AESOP Lecture at Sciences Po Paris
Alessandro Balducci Reflects on "Neither Looking Down Nor Up": Democracy in Planning
Paris, June 2025 – At the annual AESOP Lecture hosted by Sciences Po, Alessandro Balducci delivered a retrospective on his professional trajectory, using it as a lens to analyse developments in urban planning thought and practice. His lecture traced the evolution of planning as both an academic field and a civic endeavour, drawing on decades of experience across research, institutional leadership, and public service.
Alessandro Balducci, professor of urban planning at Politecnico di Milano, structured the lecture into two parts: the first exploring his intellectual formation, and the second examining his roles within universities and public institutions. At the center of both was a persistent theme—the redefinition of planning as a hybrid, dialogic, and adaptive practice, one that responds to contemporary urban complexity rather than seeks to master it.
Intellectual Origins: Participation and Situated Knowledge
Alessandro Balducci began by recalling his entry into planning in the 1970s, shaped by grassroots political activism and early academic mentorship from figures such as Pier Luigi Crosta, Antonio Tosi, Bruno Dente, and Bernardo Secchi. These influences established his concern with how knowledge, power, and territory interact in the production of urban space. A formative experience at UC Berkeley reinforced his interest in participatory and exploratory planning methods.
He described how his understanding of participation shifted—from a normative imperative to a strategic tool for navigating complexity. Participation, in his view, is not a checkbox in a formal process, but a method to engage with plural perspectives and to recognise the partial, situated nature of all planning knowledge. This orientation informed his academic research and applied work, including strategic planning for the Milan metropolitan area, investigations into the post-metropolitan condition, and studies of urban phenomena overlooked by conventional planning paradigms.
Academic and Civic Engagement: From the University to the City
In the second part of the lecture, Alessandro Balducci reflected on his institutional responsibilities. As department head and Vice-Rector at Politecnico di Milano, he worked to internationalise the curriculum, promote interdisciplinary education, and enhance the university’s civic and environmental roles. His leadership also involved the structural integration of architecture and planning faculties to foster transdisciplinary collaboration.
These experiences were extended through his public service as Deputy Mayor for Urban Planning in Milan after Expo 2015. Here, he attempted to apply strategic planning principles within the constraints of municipal governance. He discussed the tensions between academic frameworks and administrative structures, emphasising the challenge of translating theoretical models into policy under conditions shaped by political pressures and institutional inertia.
He argued that effective planning today must inhabit the space between civic initiatives and institutional structures. Neither bottom-up activism nor top-down administration is sufficient in isolation; productive outcomes emerge through their interaction.
Planning as Trading Zone
The concept of the "trading zone" anchored the final part of the lecture. Borrowed from the historian of science Peter Galison, the term describes collaborative spaces where actors with divergent knowledge systems engage in partial, negotiated understanding. Applied to urban planning, Alessandro Balducci used the metaphor to argue that planning today must enable cooperation without assuming consensus.
Planning, he said, is not a matter of reaching definitive solutions, but of creating enabling environments where negotiation and experimentation are possible. He outlined three implications of this model:
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Planning as Co-Production
Planners should facilitate shared environments in which multiple stakeholders contribute to knowledge and decision-making, rejecting both technocracy and populism. -
Conflict as a Resource
Disagreement should not be neutralized but embraced as a source of insight. Conflict reveals the diversity of values and interests that planning must navigate. -
Structures for Enablement
Planners must design institutions and processes that support collective innovation, not impose fixed solutions.
Concluding Reflections: Planning and Collective Futures
Alessandro Balducci concluded by addressing the renewed urgency of planning in the face of global crises—climate change, democratic backsliding, and urban inequality. He called for a shift away from rationalist, control-based planning toward more adaptive, situated, and reflective approaches. Planning, he suggested, should be understood as an "organization of hope": a practice that supports civic imagination, fosters capacity for collective action, and sustains open-ended inquiry into possible futures.
Discussion with Marco Cremaschi and Maria Hakansson
The lecture was followed by a discussion moderated by Marco Cremaschi and featuring a response from Maria Hakansson. Both interlocutors engaged critically with Alessandro Balducci’s reflections, offering complementary perspectives on planning theory, practice, and education.
Marco Cremaschi began by emphasizing the performative dimension of the lecture. He noted that Alessandro Balducci had articulated democracy not as a static institutional arrangement, but as a method of engaging pluralism. Planning, in this framing, is not about control but redirection—a practice of negotiating resistance and uncertainty. He invoked the metaphor of Aikido to describe how planners might work with, rather than against, urban turbulence.
Marco Cremaschi also observed that the traditional boundaries between city and countryside no longer hold, calling for new conceptual tools that reflect hybrid territorial conditions. He described planning today as situated, relational, and interpretive, drawing on Alessandro Balducci’s approach as a model for responsive practice. Marco Cremaschi drew parallels to initiatives such as Milan’s “City of Cities” and the IBA Emscher Park in Germany. These hybrid models combined state support with civic initiative, suggesting that long-term, flexible partnerships can sustain innovation. He underscored that the real challenge is not launching experimental projects, but maintaining them.
Maria Hakansson focused on the implications for planning education and institutional culture. She emphasized that while planning knowledge is generated collectively, universities often reward individual achievement. Alessandro Balducci’s career, she said, exemplifies the need for pedagogical and organizational frameworks that support collaboration and openness.
Maria Hakansson posed critical questions: should the transformation of planning be gradual or structural? How can institutions like AESOP help build the infrastructure for change? What forms of governance support inclusive planning without sacrificing institutional coherence? Maria Hakansson added that the problem often lies not in law or policy, but in the culture of institutions. She stressed the need to protect civic courage and the political space for risk-taking, particularly in times of democratic fragility.
Examples from Practice: Bologna and Milan
In response, Alessandro Balducci cited participatory initiatives in cities such as Bologna, where open calls for local projects generated over 150 community-led proposals. These examples demonstrated how institutions can create conditions for distributed innovation, with planning serving as a facilitator rather than a controller.
He framed these efforts as part of a broader shift—from planning as static design to planning as civic infrastructure. The planner’s task becomes one of enabling and sustaining diverse responses to shared problems, not resolving them unilaterally.
The discussion ended with a shared recognition that planning must evolve through collective learning and institutional reform. Alessandro Balducci, Marco Cremaschi, and Maria Hakansson all emphasized the necessity of developing practices that are open, experimental, and grounded in local realities. Planning should not seek closure, but foster ongoing dialogue and negotiated transformation.
Biographical Notes
Alessandro Balducci is a professor of planning at the Politecnico di Milano. He was the first president of Urban@it – National Centre for Urban Policies Studies – and has served as Vice Rector of Politecnico di Milano and Deputy Mayor of Milan. He is a past president of AESOP and a founding member of EURA. Since June 2024, he is President of the Foundation for Social Housing (FHS).
Maria Hakansson is President of AESOP and Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Studies at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. Her research focuses on participatory planning and institutional change.
Marco Cremaschi teaches at the Urban School of Sciences Po and leads the Cycle d’Urbanisme. His research explores comparative urban development and planning innovation.
