Culture Change and the Planner

Abstract

City planning possesses abundant observed data, a body of theory, and a genuine experimental technique, at tributes which constitute the minimum bases of a science. The deficiencies of city planning as a science are faults of applica tion, not of structure. The failure of city planning to develop into a science probably rests on the fact that the theorist of planning may speculate on ideals but the planner confronts the cultural realities which restrict the building and rebuilding of cities. The impact of planning measures on the customs of people has often been denied because to admit it would raise complex questions of cultural interrelationships. A more real istic approach would recognize the existing cultural framework and the effect of changing it. In this way, objectives could be openly and frankly stated and the implications of changes could be estimated in costs and benefits. Planned changes of cities and rural areas are now Western civilization's most ex tensive cultural change. For these plans to work culturally and to be judged culturally, researchers in the social sciences and humanities must, at the least, be accorded equality with the elected politician and the legal jurist in the making of decisions: they must be allowed to act as well as to talk.—Ed.