Is the Just City just enough?

The Reading: New Directions in Planning Theory by Susan S. Fainstein

This week’s reading covered three ideas of planning, two conceptual and one practical. The first section provided an analysis of the Communicative Planning model, pioneered by Patsy Healey, the author of the reading of two weeks before. Healey’s position is build upon the foundations of advocacy planning and community consultation, the selling point of theorist such as Paul Davidoff and Sherry Arnstein. However, Fainstein is critical of the Communicative Planning model for being too abstract. Planners must take on the somewhat unlikely role of communicators and mediators – a very value laden position within the dialogue of planning. Fainstein acknowledges that while Communicative Planning has strong merits, the ultimate result of including the voices of many is that some will be heard louder than others, whether because of their perspective on an issue of their power and influence. To paraphrase Fainstein, the problem with Communicative Planning is that power of speech depends on the power of the speaker. Inevitably traditional power roles have a way of influencing the Communicative Planning model. 

The second examination of planning comes through a critique of New Urbanism. This is a very practical application of urban planning. It is almost a renaissance of the design focus of City Beautiful and Garden City movements. I am really drawn to the concept of New Urbanism, and I think there have been some fascinating projects, such as two towns in Florida, Seaside (which provided the set of The Truman Show) and Celebration, a town build by the Disney Corporation. I used to love the idea of Celebration; of the matching house designs and simple but elegant boulevards. However, after doing further research for a project in Year 12, it almost seemed like some sinister Stepford Wives community with this strict corporation forcing this fake sense of familiarity and old world charm in a still very new community (note the police car patroling the streets below). This is Fainstein’s critique of New Urbanism: it promotes an unrealistic sense of environmental determinism, whereby physical spaces are thought to provide every aspect of social desire. However, this is pure oxymoron. You cannot manufacture designated points of social interaction without living in a city first, much like you cannot tell how a house will properly function until you live in it. Ultimately, New Urbanism shows a disregard for consumer preferences in favour of the grand vision of the planner and designer. 

This brings us to Faintein’s main body of work, the Just City movement. In fact, her most well known work is titled ‘The Just City’, and it won her the Paul Davidoff Award for Social Change and Diversity. This strikes me as odd, as the Just City is strongly routed in the political economy. While this is not unwelcome in our increasingly capitalist world full of globalisation, NGOs and transnational corporations, it seems out of place when improving the social structure for the underprivileged, as the Award would suggest Fainstein’s work did. The theory of a just city promotes Fainstein’s Neo- Marxist attitude to urban planning. She does advocate for a level of communicative planning, but stakeholders must be clearly identifiable and their involvement must result in a benefit to the whole project, not just to satisfy their need for inclusion in the planning dialogue. However, Fainstein disembarks from a pure method of empowering the disenfranchised to advocate for increased wealth for the middle class. As Adam said in his presentation to the class, and as Canberra based architect Sheila Hughes also noted in a presentation I went to, can there be prosperity without growth? I think this is my main criticism of Fainstein’s just city approach, in that it is too deeply rooted in economics to acknowledge a more slow paced sense of achievement through more sustainable means of development, incorporating more aspects of environmentalism and preservation, rather than being purely urban focussed. After all, we study Urban and Regional Planning.

A Paradigm Struggle

The Reading: “Anglo-American Town Planning Theory Since 1945: Three Significant Developments but no Paradigm Shifts” by Nigel Taylor

I couldn’t help compare this week’s reading with that from Week Three: Eugenie Ladner Birch’s “Practitioners and the Art of Planning”. While Birch provided an overview of the development of the planning profession in the 20^th Century, Taylor focuses on the turning points that changed how people think about planning. Namely, the shift away from planning as physical urban design in the 1960s; the shift away from planners as technical experts to planners as value-laden social analysts and facilitators; and the third describing the movement from Modernism to Post-Modernism. 

However, Taylor insists that these turning points are not, in fact, paradigm shifts, as other prominent planning theorist have stated. Thomas Kuhn promoted the idea of paradigm shifts as related to science. In his terms it meant a fundamental change in the assumptions (or paradigms) which is then difficult to reject or renounce. The term has now grown in popularity and is used widely outside the discipline of science. Ideas of planning theorists are often acknowledges as paradigm shifts, such as Jane Jacob’s ideas of urban redevelopment and the complexity of the city described in her most famous work “Death and Life of Great American Cities” (1961). The ideas of citizen participation and advocacy planning as expressed by Sherry Arnstein and Paul Davidoff had similarly significant ideas and are held in high regard. Despite all these highly influential concepts, Taylor hold firm the idea that urban planning has not undergone a paradigm shift of Kuhnian proportions. 

 I’m still caught up as to whether shifts in planning theory are significant enough to be called ‘paradigm shifts’. Birch uses the changed wording of the American Planning Association’s mission statements throughout the 20^th Century as marking shifts in thinking. However, Birch also states that the mission statements always seemed to be playing a game of catch up, as planning theory had evolved beyond the definitions provided by the APA. Therefore it’s easy to pinpoint the official changes to the mission statements, but they were by no means the leading authority which influenced planning theory and definitions. The mission statements were constantly updated to reflect more contemporary thinking that was already present within the planning community.

Thus I still don’t think changes in planning theory can be stated as “paradigm shifts”. There have definitely been defining moments in planning theory to influence a new ways of thinking but, in general, it seems to have been a gradual movement. Yes there are periods of change but ten years of evolving thinking over the 1960s does not a paradigm shift make.

Stop! Collaborate and Listen!

The Reading: The Communicative Turn in Planning Theory and its Implications for Spatial Strategy Formation by Patsy Healey

This week’s reading presented an idealistic approach to communicative planning. Healey’s dense phrasing and long sentences made way for two key theories, Communicative Argumentation and Inclusionary Argumentation. Healey argues this is the third major shift in planning thinking, after the methodological approach of rational strategic planning in the 1960s and 1970s and more aggressive practices of the 1980s. However, Healey’s argument doesn’t acknowledge the participatory planning theories presented in previous readings we looked at by Paul Davidoff, Sherry Arnstein and John Forester.

Instead, Healey bases her concept of Communicative Argumentation in the theories of Jürgen Habermas, a German sociologist and philosopher. Habermas advocates rationalisation, which strives to replace emotive and value laden behaviour with a more calculated and rational approach to discourse. However, this seems to go against the principles that Healey presents in her own argument of inclusionary practices, especially since she has stated that planning theory has moved beyond the methodological approach of the 1960s and 1970s. However, where Habermas and Healey come together is their agreement in the process of deliberative democracy and their presentation of distrust in the political sphere. Habermas theorised through his most famous work, Theory of Communicative Action (1981) that people must re-establish their social obligations and encourage the growth of the public realm, a concept which Healey reiterates in the reading. Thus, both scholars see the need to increased public activism to improve the communicative practices between the political and public spheres. 

The main point I took away from this reading was the theory of creating arenas to suit specific argumentation. It makes sense to craft a situation to suit a specific audience, and Healey is good to point out that anyone with a vested interest in a project should be part of the consultation process. Healey states that formal arenas can often have negative impact of communication, as ‘their form privileges some and marginalises others.” She insists argumentation must consider the arena in which is occurs and must be respective to its audience. By doing so, the process of deliberative democracy and inclusionary argumentation is easier to achieve. Healey acknowledges that different participants will have different expectations of how discussions should take place and it is important to revue proceedings. 

Choosing the right arenas is always important

However, this comes back to a point I made in the class discussions, whereby there must be a sense of mutual obligation between participants and discussion directors. As much as planners and other agents must facilitate communication and participation of stakeholders, there is only so much they can do assure active involvement. If the audience of a discussion remains passive through such an event as a community meeting, how can they challenge plans that are physically put into action when they didn’t challenge them in the theoretical stage? I think the public sphere needs to take more responsibility for its involvement and acknowledge it is not a powerless group. Maybe some of Healey’s ideas are too naive, but if a watered down version was adopted by stakeholders, I think a more involved planning process could be achieved.

Plans, Buildings and Other City 'Things'

The Reading: Contested Cities: Social Process and Spatial Form by David Harvey (1997)

David Harvey is a very well renowned geographer, political scientist and general social theorist. He has worked with multiple universities during his career, such as Oxford and the London School of Economics and Political Science. I was very impressed to know he is one of the most referenced scholars of the 20^th century.

The complexity surrounding the definition of community was an interesting concept presented by Harvey. He states that by associating oneself with a certain community, it can often serve to ‘other’. People use the word to mean so many different things or even to fill a gap that it no longer represents the ideas of connectedness, structure and organisation. I can see how confusing the definition of ‘community’ could affect the outcomes of a community. Needs may not be addressed and people may become marginalised.

This links to the ‘right the city’, a concept first presented by French planner Henri Lefebvre. He defined the term as “demand...[for] a transformed and renewed access to urban life”. Harvey suggest that people have lost their connection to their city. The city has become another thing. However, the city is not a thing, it is a dynamic and constantly changing environment that requires citizens to be engaged. Harvey, and the ‘right to the city’ concept, promote active citizenship. People need to avoid the trap of hiding from the problems in gated communities, neglected the needs of disadvantaged citizens. Resources must be redistributed to those who cannot help themselves. There should be no marginalisation of the poor through the indifference of the rich, as Harvey suggests. Harvey’s  concept of ‘things’ is supported by Robert A. Beauregard his 2012 piece Planning with Things. He further references John Forester, who’s reading was the subject of my previous blogpost. Beauregard acknowledges how planners must plan for ‘things’, whether realised or not. Planners don’t always theorise, there must be some practical application, which takes place in the form of planning for, designing and constructing ‘things’.

In relation to contestation, much like the previous reading by Forester, Harvey suggests planning is rife with conflict. Ideas will be contested and concepts will be contested, but more importantly, on a professional level, bids for development applications will be fought. Bargains will be made and political allies and rival will be carved out amongst the planning community, developers and local government. Harvey suggests that contestation ensures the best process is achieved. Through professional competition and tendering of offers, planners can create new developments which satisfy political and economic requirements but also improve the spatial form of a city.