Abstract
The aim of the paper is to expose the social and political dialectics of planning and urban development under 'postmodern' conditions. First, the different meanings of the term 'postmodernism' are discussed, and it is argued that notwithstanding the problems and the ambiguities of the concept, the debate calls attention to important contemporary social and cultural transform ations. These are described as an interrelated development of on the one hand the socio-economic structure connected to a 'postfordist model of accumulation', and on the other the cultural discourse in art, architecture and social philosophy The specification of this transformative development in rotation to the planning discourse, planning praxis and urban structure is explored, and the paper ends up with a discussion of a possible critical moment localized in the postmodern emphasis on 'otherness'.
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