| dc.description.abstract | Since time immemorial, the world has witnessed short- and long-term uncertainties of various intensities. This is due to a combination of shocks and stresses caused by climate change, environmental hazards, economic crises, unstable political regimes, rising inequalities, forced migration, armed conflict, and pandemics. These intertwined challenges reinforce existing uncertainties and generate new uncertainties.
As a result, the planning field is at a crossroads, amplifying discussions among spatial planners, decision-makers, and humanitarian actors on the need for integrated planning, decision-making, and governance approaches that could address these uncertainties through innovative and improved tools. This thesis explores the above concerns mainly through two domains that have engaged in conceptual, empirical, and practical discussions on how to deal with various facets of uncertainty, namely, spatial planning and humanitarian studies. Frameworks coping with uncertainty in the spatial planning literature have mainly been developed based on perspectives from developed contexts in the Global North qualified as contexts with robust institutional mechanisms operating in an environment of relative consensus, substantial resources, and equality among actors. Instead, this thesis draws on learnings from lesser-known marginal developmental contexts qualified here as contexts with persisting chronic vulnerabilities, weak institutional mechanisms, and scarce or unevenly distributed resources. The two connected cases explored are set within Wayanad, a peri-urban, spatially dispersed hill district in Kerala, a coastal province in southwest India. They are as follows: First, the unprecedented monsoon floods in 2018 and 2019 in Wayanad as a case of decision-making under short-term uncertainty, and second, the quarrying of ecologically sensitive hilly areas in Wayanad as a case of decision-making under long-term uncertainty. The thesis exemplifies the interrelations between uncertainty, contingency, resilience, and adaptation concepts from a planning, decision-making and governance perspective. Based on empirical insights from Wayanad, this research puts forth a contextualised contingency planning (CCP) approach which could serve as an interactional, value-laden, participatory, community-oriented, and partnership-based planning approach that bridges approaches towards uncertainty from the Global South and the Global North.
Planning manifestos that dictated earlier spatial trajectories are outdated, the term ‘smart’ has pervaded many planning discussions without tangible results, and participation in planning has renewed support in multiple arenas yet is often accompanied by participation fatigue. Simultaneously, cities are rapidly expanding; distressed transient populations flee conflict, battle poverty, hunger, fast-depleting resources, and everyday crises. Meanwhile, emerging planning theories, frameworks, and movements promise to re-invent planning for today's complexities. As a planner, it is easy to become overwhelmed. Is there anything our profession can do to make a difference under such compounded uncertainties? This thesis argues that constraints, chaos, and uncertainties can be debilitating, but they can also act as fertile ground for creativity, new ideas and new ways of doing things. This thesis is, therefore, a call for embracing uncertainty and running towards the fire. | en_US |
