The culturization of planning

Culture as an organizing concept and framework offers planning a new, deeper and more sustainable foundation. The fact that culture constitutes and is constituted by our geographies, histories and societies, is expanding, and is the world's leading intellectual resource, can be the basis for a new positionality for planning. A positionality of this kind is proposed as a new paradigm, and tagged with the neologism of 'culturization'. As a specifically ethical, reflexive and critical approach, it stands in contrast to the broader, socio-economic trend to 'culturalization' and its acknowledged commodification. For the purposes ofculturization, an integrated concept of culture and an integrated approach to planning research are described in order to engage all of the forms and dimensions of culture, and to link a plurality of cultural theory and communicative and postmodern planning theory to the enterprise. Further, innovations in theoretical writings and culturized planning practices that have emerged in recent times are cited for their relevance to a more systematic culturization of planning with greater sustainable and transformational potential.