Strategic navigation: in search of an adaptable mode of strategic spatial planning practice

In face of a dizzying pace of change, radical uncertainty and emergent policy effects there have been calls for more open, dynamic and adaptable alternatives to the modernist institutional legacy of strategic spatial planning practice. Here a case is explored where planners responsible for Melbourne's metropolitan planning sought to operationalise such an approach to strategic spatial planning following release of a new metropolitan strategy. They termed this approach 'strategic navigation'. Operationalisation of strategic navigation required: a reconceptualisation of the role of strategic planning; a codification of the subsequent organisational implications through the draft business planning process, including different priorities with respect to the knowledge and relationships, tools and practices that planners rely on to inform their situated judgement; and the identification and informal pursuit of leverageable strategies as a way to enact adaptability.