Keywords

• The article deals with postmodern critics and their uncertain influence over research programs in planning in the last three decades. As for the Italian panorama
• the author argues that planning research seems to have lost its interpretive grip on urban phenomena
• whereas any feature (political
• technical) of traditional urban planning hasnâ€
• ™
• t remained the same. In such a frame
• itâ€
• ™
• s worth asking to what extent postmodern critique has influenced approaches and programs
• whereas connections between urban research and planning still look problematic
• since the latter is traditionally a minor activity
• deeply biased by instrumental occasions and long-term traditions. In the face of the risk of too eclectic syntheses
• the author proposes four different ways to label research and professional practices (late-modern
• new-romantic
• interactionist
• experimental)
• arguing that little or no open confrontation among them has been carried out
• whereas this would be necessary. The task gets even more difficult in the post-liberalist context
• where planning practices seem not just epistemologically weak
• but also prone to power relations