“Trading zone”: A useful concept for some planning dilemmas

Abstract

In this chapter I use the concept of trading zone to reflect upon a planning experience of which I have been directly responsible: the strategic plan for the Milan’s province. In the first part I briefly describe the process and the results of this very intense experience. It was conceived to be an inclusive planning process capable to involve and therefore convince all the relevant actors to converge on the vision proposed. In the second part, describing the many difficulties of the process and the few positive results, I hold that while the participatory approach risks to be quite neo-technocratic and is unable on the end to deal with radical conflicts, the trading zone concept encourages to look for the elaboration of an intermediate language that allows the production of partial agreements and the discovery of boundary strategies accepted by different parties. The suggestion of the chapter is that this change of perspective is not only important to deal with the problems of participatory planning but also for planning in general.