Special Session: Planning and Plans: Reclaiming Purpose in a Time of Crisis and Opportunity

At this moment of dramatic change-marked by the climate crisis, demographic shifts, technological disruption, and widening inequality-we are being called to rethink how we touch the earth: the patterns of human settlement and resettlement, the infrastructure that connects us, and the very meaning of community, street, place, and home. In this context, planning is no longer optional. Planning must evolve beyond the regulation of land use, density, and building form. It must reclaim its public purpose: enabling communities to think, act, and shape their futures collectively. And it must do so with urgency, creativity, and care. A plan is not a prediction or projection-it is an invention of our own future. This transformation is nowhere more visible-or more critical-than at the local level. It is now widely recognized that the localization of global frameworks hinges on empowered, participatory, and strategic local planning. Cities-at the frontline of converging crises-are being asked not only to deliver services but to act as partners in development, incubators of solutions, and builders of resilience from the ground up. Around the world-and particularly in Saudi Arabia-planning systems are undergoing significant reform. New mandates, institutional restructuring, multi-level planning frameworks, and urban codes are being introduced. Yet even in this moment of opportunity, a deeper question persists: What does 'planning' actually mean in 2025? And by extension, what is the role and function of 'plans'? Are we truly shifting toward community-based, vision-driven, dynamic policy frameworks-capable of adapting to complexity and enabling systemic change? Or are we still reproducing the legacy of static, physical masterplans-updated in format, but unchanged in logic? In practice, both paradigms seem to coexist. Plans mean different things to different actors. Cities articulate bold visions, yet often lack mechanisms for sustained implementation. Participatory rhetoric increases, yet rigid blueprint-style plans continue to dominate official outputs. This session takes up that contradiction. It will interrogate the evolving role of plans as instruments of spatial transformation, governance, and collective imagination. It will ask whether the planning systems emerging today are genuinely breaking new ground-or merely modernizing an outdated model. And it will position community-based local planning as the crucible where global ambition must be translated into grounded, place-based action. 

This session explores the evolving role of planning in a rapidly changing world. As planning is being redefined globally: what should a "plan" do in 2025? Through dialogue and critical reflection, we reclaim planning's purpose as a tool for collective agency, spatial transformation, and locally grounded resilience.