Planning through debate: the communicative turn in planning theory

TLDR

Planning in Western culture originates from Enlightenment modernity, linking democracy and progress, and has evolved into an interactive process that balances capital, citizen, and environmental interests, with emerging inter‑communicative practices. Habermas’s theory of communicative action frames planning as an inter‑subjective project of emancipation, achieved through deliberate mutual understanding and argument.

Abstract

As with so much of Western culture, the contemporary idea of planning is rooted in the enlightenment tradition of 'modernity'. This modern idea of planning, as J. Friedmann has described in his authoritative account of its intellectual origins, is centrally linked to concepts of democracy and progress. Environmental planning, it was argued, put the needs of capital before citizens and the environment. Environmental planning has been understood as a process for collectively, and interactively, addressing and working out how to act, in respect of shared concerns about how far and how to 'manage' environmental change. The outlines of appropriate practices for an inter-communicative planning are beginning to emerge through the work of a range of planning theorists during the 1980s. J. Habermas offers the theory of communicative action as an inter-subjective project of emancipation from fundamentalism, totalitarianism and nihilism through deliberate efforts in mutual understanding through argument.