Abstract
This paper traces the historical and conceptual role of the black box as a diagrammatic figure in planning theory. Emerging from pre-war radio circuit jargon, and first theorized in cybernetics, the black box articulated a productive tension: it acknowledged the indeterminacy of future contingencies whilst concealing moments of executive discretion. Alongside cybernetics, the black box became an omnipresent yet elusive figure in 1960s and 70s spatial planning. Against the backdrop of contemporary debates on explainable AI (XAI), this history has acquired renewed significance for designers. Examining a corpus of planning diagrams produced over fifty years ago, the paper shows how black boxes functioned both as heuristic instruments and as sites of epistemic constriction. The black box variations reveal how spatial planning negotiated between automation and human judgement for decades before current AI debates. Revisiting this historical figure recontextualizes how design
Keywords
Black Box, Cybernetics, Spatial Planning, XAI, Diagrams
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.1891
Citation
Brownsword, M.J., Jasper, A., Herr, C.M., and Fischer, T. (2026) The black box in spatial planning: visualizations of indeterminacy in cybernetics and model theory, in Simeone, L., Gray, C. M., Verhoeven, A., de Götzen, A., Bakırlıoğlu, Y., Zohar, H., Stead, M., and Buwert, P. (eds.), DRS2026: Edinburgh, 8–12 June, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.1891
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The black box in spatial planning: visualizations of indeterminacy in cybernetics and model theory
This paper traces the historical and conceptual role of the black box as a diagrammatic figure in planning theory. Emerging from pre-war radio circuit jargon, and first theorized in cybernetics, the black box articulated a productive tension: it acknowledged the indeterminacy of future contingencies whilst concealing moments of executive discretion. Alongside cybernetics, the black box became an omnipresent yet elusive figure in 1960s and 70s spatial planning. Against the backdrop of contemporary debates on explainable AI (XAI), this history has acquired renewed significance for designers. Examining a corpus of planning diagrams produced over fifty years ago, the paper shows how black boxes functioned both as heuristic instruments and as sites of epistemic constriction. The black box variations reveal how spatial planning negotiated between automation and human judgement for decades before current AI debates. Revisiting this historical figure recontextualizes how design