After the crises of modernity: Urban planning and patterns in post-industrial Cleveland, Ohio, and post-socialist Sofia, Bulgaria.

Abstract

Urban planning has historically been dominated by the philosophy of modernism. The central aim of modernism in planning, despite the many variations, was to bring rational order to the city. This order was typically pursued in an autocratic fashion through means such as the sponsorship of large-scale urban renewal, the imposition of land use segregation, the endorsement of urban dispersal, and the patronage of new, rationally conceived forms, deemed superior to the messy historic city. Despite the many benefits of modernization, the embrace of modernism as chief planning ideology has often had harmful effects upon urban form. The dissertation contends that two variations of modernism guided post-war planning in the United States and Eastern Europe, leaving many of their historic cities with different but equally deep scars to heal and ultimately leading them to crises, referred here as crises of modernist urbanism. The dissertation asks whether urban planning has substantively evolved in reaction to these urbanist crises. Have alternative approaches to planning cities emerged? May one talk of a postmodern turn in planning? To answer these questions, the dissertation analyzes past and present planning in two regions, one in North America, Cleveland, Ohio, and one in Eastern Europe, Sofia, Bulgaria. It uses three themes or sets of planning ideas and practices, related to: (1) the planning process, (2) land consumption and (3) land use arrangement, as the primary criteria to assess the ostensible presence of a planning paradigm shift. The rise of participatory planning processes, and the rise of planning approaches encouraging compact forms and mixed uses are considered evidence of a postmodern turn. The dissertation concludes that despite the vastly different contexts of the two regions, urban planning went through broadly similar stages. In each, planning had its period of high modernism and, in each, the current post-industrial/post-socialist period coincides with the rise of postmodern planning themes. However, even if a postmodern transition in planning is underway, in terms of the three central themes, this transition is only partial, with the forces of tradition frequently overpowering these of change, and with planning ideas and practices often remaining in conflict.