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Link poetry and planning - the wish of Voula Mega
How to link poetry in planning: in search of visionary poetry to make visionary planning possible
Lack of response has been explained by Marx in general terms. It touches upon perception and the willingness to see problems, for he claimed people are only willing to see a problem if there has been found a solution for it. Yet solutions may be propagated officially despite being quite superficial and a mere temporary success, when in fact they are no answer to the real needs, including the need for intelligent responses. This is exactly the case when poets feel that planners have neither perceived the real needs of people living in cities or they merely avoided making major mistakes, but could not fulfill any of those aspirations linked to a dignified life in cities.
As such once poets take measure through their poems as to the kind of responses they see to needs of people living in cities, then such measured responses can become indeed a valid base for criticism of city planning. There is, however, by the very nature of such obvious differences in approaches taken by poets compared to planners to life in cities, the danger given that planners are made too readily into scapegoats. Planners shall be blamed when something goes wrong in a city or problems remain unresolved, even if they have been degraded by the very structural features of society to second rate administrators when it comes to locate different activities and services throughout the city. That flat out like perception of a city as mere surface but without people helps to produce exactly those mistakes some call over alienation and others a ruinous wastage of space. However, in due course of the conference it became quite apparent that poets like Theo Dorgan and Paula Meehan have many experiences of local initiatives behind them and that they do have a concept of planning which allows them to make these critical remarks. Moreover they extrapolate out of their poetry certain measures which can be perceived independently from poetry e.g. the need for wild and untouched places within a city. That comes then closer to re-evaluating altogether planning procedures and can contribute to a different dialogue between poets and planners.
In this respect, Voula Mega, research manager at the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, gave prior to the conference ‘Myth of the City’ a very convincing need for such a debate:
“I do believe that planning systems need to improve the imaginative capacity to envisage a better future. I also believe that each citizen can be a little poet and contribute to the planning system if there is a context of effective participation and co-decision.” [1]
She added that this conference can show how poets “can contribute in enhancing the enlightening abilities of planners (who in continuation will enhance the context and substance of citizen’s participation”. [2] As to the outcome of such a conference, she expects the following:
“Bringing together planners and poets (and it would be the same with plastic artists or film makers) will be substantial when based on selection of poets who wrote a lot on cities and planners with outstanding poetic achievements in their planning work. But even if this precondition is not fulfilled, the encounter can still be enriching if, i.e. organized around the analysis of poems or urbanity or pulling messages from planning experiments with poetry and art of living.” [3]
[1] Voula Mega, Letter, Dublin, 19 June 1995
[2] Op.cit.
[3] Voula Mega, letter, Dublin 19 June 1995
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