"We've been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden.... Government is not the solution to our problem; Government is the problem."
- President Ronald Reagan, First Inaugural Address, January 20, 1981
In the wake of the Second World War, the citizens of the United States maintained faith in a benevolent technocratic nation-state capable of harnessing objective scientific conceptions of reason and rationality in order to maximize societal progress. This societal acceptance of rational-technocratic sovereignty was extended to urban and regional planners of the day. Though buoyed by boosterism, planning and economic development in the modernist mid-twentieth century retained idealist principles of the Age of Enlightenment and the subsequent Progressive Era. An expanding economy and new technologies of the industrial age allowed the construction of ambitious physical representations of such ideals. Operating under an assumption of the public interest, planners routinely used state power and bureaucracy to enact major restructuring of the built environment, often despite public and/or capital opposition. Unfortunately, unforeseen or un-considered effects of mega-projects and master-plans on neighborhoods, communities, and the environment were sometimes devastating.
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| Jane Jacobs |
Reagan's election in the U.S. (and Thatcher's in the UK) represented a paradigm shift in liberal-democratic governance. The implied legitimacy of Keynesian-welfare liberalism had been eroded away in the previous decades of social and economic turmoil. A new paradigm of neoliberalism emerged and remains to this day, perhaps to the point of hegemony (Purcell, 2009) (Prychitko & Storr, 2007, p. 265). Classical-liberal governance attains legitimacy by "programming the government in the interest of society, where the government is represented as an apparatus of public administration, and society as a market-structured network of interactions among private persons" (Habermas, 1994, p. 1). Neoliberalism, in addition to dependence on market logic, seeks to actively assist capital accumulation. This is accomplished, for example, by "public investment in efficient infrastructure, the transfer of publically created technology to the private sector, monetarist policies to control inflation, public investment in private land development... and the increasing dominance of exchange value as the primary way to value urban land" (Purcell, 2009, p. 142).
Contemporary planners and theorists in the United States and other western liberal democracies have inherited the difficult task of defining the field in a way that not only breaks from the hubris of the modernist past, but that is appropriate and effective within the current neoliberal environment. Many approaches continue to be process oriented - focusing on the process of planning, rather than the product. Principles of democratic inclusivity and collaboration are often emphasized. A dominant branch of process-oriented planning theory is often referred to as communicative planning, the theoretical foundations of which are heavily influenced by the work of German philosopher/sociologist Jurgen Habermas; particularly his 1984 work, The Theory of Communicative Action.
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| Jurgen Habermas |
Advocates of communicative planning generally acknowledge the difficulty in approximating Habermas' ideal speech situation necessary for true communicative action. Patsy Healy has qualified her support for communicative methods by considering communicative theory as "an idea about how we can go about strategic planning in a better way.... It represents an ideal to strive for" (Healy, 2003, p. 252). In his later works, Habermas himself abandoned the utility of the ideal speech situation, acknowledging the concept had fallen "victim to the fallacy of misplaced concreteness" (Prychitko & Storr, 2007, p. 257 footnote 1).
Some advocates of similarly inclusive/collaborative models have consciously distanced themselves from Habermasian heritage. Judith Innes, an advocate of consensus building planning methods, states directly that her work "is not grounded in Habermas' concept of communicative rationality" (Innes, 2004, p. 5). In fact, writes Innes, "consensus building grew up as a practice without knowledge of or reference to Habermas" (p. 10). Instead, it "has deep roots in practices and theories of interest-based bargaining, mediation and alternative dispute resolution" (p. 6). In an article targeted specifically at critics of inclusive/collaborative planning methods, Innes describes a realistic set of principles intended to identify, and facilitate agreement between, all possible stakeholders in a project. Habermasian ideals of mutual understanding are largely absent from Innes' description of consensus building; instead she admits that the process is necessarily impacted by existing power structures and traditional rhetoric (Innes, 2004, p. 11). While it is the planners' intent to obviate pre-existing power structures and specious arguments to the greatest extent possible, Innes concedes that "consensus building is not, in any case, the place for redistributing power" (p. 12).
Innes' 2004 article (quoted above) primarily targets critics who critique collaborative methods as idealistic or unworkable. She does not address critics arguing from a Hayekian liberal perspective: that unfettered market mechanisms would be more effective at reaching the stated goals of comprehensive inclusion than even this limited role of planners as mediators. One such Hayekian disciple of the Austrian School of Sociology, Mark Pennington contends that the "inherent complexity and inter-relatedness of these issues may mean that they are often beyond the effective scope of conscience social control.... The market process, therefore, acts as a form of 'surrogate debate.'... It may be more appropriate to rely as far as possible on impersonal, self-regulating markets" (Pennington, 2002, pp. 200, 204). While Habermasian and Hayekian arguments are similarly antithetical to rational-technocratic planning and governance, Hayek and his Austrian School cohorts reject notions of universal truth, justice, and morality in entirety. Pennington does allow that the "traditional concerns of the Left over excessive inequality and unequal 'power relations' may, from a Hayekian point of view, be better addressed through redistributive taxation... so long as the purpose of this [is] not to deliver aggregate, rationalist concepts such as 'social justice', which are subject to many of the same epistemological problems as central economic planning" (Pennington, 2002, p. 200).
A separate and distinct challenge to collaborative methods comes from those on Pennington's "Left" who do not hesitate to advocate for "rationalist concepts such as social justice." Recall that Innes allowed that challenges to the extant power structure may be desirable, but asserted that such challenges are not appropriately addressed in the planning process (Innes, 2004, p. 12). Danish economic geographer, Bent Flyvbjerg counters that collaborative planning methods directly quash such challenges. This argument asserts that institutional mediation of power struggles effectively institutionalizes and reinforces the existing power structure. When planners assume the role of mediators in an exercise of conflict resolution, they crystallize and legitimize any inequity inherent in such a process. Like Habermas and Hayek, Flyvbjerg elicits subjectivity in rationality.[2] Flyvbjerg's concern is that the perennial victors of power struggles have become adept at manipulating popular perceptions of reality (aka tacit knowledge, aka subjective world-view). When power acts in apparent cooperation with government entities and weaker stakeholders, potential challenges to power are precluded through the use of soft power and lucid rhetoric - amplified through official channels and distorted by the appearance of consensus. Such a process is defined by rationalization masquerading as rationality (Flyvbjerg, 2003).
UCLA geographer Mark Purcell builds on Flyvbjerg's argument, targeting neoliberalism itself as the adversarial power. Far from adopting Austrian School rejections of objective rationality, Purcell asserts that "neoliberalism has had a corrosive impact on cities and urban life" (Purcell, 2009, p. 141). Neoliberalism, in Purcell's view, actively conspires to shape the tacit knowledge and relevant inter-subjective validity claims that form the foundation of communicative action. Communicative planning may be well-intended, but is easily co-opted by practiced neoliberal subterfuge, the power of which is masked by the facade of collaboration. Purcell does recognize the break from communicative theory offered by Innes' consensus building model. However, he is more critical of this variation, viewing it as consciously complicit in perpetuating neoliberal hegemony (Purcell, 2009).
Even if collaborative methods were to approach a communicative ideal, it is not presupposed that optimal outcomes would result. Citizens and stakeholders after all, are not generally trained to deduce the consequences of potential actions (Campbell & Marshall, 2002). By completely retreating from the ideals of progressivism, planners allow the ascent of value-free development to proceed on market-based logic, subjecting the built environment to the market's inherent inequities and profit-based, short-term drivers (Campbell S. , 2005). Inclusive democracy may even be inferior, in many cases, to technocratic methods. Consider for example, the Governor Pontius Pilate, who would have spared Jesus from crucifixion had he not sought inclusive democratic consensus (Luke 23).
The disparate sources of criticism of communicative/inclusive/collaborative planning theories reflect ambiguity and disagreement in how such theories relate to practical applications. Criticism from Austrian School practitioners such as Pennington, asserting carte blanche that unfettered liberal market principles provide optimal results (Pennington, 2002), are generally predictable, and fall apart if moral values can be clarified.[3] More surprising is the ardor of the attacks from value-oriented theorists who are sympathetic to many of the declared goals of inclusive/collaborative planning. Considering that there is general agreement that such methods effectively mitigate disruptive conflicts between stakeholders, the distinction between advocates and critics appears to be primarily in value-judgments of the existing power structure. For theorists who adopt moral justifications to challenge extant power relations, inclusive/collaborative models mask coercion the process, rationalize inequity in the product, and perpetuate injustice in societal power relations (Flyvbjerg, 2003) (Purcell, 2009). For advocates, it is an attempt to integrate democratic ideals into the planning process and moderate the effects of power (Healy, 2003) (Innes, 2004). For practitioners, collaboration is often considered only as the most efficient way to get shovels in the ground (Forester, 2009).
References:
Campbell, H., & Marshall, R. (2002). Utilitarianism's Bad Breath? A Re-Evaluation of the Public Interest Justification for Planning. Planning Theory , 1 (2), 163-187.
Campbell, S. (2005). Is "Progress" No Longer Progressive? - Reclaiming the Ideology of Progress in Planning. Unpublished. Manuscript solicited to JAPA for lead "Longer View" article, received May 17, 2005 .
Flyvbjerg, B. (2003). Rationality and Power. In S. Campbell, & S. S. Fainstein, Readings in Planning Theory (pp. 318-329). Blackwell.
Forester, J. (2009). Planning in the Face of Conflict. In R. T. LeGates, & F. Stout (Eds.), The City Reader (4th ed., pp. 387-399). Routledge.
Habermas, J. (1993 [1991]). Justification and Application: Remarks on Discourse Ethics. (C. Cronin, Trans.) Cambridge and London: MIT Press.
Habermas, J. (1994). Three Normative Models of Democracy. Constellations , 1 (1), 1-10.
Harvey, D. (1989). The Condition of Postmodernity. Cambridge and Oxford: Blackwell.
Healy, P. (2003). The Communicative Turn in Planning Theory and its Implications for Spatial Strategy Formation. In S. Campbell, & S. S. Fainstein, Readings in Planning Theory (pp. 237-255). Blackwell.
Innes, J. E. (2004). Consesus Building: Clarifications for the Critics. Planning Theory , 3 (1), 5-20.
Jacobs, J. (1961). The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1993 Modern Library Edition ed.). Toronto: Random House, Inc.
Pennington, M. (2002). A Hayekian Liberal Critique of Collaborative Planning. Planning Futures: New Directions for Planning Thoery , 187-205.
Prychitko, D. L., &; Storr, V. H. (2007). Communicative action and the radical constitution: the Habermasian challenge to Hayek, Mises and their descedents. Cambridge Journal of Economics , 31 , 255-274.
Purcell, M. (2009). Resisting Neoliberalization: Communicative Planning or Counter-Hegemonic Movements? Planning Theory , 8 (2) , 140-165.
Reagan, R. (1981, January 20). First Inaugural Address.
End Notes
[1] As an example, this suggests that an Atheist and a Christian would be unlikely able to engage in true communicative action with regards to specific issues of reproductive rights. The Christian may introduce a claim such that "abortion is murder" (a claim of truth). If the Atheist does not accept this claim, any tacit assumptions of inter-subjective world views are proven false. In urban planning and economic development, this has specific implications in value statements concerning neoliberal market logic and ideals of objective justice.
[2] In this piece, Flyvbjerg does not address the seeming logical dissonance in defining rationality as subjective, yet concluding that "instead of thinking of modernity and democracy as rational means for dissolving power, we need to see them as practical attempts at regulating power and domination. When we do this we obtain a better grasp of what modernity and democracy are in practice and what it takes to change them for the better" (Flyvbjerg, 2003, pp. 327, emphasis added).
[3] Ironically, such (Hayekian) criticisms indirectly demonstrate limitations of Habermas' communicative theory. By refusing to accept claims of objective conceptions of rationality, Austrian socio-economists preclude communicative action with those who believe that ideals such as justice and equality are definable and positive values worth pursuing.
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