VISIONING IN STRATEGIC URBAN PLANNING LESSONS LEARNED FROM SOME VISIONING PRACTICES IN EGYPTIAN CITIES

Physically cities are made from concrete, asphalt and brick but mythical cities are made from the dreams, desires and disappointments of those who grow up there or move there to find themselves. These imaginary cities are in part the creation of writers, who must invent the city before we can be satisfied to inhabit it. (Robert Fulford, 1997) Vision is a term that has been increasing found in planning documents during the late 1980s and 1990s. Visioning is the name giving to a number of techniques that have come into use in connection with strategic planning during the same period. A fair amount has been written about how to do visioning and how to create visions but few has been undertaken in term of a critical analysis. In the discourse about strategic urban planning the use of the term Vision to describe policies, actions and behaviors seems not to add any clarity. Many urban planning exercises today begin with visioning or they express a vision at some stage. There are jurisdictions that actually require a vision statement in plans. There are no exact agreed-upon definitions, but generally a vision describes a desired future and can take a simple form or can require an entire, complex document to describe Visioning represents a significant departure from conventional planning, and, in so doing, offers a better prospect for a more integrated form of development. The over-arching research question is how the visioning can be an effective planning tool to convey, clearly, the mental image of the city future to its people, so as to develop their ability to think long term in an integrated way Many dedicated researches in envisioning discipline and futurism have been studded. Beside analyzing some of visioning practices, done through preparing strategic plans of Egyptian cities, this contribution will try to introduce some useful information and advice for urban planners that might help them in formulating effective city visions as a part of their strategic planning process and also the best way to proceed