Framing Risk Thinking in Urban Planning Practice

Though Urban planning has historically been rooted in risk negotiations, it often fails to acknowledge risk explicitly. The master plan, or development plan, with a pointed focus on “development,” is primarily concerned with “planning the use and development of land in cities” (Phathak, 2011), and conversations around risk are often masked in project proposals aiming at improving or upgrading infrastructure, health, and environmental parameters. An explicit acknowledgment of planning as a negotiator of risk is absent in theory and practice. This has led to a limited development of risk vocabulary in the planning realm. Jabreen (2015), too, in his articulation of “risk city,” argues that due to the linearity of planning theories, practices, and education, planning fails to engage with risk and uncertainty. He further argues that risk is a key factor influencing change and social transformation in urban societies and should, therefore, be a central concept in the theory and practice of urban planning.

Through a study of the contemporary practice of planning, I argue that planning lacks an expansive vocabulary to capture the various forms of risk negotiations undertaken in planning practice. I borrow vocabulary from insurance and project management to build an analytical framework through which I analyse the planning decision flows in the statutory planning process of making the development plan 2034 for the city of Mumbai. Planning’s engagement with risk results from knowledge, institutional structure (seeped in political economy), and negotiations between the two. This framework reveals the often hidden and implicit structures involved in navigating risk. Situated in Mumbai, India, my research highlights southern perspectives on risk negotiations that shape cities in the Global South. By broadening the discourse around risk thinking in planning practice, this framework provides a logical substratum to critically view decision-making in planning practices, emphasizing the importance of risk thinking.