Comment on Richard Willson's paper: Assessing communicative rationality as a transportation planning paradigm

Abstract

Willson addresses in his paper a wide range of planning issues: better communication, honesty, re-education of planners, public participation, planning process, and so on, and aims at creating a new paradigm for transport planning. The paper has much content to recommend it to planners, decisionmakers and the public. Dr. Willson deserves credit ‐ as does Transportation ‐ for bringing up these issues. Dr. Willson is also right in pointing out that technical expertise and methods that have been built over the past 30 years continue to be needed. Is Prof. Willson’s case for Communicative Rationality as the new paradigm for transport planning valid? I am not persuaded. I agree with many elements of his argument enumerated above, but not the paradigm. If it is not the right paradigm, what is? I argue below that analysis and emotional communication are. This is puzzling when talking is involved in both, and a prominent econometrist friend once complained to me that “these planners like to talk rather than analyze the problems.” Willson’s core inspiration is Habermas’ concept of communicative rationality. Habermas crafted communicative rationality as postmodernist method to counter the instrumental rationality of industrial revolution. Two constructs, lifeworld and system, are central to his argument. Lifeworld comprises the social life with symbolic meanings ‐ religion, self-concepts, social norms, stories, art ‐ and form the cultural basis for communication, social interaction, consensus and conflict resolution. System is the material knowledge in society, such as agriculture or engineering. Prior to the modern era system and lifeworld had an experiential relation. Symbolically, Habermas argued, in the good old days people related to each other in human ways ‐ Oktoberfest brought people together to celebrate the hard work of harvest. Industrial revolution uncoupled system and lifeworld, mechanized harvest and commercialized Oktoberfest. Other than issues of money, there is now little human satisfaction in either. For Willson communicative rationality is an expansion of knowledge