Strategic planning as exploration

How can we influence the development process of a metropolis, which is becoming a mega-city region and faces dispersed urbanisation, traffic congestion, air pollution, housing shortages and excessive land consumption, when traditional planning tools have failed? The strategic project Citta di Citta organised by the province of Milan in the period 2004 to 2009 was an attempt to address these issues, through a series of actions at different levels. It was a proposal for a new description of urban change and of the emerging problems, a proposal for a new vision with 'habitability' as the main strategic objective. It included the use of a competition for projects, designed to involve a wide range of actors in the planning effort, the implementation of some pilot projects and a series of exhibitions. A variety of tools was used in the conviction that a change in the behaviour of local actors is only possible through their direct involvement in the planning process and this involved promoting co-operation instead of enforcement. As a result, strategic spatial planning becomes much more experimental, non-linear and interactive, a 'voyage of discovery' promising new perspectives. This paper discusses the foundations in theory and practice for an exploratory-based concept of strategic planning and identifies its limits and potentialities.