Planning the Public: Some Comments on Empirical Problems for Planning Theory

Abstract

This paper addresses the notions of communicative and participative planning through an examination of some empirical difficulties in the case of a British planning process. It focuses on the different understandings found amongst participants to a local plan process in terms of the aims and methods of planning and of the future. Two particular problems are considered: the notion of representativeness required for participants to achieve legitimacy, and the disconnections between process and outcome. The paper further considers the rituals of planning as a form of institutionalized thought that supports a particular sort of governance and lends weight to certain epistemologies and technologies. This also challenges the Habermasian notion that participants can somehow set aside their own interests or power during discussions, since this assumes that power and interests are attributes that can be shed, rather than flowing from intrinsic ways of thinking and being in the world.