Oren Yiftachel (1999) Planning Theory At A Crossroad, The Third Oxford Conference.pdf

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Planning Theory at a Crossroad: The Third Oxford Conference Oren

Yiftachel

Like most academic fields, planning theory constantly changes. One arena in which scholarly changes are introduced, fought, won, or lost is the arena of academic conferences, particularly those focusing on a specific topic. Such was the third Oxford Conference on planning theory, which took place in April 1998, following two highly successful previous gatherings of planning theorists at Oxford in 1981 and 1991. Below are my impressions from the conference, which are necessarily personal and partial. I will try, however, to sketch the general ambience emerging from the conference’s papers, exchanges,

and discussions and relate these to recent twists and turns in the development of planning theory. During the last decade, a growing number of planning theorists have taken what is described by Healey (1996) as a &dquo;communicative turn.&dquo; Work building on courses charted by John Friedmann and John Forester, and drawing on Habermassian, pragmatic, and institutional-ethnographic frameworks, has rapidly accumulated, prompting many to observe the dominance of the communicative approach (e.g., Hoch 1997), or a prevailing consensus on the need to focus on agency and practitioners among planning theorists (Mandelbaum 1996). Judith Innes’s (1995) proclamation of the emergence of a &dquo;new paradigm&dquo; has come to symbolize the claimed prominence, observing that scholars belonging to the communicative approach: differ from their predecessors, who did primarily The new theorists pursue the armchair theorizing and that arise from practice and questions puzzles do grounded theorizing based on richly interpretive study of practice they apply intellectual lenses new to planning .... Their work gained the attention of both academics and practising planners because it is accessible and interesting (183). ...

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But the claims for the discipline’s theoretical high-ground, and the high visibility of the communicationists in planning theory discourse, have not remained unchallenged. Such a

challenge fully surfaced at the Oxford conference. Prior to controversy, let us first

note

that the community of

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planning theorists identified recently by Mandelbaum (1996) is alive and kicking. The three Oxford conferences and many other gatherings have indeed established a multifaceted and multi-generational community. The advantage of the Oxford setting was the total focus on theory and the relatively small size of the group, which allowed the evolution and development of this community to gather pace and take shape. Yet, despite the focused agenda and the familiar community, the content of the papers was diverse. Simple observation of the program would attest to the spread of issues, ranging from rationality (yes, still alive) to communication, consensus, participation, postmodernity, environmental sustainability, values, control, oppression, and more. This variety may reflect, of course, a healthy state of affairs, but it may also be a troubling hint to the field’s lack of analytical rigor, as discussed below. Among the multitude of approaches, two main perspectives appeared to dominate the program: the communicative-pragmatist, and what I would label as a critical approach. The prevalence of these two approaches was expressed both in the number of papers and-perhaps more significantly -in the tenor of the discussions that followed the presentations. With a risk of being somewhat crude, and while acknowledging that all divisions are oversimplified, one can group most participants in the conference into the two approaches. The first, and larger, group presented and debated aspects of the communicative-pragmatist approach, and included the likes of Asmervick, Campbell and Marshall, Haase, Hagen, Harper and Stein, Healey, Hillier, Holsen, Mandelbaum, Muller, Reuter, Sager, Steyn, Throgmorton, and Liechfield. The critical group was smaller in numbers but still very visible, including participants such as Abram, Caceras, Fagence, Flybjerg, Hajer, Huxley, Richardson, and Yiftachel. Raphael Fischler was the only one I have heard who attempted to bridge the two schools of thought. The use of the term critical to describe the latter, and not the former, group, may need further explanation. It is based on the observation, well articulated by Margo Huxley’s paper, that most of the communicationist and pragmatist theorists have overlooked the analytical and critical components of Habermassian theory. Thus, they have adopted the communicative-action component of this theory, without engaging fully in the foundation of societal critique necessary for effective communicative action. The prominence of the two approaches was best represented in the two well-attended plenary presentations delivered by Patsy Healey and Bent Flyvbjerg, honoring the recent publication of their theoretical books. Healey began with a personal

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describing the processes that led her to adopt the communicative approach, while not neglecting a deep appreciation of the role of place and space. This scholarly journey culminated with the writing of Collaborative Planning.- Shaping Places in Fragmented Societies (1997). Continuing with her scholarly approach, Healey’s talk delicately blended her Giddensian and Habermasian analytical positions with a normative perspective about the shaping of good institutions and communities. All this is to be achieved via good-that is, colnarrative

laborative-planning process. Flyvbjerg’s approach, in a paper written jointly with Tim Richardson, was different. He weaved comments about his recent book, Rationality and Power (1998), with an all-out

critique of planning theory and theorists. Flyvbjerg did not mince his words when claiming that planning theorists have, until now, &dquo;always looked at the bright side of life,&dquo; ignoring the many &dquo;darker sides&dquo; of planning and urban development. Searching for planning’s darker sides, he argued, should not be understood as negative reflections of the theorists, but rather as a realistic, savvy, and comprehensive account of the policies that shape urban life. A series of examples from the brilliantly designed, but poorly implemented, planning project at Aalborg, Denmark, illustrated his points well: No understanding of planning can ignore its messy, negative and oppressive aspects. It appears to me as if Flyvbjerg’s powerful (and somewhat controversial) presentation reflects a new development in planning theory. One needs to go back to the glory days of the Marxist school in the 1970s to find such a concentration of critical scholars as appeared in Oxford. This follows the emer-

gence of Foucauldian, critical-Weberian, political-economic, postmodern, and feminist critiques of planning theory in a series of conferences and publications during the 1990s. Notable among these were three recent issues of the journal Planning Theory, the Postmodern Cities conference in Sydney in 1993 (where the term the dark side of planning was also used; see Watson and Gibson 1994; Yiftachel 1994, 1998), and a variety of special sessions in planning conferences both in Europe and the U.S. The Oxford conference thus illustrated that a critical school of planning is reemerging. It is broader than the mainly Marxist orientation of the 1970s and early 1980s, and attracts a range of perspectives that critically examine the role of planning in creating, maintaining, or reproducing social control, oppression, inequalities and injustices. Beyond the participants at the Oxford conference noted above, scholars such as

Beauregard, Fainstein, Feldman, Friedmann, Lauria, Marcuse, Sandercock, and many others have produced excellent work in this mold during the 1990s. For me, one of the most significant features of the Oxford conference was the exchange between these two approaches. Of course, there is great diversity within each one (and other classifications may identify more than two approaches), but the debates on the conference floor were marked by a degree of

bi-polarity. Several exchanges were in fact carried across a few sessions. For some, the tinge of scholarly intransigence expressed by the two positions may be bothersome, while for others, the existence of continuous and open exchange was both enlightening and welcome. Despite the marked differences in these approaches, they are not necessarily contradictory-and may complement one another. But this depends on

clarifying the differences and disclaiming the hegemonic tendencies and aspirations of any one approach over others. What became clear in the conference debates is that, beyond and above the communicative-critical demarcation, other differences stand between the two approaches, most notably an analytical-normative split. Communicative scholars analyze planning with a clear normative task of reforming and improving it from within (that is, influencing the way things are done in the profession, although not losing sight of the wider context). Most critical scholars, on the other hand, examine planning as a societal phenomenon, that is, from outside. They argue that theorizing requires critical distance in order to generalize, explain, and compare. In reality, the normative-explanatory and normative-critical differences are of course rarely sharp or consistent, as theorists tend to synthesize various elements in their work. Indeed, all sound social science requires both understanding and a normative position. Yet, basic differences between scholarly approaches do exist, touching the very heart of the theorizing project, and impeding the dialogue between the groups. Put differently, it is difficult to debate about theory when the meaning of theorizing is perceived differently by the protagonists. Another notable difference between scholars emerged with regard to the very definition of planning : What exactly is the phenomenon we are studying? Here the main issue of this ageold discussion revolved around the notion of space. Most communicative scholars, influenced by the traditional American approach to planning, treat it as processes of decision making, information exchange, or power relations (usually in or about

city). Others, especially Europeans, regard space, developand land use as the very heart of planning. For them planning is spatial public policy. These fairly fundamental disagreements can be interpreted as signs of a chaotic discipline (see McLoughlin 1994), or as an exciting arena for dialogue and mutual adjustments. But what became patently clear at Oxford was that the chasm between planning theorists exists not only about the &dquo;best&dquo; paradigm, but about the very meaning of the two most fundamental entities in our discipline, namely plrxnning and theory! This explains, perhaps better than any other factor, the continuing analytical and professional problems associated with planning theory (see also Friedmann 1998; Lauria 1997). I do not claim, of course, that analytical terms should not be contested in the social sciences, but that we must develop firmer shared understandings in order to advance our scholarly debates. Finally, two further aspects of the conference were notewora

ment,

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thy. First, central issues in contemporary social theory, such as gender, ethnicity, race, and nationalism, are still curiously silent in the planning theory discourse (but not the environment, which was well represented). In planning, these peripheral topics are often shunted to specialty groups although they are undoubtedly powerful societal engines behind both policymaking and the division of space, and thus lie at the heart of planning. Second, rational planning is making a cautious comeback and not through the list of past heroes. Several scholars in the conference brought it back into discussion, most notably Alexander. In this context, though, it was refreshing and illuminating to hear Faludi admitting at the conference dinner that much of his past work, self-proclaimed as &dquo;planning theory&dquo; (and hotly debated during the 1970s and 1980s), was in fact &dquo;planning methodology.&dquo; It is hoped that we are not simply heading back into these futile debates and impasses, and that the current communicative-critical exchange would lead to more fruitful results than the rationalMarxist polemics to which Faludi refers. In sum, the Oxford conference crystallized and clarified the field’s various approaches, as well as its opportunities and pitfalls. The challenge in the years ahead is to construct productive and creative dialogues between the various schools of thought, although-as shown at Oxford-this is by no means simple or certain. Yiftachel is a professor in the Department of Geography at Ben University, Beer-Sheva, Israel, [email protected]

Oren

0

Gunon

REFERENCES

1998. Rationality and Power Democracy in Practice. ChiUniversity of Chicago Press. Friedmann,John. 1998. Planning theory revisited. European Planning

Flyvbjerg, Bent. cago, Ill.:

Studies 6(3):245-253.

Healey, Patsy. 1996. The communicative turn in planning theory and its implications for spatial strategy formation. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 23: 217-234. Healey, Patsy. 1997. Collaborative Planning: Shaping Places in Fragmented Societies. London: Macmillan. Hillier, Jean. 1996. The unwritten law of planning theory: Common sense. Journal of Planning Education and Research 15(2):101-105. Hoch, Charles. 1997. Planning theorists taking an interpretive turn need not travel the political economy highway. Planning Theory 17:13-39. Innes, Judith. 1995. Planning theory’s emerging paradigm: Communicative action and interactive practice. Journal of Planning Education and

Research

14(3):183-191.

Mickey. 1997. Communicating in a vacuum: Will anyone hear? Planning Theory 17:40-43. Mandelbaum, Seymour. 1996. The talk of the community. In Explorations in Planning Theory, eds. S. Mandelbaum, L. Mazza, and R. Burchell, 310. New Brunswick, N.J.: Center for Urban Policy Research. McLoughlin, Brian. 1994. Centre or periphery? Town planning and spatial political economy. Environment and Planning A 26:1111-1122. Watson, Sophie, and Kathy Gibson, eds. 1994. Postmodern Cities and Spaces. Oxford, U.K.: Basil Blackwell. Yiftachel, Oren. 1994. The dark side of modernism: Planning as control of an ethnic minority. In Postmodern Cities and Spaces, eds. S. Watson and Lauria,

K. Gibson, 216-242. Oxford, U.K.: Basil Blackwell. Yiftachel, Oren. 1998. Planning and social control: Exploring the dark side.

Journal of Planning Literature 12:395-406.

Learning through Conflict at Oxford James A. Throgmorton Over the past 10

to 15 years, a diverse mix of planning and scholars have claimed that planning and the policy-related sciences have made an argumentative, rhetorical, neopolicy

pragmatic, or-more broadly- communicative turn (see Forester 1989; Forester and Fischer 1993; Harper and Stein 1995; Healey 1997; Hoch 1994; Innes 1995; Mandelbaum, Mazza, and Burchell 1996; Throgmorton 1996). Innes made the claim most directly when she argued in her 1995 paper that &dquo;a new type of [communicative] planning theorist is beginning to dominate the field&dquo; (183). I think it is fair to say that a clear majority of the planning scholars who attended the Oxford conference on planning theory in April 1998 rejected Innes’s strong claim. Most of the participants wanted to replace communicative theory with their own preferred theoretical approaches. Some argued, for example, that planning should be based on the principles of ecological sustainability. Others argued that it should be based on spatial processes and the regulation of space. Still others promoted a return to Rationality. And so on. In the end, the conference participants proffered such an array of theoretical approaches that resolution of differences among them would require imposing one of them on all the others, or else devising a process which would enable them to engage one another constructively. Ironically, it is just this need to engage others constructively that has led to the increasing interest in communicative theory. As best I could tell, the irony seemed to escape most of the conference participants. After Oxford, those who advocate a communicative approach to planning will continue to make their case, while those who reject that approach will continue to promote their own perspectives. I will not, therefore, try to present a complete summary of &dquo;what happened&dquo; at Oxford as if I were an unbiased reporter. Rather, let me simply offer a few observations that might be of value to fellow communicative theorists and that might facilitate future dialogues about

planning theory. First, communicative theorists should back away from any strong claim to dominate the planning theory field. Although Innes and other communicative theorists surely do not aspire to rule or control the planning theory domain, planning scholars who do not embrace the communication action perspective evidently fear having that perspective imposed on them. In that context, to speak of dominating is to evoke a social relationship to which we should not aspire. Moreover, the diversity of opinion expressed at Oxford amply undercuts the empirical base of any claim to dominance. Second, the diversity of theoretical perspectives expressed at Oxford reinforces the communicative theorists’ claim that any

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