introduction: outlining the power of planning - geog.bgu… · introduction 3 deficiencies and...
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In: Yiftachel, O., Alexander, I., Hedgcock, D. and Little, J. (2001, Eds).
The Power of Planning: Spaces of Control and Transformation
Kluwer Academic, pp. 1-19
INTRODUCTION:
OUTLINING THE POWER OF PLANNING
OREN YIFTACHEL1
What is the impact of urban and regional planning on social and political relations?
What are the main influences of planning on the distribution of power and resources?
Are they mainly ‘progressive’ or ‘regressive’? Does planning advance social reform or
legitimise oppressive control? What are the political, philosophical, cultural or material
roots underlying the power of planning (or lack of) in late-modern globalizing societies?
Who holds the power to use the tools and instruments of urban and regional planning?
Can we discern changes in the above over time and between places?
These broad questions have guided the editors in compiling this volume. They
emerged as a result of unease among the editors and writers of this book, to what
appears as a somewhat narrow and limiting analytical scope of planning research and
theorization. The book seeks to present a series of studies, which examine openly and
critically some of the taken-for-granted assumptions about, and approaches to, planning,
and hence assist in broadening and deepening its analytical scope.
This introduction aims to construct a critical and conceptual foundation for the
following chapters. It is not meant to offer a thorough review of the literature, but rather
to delineate five key areas of deficiency in mainstream planning research, theory and
thought. These include: (a) a confused demarcation of disciplinary boundaries; (b) a
dominance of professional perspectives; (c) a privileging of process over substance; (d)
a slighting of planning’s spatial dimensions; and (e) the unchallenged acceptance of
planning’s benevolent power.
It is the fifth point with which we engage most fully. The book seeks to openly
study the power of planning to shape societal relations, and document and the many-
fold manifestations of that power: emancipatory, reformist, progressive, normalizing,
legitimizing, regressive and oppressive. Following a brief discussion on the engagement
with the concept of power in past planning scholarship, the introduction proceeds to
1
The Introduction was written after consultation with the entire editorial team (David Hedgcock, Ian
Alexander and Jo Little) to whom I owe gratitude for their useful input. The responsibility for the text,
however, remains with the author. Importantly, the introduction also includes several ideas developed
with Margo Huxley and material from our recent joint article (see: Huxley and Yiftachel, 1999). I am
very grateful for Margo’s input and wisdom, and for her willingness to let me use material from our joint
work.
O.YIFTACHEL 2
describe how the book’s chapters and parts engage with these deficiencies, and how
they respond to the critical questions we raise about the power of planning.
1. The Canon and Its Limits
For a young discipline, ‘urban and regional planning’ (or ‘town and country planning’
and ‘city planning’ as it is also called in the UK and North America, respectively) has
developed an impressive scholarly track record. For nearly a century, highly capable
minds have attempted to analyze, comment and prescribe the ‘good city’. Their studies
and models have formed the backbone of a growing field of scholarly endeavor, as well
as given conceptual and practical tools for planners occupied with ‘real life’ efforts to
guide the development of cities and regions.
Without entering into the debate over the relative importance of specific
planning texts, it is possible to tentatively mark the seminal works of the likes of
Howard, Geddes, Stein, Perry, Garnier, Lloyd-Wright, Le-Corbusier, Mumford, Harvey,
McLoughlin, Faludi, Friedmann, Castells and Hall, among others, as having shaped the
way scholars and practicing planners have thought about the making of cities and
regions, roughly until the late 1980s (for reviews, see Cherry, 1988; Friedmann, 1987;
Hall, 1988; Sandercock, 1998, Yiftachel, 1998). Despite the necessarily contested
nature of marking any group of works as a disciplinary canon, it can be observed that
the works of these scholars (and probably of several others) have formed a frequently
quoted and used core of disciplinary knowledge especially in the industrial west.
During the last decade, a growing number of planning theorists have taken a
‘communicative turn’ (Healey, 1996), in describing and theorizing urban and regional
planning (see also: Sager, 1994, 1999; Hillier, 1998). A rapidly growing amount of
work drawing on Habermasian, ethnographic and related frameworks has prompted
some to articulate the emergence of new forms of ‘collaborative’ or ‘deliberative’
planning (Healey, 1997; Forester, 1999). The density of work using this approach
brought some to declare the ascendancy of a ‘new paradigm’ (Innes, 1995), or the
existence of ‘consensus’ among scholars about key theoretical and methodological
questions (Mandelbaum, 1996, 2000). The claims to prominence of this approach to
planning research are well articulated by Innes (1995: 183) who describes the
communicationist scholars as:
Different from their predecessors, who did primarily armchair theorizing.... The
new theorists pursue the questions and puzzles that arise from practice ... and do
grounded theorizing based on richly interpretive study of practice ... they apply
intellectual lenses new to planning ... Their work gained the attention of both
academics and practicing planners because it is accessible and interesting.
Although these declarations are contestable (Huxley and Yiftachel, 2000;
Neuman, 2000), it appears as though the ‘communicationist’ approach, in the eyes of
some, has joined the disciplinary canon.
But despite the rich and pioneering nature of the seminal studies cited above, and
despite their important role in shaping the planning discipline, as-we-know-it, several
INTRODUCTION 3
deficiencies and fault-lines are evident in that scholarship. These form the basis for this
essay, which attempt to point towards new areas of thought and research, with the aim
of enriching the body of scholarship to which I refer loosely as ‘planning knowledge’.
The following pages will thus sketch a broad critique and initial agenda which have
framed the selection of material for the book. The various chapters do not always deal
with the theoretical and epistemological issues raised in this introduction, but their
material addresses some of the deficiencies and agendas highlighted here, and may thus
be viewed as an empirical extension (from a variety of perspectives) of the present
discussion.
The present introductory essay highlights deficiencies in the prevailing body of
planning knowledge in several key areas: analytical confusion, a professional ‘straight-
jacket’, a dominance of process over substance, a diminution of space, and an
unwarranted faith in the benevolent power of planning. These deficiencies hamper, in
my view, the accumulation and consolidation of a solid body of knowledge, which can
form a credible, scholarly foundation for the planning field. Let us now turn to a brief
exposition of these areas of critique.
2. Analytical Confusion: What’s in a Definition?
It has been commented for quite some time that planning scholarship is marked by deep
analytical confusion regarding the nature, boundaries and methods of its endeavor (see,
for example: de-Noufville, 1983; Reade, 1987), leading McLoughlin (1994) to declare
that the entire discipline and concept of planning is ‘chaotic’. The analytical
shortcomings of the scholarly field loosely called ‘planning’ are too many to enumerate
here, beyond focusing on several basic deficiencies which have had a marked effect on
the field.
Let us start with the most fundamental requirement for studying a phenomenon –
its definition. A brief scan of literature pertaining to ‘planning’ would immediately
reveal that the word has a wide variety of meanings. This does not stem from
ideological or political contestation over a term, as common with analytical terms (such
as, ‘democracy’, ‘policy’ or ‘development’), but rather from basic historical and
institutional differences between the various settings where ‘planning’ is practiced.
Hence, for example, Italian scholars have often considered ‘planning’ as part of
the aesthetic design of cities; British scholars have often focused on the regulation of
spatial development in cities and regions; and American scholars have often referred to
‘planning’ as a loose concept, dealing mainly with policy efforts of disparate arms of
government, or the efforts of voluntary, community and semi-public bodies in the
governance of (mainly local) communities. In the absence of a relatively firm definition
of the phenomenon to be studied (‘what are we looking for?’), the search to explain and
improve ‘planning’ has often been akin to shooting in the dark. Nowhere has this
confusion been more evident than in planning theory, which has been unable to agree on
the very subject of its study, and has therefore been sharply criticized (see: Bureaugard,
1995; Flyvbjerg and Richardson, 1998; Scott and Roweis, 1977).
A broad definition of planning appears necessary for the development of a
credible body of knowledge about the shaping of cities and regions. Therefore, it is
O.YIFTACHEL 4
defined here, after Lefbvre (1991), as shaping ‘the public production of space’, or in a
similar vein after Friedmann’ (1998), as ‘the production of urban habitat’. Adhering to
these definitions which emphasize the process of ‘production’, planning’ is portrayed as
including both the procedural (decision-making) and substantive (material, spatial)
aspects of planners’ work.
The term ‘public’ in the definition above denotes the combination of discourses,
public policies, institutions and practices which govern urban and regional
development. These are often shaped under the (direct or indirect) auspices of the
modern state, or other public bodies and organizations. Planning here is both part of the
formal planning system (namely agencies which directly produce urban plans), and the
wider set of institutions, groups and authorities involved in the public regulation and
development of space, including housing, engineering, environmental and development
bodies. This definition attempts to demarcate a broad, yet identifiable, analytical space
within which a scholarly community can develop a common language, and engage in
the useful exchange of ideas and concepts.
Like the confusion over the definition of ‘planning’, the term ‘theory’ has found
most planning theories confused. Theory can be defined in many ways, but in the book
its prevailing meaning is closest to the one identified by Raymond Williams (1983: 316-
318) as "an explanatory scheme" (p. 316), or in the words of the Oxford English
Dictionary, "suppositions explaining a phenomenon; a sphere of speculations and
concepts as distinguished from that of practice".
This emphasis does not necessarily negate the normative or prescriptive elements
of social theories. Indeed, social analysis can never be neatly separated from normative
and ethical assumptions, as these often frame the very questions posed by researchers
and the ways in which the latter observe and interpret the social world. Yet the
explanatory, conceptual, analytical, deconstructive and critical aspects are stressed as
the main ‘pillars’ of the theorizing endeavor, without which the prescriptive and
normative aspects of theory are often shallow and ineffective (see also Fainstein, 2000;
Huxley and Yiftachel, 2000).
The need for emphasizing analytical and explanatory theories is particularly apt
for planning theory, due to its close-knit association with the professional world. As
elaborated below, this association has pulled planning scholarship towards the
prescriptive and the procedural, and away from the explanatory and the substantive, to
the detriment of the production of planning knowledge. To illustrate the need for
explanatory and substantive theories let us quote Michael Zinzun, a black civil rights
activist (cited in Sandercock, 1998: 85):
Theory is necessary to figure out what’s really going on. People always want to
be saviors for their community. It’s like they see a baby coming down the river
and want to jump and save it. We need to stop being so reactive to the situation
that confronts us. Saving babies is fine for them, but we want to know who’s
throwing the goddam babies in the water in the first place.
3. A Professional ‘Straight-Jacket’ and Prescriptive Orientations
INTRODUCTION 5
Despite the oft-heard claim that planning theory is ‘irrelevant’ to planning practice, or
that a ‘chasm’ exists between the two (see: de-Noufville, 1983; Innes, 1995; Hall, 1988:
Chap. 6), it can be observed that over the years planning knowledge has developed
through a close association with what McLoughlin (1992) called ‘the built environment
professions’ (see also Taylor, 1998: Chap. 1). This situation can be identified as a
‘professional straight-jacket’ born out of specific sets of circumstances which gave rise
to urban planning as an organized, state-sanctioned, field of human activity during the
20th
century.
Hence, planning is not an age-old discipline of relatively independent knowledge
emerging from scientific endeavor, such as history, geography or philosophy, but rather
part of the consolidation of the modern nation-state, with its dominant capitalist and
national motives to control and regulate space (Yiftachel, 1998). These motives are
often shaped and buttressed through the association of the state with stabilizing societal
elements, such as the professional middle-classes. Thus, state interests are often
articulated by professional organizations and institutions, including urban and regional
planning. The emergence of most writing with a claim to ‘theory’ in the planning field,
has thus been bound with the institutionalization of planning the need of professional
circles to develop bodies of knowledge in order to give the field depth and legitimacy.
Of course, prescriptive theories about the ‘good life’ and ‘good community’ have
existed since the dawn of human culture, and have proliferated since modernity (see
Friedmann, 1987); but their crystallization into what can be termed ‘planning theory’ is
the product of the circumstances which prevailed in the industrial and national west
around the mid 20th
century, and followed the emergence of institutions which aimed to
control, govern and shape the built environment. The emergence of educational
institutions has been of particular importance, particularly the introduction of ‘planning’
degrees in universities. The formalization of the practices, experiences, ethics and
models of these teachings and research has given us the procedures, practices and
models recognized today as ‘planning knowledge’.
But the academization of professional interests has been accompanied, naturally,
by the professionalization of the academe (see also Reade, 1987). In many respects, the
profession has created an academe which has resulted in a certain dependence of the
academe on professional circles for legitimacy, relevance and often financial backing. It
is argued here that this institutional and intellectual straightjacket caused planning
scholarship to focus on prescriptive, normative and procedural theories to the detriment
of the explanatory and the substantive. While procedural and prescriptive theories are
important, and indeed essential, in the field of urban planning, the lack of focus on
explanatory and substantive theories appears to have hampered the development of a
foundational body of knowledge. Such a body would promote an understanding of state-
sanctioned urban and regional change, or the ‘public production of space and/or urban
habitat’’, as further discussed below.
The link between the academe and the profession has thus shifted the focus and
energy of most planning scholars from the perennial question of ‘what is a good city’ to
the more vocational concern of ‘what is good planning’. These two questions have
existed in parallel in the literature (see: Hague, 1991; Yiftachel, 1989), but the weight
has shifted increasingly towards the latter. This meant that the realms of theory in urban
and regional education and thinking have been increasingly devoted to planning
O.YIFTACHEL 6
methods, processes and interactions, and far less to the substantive nature and
consequences of that activity. Planning scholarship has moved the planner to center
stage, at the expense of the city. It has thus tended to focus on the ‘how’ over the
‘what’, impeding the development of explanatory theories and critical insights. This, it
may be suggested, has caused many planning scholars to slight the study of urban and
regional change, overlook the inseparability of urban planning from spatial processes,
and downplay the importance of oppressive power, as discussed in the next sections.
4. Process over Matter
The prevalence of process over substance in most planning scholarship has been well
illustrated by the dominance of two main theoretical approaches in the short history of
planning thought. Throughout almost three decades – from the 1960s to the 1980s – the
rational planning model reigned supreme, claiming to provide theoretical, professional
and methodological foundations for planning (Alexander, 1992; Faludi, 1973). As we
remember, it was severely challenged from a variety of perspectives, most notably
materialist and feminist (see Scott and Roweis, 1977; Sandercock and Forsyth, 1992),
causing a gradual decline. Even in the words of Faludi (1987), a central figure in the
claims to dominance of rational theories (see: Faludi, 1973: 8), rational planning was
predominantly a methodology (that is, not a theory). Faludi, in his later writings (1994),
urges the integration of spatial considerations into planning theory, a point to which we
shall return below.
Following a brief period during the 1970s and 1980s when materialist theories
(mainly Marxist, but also Weberian and other traditions) gained some prominence in the
texts and discourses of planning theorists (see: Hague, 1984; Taylor, 1998),
‘communicative planning’ became the dominant approach, as discussed above. Other
approaches continued to develop in parallel, notably those influenced by concepts of
environmental sustainability, postmodern critique and feminist thought, but they
remained on the fringes of what was discerned as the disciplinary canon – the main texts
which guide the understanding of scholars, students, practitioners and the public
regarding the nature of urban and regional planning.
To be sure, the professional influence has resulted in rich and groundbreaking
scholarly activity, but one, which nevertheless tended to overlook the need to seriously
study and theorize the substantive elements of the planning endeavor. This has
ultimately weakened the field, because the emphasis on procedures and communication
has not addressed many of the deeper forces of urban and regional change within which
planning work is enmeshed. Our approach in this book attempts to ‘bring back’ a
substantive focus in the generation of planning knowledge. In addition to focusing on
the way in which planners work, scholars are encouraged to study the actual material
and political outcomes of their actions. Needless to say, the two approaches do not
stand in opposition, and cannot even be neatly separated. The process of planning is
indeed critical to the shaping of cities and regions, as well as the power relations in
them. But the dominance of the procedural and communicative approaches (with all the
significant differences between them) has tended to conceal the long-term material
changes caused by urban planning.
INTRODUCTION 7
As well articulated by McLoughlin (1992), after studying in detail the turns and
tribulations of planning in Melbourne, planners, that is the various groups of public
professionals dealing with the regulation of the built environment, tend to be ineffective
because their typical response to a failed plan is the production of yet another plan. This
reaction comes instead of substantive learning, where planners may reevaluate their
work vis-à-vis changes in the urban fabric caused by plans and policies. But such an
approach necessitates a kind of research which explores openly the material, power and
identity consequences of planning (that is, what has been the impact of policies on
cities, communities, environments), and a shift away from the procedural and
prescriptive approaches which has dominated planning thought for a long while. The
chapters in this book are written with this approach in mind.
This may also require planning thinkers not to take the societal usefulness of
planning as a given, and may cause them to challenge – under certain circumstances –
its very existence. If the theoretical literature is a true reflection, the planning
professional community, and with it leading voices in academia, have been unable, or
unwilling, to take this substantive-critical and explanatory approach.
This scholarly direction, as suggested above, has hampered the development of
planning knowledge, and has placed planners in a relatively weak professional status.
This is mainly because unlike other professions, notably medicine, law or teaching,
planning does not enjoy an independent body of knowledge regarded as ‘its own’.
Medical practitioners rely on theories, which explain the workings of human bodies,
while lawyers learn the impact of legal systems on human affairs. These professions
also study about the conduct of the practitioner, but this is not the central theory which
guides their professional activity (see also: Huxley, 1997). A parallel approach among
urban planning theorists would be to develop bodies of knowledge about change and
transformation of cities and regions, that is, to shift the focus from the planner to the
locality, region, community or environment to be planned.
Needless to say, communications, decision-processes and the imaginations of
futures are important elements of this knowledge, and can never be fully separated from
the material basis of cities, as these constitute one another in ceaseless interaction. Yet,
it may be an appropriate time to call for a material and explanatory shift in the planning
and its societal implications. This highlights the need to reintroduce space into the heart
of planning knowledge.
5. Spaceless Planning?
Much of the influential literature on planning, especially in North America, treats
planning as a generic, procedural activity (see: Alexander, 1992; Faludi 1973; Forester
1989; Friedmann 1987; Innes 1995). This approach tends to focus on important
components of the policy process such as democracy, decision-making, citizen
empowerment and the limits to state intervention. But the generic nature of this
literature raises a question: ‘What makes this knowledge specifically relevant to urban
and regional planning?’ Despite the powerful tradition of generic, a-spatial, planning
literature, its space-less nature presents a weakness, mainly because it divorces planning
O.YIFTACHEL 8
theories from fully engaging with the arena in which planners operate, namely cities and
regions. For this they must understand the processes of spatial change.
Therefore, planning is treated here as a specifically spatial practice that is related
to the state and the production of space. Within this view, ‘planning’ could not be
theorized in abstraction from the activities, organizations, and the substantive objects
being planned. If we are to make any sense of the debate around ‘planning’, we have to
be clear about what we are studying -- policies which cause urban, regional and
environmental change. The urban scene, with its clear spatial foundation of location,
development and place, is where planners have an expertise to claim, and where this
expertise can actually be tested, improved and perfected. Planning theory, which
continues to overlook the direct relevance of spatial processes, is akin to medical theory,
which ignores the human body, or legal theory which overlooks the impact of laws on
human affairs.
Leading planning theories have underplayed this context and in the process lost
much of their explanatory and prescriptive potency. Here it is somewhat ironic that
Habermas’s work forms a broad theoretical foundation of the new ‘communicative
turn’, because, as David Harvey (1996: 354) notes: "Habermas has... no conception of
how spatio-temporalities and "places" are produced and how that process is integral to
the process of communicative action and of valuation".
Given this context, most critical approaches to understanding planning, cities and
urbanization, the spatial dimensions of difference and disadvantage, power and
regulation, have recently developed in other fields, mainly human geography,
sociology, politics, architecture and law. But they have remained at a distance from
mainstream planning literature, especially in the influential American academic scene
(see Huxley and Yiftachel, 2000). As already hinted, this disciplinary isolation has
come at a substantial cost: a certain peripherialization of planning theories from the
main subject areas of the planning project: the material development processes which
shape the home, the city, the region, the territory and the state.
But the immediate relevance of spatial processes cannot be ignored for too long.
Recently, two leading theorists who had been among the main proponents of generic (as
opposed to urban/spatial) planning: Andreas Faludi (1996) and John Friedmann (1998),
have both made what may be described as a ‘spatial turn’. The first, in his suggestive
theory of ‘planning doctrines’, portrays ‘spatial organisation’ as one of the key
conceptual and material bases for planning. The latter makes a similar shift by
highlighting the importance of studying ‘the production of the urban habitat’ in a
rejuvenated planning theory, and by acknowledging the lack of due reference to this
aspect in his earlier work.
It may be high time for a ‘spatial turn’ among other leading theorists, in order to
create a shared theoretical discourse directly relevant to the actual practice and material
consequences of planning. Needless to say, focussing on ‘the production of space and
urban habitat’ does not obscure the importance of decision-making and communications
for the analysis of planning, rather it firmly incorporates the spatial and political-
economic embeddedness often overlooked in past theories. Neither does such a shift
turn planners into geographers, mainly because the latter rarely focus on the policy
arena and on the politics of policy-making. It is precisely the combined knowledge of
the substance of cities and regions, and the making of spatial policies, which demarcates
INTRODUCTION 9
the niche for planning expertise. This theoretical and practical ‘zone of knowledge’
exists in constant dialogue with neighboring disciplines such as geography, politics and
sociology. But serious engagement with these social sciences, so essential for planning
knowledge, also teaches us that no spatial change occurs outside power relations, to
which we now turn.
6. Benevolence and Power
A further deficiency evident in previous planning scholarship is a somewhat narrow,
and analytically limited, assumption about the societal power of planning. The general
story planners are told by the historical and conceptual architects of the discipline is that
it emerged out of the unacceptable and inhumane living conditions prevalent in the
rapidly expanding industrial cities of the 18th and 19th centuries. The emergence of
planning was intimately linked to a broader reform movement, which sought to redress
the ills of unconstrained capitalism, through changes to the politics, economy and
geography of cities (see Hall, 1988).
While early planning thinkers (like later ones) were clearly divided along
ideological lines, a discernible agreement underlay the development of planning thought
and the emergence of the planning profession: planning should, first and foremost, act
to improve people’s (mainly physical) living conditions. This basic assumption formed
the foundation for theories and tools, which were later developed to guide public
intervention in the land development process, and for the discourse developed by the
profession. Most of the theories and concepts developed in planning during subsequent
decades thus focused on key questions such as: what is a good city/region? How do we
make the ‘good city/region?’ what is a good planning process? (see Cherry, 1988; Hall,
1988; Schaffer, 1988; Flyvbjerg and Richardson, 1998; Sorensen and Auster, 1990;
Yiftachel, 1989, 1994).
We can therefore observe that an underlying assumption accords a benign role to
planning in society, forming a common point of departure for most planning studies.
This was not always fully or explicitly articulated, but has nonetheless been ever-
present in both scholarly and professional circles, attaching fundamentally positive,
reformist and even emancipatory qualities to urban and regional planning. This belief in
planning has ruled supreme, often without subjecting the discipline or the planning
endeavor, with its supporting sets of practices and discourses, to critical examination.
Evaluative studies on the performance of planning systems clearly attest to this
taken-for-granted perception of ‘planning as reform’. Studies, such as Pearce (1992) and
Healey (1992), Cullingworth (1994) and Taylor (1998), examine the historical
performance of planning by using analytical yardsticks pertaining to progressive goals,
such as amenity, order, efficiency, distributive justice, public participation, and
environmental protection. In these works, planning and planners are treated as ‘do-
gooders’ whose frequent failures relate mainly to ‘external’ political and economic
forces, or to technical difficulties. Even the thoroughly reflective work of Friedmann
(1987) delineates four main perspectives which have dominated the development of
planning theories and concepts: social reform, policy analysis, social learning and social
mobilization. These four concepts -- beyond their many differences -- share a common
O.YIFTACHEL 10
denominator of planning as an agent of ‘positive’ change. Taylor (1998: viii) sums up
this approach by framing planning theory about the question: “What part should be
played by planning in bringing about better cities, and better environments more
generally, for people to live in?”
Our approach in the book is somewhat different. Indeed, one of the central goals
of this collection is to examine precisely the pervasive assumption about the (putatively)
benign nature of planning. The 12 chapters of this book attempt to study the variegated
influences of planning on society, without privileging the declared benevolence of
planning. This approach thus adds to a small but growing body of scholarship, which
attempts to openly examine the role of planning – empirically and theoretically -- in
shaping and reshaping sociospatial relations.
This approach moves beyond critical comments about the conduct of planners or
planning institutions, or the deficiency of planner’s’ ideas or methods (abundant in the
literature) into a societal critique of planning, which puts the actual (rather than
rhetorical, or promised) impact of planning on the operating table. This approach, which
is still rare in the literature, is thus willing to (re)consider the legitimacy of the entire
planning endeavor, and not to presuppose its societal usefulness. It thus explores the
broader power structure and dynamics within which state, public, and commercial
planning agencies act, often venturing into ‘the dark side’ of planning (see Yiftachel,
1994, 1998; Flyvbjerg, 1996, 1998).
This brand of critical scholarship has several origins, mainly Marxist, feminist,
Foucauldian and ethnic/cultural, which converge over a critique of the relative neglect
of power as topic of analysis by mainstream planning scholarship. Here the title of a
vastly influential book, John Forester’s Planning in the Face of Power (1989) says:
power is portrayed as being an entity against which planners work. It is somewhat
external to planning and planners. Of course, it is not claimed that planning is
omnipotent, but rather that the aims and practices involved in the public production of
space is constantly intertwined with the exercise of power. Yet, the a-priori assumption
of the benevolence of a planning project allows the work of most planning scholars to
comfortably focus on issues such as: planner-client relations, technical or design
solutions, or methods of achieving a consensus of urban futures (see: Innes and Booker,
1999). But the powers that shape the urban environment can be, and often are,
regressive and exploitive. This calls for a broader framework within which to analyze
planning, not merely as a reformist profession, but as a set of institutions, practices and
discourses, enmeshed within the ‘grids of power’ which shape cities and regions (see:
Massey, 1994).
A critical - but also realistic - reading of urban and regional planning should thus
treat it, fundamentally, as a double-edged sword. Beyond its well-documented and
much discussed ability (and deficiencies) in enhancing progressive and enlightened
aims, it is often used for other, less enlightened purposes. The very same policy tools
and capabilities represented as a means to enhance social reform, that is, improve living
conditions, sustainability, community, prosperity, amenity and efficiency, can also be
used by societal powers to advance opposing goals. These policy tools can indeed harm
communities and localities, retard prosperity, intensify conflicts, marginalize minorities,
and shift resources from the weak to the strong. Further, planning’s adverse power may
also lie in its normalizing effects: it introduces a set of procedures, practices and
INTRODUCTION 11
performances which render the goals and visions of plans neutral and necessary, and
adds ‘layers’ of regulation and surveillance to the lives of communities and individuals
(Huxley, 1994). In short, planning introduces various dimensions of social control into
the project of governance of cities and region.
Yet, critical observers of planning have also realized that control is rarely exerted
openly, and is seldom officially declared as a policy goal. Neither is control a result of a
planned conspiracy on behalf of a specific self-defined group. Rather it is often exerted
as part of a broadly agreed and generally unquestioned set of their own social goals and
understandings. These tend to work in the interests of powerful groups that generally set
societal agendas (see: Lefebvre, 1996). Actors involved in the practices of social control
often conceal, ignore, or are simply unaware of the regressive consequences of their
activities. These practices are typically portrayed as part of different, and often socially
worthy, projects. For example, inner city developers would rarely promote their
proposals as ‘promoting the interests of capital over people’, or as ‘causing the
displacement of inner city residents and recent immigrants’. Yet, their projects will
often have precisely these controlling and stratifying effects.
To be sure, most social systems devise mechanisms of legitimation, which tend
to obscure, appease or even partially negate the oppressive and regressive effects of
control policies. In our example of inner city redevelopment, a discourse of ‘urban
regeneration’, ‘global image’, ‘renewal’, ‘efficiency’, or ‘correcting market failures’ is
likely to emerge, legitimising the displacement of inner city residents and the use of
public resources to benefit narrow property interests often under the veil of ‘national
interest’, ‘economic growth’, of simply ‘orderly development’ (see Bronwill, 1990).
This creates ‘surface ambiguity’ in the policy field, where official representations
conflict with the ‘actual’ processes of spatial and societal change. Flyvbjerg (1998: 227-
231) articulates well the many faces of power-through-planning:
Power, quite simply, often finds ignorance, deception, self-deception,
rationalization, and lies more useful for its purposes than the truth… Power defines
what counts as rationality and knowledge, and thereby what counts as reality.
Therefore, the study of controlling power in general, and ‘planning as control’ in
particular, maps the main social interests of the place and period in question, and traces
their practices in the actual process of spatial change (Foucault, 1991). Such analysis
would cut through legitimizing ideologies and narratives, and search below the
inevitable, and ever-existing, ambiguities of urban and regional policy. Examining the
material, political and identity consequences of spatial policies can reveal much of the
long-term role of such policies on social relations.
Needless to say, it is not suggested that the actual impact of spatial policies
should be studied in sharp dichotomous terms. The metaphor of ‘double edged sword’,
or the positing of ‘reform vis-à-vis control’, are mainly used for analytical purposes, and
aim to draw attention to the variegated possibilities of planning interventions. In reality,
of course, the consequences of planning fall in between the various poles identified in
this essay, as policies and practices meet the complex and layered reality of late-modern
societies.
The realization about the multi-faceted nature of planning is not new. The use
and abuse of power by and for planning has been documented in many foundational
studies (see: Meyerson and Banfield, 1955; Hall, 1978; Harvey, 1973; Marcuse, 1978;
O.YIFTACHEL 12
Sandercock and Forsyth, 1992; Flyvbjerg, 1998). Yet, the field of urban and regional
planning is still awaiting a coherent theoretical exposition of the ‘dark side’ of planning,
that is, the use of the legitimizing discourse of ‘progressive’ planning and planners, to
facilitate and assist the deepening of societal disparities, segregation and power
relations (for some beginnings in this direction, see; Flyvbjerg, 1998; Yiftachel, 1998).
A final word of caution is in order regarding the power of planning. While
critical scholarship can, and should, explore its ‘darker sides’, the very power of public
authorities including the state, to reshape cities and regions is itself contested. This is
the result of a recent weakening and transformation of the state in what is often defined
as the late-modern, post-fordist era (Held, 1990; Sassen, 1998). State power is
challenged first and foremost by the logic of a globalizing economy, but also by
minorities and deprived groups, which either mobilize to increase their share of public
resources (of which planning is one), or lose faith in the state-building project,
preferring alternative routes of development, identity and empowerment (see
Friedmann, 1992; Marcuse and van Kempen, 1999).
7. Critical Distance and Critical Scholarship
A final aspect in the critique and agenda outlined here, regards the place from which
planning knowledge is produced. I contend that the reconceptualization of urban and
regional planning requires a critical distance, that is, the positioning of the researcher
outside the internal discourse of planning, free from the profession’s supporting
ideological apparatus. A faith in planning, as promoted in the internal discourses of the
profession, characterizes most literature in the field, explicitly or implicitly. In our view,
it has prevented scholars from openly examining, not just the conduct of planners vis-à-
vis their clients, and not just the optimization of outcomes by rational evaluation
methods, but the taken-for-granted assumptions about the nature of planning and
planners. This applies to the analysis of both the formal planning system, and wider
circles of public bodies and entities involved with the production of the urban habitat.
But, regardless of the scale of analysis, only by treating the public production of
the urban habitat as a contingent political phenomenon (and not as a desired or
cherished intervention), and only by recognizing that ‘planning principles’ are often
used to rationalize oppressive policies, can we advance towards a robust understanding
of the societal endeavor we label ‘planning’. This is precisely the purpose of critical
theory: Testing professional concepts, models, assumptions, values and ‘gospels’,
against their ‘real world’ material, discursive and political consequences. This cannot be
achieved without ‘stepping outside’ the cozy and self-assuring professional discourse
pertaining to planning’s goals and methods.
The need to ‘step outside’ and view planning with social science tools as an arm
of the state and dominant societal interests was already advanced by early critical
thinkers. Their works have been crucially important for contemporary critical
scholarship. These emerged mainly from Marxist (for example, Harvey, 1973; Castells,
1978; Hague, 1984), and later from feminist (see, for example, Huxley, 1988;
Sandercock and Forsyth, 1992; Wilson, 1991) and multicultural, ethnic and racial
critiques (see: H. Thomas, 1995; J.Thomas, 1996; Yiftachel, 1994; Young, 1990).
INTRODUCTION 13
On these foundations there appears to be a wider circle of critical scholars whose
work challenges the conventional intellectual, conceptual and empirical foundations of
urban and regional planning. Most of the chapters of this book fall in this category, and
the sources they attest to a growing breadth and depth of this endeavor. One needs to go
back to the glorious days of the Marxist school in the 1970s to find a similar
concentration of critical analyses with planning and urban writing. The current work is
not coherent or unified by any stretch of the imagination, as it follows the diverse
influences of Foucauldian, critical-Weberian, political-economic, post-colonial, post-
modern and feminist critiques in the social sciences.
But it appears that the diffusion of these approaches into planning theory and
research makes it richer and more intellectually and analytically rigorous, thus
beginning to respond to Beauregard’s (1995) damning description of planning theorists
and ‘edge critics’. Contributors to the current volume have attempted to add new
insights into these critical efforts, from the description and interpretation of their own
case studies, and with a constant engagement with recent social theories. A common
feature of the 12 chapters is a serious and critical examination of the power of planning.
THE BOOK
The studies accumulated in the book address the various problematics and dilemmas
highlighted above. While the authors of the chapters use a variety of perspectives, they
all question openly the causes and consequences of planning, by studying its unfolding
in specific settings. They also address the more specific critique of past scholarship, by
engaging directly with the materiality of the planning project, with its spatial and
political aspects, and with the coercive, formal-legal and discursive powers embedded
in the public production of cities and regions. Together, the 12 chapters make rich and
critical statements about the actual impact of specific planning events and struggles,
thereby enhancing our empirical and theoretical understanding of planning.
The editorial team decided to design the book according to four main ‘prisms’
which reflect common sites of interaction between planning and the fabric of social life:
communities, gender, social polariזation and ethnicity/race. Each of these offers an
important arena where planning policies, practices, discourses and material reality have
a significant influence on people’s lives. The four perspectives cut across the three foci
of analysis critiqued earlier as lacking in previous planning scholarship: (a) explanatory
and descriptive accounts; (b) ‘bringing back’ the material reality (‘substance’) within
which planning procedures operate; and (c) re-emphasising the role of space in the
analysis of urban and regional planning; and (d) openly examining the nature of
planning power.
Explanatory-descriptive Community
Substantive Gender
Space Social Polarization
Critical
Approach
O.YIFTACHEL 14
Power Ethnic/Racial
The book is also designed to foster comparative learning, by systematically
positing cases from three states: Australia, Israel and England. The book does not wish
to over-emphasize the similarity of the three cases, which possess many historical,
ethnic and geographical differences. Yet, the three states do lend themselves to
potentially profitable comparison, as they all have constitutional and planning systems
based on the logic of the British system of government. More specifically, the
parameters of ‘urban and regional planning’ is quite similar in the three states, denoting
mainly public policies which formulate, shape and manage spatial plans and policies.
The instruments of planning are, therefore, quite similar in the three countries, and
include the location and character of land uses, development, infrastructure, and zoning,
as well as the governance of decision processes affecting these policies.
Notably, the comparative cases in this book also give the reader a journey into
non-American planning settings. The editors feel that the dominance of American
writings in planning in general, and planning theory in particular, presents particular
problems stemming from the very different institutional settings of planning in
American society (where it is often less formal, less backed by legal powers and further
removed from the state). Hence, the Australian, Israeli and English cases may bring new
comparable opportunities, and, thus, possibilities for generalizations and theorizations,
than the frequent use of American cases in international planning literature. The non-
American focus is thus an additional contribution of the interventions made in this
book.
Critical Assessments: Community, Gender, Class, Minorities
Each major ‘prism’ through which we examine planning is organized into one section in
the book, individually edited by one of us. Hedgcock assembled and edited the section
on communities; Little reigned over gender; Alexander was responsible for social
polarization; while Yiftachel oversaw the section on ethnic and racial minorities.
The first part of the book is devoted to the influence of planning on the
formulation, change and power of communities. Ian Alexander and David Hedgcock
compare in Chapter 1 how the implications embedded in the planning process for local
communities unfolded in two West Australian localities: one in the affluent Perth inner
suburb of East Fremantle, and the other in the (previously) low-income inner
neighborhood of East Perth. The analysis points to a much greater impact of local
residents of East Fremantle who managed to avert a redevelopment proposal in the heart
of their neighborhood, and thus preserved its historic value, and further their own
interest in maintaining the socioeconomic character of their gentrified community, as
well as their property values. In East Perth, on the other hand, a large housing
redevelopment project, promoted by the state in concert with large construction
companies, and legitimized by the ‘need’ to give inner Perth an ‘international image’,
managed to crumble the little organized resistance of its previous low-income
community. Hence “in East Perth a community was destroyed and built again”.
Alexander and Hedgcock show that on the one hand, the active and often militant
INTRODUCTION 15
involvement of residents can be interpreted as a democratization of the planning arena,
but on the other, that the uneven impact of such involvement, which accords greater
value to the more organized (and often more affluent) communities, work to widen gaps
between urban communities, much against the overall goals of most planning strategies.
In Chapter 2, Shlomo Hasson accounts for the mobilizsation of four main
Jerusalem communities vis-à -vis the urban policies of the state and the city. He shows
vividly how the history and geography of the city spawned the emergence of
communities and movements on the basis of different sets of oppositions, namely
ethnic-nationality (Palestinian-Zionist), religiosity (Orthodox-secular Jews), ethno-class
(Mizrahi-Ashkenazi Jews; that is eastern and western Jews, respectively) and life-style
(ecological preservation – development). But the public arena in which these segregated
communities operate is in a state of flux, as they resist the spatio-political order imposed
by the state, but also struggle with one another. Planning in Jerusalem thus involves the
constant challenging of the city’s geographical and power matrix, generating a space of
regular conflict and inter-communal tension. The immense importance of urban
planning is highlighted here by Hasson’s conclusion that “Jerusalem is a violent city rife
with tensions and conflicts… associated with control over land.”
The section is closed by Chapter 3 in which Phil McManus critically evaluates
the notion of ‘community’ as used in English and British planning. McManus shows
how the seemingly objective unit of ‘community’ has been used by government policy
directives to further a set of economic and political interests, all in the name of a
desired, and notionally progressive, interest in local communities. However, McManus
illustrates clearly how, like most social categories and terms, ‘community’ is a
contested, contextual and multi-faceted term, and its use by planners must be aware of
its use and abuse by societal powers. McManus details clearly how during the 17 year
reign of the Conservatives in the UK the discourse of ‘community’ overlaid a neo-
liberal economic agenda, often using the vehicle of the Urban Development
Corporations. The latter used ‘planning for communities’ as a (thin) legitimizing veil for
urban development objectives, which have worked to destablize and segregate many
inner city collectivities.
The second part places the magnifying glass on the interactions between urban
and regional policies and gender relations. Here, Jean Hillier opens Chapter 4 by
critically examining the impact of development policies and practices in Australian
suburbia, as reflected through the unmediated speech of women. She demonstrates how,
despite the increasingly reformist ‘utterances’ of planners, and despite an increasingly
articulate voice of Australian women, the planned-for unit in most Australian planning
thinking remains centered on the middle-aged, middle-class, white, suburban male.
Women’s experiences, interests and needs have largely been left out of the ways in
which planners understand the built environment. The invisibility of the difference
women make is, as Hillier demonstrates, linked directly to the grids of power which
govern the making of places and spaces.
In Chapter 5, Tovi Fenster analyzes the critical link between power and
knowledge (and ‘mis-knowledge’) -- as expressed in housing and settlement policies --
on the life chances of minority women in Israel. These women exist in a position of
double marginality, vis-à -vis dominant men in their own communities, as well as the
dominant, and often alien, ethnic majority. Fenster’s analysis of the impact of planning
O.YIFTACHEL 16
on Ethiopian and Bedouin women in Israel’s peripheral regions, clearly shows the
oppressive potential of planning, and the multiple faces of this oppression, which
reaches the home, the private and the local. But Fenster’s account also harbors new
possibilities, premised on the ability of planners to be attuned to the various voices and
needs rising from each minority community, and a shift towards planning which is
sensitive to both cultural and gender considerations.
In Chapter 6, Jo Little completes the section by charting a broad overview of
policies towards rural women in England. Little demonstrates empirically how the
growing acknowledgement of women’s needs and difference has been largely confined
to urban areas in England, and how the conservative tradition of local authority and
policy in rural areas meant that even where gender equality was recognized as a
potential problem, it was not considered one that can or should be tackled as part of
public sector policy. This was expressed by the overlooking of women’s initiatives in
the ‘rural regeneration’ programs of several British governments, especially the recent
Rural Challenge. But while Little traces important shifts in rural policy-making as part
of the new programs, she argues that these changes “could be seen as reinforcing a
masculine ethos within rural policy…[thus] failing to respond to existing gender
inequality in the construction and delivery of policy”.
In the third part, the discussion shifts to the issue of social polarization, focusing
mainly on socioeconomic and class cleavages. Margo Huxley’s chapter opens this part,
by tracing the introduction of a specific planning program known as “the Good Design
Guide” to one of Melbourne’s most established and affluent inner suburbs - Hawthorn.
Huxley accounts for the growing resistance from local residents to the introduction of
the new Guide, which was set to increase residential densities in the area, thereby
threatening its age-old character. The program aimed to stimulate the property and
development market, assist in giving Melbourne a ‘global image’, as well as open
opportunities for low income residents to move into the area. But as Huxley shows, and
much like the example of East Fremantle brought by Alexander and Hegdcock in
Chapter 1, the area’s residents campaigned effectively against the Guide, using well
their symbolic and cultural resources (that is the ‘Melbourness’) to avert the
implementation of the program. This turn of events could be seen as an empowerment
of Hawthorn’s residents, but it has also worked to increase social polarization in
Melbourne, because neighboring and less affluent or organized suburbs could not resist
the program, and the reshaping of their localities with higher densities and commercial
development.
In Chapter 8, Oren Yiftachel examines the consequences of Israeli urban
planning, by evaluating one of the country’s most ambitious planning projects – the
establishment of 28 new towns (known as ‘development towns’) during the 1950s. The
towns were mainly built in Israel’s ‘frontier’ regions as part of the Zionist Judaization
program, which has been a center-piece of the political geography of what he terms ‘the
Israeli-Jewish ethnocracy’. In the towns the state settled mainly Mizrahi Jews of low
socioeconomic standing, who arrived in Israel from the Muslim world and lacked
cultural contacts or political influence. Yiftachel traces the long-term impact of this
planning project, and finds that it generally caused geographical isolation, economic
deprivation, political dependence and stigmatized identity for the town dwellers.
Planning has thus been used as an instrument of social control, through which socio-
INTRODUCTION 17
spatial structures worked to preserve and even deepen social inequalities, with the
discursive and legal legitimacy of the settling state. Yet, this structure of control has not
remained unchallenged, and Yiftachel shows how the residents of the towns have rallied
in recent years in search of new identity and greater equality, and how the Mizrahi
ethno-class identity emerging in the town continues to form a source of inter-group
tension and social instability.
In Chapter 9, Keith Bassett shifts our attention to the urban poor in the UK. He
traces the impact of two British regimes on the plight of the poor in Britain’s large
urban centers. The chapter begins with an analysis of governmental policies during the
17-year conservative rule, which saw urban poverty increasing dramatically, under the
guise of well-marketed programs of entities such as the Urban Development
Corporations. Bassett then moves to the New Labor government, and examines its two-
pronged approach to poverty, which concentrates on inner city neighborhood renewal,
and local-employment programs. With the introduction of new initiatives such as New
Deal for Neighborhoods, Social Exclusion Unit, Employment Zones, Health Education
Zones and ‘pathfinder’ regeneration zones, Bassett notes a definite progressive shift in
inner area policy during the New Labor years. Despite the inconclusive results of such
programs, Bassett’s chapter highlights well the persisting progressive capabilities of
urban planning, and hence our analytical need to treat it as ‘double-edged’.
The book’s fourth part focuses on ethnic and racial minorities as an important –
if often overlooked – dimension of urban and regional planning. In Chapter 10, Marcus
Lane and Stuart Cowell examine Australia’s regional policies in Queensland’s northern
regions, and its impact on the area’s Aboriginal population. The authors focus the
planning process and political struggles over the construction of a large zinc mine in the
study region. They reveal that by and large, the planning system acted as an uncritical
facilitator of the interests of capital against those of the politically marginalized, and
thus contributed to the reproduction of inequality in the ownership and use of resources.
However another aspect emerges from the analysis: a gradual and incremental
incorporation of the Aborigines in the planning of the region. As the authors state:
“while state planners continue to reproduce inequality. They were forced to confront
organized indigenous participants who assiduously challenged the prevailing
orthodoxy… and the range of possible outcomes. By focusing on the agency of the
marginalized minorities, then, Lane and Cowell manage to highlight the openings –
small as they are – presented by planning for the democratization of the capitalist
development process.
In Chapter 11, Hubert Law Yone and Rachel Kalus analyze the degree of
segregation in Israeli regions and cities. They show convincingly the manner in which
Israeli space has been divided and stratified on the basis of persisting segregation
between the country’s various ethno-classes. The authors thus demonstrate the power of
planning to create long-term socioeconomic structures. Despite a very dynamic
population movement which typifies Israel, Law-Yone and Kalus show that the lines of
separation between Arabs, Mizrahi, Ashkenazi and most recently Russian-Speaking
Israelis, is linked directly to the planning and housing programs of the Israeli
government, and to the manner in which the Zionist project changed the geography of
Israel/Palestine. They show further how prevalent planning discourses systematically
obscure the oppressive effects of state strategies and hegemonic spatial practices.
O.YIFTACHEL 18
Finally, in Chapter 12, Sue Brownill and Huw Thomas examine to what extent
inner city policies in England and Wales have influenced the level of exclusion
experienced by racial (‘racialized’) and ethnic minorities. They demonstrate that despite
claims by policy makers about the ‘deracialized’ nature of policies, and the ‘ethnic
blindness’ of urban planning, minorities have been systematically excluded through the
policy-process in most English inner city areas. But Bronwill and Thomas also highlight
the openings that planning increasingly afford excluded minorities (in certain places and
times) and urge us not to look at the state as monolithic or unidimenesional in its racist
attitude. Yet, they aptly conclude that “the limited spaces thus opened up within urban
policy cannot be seen as evidence of an enlightened system, only as pointers to a more
equitable and transformatory planning policy and practice.”
In overview, the 12 chapters bring varied case-study insights under the one
umbrella of our book. There is no one, overriding conclusion to be reached from these
studies, as they demonstrate the complexity and multi-dimensionability of the planning
endeavor. Yet, the 12 chapters can teach us important lessons about the power of
planning, and the need to take it seriously as an object of analysis. The chapters have all
taken a probing and critical look at what may be taken for granted in most studies – the
benevolence of urban and regional planning and the reformist aims of spatial plans and
policies. In this manner, the chapters accumulate into a collective statement about the
multiple possibilities – progressive and regressive, reformist and oppressive –
embedded in the planning endeavor. Taking this line, the 12 chapters have placed
planning, that is, the public shaping of cities and regions, firmly within its material,
spatial and discursive arenas, where power, resources and identities are contested and
determined.
The approaches taken by the 12 chapters, in a nutshell, form our agenda for
planning studies in general, and planning theory in particular. The book can be seen as
part of an emerging wave of critical scholarship which refocuses the study of planning
policies on the materiality of social life, on the central axis of space, and on the
normalizing and legitimizing discourses that wrap and shape urban governance. This
wave engages constantly with on-going discourses in the social sciences and the
humanities. It dares to be explanatory and theoretical for the sake of establishing a
conceptual foundation for the planning field; and it dares to be empirical and critical, for
the sake of learning from the concrete consequences of past policies and programs. It
also aspires to ‘step outside’ the professional straight-jacket of the planning world by
openly examining, from a critical distance, the assumptions, methods and interpretation
of planning as-we-know-it. Hopefully, such an approach will strengthen both the
empirical and theoretical foundations of our knowledge about urban and regional
change, and ultimately work to improve the soundness, coherence and relevance of the
planning societal project.
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