Planning in the Public Domain

John Friedman, 1987

 Rationality in Planning
• Rationality: relation between means and ends.
• Market Rationality:
Rationality needs to be justified in terms that are broader than mere self-
interest.

It needs to be demonstrated that “my action” will tend to benefit the collectivity
as well (Basic position of Adam Smith: private vices yield public benefit)

Social welfare is enhanced, so long, as an action makes at least one person

better off than before, and no one’s situation is made worse
The gain of some is not necessarily inconsistent with the gain of all

The individual is assumed logically prior to society

Rationality in Planning: Social Rationality
• Social formation were said to be logically prior to
the individual, whose separate identity as a person
derived from membership in a specific group
• Individual ought to be exercised in the name of the
group so that its collective interests might be
properly formulated and pursued through
appropriate action
 Planning before 19th century
• Rational, Euclidean order upon the organic forms of
nature -------- Orthogonal Design ------- Artificial rational
ordering of space
• Proto city of the ancient world:
– Ceremonial center of the Chou Dynasty
– Teotihuacan Mexico
– Angkor Wat Khmer Empire (All classic examples)
– Pierre Charles LEnfant design for the federal capital
at Washington DC (more recent example)
Orthogonal Design
• Physical arrangements
• Static hierarchical world that was constituted as part of
cosmic order
• It had to conform by priest, theologians, astrologers.
Were not obliged to justify their work in rational
discourse.
• Pragmatic knowledge or orthogonal design was typically
passed from Master to apprentice I actual work
situation
The uses of Planning
• In modern sense, started in early 20th
century
• To trace its ideological roots, we must go
back to early 19th century
• Work of Saint Simon and Auguste Comte
 The uses of Planning
• Modern planning: early 20th century
• Science working in the service of humanity
• Technical reason and social rationality
• The substantial transformation in society to achieve this
type of planning:
– A science of society together with several disciplines
had to grow to maturity and gain a social acceptance
– Industrial revolution had to mature before
bureaucratic state would take an active role in
promoting the new economic forces
 Modern Panning
• A Form of Technical Reason: modern planning is
applied to the full range of problems that arise in the
public domain
• Planning takes place in and is adopted to a rapidly
changing and increasingly turbulent world
• Knowledge derived from scientific and technical
research
• Must conform to human reason must be validated in
rational open discourse
Modern Planning
• The first implementation
– The allocation of raw materials to the German
war machine (WW I)
– Mobilizing America’s war economy (WW II)
– Afterwards, Planning ideas proliferated in urban
and regional level
– The first professional degree in city planning :
Harvard University in 1923
 Contemporary Planning Practice
• National security planning
• Economic planning (national state local): investment, employment,
monetary policy, trade, strategic resources (energy), etc
• Social Planning (national state local): meeting individual and
collective needs
• Environmental Planning (national state local): water resource, public
land management, resource conservation, etc
• City Planning: land use, local transport, urban redevelopment, urban
design, community development
• Regional development planning: natural resource development,
regional economic development, comprehensive rural development,
location of industry (growth centers), regional transportation
Contemporary Planning Practice
• Planning is put in the ----------- Management of
Change in territorially organized society
• Chart 2
• All ten uses of planning correspond to some notion
of social rationality and not one to the market
rationality
The uses of planning
Planning in the Public Domain: Basic concepts
Planning in the Public Domain: Basic concepts
• Territorially Based System of Social Relations
• Whatever the scale: territorial system tend to look
back on common history and forward to a common
density
• Although people could escape through migration
------- most are remain in the same place
• Therefore, people seek for some measure of
political control
 System of Political Order
• Territorially organized social system are typically
organized as political systems
• Basic institutions of self governance
• An organized system of legitimate coercion
• This does not extend to a full length: the leftover
space is took over by revolutionary practice (refused
legitimacy of established political order)
 Maintenance, Change, and Transformation of the System

• Basic dynamic of territorial system: maintenance,

change, and transformation
• System maintaining practices state bureaucratic in
nature
• System transforming practices involve a mobilized
political community acting autonomously
• Mediating these extremes: system changing practices;
radicals become integrated in the structure of the
guidance system of society (Conflict and Compromises)
 Societal Guidance
• This concept covers activities comprising primarily
system maintenance and change
• Though mediated by the state, process of societal
guidance are also promoted by central institutions from
other domain especially from corporate economy.
• In short societal guidance means: A TOP DOWN
MANAGEMENT OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS WHICH INCLUDES
ADMINISTRATION AND PLANNING AS WELL AS
POLITICAL PRACTICES. It exclude revolutionary
practices
 Administration and Planning
• These two bars should be looked at simultaneously
• Administration refers to the management of program
routines and is therefore concerned chiefly with
activities of system maintenance
• Planning, by contrast, is concerned mainly with
informing processes of system change, which form its
boundary on the left.
• It extends the entire length of the bar representing
political order because planning established politics
and institutions that make it possible
 Allocative, Innovative, and Radical Planning
• Three principal forms that planning can take
• Allocative planning: central disposition of scarce
resources (financial land labour): budgeting, land use
planning, economic development planning
• Innovative planning: institutional changes in the system
of societal guidance: formation of new institutions of
panning
• Radical planning: organizing citizens power towards
social transformation: citizens movement; feminist
movement
 Revolutionary Practice
• Work with seeking the dissolution and breakdown
of political order.
• In its pure form, revolutionary practice remains
outside the public domain.
 Important Conclusion of the Model
• The practice of planning IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN has both political
and technical aspects
• Technical aspects are especially pronounced in bureaucratic
practice; political aspects predominate in political practice; Both
however are present to some extent in both forms of practice.
• Bureaucratic practice is articulated through the institutional
structures of the state; political practice has its origin in the
politically active community. Effective territorial governance needs
both, but often both are in conflict.
• For this reason, state will attempt to bypass or suppress political
practice but political practice is the major sources of structure
innovation.
 Formal Concepts of Planning
• The broadest definition of planning as a form of
technical reasons is:
• PLANNING ATTEMPS TO LINK SCIENTIFIC AND
TECHNICAL KNOWLEDGE IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN (1)
• So, planning is not wholly concern either with
knowing or acting but rather SERVES AS A LINK.
• ITS SPECIFIC TASK IS TO MAKE SCIENTIFIC AND
TECHNICAL KNOWLEDGE USEFUL TO SPECIFIC ACTORS
IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN
 Formal Concepts of Planning
• PLANNING ATTEMPS TO LINK SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL
KNOWLEDGE TO PROCESSES OF SOCIETAL GUIDANCE (2)

• PLANNING ATTEMPTS TO LINK SCIENTIFIC AND

TECHNICAL KNOWLEDGE TO PROCESSES OF SOCIAL
TRANSFORMATION (3)

• Societal guidance through the state concern with

systematic change; social transformation through political
practices and system transformation : Planning are in both
Each of these three definitions has roots in DIFFERENT INTELLECTUAL TRADITION

• DEFINITION I: The concept of action is central.

• Action is prior to any need for scientific and
technical knowledge
• Actors request the service of planners; they are in
charge
• The concept is taken from POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
 DEFINITION II : SOCIETAL GUIDANCE
• Societal guidance is a concept drawn from MACRO
SOCIOLOGY (approach to sociology which emphasizes the analysis of
social systems and populations on a large scale)
• It implies a central involvement of the state and
incorporates both allocative and innovative planning
• NEO-CLASSICAL (an approach to economics that relates supply and
demand to an individual's rationality and his ability to maximize utility or
profit)AND INSTITUTIONAL ECONOMICS (economics in
influenced by behavior-cultural-norms), PUBLIC
ADMINISTRATION
 DEFINITION III: SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION

• Drawn primarily from both anarchist and Marxist

literature and utopian tradition
• Political theory and political sociology
 THE INTELLECTUAL TRADITION
• Intellectual tradition and authors are placed along
a continuum of SOCIAL VALUES
• From conservative ideology (left side) to
utopianism and anarchism (right side)
• Social reform (1) ----- Policy Analysis (2) -----------
• Social Learning (3) --------- Social Mobilization (4)
KNOWLEDGE CONSERVATIVE RADICAL
TO ACTION
In societal POLICY SOCIAL
guidance ANALYSIS REFORM

In social SOCIAL SOCIAL

transformation LEARNING MOBILIZATION
 SOCIAL REFORM
• FOCUS: The role of state in societal guidance

• make action by the state more effective

PLANNING IS REGARDED AS: Scientific Endeavour

Using the scientific paradigm to inform and to limit politics;

what are deemed to be its proper concerns
 A SIMPLE MODEL OF SOCIETAL GUIDANCE
Responsiveness
ELITES

Needs n Wants Mobilization

Desires and Values Control

ACTIVE PUBLIC

Consensus Formation
Active society has the potential capacity to act together as one entity by drawing on
set of values
Post modern societies experience new organizations and techniques of
contextuating control ---------- link control more closely to consensus formation
 A SIMPLE MODEL OF SOCIETAL GUIDANCE
• Planning mixes with more general process of societal guidance
• This mixing is a matter of degree , as planners are assumed to
have the political roles (part of social elites).Some planners
may attempt to learn about the perspectives of the decision
makers and take this perspective into their planning.
• Other planners will wish to explore the perspective of those
who are likely to be affected by the plan
• Some other planners will seek a much higher level of
articulation with societal guidance institutions (European
Economic Community; British National Economic
Development Council)
 SOCIAL REFORM
• VOCABULARY: macrosociology, institutional
economics, and political philosophy
• PHILOSOPHY: Planning is the application of scientific
knowledge to public affairs
• STRONG ROLE OF THE STATE
• The promotion of economic growth
• The maintenance of full employment
• The redistribution of income
 SOCIAL REFORM
• THE CENTRAL QUESTIONS:
– What is the proper relation of planning to politics
– What is the nature of the public interest, and should
planners have the power and obligation to promote
their version of it
– What is the role of the state to market economy
– Institutionalization of planning: should planning be
comprehensively used as an instrument of societal
guidance and control by the state? Should planning
be divided among autonomous actors?
 SOCIAL REFORM
• FORMED THE TOOLS NEEDED BY THE STATE TO
MANAGE THE ECONOMY IN THE PUBLIC INTERESTS
(urban and regional economics, development
economics)
 POLICY ANALYSIS
• FOCUS: behavior of large organizations and particularly how
they might improve the ability to make rational decisions

– What best would be limited by resources, information, time

for making the decisions
– (This is a model of bounded rationality)

• VOCABULARY: neoclassical economy, statistics, mathematics

– SUB DISCIPLINE: SYSTEM ANALYSIS (mathematical modeling);
POLICY SCIENCE (combined neo-classical economy and
political science)
 POLICY ANALYSIS
• CENTRAL QUESTIONS INFORMING THIS TRADITION
(ESSENTIALLY TECHNICAL)
– What are the relative advantages of comprehensive
and incremental policy analysis?
– Different model yields different types of solutions
– Policy analyst make forecast about economic
variables. What are the best method?
– Most policy analyses contain huge areas of
uncertainty about the future . How should these
great unknowns be treated?
 POLICY ANALYSIS
• The ideal typical decision model:
1. Identification and design major alternatives
2. Predictions of major consequences
3. Evaluation of consequences
4. Decisions
5. Implementation
6. Feedback
FOCUS OF POLICY ANALYSIS: 2, 3, 4
 POLICY ANALYSIS

• As a field policy analysis is established from three streams

of intellectual discourse:
– System engineering (strong bias for quantitative
modeling)
– Management science (a general system-theory approach-
The dominant organizational theories in management today. It treats an
organization as either an open or closed system. A system is a set of distinct
parts that form a complex whole. A closed system is not affected by its
environment, while an open system is)
– Political and administrative science (behavioral
orientation focus on political institutions)
 POLICY ANALYSIS

• What made convergence of these three traditions

possible was a shared belief that
– The objective methods of science could and indeed
should be used to make policy decisions more rational
– More rational decisions would improve the problem-
solving ability of organizations.
 The BASIC ECONOMIC MODEL OF POLICY ANALYSIS: WITH PROPER
PACKAGING SUPPLIERS MIGHT ACTUALLY SUCCEED IN CREATING A DEMAND FOR WHAT THEY HAD TO SELL

PROBLEMS
MONEY

POLICY ANALIST POLICY MAKER

SUPPLY DEMAND

REPORTS
ADVICE