Building up stories

The surge of storytelling in urban planning is concomitant with the end of what has been called the great narratives. The story of urban planning, as defined by Secchi in the 1980s, namely a progressive and emancipatory rhetoric associated with city transformation, gives way to a simple urban project plot development, a narration of the city to come. This urban action transformation is based on new conditions in the urban planning profession. Town makers are now called upon to be planning technicians, producers of meaning, leaders of participatory processes, intention communicators and cultural mediators. In addition, this urban action transformation is crossed by the emergence of a new urban governance mode (the new public governance). Finally, this urban action transformation heralds spectacular urban planning within the meaning of Débord. Urban planning that, upon failing to produce land management, strives to disseminate images and narratives: the action becoming transformed into its representation.
This book is dedicated to the description – from a subjective point of view – of this urban action transformation in an era of integrated spectacularity.