Reflections on the future understanding of planning practice

Abstract

This paper discusses the planning academy's avoidance of issues of power and value while discussing the author's strategies of research on planning practice as they have developed socially and historically. The analysis of planning, these days, is not in crisis but in denial. Not only do many analyses of planning end where they should begin, with the recurrent discovery that power shapes practice, they also fail to address better and worse approaches to acting in the face of power. Such facile treatments of ‘power’ actually make action in a real world of power relations more difficult, and by failing to assess strategies to empower weaker voices, such analyses effectively and conservatively strengthen established power. Further, many analyses of planning presume that ‘better’ and ‘worse’ are undiscussable matters of personal, subjective opinion. The resulting avoidance of value inquiry and value‐critical argumentation hinders planners in their inevitably evaluative work, confuses respect for different persons with agreement on different ideas, and also conservatively weakens the hand of those with legitimate rather than narrowly self‐serving needs.