Mediating the global and the local: A natural crossroads for planning and planners?

Abstract

Globalization is all around us. It is a fundamental dimension of the changing world that planners-and others-have to come to terms with these days. It was an almost inevitable focus of one of the 1998 CIP Conference sessions, attracting a particularly large contingent of curious and questioning attendees. This article discusses how the global dimension of the planners' changing world was considered in a series of presentations by Pamela Robinson, Gillian Mason, and Ian Wight. Collectively, the presentations yielded the notion that mediating the global and the local might be a natural crossroads for planning and planners-connecting relevant knowledge with necessary action.