Planner

National interest Global interest

Private interest Community interest

Local Authority

Plan

“Low-responsiveness” of planning

The ‘crisis’ for the Planning Profession

•Shift in Knowledge – away from expert technical knowledge / factual knowledge towards system knowledge. Legitimacy of on-the-ground, upstream factual / identity knowledge rises and shifts reliance on planner as expert.

•Loss of Autonomy – Professional used to be defined by its independence from the state interests and independent expertise. So now the knowledge-dependence shift and autonomy crisis leave the planner with potentially low level of agency.

•Position in relation to L.A.

•Constraints of government policy. Centralisation vs. local discretion. Political relationships.

•Development frameworks and how flexible they are relative to the unpredictability of all interests.

•Kate Barker review - responsiveness

•Relation to Planning system

•Interiority – The professional has been internalised, a process which is perhaps a function of the representative democratic system and consultation model.

Private

Community

National

Global

Policy and Interest Divergence

Policy

time

actor

Unpredictability

•Liquid free market interests

•Resistance to regulation

•Difficult to express

•Disinvestment from geographic community

•‘Imagined’ communities – geographic also imagined.

•Fluidity in movement and unpredictability of ‘investment’

•Legacy of modernist planning on ‘competing’ cultural identities

•Population fluctuations

•Policy change

•Boundary unpredictability

•Ill-defined - Lack of articulation of single ‘ecosystem’ interests – Democratic failure

Unpredictability

Agents' investment in that future is ill-defined and precarious

Responsiveness

Legitimacy

National / Global

‘Local’

Command and Control

Collective / Representative

ParticipatoryChoice

democracy in planning

planningsystem

•Planning has become set somewhat into the space shown in the diagram. Not fully satisfying any of the interests and with the planning system absorbing the planner, the chances of working towards bridging vision gaps between these are slim. The planner’s complicity in the system, and that system’s links to a failing democratic model, mean that planners are unfairly blamed for unresponsiveness to divergent needs.

•The interests remain ‘disjunctures’.

current policy future policy

Feedback / resonance

•“Externalities” of choices made manifest through feedback or resonance.

•Alternative stories of future / past emerge with 'equal' claims to validity.

•Expert knowledge of these future decisions challenged and distributed.

•Works for current and future policy but also for domestic / foreign policy – about internalising the externalities of action. For example, with fair trade – making manifest through resonance the intangible costs and benefits. Bridging future / current, domestic / foreign etc.

'Boundary' Democracy, Complex Systems and the Planner

1

2

•Democracy is based on rights to influence direction of future•Based on interests, rights and responsibilities•Current geographic democracy ignores valid affiliations those in boundary 1 might have with 2, and the impact of the decisions in 2 might have on those in 1.•Based on 'sovereignty' – but problematised by 'imaginary' communities.•Geographic and boundary identities are as much imaginary.

'Rights' of interest not matched by responsibility to those outside boundary. EG of Brasil forestary policy; UK foreign policy; NIMBYism.

Implications for Planning / Planner•Knowledge 'required' to define interests potentially dispersed – cultural, geographic, economic. These are the building blocks of planning.•Tensions between national and local interests – The 'local' doesn't feel the responsibilities to the national interests. Vice versa.•Monopoly over these interests dispersed.

Networks and Communities

•The difference between inward looking community interests and ‘open’ networks?

•Interests (private, community, national or global) draw on different histories to define themselves

•Planning as ‘disruptor’

Global PrivateCommunityNational Local

What has led to these interest being so divergent? In the spaces left by that legacy is the chance to tell new stories that question each interest’s histories and plans.

Planner

•Planning as ‘opportunity’ rush.

•Divergent interests with potentially divergent visions of opportunity.

•Currently there an ill-defined relationship between planning system, government policy and the planner.

•Democratic model has irreconcilable tensions between national, local and global interests all loaded onto the planning system and planner, which is then seen as a failure.

•The planner could re-establish autonomy by using its systems and actor knowledge to operate horizontally across interests, playing a Socratic role.

•Dislocating profession from planning system.

•Also perhaps a space for planner as ‘arbitrator’, a ‘neutral’ judge.

•Rethinking its knowledge advantage / base and re-establishing its legitimacy and reputation.

•Kill the plan - Letting the planner shake free from a non-responsive role within the system.

•Rethink divergent interests – move away from ‘inherent’ differences to retelling stories about commonalities and legacies that brought them about etc? (Points re Nimbyism vs Open systems?)

•The planner as ‘Judge’ – a troublemaking arbitrator. The ambivalence of the planner’s ‘neutrality’ could be used to place them as a ‘why’ agent with arbitration responsibilities. Their legitimacy and independence would have to be paramount.

•Knowledge of the political systems and agents in play.

• The planner as ‘enabler’ – using the system knowledge to facilitate the interest group to develop their visions and possible futures.

•‘Socratic’planner – in the knowledge dispersed world, answers are easily found but a certain monopoly on prescient questions remains – sharing that ability and offering ‘why’. A Socrates without the answers.

•‘De-optimising’ agent – a ‘viral’ programme that deconstructs networks and opens them up to reworking and reordering.