Why Urban Planning Is Such A Complicated Field As A Knowledge?

Cities always were the common location of communication systems, which can be modelled as networks, i.e. a graph of emission/reception points with vertices. In a far past the only visible network was the walking man. Even used water was seldom understood as a system, even less a network. Since our body is no longer enough to support urban life, several networks have appeared and they are not that many: - people movement, by walking but beyond that, right now a generalized mess because everywhere the benefit of which is understood as {money flowing toward vehicles vendors} and not {helping users}. Having said that the problem is not difficult in itself. - people meeting and communicating with each other, linked to the one before, traditionally well done as long as the city is not too large, and if that doesn't work it is due to a transport system not following the need. - water network, drinkable or not. - energy network. - communication network. - goods transport, which should obviously be coupled with that of persons for efficiency but is of course not due to, again, a perverted " " "economic" " " system. - lodging, a result from the above - within goods, food is essential and should have a proper, as close as possible merging with the housing graph, this being a vital condition to sustainability. Nature should enter the city enough to allow permaculture, but not more: mankind definitely belongs to another world as nature now we like a shower, no bugs in bed etc. - things unthinkable today in "modern" cities as a network of not drinkable water for local use, a network of urine... - extension of the networks to the outside. Well, no city in the today world is any close to sustainability, good news: everything is to be done and quickly, because the ongoing catastrophe is immense. Everything not sustainable will by definition perish. A good time for urban planners, which we could as well call rescuers.

The question is difficult because the goal is unknown

I feel urban planning cannot and should not be understood through theory. As Mr. Hassan Qaree, has rightly said planning is a process and the dynamics of cities continuously shifts. Further more it is not a linear field, like engineering, medicine, etc. its has multidimensional aspects, like sociology, economics, culture, etc. One can definitely read the theory to understands the basics or content, but it wont give anything more than a thought process of certain school of thought, which gets outdated or irrelevant over a period of time.

Knowledge is the infrastructure to support the creative thinking in the centre of each planning process.