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.