The Roots and Principles of Post-structuralism in Urban Planning

Urban planning of the 20th century is replete with theories and techniques that are associated with ontological, epistemological, and methodological assumptions of positivism; in fact, the urban planning before the last years of the 1970’s is the heritage of the dominant positivist and modernist rationality. In 1960s and 1970s the structuralism’s influence on planning theory decreased the dominance of modernism, and this transformation gradually resulted in a paradigm shift and the prevalence of Post-structuralism and postmodernism in the theory and practice of urban planning. This paper aims to explain the theoreticalroots and the principles of post-structuralism in urban planning. The method of this research is the systematic review of the literature, done by reviewing over 130 related works in fields such as philosophy, physics, geography, etc. We explore the qualities and assumptions of positivism and structuralism in urban planning and explain their affinity for the absolute space and linear time, and for naturalist tradition; as opposed to relational time-space in interpretive tradition. Thispaperproceeds to explore the development of post-structuralism, and its rootedness in process philosophy and process metaphysics. The findings of this research show that the "ontology of becoming" is the primarytheoretical root of post-structuralism in urban planning. We define and explain the five critical principles of post-structuralism in urban planning which include the relational time-space, the complexity of urban and spatial elements, the multiplicity of urban problems (integration of immanent and transcendent planes), pluralism and agonistic planning (agonizing over consensus).