources, especially because efficiency does not necessarily mean reduction, but could instead lead to the increased depletion of natural resources.The interlinked stories about the pasts, presents and futures surrounding these cases are investigated in this research with the aim of initiating critical discussions on how stories about pasts and futures can inform, but also be sustained by, planning processes. While studies of these cases are presented in separate papers, these studies are brought together in an introductory essay and reconstructed in response to these research questions: How do regional futures become informed by the pasts? (Papers one & two); How do particular stories about the pasts become selected, framed and projected as envisioned futures? (Papers one, two & three); What messages are conveyed to the pasts and the presents through envisioned futures? (Papers four & five); and How can stories of the past be referred and re-employed in planning to build more inclusive futures? (Papers three, four & five). To engage with the complexity and multidisciplinary of these questions, they have been investigated through dialogues between three main fields of inquiry: heritage studies, futures studies and planning. The discussions have challenged the conventional divides between pasts, presents and futures, emphasised their plural nature and uncovered how the discursive power of stories play a significant role when interpreting the past and envision the futures in planning practices. This research therefore advocates the need for new ways of engagement with pasts, presents and futures in order to plan for more inclusive futures.