Urban and Regional Planning: An Integrated Space-Time Approach

Abstract

Planning exercises are often done taking into account only one dimension, either time or space. Development plans usually define objectives, goals, programs and projects considering only the time dimension, while territorial ordering plans define soil uses and location of human interventions in the space dimension, without assuring a minimum of consistency between the two exercises. The purpose of this paper is to present a proposal for planning in which these two dimensions, space and time, are fully integrated, applying two fundamental principles: to go always from the long to the short run in the time dimension and from the macro to the micro areas in the space dimension. The approach is applied to the case of Buenaventura, a municipality in the Pacific region of Colombia. It is expected that the exercise will contribute to improve regional and urban planning in developing countries.