It involves setting clear objectives, coordinating public and private efforts, and adapting to new circumstances to enhance the living conditions of the affected citizens.
SUP is not a new concept; it has been applied to various aspects of human activity, with notable figures such as Sun Tzu, Arthur Thomson, and Henry Mintzberg contributing to its development.
Fifteen years of practice proved to be enough time for the technique to spread and for the first “Meeting of American and European cities for the Exchange of Experiences in Strategic Planning” to be organized.
At that meeting it was demonstrated, along with other relevant aspects, that if cooperative processes are used in large cities in order to carry out strategic planning processes, and if a reasonable degree of comprehension is reached between the administration, businesses and an ample representation of social agents, organizational synergies will develop that will eventually improve resource management and citizens’ quality of life.
An SUP process, according to Borja and Castells is: The definition of a city project that unifies diagnoses, specifies public and private actions and establishes a coherent mobilization framework for the cooperation of urban social actors.
Knowledge relating to strategic urban planning processes is evolving in two complementary directions that can be denominated, borrowing concepts from programming, as Bottom-Up and Top-down.