City, financial crisis, planning: comparing Detroit, Amsterdam, Dubai

The debate about the effects of the current economical crisis is wide; according to authors such as Harvey (2008), the current economical crisis was a '"urbanization crisis", exploded close to a speculative investment on the built environment, typical of the mechanisms of production of industrial capitalism in the city. Whether or not Harvey is right, the crisis has however introduced elements of turbulence in society and in cities and urban regions, which require a greater ability to analyze the relationship between the crisis and in progress transformation processes. This also means to answer some theoretical questions that have to do with the conceptualisation of the same processes of urban transformation, furthermore it finally questions the role of spatial planning in dealing with such a critical condition of urban models and development models. In fact whether and to what extent it is necessary to change the conceptual frameworks so far used to study processes of urban restructuring generated by the crisis is not easy to say. Nevertheless the stresses in the field of planning, are equally relevant. In fact, the crisis calls into question the mechanisms of urban development linked to a neo-liberal season (Brenner, 2009) and pushes to look for the possibility of producing a vision antagonistic to these forms of regulation (Friedman, 2009). The paper, discussing about three cases of cities, which are trying in different ways to address the effects of the crisis, Detroit, Amsterdam and Dubai aims at investigating: the role of planning in these different cases and how planning is forced to introduce innovations in order to face the current critical situation; cities, not only as a significant fields of observation of the outcome of the crisis, but as spaces where such effects may mix in a very problematic manner. Where the interaction among different aspects of the crisis may also lead to a potential crisis of the city itself but also to the reinvention of cityness as a defense against the crisis. The literature on the matter has often swung between two poles, sometimes considering the city as the problem, in other occasions as the solution. The present condition of crisis questions again the role the cities may or shall play today and in the immediate future