After the General Plan: Why Cities Are Beginning to Stop Trying to Draw the Future

Is It Possible to Create a General Plan for Your Life Until 2040?

Imagine that today someone proposes developing a detailed plan for your life until 2040.

It would determine where you will live and work, what forms of transport you will use, what technologies will surround you, and how your needs and opportunities will change.

We can define desired goals. We can develop several scenarios. But can we really approve a detailed plan for your life for the next fourteen years today and then consistently follow it?

Probably not.

Circumstances, technologies, the economy, your opportunities, and your wishes will change.

This is even more obvious in medicine. A doctor does not prepare a detailed treatment plan for a person through to 2040. The doctor defines desired health indicators, assesses the current condition, orders additional tests when necessary, makes a diagnosis, and proposes treatment. After a certain period, another examination is carried out. If the treatment has worked, it continues. If the situation has changed, the treatment changes as well.

Why, then, do we try to manage a city differently?

A city is also a living organism, only incomparably more complex. Housing, jobs, transport, engineering networks, businesses, schools, parks, and public spaces are interconnected. A change in one element affects the others.

This leads to a simple analogy.

A traditional General Plan is a photograph of a city taken on a particular day and at a particular hour.

Producing this photograph requires an enormous amount of professional work: data is collected, existing conditions are analysed, forecasts are prepared, and population, housing, transport, and infrastructure needs are calculated.

But after the photograph has been taken, the city continues to change.

A digital dashboard proposes a different model.

It is a continuously updated medical record for the city.

The city has measurable indicators of its “health” and target values. At any moment, another “medical examination” can be carried out, new Geographic Information System data can be obtained, deviations can be identified, additional investigations can be commissioned, possible interventions can be compared, a decision can be made, and its results can then be assessed.

This creates a continuous cycle:

goal → indicator → measurement → deviation → diagnosis → decision → action → new measurement.

The question itself therefore changes.

Not:

“What exactly will the city look like in 2040?”

but:

“What kind of city do we want, and are we moving in the right direction towards that goal today?”

The most interesting point is that similar thinking is now emerging independently in very different parts of the world.

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Bays West, Sydney: Not a Masterplan, but an Urban Framework

Bays West is a major transformation area in inner Sydney, including White Bay, Glebe Island, Rozelle Bay, the former White Bay Power Station, and surrounding areas.

In 2026, the Bays West Delivery Authority launched an international competition to develop an approach to the future development of this territory.

What is particularly interesting is the way the task itself has been formulated.

The organisers emphasise that the outcome is not intended to be a detailed masterplan determining the position and design of every building or park, but rather a design-led urban framework.

The difference is fundamental.

The subject of planning is no longer primarily the final composition of the district, but the structure and rules governing its future development.

The first stage, the Expression of Interest, is also revealing. Participants were not required to submit a design proposal at this stage. Instead, the assessment focused on the team, its capabilities, experience, and ability to propose an appropriate approach.

The competition process therefore consciously distinguishes the required urban framework from a traditional detailed masterplan.

This significantly changes the role of the planner.

Instead of being the author of a finished picture of the future, the planner becomes the designer of a system capable of maintaining the direction of development even when circumstances change.

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Grangemouth, Scotland: It Says It Directly — Not a Fixed Masterplan

The new logic is expressed even more explicitly in Scotland.

In August 2026, Scottish Enterprise launched a procurement process for the development of the Grangemouth Strategic Spatial Framework.

Grangemouth is a major industrial and energy hub. Its development depends simultaneously on the availability of land, energy, water, transport, logistics, production flows, infrastructure, and investment.

For this reason, the brief contains a particularly significant formulation.

The required outcome is a practical, infrastructure- and investment-focused decision-making tool addressing land, infrastructure, development sequencing, and investment readiness —

rather than producing a fixed masterplan.

In other words, the distinction is explicit:

not a fixed masterplan, but a decision-making tool.

It is no longer sufficient simply to determine where new industries might be located.

It is necessary to understand what land is available, what infrastructure capacities exist, where constraints are located, what resources are produced, what proportion is consumed within the area, what proportion is exported, what government decisions are required, and in what sequence investments should be implemented.

Spatial planning therefore becomes the management of a system:

land → capacity → flows → infrastructure → investment → sequencing → decision.

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Chișinău: Managing a Trajectory Instead of Forecasting the Future

Our proposal for Chișinău emerged independently of Bays West and Grangemouth, yet the underlying logic has proved surprisingly similar.

We propose starting not with an attempt to imagine Chișinău in 2040, but with defining the city’s long-term goals.

Each goal is linked to measurable indicators: transport accessibility, housing affordability, compactness of the urban structure, green space, social infrastructure, the historic environment, engineering infrastructure provision, efficiency of urban land use, and others.

For each indicator, the following sequence is established:

baseline → goal → trajectory → actual condition → deviation → signal → decision.

Every new housing development, road, Zonal Urban Plan, public facility, or change in density can then be assessed not in isolation, but according to how that decision affects the condition of the city as a whole.

The General Plan does not necessarily disappear.

Its role changes.

It becomes one of the instruments for achieving the city’s goals rather than the single finished model of its future.

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Sireți: The Digital Foundation Already Exists

Sireți provides an opportunity to test the new methodology at a smaller scale.

There is, however, another circumstance that makes this example particularly interesting.

The territory of Sireți has already been digitised, and a Geographic Information System foundation has been created.

It is precisely the availability of digital spatial data that makes it possible to move from a conventional document to a continuously functioning dashboard.

This is fundamental.

The dashboard does not create the original spatial data itself. For it to function properly, a digital model of the territory is required: land parcels, existing buildings, streets, functional land use, natural features, restrictions, and other Geographic Information System layers.

As information becomes available, engineering networks and more detailed data can be added.

The spatial data can then be connected to goals and indicators.

For Sireți, the proposed sequence is therefore:

digitisation → goals → indicators → existing conditions → spatial development alternatives → public choice → Geographic Information System development → monitoring.

The first substantive question is not “what should be built where?” but:

“What does Sireți want to achieve?”

Once the goals have been defined, the digital foundation makes it possible to assess the existing situation and previous planning decisions.

Alternative spatial frameworks can then be developed.

Residents are given the opportunity to discuss genuine development directions before an almost completed General Urban Plan has already been produced.

The selected alternative becomes the brief for subsequent Geographic Information System development, while infrastructure and individual areas are detailed as real needs emerge.

The digitisation already completed for Sireți is therefore not simply preparatory work for another General Urban Plan.

It is the potential foundation of a continuously operating digital model of the territory.

If the data continues to be updated, its value does not end when the next planning document is approved.

It becomes the basis for subsequent decisions by the local authority.

This leads to one of the fundamental principles of adaptive planning:

we do not necessarily need to know today exactly what Sireți will need in 2038. We need to have a digital model of the territory, understand the direction of development, and avoid making a decision today that would make the right decision in 2038 impossible.

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East City: The Project as a Testable Hypothesis

In the East City experiment in Chișinău, the same principle is applied to a major urban project.

Normally, a territory is identified first, after which housing, streets, public spaces, and infrastructure are designed.

We propose changing this sequence.

The first question should be:

“Why does Chișinău need this project?”

Should it increase the supply of housing? Create jobs? Reduce commuting? Make more efficient use of existing urban land? Improve the transport structure of the eastern part of the city?

The project is then tested against citywide goals and indicators.

As a result, its status changes:

the project is not a predetermined answer. It is a hypothesis.

If the assessment demonstrates that East City improves the condition of the urban system, the hypothesis is supported.

If another alternative produces a better result, that alternative should be considered.

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Moldova: An Opportunity to Move to a New System at the Scale of the Entire Country

For the Republic of Moldova, this issue is particularly important right now.

The country is planning a large-scale programme to develop and update General Urban Plans for a significant number of towns and villages.

This will require substantial investments of time, state and municipal resources, as well as the simultaneous involvement of architects, urban planners, engineers, Geographic Information System specialists, transport specialists, environmental specialists, and other professionals.

This raises a strategic question:

should we repeatedly reproduce the traditional methodology, or should we use this programme as an opportunity to move towards the next generation of planning?

There is an opportunity to create a single national digital foundation for adaptive planning, to which municipalities can gradually connect.

However, the experience of Sireți demonstrates an important technical condition for such a transition.

The settlements must first be digitised.

For Sireți, this step has already been completed.

For towns and villages where a comparable digital foundation does not yet exist, it will need to be created.

This means establishing the basic Geographic Information System layers describing existing conditions and organising their subsequent updating.

At this point, the meaning of expenditure changes fundamentally.

Money is no longer spent only on producing a document that will need to be updated again after several years.

Instead, a long-term digital asset is created:

the spatial database of every town and village.

At the same time, there is no need to wait until all information is perfect and complete.

The system can begin operating with the data already available, clearly identify what information is missing, and be progressively enriched as new sources become available.

In the new model, data is collected not for a single General Urban Plan — it is created for the continuous management of the territory.

Therefore, instead of the traditional sequence:

source data → General Urban Plan → approval → periodic update

a new sequence can emerge:

digitisation → Geographic Information System and GEODATA → municipal dashboard → goals and indicators → spatial decisions → projects → monitoring → data updates.

The methodology, data structure, principles for defining goals and indicators, connection to GEODATA, rules for project assessment, monitoring, and mechanisms for public participation can be common across the country.

What remains local are the territory, goals, indicators, problems, Geographic Information System layers, constraints, projects, and scenarios of each individual settlement.

Such an approach potentially provides three major advantages.

The first is time.

A municipality gains a functioning system once the basic digital foundation has been created and its goals and indicators have been defined. It does not need to wait for the completion of an entire multi-year planning cycle before it can begin using the results.

The second is financial resources.

A digital foundation created once continues to be used for subsequent decisions and does not have to be recreated from scratch every time planning documentation is updated.

The third, and most important, is quality.

The quality of planning no longer depends primarily on the ability of planners to correctly predict conditions fifteen or twenty years into the future.

Instead, the system must define goals correctly, measure ongoing changes, compare alternatives, and enable decisions to be adjusted when new information becomes available.

This is particularly important for small towns and villages with limited resources.

They do not need to design in detail today everything that might theoretically be required fifteen years from now.

What they need is to determine what must not be lost, what needs to be reserved, what goals must be achieved, and what indicators must be continuously monitored.

In this sense, Sireți can become not simply a local experiment, but a prototype for a national methodology.

It can be tested in several settlements of different sizes.

We can compare implementation times.

We can compare costs.

We can compare the quality of the results.

And then the system can be scaled.

The Republic of Moldova has an important advantage here: the country is compact enough for a unified digital system to be created and tested more quickly than in much larger states.

The current programme for developing General Urban Plans could therefore become more than another cycle of updating planning documentation.

It could become the transition point from the production of separate planning documents to a national digital system for managing territorial development.

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Different Countries — the Same Trend

When these examples are placed side by side, an interesting picture emerges.

Bays West — instead of a detailed masterplan, it seeks a design-led urban framework.

Grangemouth — instead of a fixed masterplan, it requires a decision-making tool.

Chișinău — management of the trajectory of urban indicators.

Sireți — a digital model of the territory, goals, alternatives, and continuous monitoring.

East City — a major project treated as a testable hypothesis for achieving citywide goals.

Sydney, Scotland, and the Republic of Moldova did not coordinate these approaches with one another.

That is precisely what makes the convergence so interesting.

We may not be looking at several isolated experiments, but at the beginning of a deeper transformation in urban and territorial planning methodology.

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Technology Has Changed. Methodology Must Change Too

The General Plan of the twentieth century corresponded to the technological capabilities of its time.

Data was collected slowly. Calculations required significant time. Changing a large set of planning drawings was a complex and expensive process.

It therefore made sense to conduct studies, prepare a forecast, and establish a relatively stable model of the future.

Today we have Geographic Information Systems, satellite monitoring, digital municipal databases, digital twins, automated data analysis, and artificial intelligence.

But moving from paper to computers does not in itself represent a methodological transformation.

We can transfer a General Plan into a Geographic Information System.

We can create an impressive three-dimensional model of the city in 2040.

But if the underlying logic remains unchanged, we are still attempting to fix the future in advance — only with more modern tools.

True digital transformation begins when technology changes not the way we draw the plan, but the way we make decisions.

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Not the End of Planning, but the Beginning of a Different Era

General Plans will not disappear tomorrow.

Cities still need land-use rules, protection of historic heritage, reservation of infrastructure corridors, restrictions, and mechanisms for safeguarding the public interest.

But the place of the General Plan within the overall system can change.

Instead of a linear sequence:

study → forecast → plan → implementation

a continuous cycle emerges:

goal → data → assessment → scenario → decision → implementation → measurement of results → adjustment.

And here we can return to the analogy from the beginning.

A city is a living organism.

A photograph, however good it may be, is not enough.

It needs a continuously updated “medical record” that allows us to understand its condition and respond to change in time.

Perhaps, therefore, what is ending is not the era of urban planning.

What is ending is the era of the General Plan as a picture of the future drawn once and expected to remain valid.

The twentieth century tried to predict what the city would become.

The twenty-first century gives us, for the first time, the ability to define what we want the city to become, continuously measure its condition, and manage its movement towards that goal.