Realistic planning and qualitative research

Abstract

It is common to find in planning both by government and via private consultants ideologically-loaded abstractions dressed up as practicality. There are plans for the year 2000, to which no channels of implementation exist; ‘New Cities’ of monumental character; ‘policies’ which bear a strong resemblance to the joint communiqu& of governments which disagree and which are not willing to declare their disagreement. This is particularly true of planning in the developing countries or less-developed countries (LDCs), and nowhere more so than in the field of housing. Here calculations of ‘deficit’ based on bad data relating to poor categories may be joined with ‘programmes’ constituting at best very partial solutions to the existing problems and at worst exacerbating them via slum clearance. There is a tendency to interpret such ‘paper plans’ and ‘show projects’ as representing a lack of sophistication. But surely there is more behind it than that. Unrealistic planning has behind it a huge weight of institutional interests of groups which benefit from the expensive projects, and by governments which need to appear as committed to progress, and to present a set of actions benefiting the few as a commitment to high standards for everyone. Thus to press for realism in housing and urban planning in LDCs requires not merely an intellectual grasp of the working of cities, but energy, tenacity, and moral commitment. It is not surprising, therefore, that Otto Koenigsberger has been one of the important figures in a slow movement towards greater realism in the way that housing and urban planning are thought about in the developing countries. Realism is grounded in a concern for the lives of people, as well as in common sense; for many years Koenigsberger has exemplified both. I want here to call attention to some particular developments in planning for the cities of the Third World developments with which Koenigsberger has had a good deal to do and to suggest their relationship to research. This is the development of approaches to housing and settlement policy which are less building programmes than intervention programmes. I will briefly indicate the types of research which have supported these programmatic approaches, and then discuss the way a commitment to these newer approaches requires a new approach to research as well one which relies much more heavily on qualitative methods than in the past.