Nexuses Between Structuration Theory And Urban Planning

Much of the research in Urban and Regional Planning both in the developed and developing worlds have been skewed towards positivism as against the humanistic tradition. Developments in research in the humanistic tradition have not received much attention until recently. In contemporary urban scholarship, there is a growing recognition of the need to integrate humanistic and structural perspectives in explaining urban transformation. While positivist traditions have long dominated urban and regional planning, the emerging relevance of theories like structuration has created new opportunities for bridging agency-structure debates. This paper extends Giddens’ structuration theory by embedding it within broader paradigms of urban sociology, urban theory and citizenship. The main focus of this paper was to examine the nexuses between structuration theory and Urban and Regional Planning as well as some of the limitations. Drawing on contributions from the Chicago School and the culturalist and community study traditions, the study reinterprets urban life as a co-construction of institutional systems and individual agency. The paper relies mostly on literature survey to establish a link between structuration theory and Urban Planning using search engines and research databases like SASTRA, Google Scholar and Scopus. The paper also explored how structuration interacts with spatial planning, social norms and political citizenship in urban environments. The paper concludes that in spite of the criticisms against structuration theory, it offers a compelling lens for analyzing urban transformation and participatory planning enriched by sociological and urban-theoretical insights.