Here an example of the project list or shopping list.
We can see that we have a particular element,
we see that at an intersection,
we see that we have here a bypass that is drawn, we see
that we have sectors which without a doubt will have to be restructured,
of particular elements.
Urban planning is seen, in this case, as the succession of financeable projects.
So we no longer truly have a comprehensive plan,
or rather the comprehensive plan is not that important
compared to the whole of the project list,
and finally urban planning, planning
is done by superimposed projects.
Another example, we go from the project list,
to a planning by domain or by business sector.
Here we are in Nouakchott, Mauritania
with the road network hierarchy in the long-term.
So we go eventually from a planning
that wants to include all of the planning elements
which is broken down into different areas of activity, the road network
being without a doubt the most classic domain, really everything
that is transportation and mobility, but this is often about hierarchy issues
of the road network in the long-term which we primarily act on.
And finally the last invention in the history of planning,
is strategic planning.
Here we are in Douala, where we see that
we are talking about large sectors, sub-sectors which are
secondary centers, a center with a number of arrows
which show the dynamic that goes in the direction of reinforcing
a number of precise ideas that were put in place.
So we see that, we are dealing with agroalimentary industry issues
with the plan, so we are also dealing with plans that are often sector-specific,
there is rarely a plan that synthesizes everything since it becomes
very complicated to read, but we realize
that we are no longer discussing in terms of physical planning,
of project elements but of a regional dynamic
that we put ahead of a plan, with the use, in particular,
of a number of arrows, as we can see them here,
as we have seen them in the center of the plan.
So all of this to say that, in theory, everyone has their own planning history.
Each time, it's said that up until now
we have been mistaken, that we are going to make a new tool,
and that thanks to this tool, the planning will be useful and efficient.
We realize eventually that, aside from what I have called the first drawings
which are true subdivision plans,
which are plans of military genius,
but which shape the city, the urban shape, so the spatiality is created
through these plans, however templates are created, the size of the streets,
the size of the plots are created.
Everything else is after, after this first stage of subdivision plans
which are the city's first urban plans.
After this stage, all the planning done,
from classical planning, simplified, the project list,
all this planning that I spoke of, that we saw in detail,
we have purely only done, exactly the same thing, right up to the last plan
which is supposedly strategic, where we have invented nothing else
than doing what we used to do except that it's presented
in a radically different way since we're trying to put forth the dynamics.
And then there is in the discourse a way to make believe
that before it was being done wrong and now we are going to do it correctly.
But strategic planning, one must know,
is really the same as all planning.
And if the paradigm shift takes place, it is not between what
what happened before and today,
strategic planning, but it's really between
the first plans, which were subdivision plans,
which were urban plans, which were an urban design;
there is a rupture between this first part and everything after.
And the paradigm shift in urban planning
intervenes thus in this passing from
the first plans and the current plans which are strategic plans.
There you have, quickly described, a history of planning
without any date, which is distinctive.
Simply why?
Because the examples that I gave
were not necessarily created in a linear manner.
The different stages of plans happened in a linear manner
but some, like simplified planning,
was happening in 2000 in Mauritania while for other countries
it was happening in the 80s, even the 70s, even well before that.
So this whole history is not linear,
one must keep in mind that
we have these different stages and that today we're almost everywhere
in a strategic planning stage.
