Scenario Planning and Support Systems for Spatial Planning of Growing Cities

Abstract

Since 2007, a larger proportion of the world's population has been living in non-rural areas, whereas almost 90% of the future urbanisation will concentrate in Africa and Asia. Within South Asian countries, urbanisation has attained its fastest pace in Pakistan where the urban population has increased more than two times during the last three decades and is expected to become predominantly urban by 2025. However, due to the inter-census definitional shifts, the quantification of urban settlements remained partially documented. Effective management and control measures cannot be ensured unless the accurate picture of urban areas is evident at the national scale. Secondly, on the response side, urban planners and controlling agencies in Pakistan have tried various spatial plan making solutions to manage urban areas, but none have given the desired results. After a 20% increase in the number of declared urban areas within the last two decades, urban planners and policymakers are looking for a more innovative and realistic spatial planning solution, which could adjust to the uncertainties and complexities of the real world. Despite its continuous evolution, spatial planning in Pakistan still lacks the 'future' as it has been unable to adopt the contemporary planning process and tools such as scenario planning and planning support systems. Thirdly, despite the wider development and adoption of geographic information systems (GIS) based planning support systems (PSS) in spatial planning worldwide, the utilisation of digital planning tools in Pakistan to support planning practice has been minimal. Previous studies have highlighted that the poor conformance and performance of spatial planning outputs in Pakistan have their roots in the faulty preparation process and the lack of the usage of digital planning tools This research aims to formulate a framework for the improvement of spatial planning of growing cities by adopting scenario planning and planning support systems. This research uses a mixed-method hybrid approach to achieve that aim. It maps the declared urban areas across the census from 1951 to 2017 and presents an inventory of urban spatial plans to document their availability gap. The primary data of this research consist of two significant sets; a) a survey of professionals to ascertain digital planning tools utilisation gap, and b) a survey of urban planners to explore the reasons behind the failure of past spatial plans and the aspirations for the future. The former survey investigates why there is a paucity of up taking digital planning tools in the spatial plan preparation and documents key stumbling factors. A survey of (n=106) urban planners has been undertaken using an online questionnaire to understand users' perspectives. The survey assesses their understanding of the terms and their perception behind the current utilisation level of digital planning tools for plan preparation. The analysis reveals a shallow familiarity of urban planners with digital planning tools, particularly planning support systems, in Pakistan, which is aligned with the findings from technologically advanced countries. The causes behind low utilisation (21 factors) have been identified and grouped under three dimensions adopted from previous research, including 'user acceptance,' 'instrument quality,' and 'diffusion.' The second survey comprises a two-phased survey of professional planners, analysed through the selective lexicon approach to document planners' opinions about the reasons behind spatial plans' poor performance and conformance. This study documents the planners' understanding of the contemporary concept of 'scenario planning.' To explore the solution, this research presents a semi-systematic review of the literature on applying the 'scenario method in urban spatial planning across the globe.' As a result of this research, a comprehensive digital inventory of all spatial plans ever made in Pakistan has been developed. It has been found that 83% of the urban settlements in Pakistan are growing without a spatial plan and require immediate attention. Furthermore, in terms of the plan-making process, twenty-seven significant factors contributing to the failure of past plans have been identified and categorised under seven distinct plan making stages. Finally, this research presents a new process of spatial plan-making, which is the fusion of scenario planning and the traditional plan-making process, backed by digital planning tools. A comprehensive framework for bridging the utilisation gap to improve spatial planning practice has been proposed. It emphasises that enhancing open data availability, introducing planning support systems (PSS) in academia, supporting research around PSS, developing local case studies, opening access to PSS tools, and awareness-raising will be the immediate actions required for improving spatial planning by optimum utilisation of digital planning tools. This research demonstrates the development of prototype planning support systems; one for micro-level (a PSS to optimise approval of private housing development projects), the other for macro-level (a PSS to aid spatial planning at city level) and the third for a scale-independent planning problem to pave the way for the adoption of improved process and tools. The findings of this research can create a long-lasting impact on the planner's community and spatial planning practices in Pakistan. This research will introduce a very pertinent branch of planning knowledge to academia and professionals in Pakistan and provide an implementable framework of action for improving planning products at various levels. In an era of smart cities, big data, and planning support science, this research provides a movement plan to Pakistan, which will result in more comprehensive data-driven spatial plans.