Exploring practitioners’ perception of ethical issues in planning: The Peruvian case

Abstract

Despite the ethics of planning in the Global South is an issue of crucial importance due to the challenging circumstances in which the discipline is practiced in the region, this discussion is still at this initial stage. This article contributes to expanding on the matter through an approach to identify the influence on practitioners’ perception of ethical issues of the planning purposes and values embedded within five frames of reference of practice (i.e. professional training, professionalization bodies, institutional settings, planning systems and policy frameworks). Using the case of professional architects working as planners for municipalities in Arequipa (Peru), the article starts with an exploratory comparison between the purposes and values put forward by professional training in planning and architecture and then contrast these with the planning purposes and values purveyed by professionalization bodies, institutional settings, planning systems, and policy frameworks. These results support the analysis of practitioners’ perception of ethical issues. This shows that the understanding of planning purposes and values of Peruvian architects acting as planners and the views of the country’s architecture professionalization body contributes to strengthening the regulatory, technical, and apolitical orientation of the Peruvian planning system. With the adoption of neoliberal urban policies and within the ethically inconsistent municipal institutional setting, architects’ operationalization of their understanding of planning purposes and values leads to a procedural perception of ethical issues, which is based on the belief that these center on conflicts of personal principles. Their belated realization that ethical issues also concern conflict of interests adds to their questioning of the idea of planning, making the discipline’s practice in the country even more challenging.