Taylor_An Analysis of the Planning Profession

Justin Taylor 20330155 PLAN 485: Projects, Problems & Readings PLAN 474

An Analysis of the Planning Profession: What is our Role?

Introduction

The problem with writing histories is two-fold. First, it is the prerogative of the

author to choose to chronicle the subject from any of a great number of vantage points,

or to focus on a single thread out of many. The second is that, when reading and writing

a history, both the individual audiences and the author have a specific knowledge of the

final outcomes, and tend to read the subject matter through that lens. I say all that to

say this; that I believe it will be a benefit to the reader if I were to start near the end –

where I would normally have offered you my lens – before beginning the narrative.

The purpose of this paper is to comprehend the evolution of the planning

profession – and the skills, knowledge, and ideas of its practioners – using the

progression to gauge where the current niche of planning exists, or should exist. It has

been the continual ambition of the planner to strive for the ideal; however, as the

profession begins to settle into a place of equilibrium within our social construct, I

would like to ask whether or not we should be resituating ourselves before we take our

seats?

The Lens: my perspective on the planner

As previously stated, this analysis is not the final truth on who the planner is, nor

is it a completely comprehensive summation of their role. It is, however, a disclaimer of

sorts and it is one of the lenses to how I read the story. The other lens that factors into

my analysis – and which will be discussed in more detail later – is how I view the

epilogue to this narrative being written. I should mention that I have always found that

the use of metaphor is a highly effective tool of analysis when dealing with new or

convoluted concepts; the flaws in your understanding become immediately apparent

and better connections can be made. As such I would like to introduce my analysis as an

analogy. It is the analogy of the doctor as a metaphor for our position as planners.


It is simple to view the planner as a medical professional whose role is to mend

the abrasions and contusions of our spatial fabric – the realm of the physical in which

we live. Many of the fathers of planning made extensive use of analogies of the body’s

systemic functions to illustrate their concepts. But, beginning from the standpoint of

doctors, I immediately recalled the well known saying – constantly reiterated by critics

of the profession – but best vocalized by Le Corbusier; that we are “less than talented

practitioners”. This is a statement which I do not wholly devalue and which made me

consider whether we are simply undergraduate students who never went to medical

school? But upon consideration, this is plainly unfounded. Our practice is so rooted in

academia, and even further in theory, that in many instances it has been a stumbling

block in terms of practical application. So I began to reconsider, whether we are simply

medical students who never fulfilled their years of residency? Practical experience is

essential to understanding any concept beyond the rhetoric, and my question became;

how much experience have we had? The fact that there has been so much critique on

the initiatives of the planning profession and of the failures to measure up to

expectations, tells me that there is in-fact evidence of experience. One of the strengths

of the medical profession is how they document the methods in every case of failure,

and continually integrate into the education of the practitioners the knowledge gleaned

from failures. In the introduction I mentioned that we are beginning to settle into

equilibrium; meaning that our experiences, negative though they may be, have been

sufficient and numerous enough for the profession to have recovered and fallen into

routine. It should be our goal to effect change first and foremost through the education

of future generations of practitioners.

So what of the failures then? This question leads me to begin relating the

process of planning to medical practice in a number of practical manners. Doctors fail all

the time. This is not entirely their fault however. Diagnostic medicine recognizes that

given any number of symptoms, there is an exponential number of conditions that fit

with those symptoms. It is only through experience that they are able to narrow the

diagnosis to a select few conditions in a particular case. On the other hand, fixing one of


the symptoms can often lead to unforeseen complications, new diagnoses, or cause the

patient even more suffering than previously. This is the very essence of planning,

dealing with externalities and infinite variables in the economic, social, and

environmental systems that have direct consequences and reactionary effects to any

interference (Campbell, 1996). I find myself arguing along with Aaron Wildavsky (1973,

p. 131) that “planning is a self-protecting hypothesis”. I agree with the idea that

planners – much like doctors mind you – are able to skirt responsibility in failure and

receive praise in success. I do not find that concept abhorrent or unethical, since there

are externalities that we don’t always have the ability to manipulate, that in turn, lead

to failure. It is better to attempt to rectify unsatisfactory situations when you feel that

there is a solution, than to fear action that may lead to unforeseen circumstances. While

the solution may not always work, when it does there should be gratitude for the

improvement. Planning has had numerous failures, but there has not been enough

appreciation for its successes. I would question a patient that would not prefer

chemotherapy to life-threatening malignant tumors. However, I also understand how

undergoing such a treatment can be viewed as a significant decline from that person’s

current lifestyle; even though in reality it may in fact lead to improvement in the long

run. I find the planning process to be an attempt to deal with the biggest problems first.

There will, however, be side effects to solutions that need more interventions – i.e. a

morphine drip post-chemo, pain once you are off the medication, etc. – there is also

the potential for relapses due to cyclical pressures. So while failure will always be more

apparent than the subtleties of success, we need to strive for the best solutions to our

diagnoses while keeping in mind that variables will change, there will be consequences

to our actions, and that adaptability is the best trait to possess. All in all, I would suggest

that we are not the surgeons or nurses who actually implement the solutions, but

rather, we are prescriptive diagnosticians acting for the common health of our patient.


Progression of the Planning Profession

Intro: Values as Pressures Now that we have established a common perception, we can begin to discuss

the history and the evolution of the planning profession. There are a number of seminal

works that we read and discussed in class; and in my opinion, isolating common threads

tends to come down to the reaction of the planning community more than to the

differing ideas and pressures themselves. I will, however, make an effort to distinguish

those distinct pressures wherever applicable. I feel that the most distinct way change is

perceived is as a value change. So I have identified a few values that are constantly

associated with the planning profession: the planning schema & models, policy, equity,

amenities, and health.

Another way of looking at these concepts is as institutions. Institutions in the

sense of these values are in-fact norms that possess dynamics that persist and change;

they can be regulative which is a legal dimension, or normative in the sense of being

shared values. Everything operates within the construct on the institutions in place in

the social environment. They are the key pressures that constrain individuals and enable

others. Value systems are always adhered to subconsciously; which is why it is necessary

for conscious efforts to be made to reject the current frameworks to institute change. It

is the planner’s job to prescribe these new ideas and purposefully change the rules to

achieve certain goals for the good of the social, urban, economic, and environmental

systems. These changes are never widely valued or accept when first proposed, which

causes change to be slow and incremental. Sometimes, however, change is punctuated

by sudden changes in equilibrium – such as the appearance of the automobile –

followed by longer periods of stasis (Markvart, 2012). This should all be kept in mind as

we progress through the summaries of the Early Town Planning Movement, the

Depression Era, the Wartime and Recovery Period, the Citizen Action Movement, and the

Postmodernism and Neo-Conservatism Era (Bunting & FIllion, 2006).


Early Town Planning Movement (1890s-1939)

To begin, the Garden City Movement – proposed by Ebeneezer Howard – was

the first comprehensive theory to emerge from the profession. Jane Jacobs described

this plan as the “envisioning of not simply a new physical environment and social life,

but a paternalistic political and economic society […] conceived as an alternative to the

city, and as a solution to city problems” (1961, p. 25). This was one of the first utopian

concepts, prescriptive in nature – prescription being something that Jacobs rails against

– where the planner decided on behalf of others what was best for them. In this period

we utilized the tool of legislation to proliferate planning schemes that improved living

conditions in American cities. Zoning legislation was generally considered one of the

great successes produced by planning. Lewis Mumford and Catherine Bauer popularized

many ideas now taken for granted in orthodox planning (p. 27), due to their City

Beautiful and public health models. These solutions, such as sanitary reform – resulting

from the discovery of germ theory of disease – lead to the adoption of codes and

practices that improved health. However, there were negatives in terms of social equity;

for as cities began concentrating growth in the central nodes, power and prosperity

came to the corporations but lead to pockets of extreme poverty. Housing advocates

were unable to provide low-cost housing, and as such, planning divorced from housing

interests (Bunting & FIllion, 2006, p. 323).

After the “Decentrist movement” – as Jacobs described those early fathers of

planning – there was a decline in planning in government due to their fears of socialism.

Few improvements were made since the economy was in a depression; yet social

planning began to have an impact, and the reconnection of housing interests and

planning took place. As zoning continued to spread as an efficient strategy for land

control, cities began advocating regional planning. Le Corbusier and his Radiant City

came directly out of the Garden City ideals, but turned out to be the nail in the coffin for

social utopias. People began to realize that these formulas not only undermined the

economies, but they proved how unprepared planning was to receive change. The

automobile was an integral part of the planning schemes, however, the utopian premise


that: “every significant detail must be controlled by planners and the stuck to”, left no

room for adaptability (Jacobs, 1961, pp. 27-32).

Wartime and Recovery Period (1940-1965)

In this period comprehensive planning began to gain popularity and policy and

regulations rose to the forefront of planning. We began to establish building codes that

dealt with urban blight; establishing standards for green spaces to ensure open

environments, creating wide streets and a writhing masses of highways to support the

automobile boom. Social housing was introduced ineffectively, and mass-production of

housing for the middle class became common. This was the “Modernist era” that used

rational planning as a tool to reshape the urban environment on greater scales (pp. 325-

327).

Citizen Action Movement (1965-1979)

Jane Jacobs was the voice of this movement in her seminal literature, The Death

and Life of Great American Cities. She decryed the philosophies of planning up to that

point and called for a democratization of planning. As the modernist movement

continued there was redevelopment of inner-city neigbourhoods, expantion of parks,

neighbourhood improvement programs were implemented to improve infrastructure,

and environmental assessment procedures were established. However, Jane Jacobs’

outcry for participatory planning created greater opportunities for citizen involvement;

and citizens used their voices to comment on this onslaught of “urban renewal” (p. 328).

Postmodernism and Neo-Conservatism Era (1980-2000)

The fiscal crisis in the 80s lead to fewer resources for planning, and planning was

seen as inefficient and an impediment to market flexibility. This caused planning to

change its approach to focus more on urban design and free-markets; which was

facilitated through the New Urbanism and Smart-growth movements. These models

promoted higher density, mixed use and mixed housing types; to provide diversity,

greater equity, and affordability. Healthy communities became founded on the ideas of


sustainable development; and towns began to revitalize their downtowns, with heavy

focus on amenities and aesthetics (p. 333).

The Future of Planning

Pressures Looking at the evolution of planning, we can see a number of shifts; which when

looking at existing conditions and initial state conditions only, may seem like a

significant amount of change. However, this change was achieved incrementally in a

number of different systems. From shifts in values and institutional systems;

materialism to post-materialism; from anthropocentrism to ecocentrism; from theory

rooted in practice to a separation of theory and practice; from authoritarian to

libertarian social programs; from social-democratic ideology to neo-conservative

platforms; from Keynesian economics to free-enterprise; from centralized visions and

formulated utopian visions to decentralized and adaptive utopian visions – e.g. the

prescribed organization in the Garden City versus the self-organization of the

Sustainable cities of the future (Lewis, 2012). Our views on prescriptive planning are

slowly changing. But should they?

Regardless of the incremental system changes above, there are still common

denominators; persistent – although sometimes severely fluctuating – pressures that

manipulate the great range of sub-systems above. Economics is the greatest influence,

since we consider our well being unquestionably tied to monetary value systems. Thus

everything from policies to practical implementations are limited by the economic

scales. One of our key and original mandates as planners, however, is to deal with

externalities from private market decisions to avoid negative consequences. As I see it,

the more detrimental externalities result from the decisions made in government,

where the power created through the seats of government ripple through all other

systems. But how are we to maintain equity within the systems if we ourselves are

seated on the lowest tier of government? Social influences are the next greatest

pressures. We have been judged since our very founding on the basis of how well the

social environment functions when attempts are made at to balance the inequities in


the system. However, the very essence of the problems in dealing with the social realm

is the utter subjectivity of it all. There can never be a single correct, equitable, and

satisfactory solution for all parties; there is only better or worse, efficient or un-efficient

with regards to social systems. We are required as planners, to strive for those solutions

in the face of the impossibility, to deal with the immense number of variables and

preferences, to prescribe the correct improvements, and to manage the side effects of

those solutions. Environmental pressures are on the bottom of the scale, even though

when considering it objectively, the management of the environment and proper use

and distribution of its resources is essential to our continued survival as a species.

Evolutionary theory purports that survival and replication are the two greatest

motivators to any species. However, we are so entrenched in the current system –

which revolves around the economic markets – that we believe that its destruction

would be the epitome of disaster; when in fact, the same can be argued about the

environment. Sustainability is the future of planning reforms; however, we are limited

by the resource conflict created by pitting the valued uses of the environment against

those of the economy. The crucial point here is that there will be no grassroots change

do to a public outcry in favor of sustainability above profits. I see it as Campbell does;

that” sustainability is a laudable unifying theory and holistic vision” (1996, p. 296). But I

see a paradigm shift occurring only one of two ways: The first being a wiliness from the

bottom up to insist on change – where the planners role would be to act alongside the

public as activists; or the second being a top down policy reform from the government,

with legislation mandating change. Is either of those going to occur in the near future?

No. Can it? Yes. And below outlines how I view the solution.

New Direction

Our position as planners is being solidified, and our processes of education in

theory and method are being recognized and substantiated through both academia and

passage of time. In 1926, at the founding of our formal organizational structures,

Thomas Adams made a statement about the profession: that “no profession is so open

as City Planning to the danger of being watered down to the dilettante level by groups


of civic amateur reformers and untrained exponents of civic improvements” (Birch,

1983, p. 124). I believe that even though Planning moved through periods of change,

transformation of ideas, and has grown in sophistication in terms of positivist methods;

we have become complacent with our position. The warning given by Adams at the

onset of organized planning was reiterated later in the article by Birch – and has grown

to be my highest personal criticism of planners. That the profession relies on “technical

expertise coupled with political neutrality, [and makes the crippling] assumption that

knowledge of problems would lead to their rapid, scientific [implementations]; long

ignoring political realities” (p. 142). If I have learned anything it is that change occurs

where power rests. For the most part, in our democratic society, power rests with the

people – although they only realize it to such a small degree. The public looks to the

government offices as the location of power. Thus the political sphere is the greatest

hindrance to effecting change in our particular social environment. On the other hand, it

can also be the greatest asset depending on how one is situated. I believe that we need

to regard our current situation in government as an ineffective location. I believe that

we need to take a hint from Wilidavsky (1973) and look for a place on the national scale.

There will be no great change in the existing paradigm without a great change in our

perspective. The acquisition of greater power from whence we can prescribe our

solutions will be the only way to effectively bring change to the system.

We have failed in the past, because there are too many variables, systems are

too interconnected to deal with them in isolation. On such a small scale as

municipalities, of course we have failed! The theory we have is legitimate, and Le

Corbusier was right, in that it is rarely implemented properly. If you were to look at

larger scales of planning – such as the protection acts implemented at the provincial

scale – there is evidence of great potential for success. We as planners operate from the

basis of fear; that is the fear of allowing anything evolve without meddling. We operate

out of faith in our own plans with forethought and rationality, yet we are afraid to reach

for the position we so desperately need to effect real change. “Significant control of the

future demands mobilizing knowledge, power, and resources throughout a society” (p.


147); and would require us to do so rationally, systemically, efficiently, with a

coordinated effort and consistency in approach. The power is in politics, and in order to

change any grand perceptions in the social, economic, or environmental contexts, we

need to govern. When there is swelling and inflation in the economy, lacerations in the

equity of the social fabric, and aneurysms occurring in the environment; we are the

doctors who need to prescribe our patients those medications. But it is not just about

the correct solutions, it is about the correct implementation.


Works Cited

Birch, E. L. (1983). Radburn and the American Planning Movement: The persistence of

an idea. In D. A. Krueckeberg, Introduction to Planning History in the United States (pp.

122-151). Center for Urban Policy Research.

Bunting, T., & FIllion, P. (Eds.). (2006). Canadian Cities in Transition: local through global

perspectives (3rd ed.). Toronto: Oxford University Press.

Campbell, S. (1996). Green Cities, Growing Cities, Just Cities?: Urban planning and the

contradictions of sustainable development. APA Journal , 296-312.

Inglehart, R. (1995). The Rise of Postmaterialist Values. In Value Change in Global

Perspective (pp. 67-83). University of Michigan Press.

Jacobs, J. (1961). The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Random

House.

Lewis, J. (2012). PLAN 485: Problems in Planning, lecture discussions. University of

Waterloo.

Markvart, T. (2012). PLAN 474: Sustainable Communities, lecture discussions. University

of Waterloo.

Wildavsky, A. (1973). If Planning is Everything, Maybe it's Nothing. Policy Sciences , 127-

153.

Taylor_An Analysis of the Planning Profession

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