Hello Today a history of urban planning. A brief history, going back a few plans, a few decades, a few large types of plans, from the first subdivision plans, often colonial plans, right up to current plans, strategic city planning. We are going to divide it into different stages. The first was what we called the first drawings, it is often subdivision plans, we will show an example a little later. Then classical planning, which we probably know best. Classical planning simplified, the project list or the shopping list. Planning by discipline. Strategic planning. First example of planning, what we call the first plans. We are here in Abidjan, the first plan of subdivision of the city of Abidjan, it is a plan of military genius. Most colonial cities, we are not referring to precolonial cities of course, the first colonial cities had plans, which were generally made by military genius. We are referring to the subdivision drawing with an exact description of the roads and the size of the lots. We have here, each time, we know exactly the size of the street, the boundaries of the roads, we also know that the blocks are well defined in a subdivision. So we're really talking about a spatial drawing, where we try to organize things, the large facilities, we have here the hospital as well as a number of plots which are common plots that could welcome residents or facilities. The second example here, is what we call classical planning. Classical planning, is a encyclopedic planning of the city. So there is no date on the side on purpose, since we are of course looking at the first plans, in 1830, 1850, it depends on the cities, but here we are dealing much more classical planning. We are still in Abidjan, however, providing a date does not make sense. Why? Because this type of plan can be found before in certain cities and well after in other cities. We can even say that this classical planning is still used today in any number of African cities. What are its special features? We plan the networks, we plan large subdivisions. We see that it's mostly streets that we have, we see that we plan the new subdivisions that we have the large roads, mostly, that exit to the outside of the city. So it's the road network which is planned. To do this planning, we use a large amount of data. The idea behind it is that if we have encyclopedic knowledge of the city, we will be able to plan correctly. Same situation here, we find ourselves a few years later, it is the 80s, in Nouakchott in Mauritania, we are dealing with the same type of planning, it's a classical planning but based on an encyclopedic knowledge of things. So we know absolutely everything about the city and knowing everything allows us to plan well. Then, we go to another type of planning, still in Nouakchott, still in Mauritania, the so-called classic planning but its simplified version. We realize that after a few classical planning failures, finally, all of this encyclopedic data, this mass of information, is maybe not essential to the planning of the city. So we are going to do the same type of road planning, of large areas, of residential areas, popular housing areas, but this time, we are going to base it on data that is much more insufficient. So we are going to look to simplify, both the diagnostic, based on much less data, and at the same time the result, starting with the principle that the simpler and the clearer it is, the more possibilities for planning to work. So it's a secret for no one, we have reduced the complexity so much that we are now in situations where planning is no longer effective at all since it no longer represents urban complexity. 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.
