341 research outputs found
Patsy Healey: "Puzzling towards people-oriented planning"
No full textPatsy Healey is one of the most prominent, productive and highly praised planning academics of our time. During her career, the connection between practice theory and normative perspectives on planning has been a central concern. As professor emeritus at Newcastle University, she recently became involved in a rural development planning practice in the North of England, a typical example of trending towards ‘people oriented planning’ in practice. Rooilijn spoke with Patsy Healey during her recent visit to Amsterdam, a city that has a special place in her academic work
Places Matter. Memories of Places Where I Met Patsy Healey
No full textPlanning Theory & Practice, 26 June 2025.In this deeply personal and reflective piece, Klaus R. Kunzmann pays tribute to the late Patsy Healey by recounting the many places where their paths crossed throughout decades of academic and professional collaboration. From Atlanta and Cappenberg to Vienna and Wooler, the article combines narrative, memory, and spatial symbolism to illustrate how places shaped their intellectual exchange and how Patsy Healey’s work and presence left an enduring mark on planning thought in Europe and beyond. Structured as a geographic and emotional journey, the article is both a eulogy and a creative homage, blending biography, planning history, and artistic inspiration.publishedVersio
A tribute to Patsy Healey (1940–2024) : Obituary
No full textdisP - The Planning Review Vol. 60 No. 2I write this tribute with a heavy heart as I had never imagined that one day I would write about Patsy Healey in past tense. Her passing away in March 2024, at the age of 84 left planning communities across the world with a deep sense of loss and sadness. But as her commemoration in the AESOP conference in Paris showed, people who know Patsy wish to share their cherished memories of her and celebrate her life and achievements not only as a distinguished scholar but also as a remarkable caring and compassionate person.
There is much that I can say about Patsy from my own experience of knowing her for over thirty years as her student, colleague, and friend, but in the interest of brevity, I limit myself to a brief account of her key accolades.
After an undergraduate degree in Geography at University College London (UCL), Patsy was trained as a teacher and then a planner, following a Diploma in Town Planning from Regent Street Polytechnic (now University of Westminster). In the 1960s, she worked as a planning officer in the London Borough of Lewisham at a time when, as Patsy often recalled, there was a lot of planning without much clarity about its purpose.publishedVersio
La gestion de l'espace en Angleterre à l'échelle du district : Patsy Healey, Local Plans in British Land Use Planning
No full textMoindrot Claude. La gestion de l'espace en Angleterre à l'échelle du district : Patsy Healey, Local Plans in British Land Use Planning. In: Annales de Géographie, t. 94, n°522, 1985. pp. 223-224
City Regions and Place Development
No full textHealey P. City regions and place development, Regional Studies. The paper explores the concept of a 'city region' in the context of proposals for reconfiguring sub-national government arrangements. It considers the various arguments behind calls for a 'city region' focus, and reviews recent experiences in the Netherlands and England. This highlights that the concept of a 'city region' can be mobilized both as an organizing device and to call attention to place dynamics. There are dangers in a narrow focus on administrative and economic considerations when promoting the creation of 'city region' institutional arenas. Instead, greater attention is needed to promote more integrated, locally specific, place development agendas. [image omitted] Healey P. Ville-region et developpement de places, Regional Studies. L'auteur analyse le concept de ville-region dans le contexte de propositions de reconfiguration d'arrangements gouvernementaux subnationaux. Il prend en consideration les divers arguments, appelle a se concentrer sur les villes regions et passe en revue des experiences recentes menees aux Pays-Bas et en Angleterre. Il insiste sur le fait que le concept de ville-region peut etre mobilise comme dispositif d'organisation et pour rappeler l'attention sur la dynamique de places. Il est dangereux de se concentrer etroitement sur des considerations administratives et economiques lorsque l'on fait la promotion de la creation d'ensembles institutionnels de villes-regions. Au contraire, il faut attacher une plus grande attention a la promotion de programmes de developpement de places mieux integres et specifiques sur le plan local. Region metropolitaine Competitivite economique Devolution au gouvernement Developpement durable Innovation sociale Concept institutionnel Developpement de zones integrees Healey P. Stadtregionen und Raumentwicklung, Regional Studies. In diesem Beitrag wird das Konzept der 'Stadtregion' im Kontext von Vorschlagen zur Neugestaltung von subnationalen Regierungsformen untersucht. Ich untersuche die verschiedenen Argumente hinter der Forderung nach einem Fokus auf der 'Stadtregion' und uberprufe die jungsten Erfahrungen aus den Niederlanden und England. Die Ergebnisse verdeutlichen, dass sich das Konzept der 'Stadtregion' sowohl als organisatorisches Instrument als auch zur Hervorhebung von ortlichen Dynamiken nutzen lasst. Bei der Forderung der Schaffung von institutionellen 'Stadtregion'-Arenen besteht die Gefahr eines zu engen Fokus auf verwaltungstechnischen und wirtschaftlichen Gesichtspunkten. Stattdessen sollte der Forderung von integrierteren und lokalspezifischen Raumentwicklungsplanen starkere Beachtung geschenkt werden. Metropolitane Region Wirtschaftliche Konkurrenzfahigkeit Politische Dezentralisierung Nachhaltige Entwicklung Gesellschaftliche Innovation Institutionelle Gestaltung Integrierte Raumentwicklung Healey P. Ciudad-regiones y desarrollo de areas, Regional Studies. En este articulo analizo el concepto de 'ciudad-region' en el contexto de propuestas para reconfigurar los acuerdos gubernamentales subnacionales. Considero los diferentes argumentos con respecto al enfoque de una 'ciudad-region' y analizo las recientes experiencias en los Paises Bajos e Inglaterra. Destaco que el concepto de una 'ciudad-region' puede aprovecharse como dispositivo organizativo y como elemento para destacar las dinamicas de areas. Al fomentar la creacion de escenarios institucionales de una 'ciudad-region' se corre el peligro de limitarse a las consideraciones administrativas y economicas. Mas bien se deberia prestar mas atencion para fomentar programas del desarrollo de areas mas integrados y localmente especificos. Region metropolitana Competitividad economica Transferencia de competencias del Gobierno Desarrollo sostenible Innovacion social Diseno institucional Desarrollo integrado de areasMetropolitan region, Economic competitiveness, Government devolution, Sustainable development, Social innovation, Institutional design, Integrated area development,
For a dialectic of planning pasts and futures: Theoretical courses and recourses in conversation with Patsy Healey
No full textplaNext – Next Generation Planning, 15 (2025)This reflective essay revisits the intellectual legacy of planning theory by engaging with past debates and reconnecting them with contemporary concerns. Drawing inspiration from a concluding paragraph drafted by Patsy Healey for plaNext Volume 3, the author explores how new generations of planning scholars can better understand the historical trajectories of concepts such as system thinking, resilience, and transnational flows of planning ideas.
The article reconstructs the origins of the 9th AESOP Young Academics Conference (Palermo, 2015) and analyses its thematic emphasis on geographical differences, postcolonial critique, and the blind spots between micro-practices and broader urban trends. It highlights how issues once considered marginal—such as Western-centrism, uneven development, and the politics of knowledge transfer—have since become central in planning theory.
The essay then examines how planning scholars engage with concepts of time, challenging linear narratives of progress. Drawing on critical theory, political economy, and abolitionist thought, the author argues for a dialectical understanding of planning futures: not as predetermined visions to be implemented, but as emergent possibilities already present in the struggles, contradictions, and unrealised alternatives within the contemporary urban condition.publishedVersio
The framing of power in communicative planning theory: Analysing the work of John Forester, Patsy Healey and Judith Innes
No full textIn this paper, I analyse the framing of power in streams of communicative planning influenced by American pragmatism, sociological institutionalism and alternative dispute resolution. While scholars have heavily debated Habermasian communicative planning theory, the broader conception of power across these linked, but distinct, streams of the theory remains to be explicated. Through analysis of 40 years' of publishing by John Forester, Patsy Healey and Judith Innes - widely cited representatives of these three streams - a broader account of the treatment of power in communicative planning is established. The analysis shows that the streams of communicative planning provide distinct approaches to power with a joint focus on criticising conflictual illegitimate power over and developing ideas for how consensual power with might arise through agency in the micro practices of planning. Even if communicative planning thereby offers more for reflections on power than critics have acknowledged, the theory still leaves conceptual voids regarding constitutive power to and legitimate power over
Patsy Healey and 'Collaborative Planning' (2005): Re-thinking Democracy in the ‘Reasoning in Public’ Arena
No full textThe interpretation of the notion of citizenship has led some authors to the conclusion of the necessity of overcoming a ‘restricted conception’ of citizenship, in order to gain a more inclusive recognition of a cosmopolitan, rather than a mere universal, recognition of rights. So, three core issues are tightly intertwined in this paper: the controversial issue of citizenship in its multiple facets: the formal that is institutional, the substantial and the denied one; the role of planning and its ethical implications; and the very idea of democracy in its dichotomy: institutional versus substantial. Patsy Healey’s work offers us a wide set of normative perspectives and intellectual stimuli, with all the challenges of their applicability and transferability, in order to nurture (a more substantial) democracy. In all the work of Healey, planning is considered a way to enhance and re-enchant democracy, due to the long history of planning’s normative interest in richly participative democratic processes. In line with Patsy’s work, this paper considers planning as a way to enhance and re-enchant democracy
The framing of power in communicative planning theory: Analysing the work of John Forester, Patsy Healey and Judith Innes [Elektronisk resurs]
No full textIn this paper, I analyse the framing of power in streams of communicative planning influenced by American pragmatism, sociological institutionalism and alternative dispute resolution. While scholars have heavily debated Habermasian communicative planning theory, the broader conception of power across these linked, but distinct, streams of the theory remains to be explicated. Through analysis of 40 years' of publishing by John Forester, Patsy Healey and Judith Innes - widely cited representatives of these three streams - a broader account of the treatment of power in communicative planning is established. The analysis shows that the streams of communicative planning provide distinct approaches to power with a joint focus on criticising conflictual illegitimate power over and developing ideas for how consensual power with might arise through agency in the micro practices of planning. Even if communicative planning thereby offers more for reflections on power than critics have acknowledged, the theory still leaves conceptual voids regarding constitutive power to and legitimate power over
'Rational method' as a mode of policy formation and implementation in land-use policy
No full textIn this paper the author discusses the place of rational method as a mode of operation in the procedures and actual practices of British land-use policy in recent years. In the first part she examines rational method and plan-based action in relation to other modes of operation within the context of theoretical debates about planning and public-policy procedures. This is followed by an exploration of the modes of operation evident in the procedures of British land-use policy. Then, drawing on research work on the detailed implementation of land-use policy, the author examines the way the modes of operation allowed by these procedures were used in the allocation of sites for major residential development and in the restraint of development. The author concludes with a comment on when rational method and plan-based action are likely to be adopted in British land-use policy practice.
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