Chapter 3 Multiplicities, interwoven threads, holistic paths: The phronetic long-haul approach

Understanding the intricate details and intertwined power plays and shifts in complex urban processes is a key to actually empowering change for the better. A longitudinal qualitative research approach can be particularly valuable to that endeavour. In this chapter, a ‘phronetic long-haul’ methodology is proposed, based on the authors’ ongoing research into certain practices that have been popularised in the name of urban sustainability. The motivation for articulating such an option derives from discontent with the predominance of perfunctory, snapshot studies of contemporary urban development projects. To offset that ascendancy, the authors have sought ways to facilitate a rich, deep, holistic and integrated understanding of contemporary urban change over time, underpinned by the concept of phronesis. Phronetic practice involves the exercise of situational knowledge, intuition and common sense derived from experience, values and judgement.¹ Keeping attention on issues of power, using multiple narratives to show how power works, the approach seeks to comprehend urban planning situations in a practical way by maintaining a long-term, ethnographic and reflective connection with the practices under study.