Chapter #9 Summary: New Directions in Planning Theory Essay

Chapter 9 compact New Directions in Planning TheorySusan S. Fainstein Susan S. is professor of urban planning and acting program conductor in Columbia University. In this article she discusses and critiques contemporary planning theory in terms of its advantage in addressing what I believe to be its defining question what is the possibility of consciously achieving widespread receipts in the quality of human life within the context of a global capitalist semipolitical economy. She examines the three approaches referred to above under the rubrics of -(1) the communicative model sometimes called the collaborative model, emphasizes the planners share in mediating among stakeholders within the planning situation-(2) the new urbanism frequently labeled neo-traditionalism, paints a physical personation of a desirable city to be obtained through planning -(3) and the just city, which derives from the political economy tradition, bandage also appearcome oriented, is more(prenominal) abstract than the new urbanism, presenting a model of spatial relations base on equity.The Communicative ModelThe communicative model draws on two philosophical approaches American realism as developed in the idea of John Dewey and Richard Rorty and the theory of communicative rationality as worked out by Jurgen Habermas.5 The two strands differ somewhat in their methodologies. Neo-pragmatism tends toward empiricism. Theoretical and Practical DeficienciesIn its effort to carry out planning from elitist tendencies, communicative planning theory runs into difficulties. The communicative model should not be faulted for its high-mindeds of openness and diversity. Its vulnerability rather lies in a tendency to substitute moral exhortation for synopsis. Although their roots, via Habermas, are in scathing theory, once the communicative theorists move away from critique and present a manual for action, their thought loses its edge. THE tender URBANISMThe new urbanism refers to a h uman body-oriented approach to planned urban development. Developed primarily by architects and journalists, it isperhaps more ideology than theory, and its message is carried not just by academics but by planning practitioners and a hot movement. New urbanists have received considerable attention in the United States and, to a lesser extent, in Great Britain.Their orientation resembles that of the early planning theoristsEbenezer Howard, Frederic Law Olmsted, Patrick Geddesin their aim of using spatial relations to create a close-knit social community that allows diverse elements to interact. The new urbanists call for an urban design that includes a variety of building types, mixed uses, intermingling of housing for different income groups, and a strong privileging of the public country CritiqueThe new urbanism is vulnerable to the accusation that its proponents oversell their product, promoting an unrealistic environmental determinism that has threaded its way throughout the h istory of physical planningTHE JUST CITYIn Socialism Utopian and Scientific Friedrich Engels (1935, p. 54) presents the Marxian critique of utopianism The nett causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in mens brains, not in mans better insight into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange. . . . For Marx and Engels, social transformation could occur only when the times were ripe, when circumstances enabled the forces for social amelioration to get word their objectives. In their view utopian thinkers like Robert Owen and Fourier could not succeed because they developed a social ideal that did not coincide with a material reality still dominated by capitalist interests. but smashing the structure of class domination could create the conditions for achieving a just society. CONCLUSIONIn Her termination she defends the continued use of the just city mode and a modified form of the political-economy mode of analysis that underlies it, described below The three types of planning theory described in this essay all overlay a social reformist outlook. They represent a move from the purely critical perspective that characterized very much theory in the seventies and eighties to one that once again offers a promise of a better life.Whereas reaction to technocracy and positivism shaped planning theory of that period, more recent planning thought has responded to the challenge of post-modernism.