Emergent Urbanism: structural change and urban planning and design

In response to the structural changes of recent decades, many European cities and towns have invested in production, consumption and transportation infrastructures, marketing and branding measures, and urban design schemes, in order to manage and stimulate urban regeneration. This paper contributes to a discussion of urban planning and design in the context of structural change, emphasizing the consequences that such change has had for urban heritage and the sense of place. The paper addresses two cases from Swedish infrastructure planning practice to construct a conceptual framework for the discussion and analysis of contemporary theory and practice in urban planning and design. Throughout this paper, we argue that the urban landscape should not be seen as solely resulting from deliberate planning and design measures. Rather, understanding the regeneration of that landscape requires a deeper consideration of decisions related to infrastructure planning, as well as emergent processes of economic, social and spatial processes of structural change. We put forward the term Emergent Urbanism to describe this expanded understanding.