Towards a Planning Imagination for the 21st Century

Abstract As an enduring social project, planning needs to come to terms with the social realities of 21st-century cities. Most Western cities today are demographically multicultural, presenting the challenge of a new urban condition in which difference, otherness, and plurality prevail. This essay asks whether there is a planning imagination capable of responding to the challenges of diversity. I suggest and provide examples of four key qualities of such an imagination: political, audacious, creative, and therapeutic. Embracing these qualities constitutes a cultural change in planners' modes of thinking and practice.