On improvising, contextualizing and active listening. A Dialogue with John Forester

This article reports some reasoning solicited by the encounter with John Forester and it is deve- loped in three sections. The first one synthetizes the main issues coming from an interview lead by Gilda Berruti and Cristina Mattiucci, which had place before the lecture. John Forester was asked about the relationships between planners and changes in contemporary complex con- texts, to update the methodological statements developed along the years. Forester’s answers are reported after an argued description of the questions. The second and third sections are the critical arguments to the main topics of John Forester’s speech, focusing on context-responsi- veness and practices of listening. They are authored by Enrico Formato and Laura Lieto, invited as discussants to the lecture. The texts deal with the perspectives of urban planners engaged respectively in making plans and in the local government.