Emergent planning

Emergent planning is a practical planning methodology that recognizes the “weak point” of a city through a two-step collaborative process and offers to tackle it by working simultaneously with various stakeholders representing the different sectors of the city. This article investigates the background for emergent planning, which includes planning approaches such as integrated planning, collaborative planning and ‘complexity’ planning. It then describes the implementation of the emergent planning methodology in the city of Auroville, South India, in a collaborative process that lasted over a year and analyzes its outcomes and the possibilities it offers the future of planning.