Histoires et cultures urbanistiques en action et en situation : la pratique de l’urbanisme en contexte d’assistance technique Nord-Sud

The thesis investigates the practice of urban planning in the context of North-to-South technical assistance focusing on two recent development aid projects in Palestine. The research focuses on the analysis of situated professional action and, in particular, on the interactions between practitioners from Italy and Palestine, working together on the technical implementation of two aid projects selected as study cases: “Jericho Master Plan” and “Regeneration of Historic Centers in Local Government Units”. This research aims to better understand how the different backgrounds of urban planners coming from different countries influence their professional practice and to which extent the development aid project as the context of action affects this practice. The practice of urban planning in the context of international technical assistance is appreciated as an activity characterized by an intercultural context and a specific institutional frame. Thus, this research envisions professional practice as “planning histories and cultures, in action and in situation”, that is an analytical framework that envisions that particular planners’ practice as : i) an activity influenced by the professional cultures of local and international professionals deeply rooted in the respective national planning histories; ii) a discursive professional practice interpreted as a rhetoric exercise of both evaluation and persuasion.; iii) an activity shaped by the obligations to deal with a peculiar context of action, i.e. the development project. The research strategy is based on an extended case method approach, centred on the analysis of “planning stories”, an ethnographic method to collect thick accounts of the actual professional practice of urban planners pioneered by John Forester (2012). Official documents have been used as elicitation instruments. The actual situated practice, as it emerges from those “planning stories”, is analyzed using this double analytical framework, as an activity influenced by the mutual interaction of factors originating at different scales and temporalities: structural ones, i.e. the historically shaped planning cultures, and situational ones, i.e. the specific institutional frame and the aleatory circumstances. The interaction between those factors is appreciated with the constructivist and empiricist posture advocated by the pragmatist sociology. This historically grounded, culturalist and contextual analysis of the reflexive professional action of Palestinian and Italian planners engaged in a technical assistance project reveals a practice deeply influenced by normative and cognitive frameworks, rooted in the respective national planning histories. Professional action appears as equally hindered by the lack of contextual knowledge and the contradictory logic the development aid industry. Finally, planners’ stories reveal a professional posture animated by a pedagogical and missionary attitude, marked by a tension between the necessity to adapt to the local context and a generalized will to improve, to work for better cities.

Keyphrases: Palestine, International diffusion in planning, Urban planning practice, Urban planning cultures, Urban planning history, Technical assistance, Development aid, Italy