Ethiopian Institute of Architecture, Building Construction

and City Development (EIABC)

CHAIR OF URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

Course Title
History, philosophy and theory of urban planning processes and
practices (MUP6111)

Instructor:- Frew Mengistu (Ph.D.), Asst. Professor

Critical review of Adaptive planning
Yonas Terefe (gse/8305/12)

jan. 2020
Review of adaptive planning

Prepared by
yonas terefe
 background
 Adaptive management was developed to deal with the
uncertainty as consequence of complex systems.

 adaptive management has been widely practiced since1970s

in natural resource and ecosystem management.

 in 1978 Holling presented an adaptive management strategy

which had been developed through a series of workshops

 Major issues that were addressed where issues of multiple

uncertainties by giving a chance for planners to know as
much as they can about uncertainties and develop strategies
and methods to address them.
 Views/perspective
 promotes management actions as experiments in which every
decision is reassessed and considered as an input for the
future decision making.

 promotes fast learning by implementing several small

policies simultaneously, each management action can have
several hypotheses, investigating different effects of the
action.

 monitoring the progress continuously reduces uncertainty by

creating the opportunity to understand the system overtime.
 Minimizing uncertainty by assessing the feasibility and
effectiveness of planning decisions and the risks inherent in
each stage of the planning process.

 Learning by doing- conceiving uncertainties not as obstacles

but opportunities to learn from the experience.

 encourages the culture of experimenting by acting, but they

should minimize the risks by making decision based on the
best available data and knowledge.
 This approach was more appealing to the planning
professionals because, it creates the environment for
planners to adjust to the uncertain conditions and develop
strategies that are more efficient though adaptation of
previous experiences.

The role of the planner is understanding the risks involved in

planning actions and implement strategies, to do everything
reasonable to reduce the risk of failure – yet still be explicitly
willing to accept failure.
This is perhaps the greatest challenge to implementing adaptive

planning.
 Process of adaptive planning

Figure 1. Schematic steps of an adaptive planning method.

Schematic steps of an adaptive planning method. A characteristic feedback loop is
shown: data collected from monitoring are fed back to the process to formulate new
policies; plans are adjusted according to the monitoring results.Monitoring is
conducted before,during and after Implimentation.
this approach was slow to be adopted because:-
 Planners fear to accept mistakes created by uncertainties,
understandable fear of failing and being held responsible.

 Unsupportive institutional settings and complex and

computing social values and interests.

 the lack of support from legal and institutional structure.

 Stakeholders do not share the interests and values of the

approach and lack of agreement on common goals and
objectives.
 View development and response

 This planning strand is constructivist in a sense that the

planner is always constructing an interpretation of the
unfolding situation in which the outcome is also monitored
for the decision makers to either apply or reject the results.

 These planning strand is procedural because encourages

decision makers to implement several, small plans for faster
learning

 Adaptive management is a proactive method, where policy

decisions are Used as ‘experimental probes’,
Conclusion

 This approach mainly promotes the need for action in the

face of uncertainties and these bring the idea that planners
have to open up their practice for self organization
mechanisms to alleviate informality.

 The continuous monitoring and feedback mechanism which is

carried out though out the process of adaptive approach, will
promote more efficient ways to tackle current urban
problems and could be proposed as an alternative approach
towards achieving sustainable development.
End of presentation

Thank You