Everyday Ethics for Practicing Planners

Carol Barrett

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351177740
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

"This book is on the suggested reading list for planners preparing to take the AICP exam. As veteran planner the author points out, the most troublesome conflicts for planners aren't between good and bad, they're between competing good, neither of which can be fully achieved. The 54 real-world scenarios described here typify the tough moral dilemmas that confront today's practioners. The author offers planners a way to recognize the ethical conflicts that arise in everyday practice, analyze them using ""practical moral reasoning, "" apply relevant sections of the AICP Code of Ethics and the APA/AICP Ethical Principles in Planning (both of which are included in full), and decide on the best course of action. The author tells a series of stories-each one a sticky situation that could confront a typical planner. Barrett points out the ethical issues, identifies possible alternatives, and cities relevant sections of the AICP Code. Finally, the author discusses the pros and cons of each alternative. Five particularly complex scenarios are especially intended for group discussion. Individuals studying for the AICP exam will find this book indispensable. But it also should be required reading for every planner who struggles to act ethically and for planning student who wants to understand how professionals define and serve the public interest. Planning agencies, private consulting firms, and planning commissions can use its realistic scenarios to jump start group discussions and workshops on ethical planning."

Chapter
1
Introduction

Planners are not expected to be the most perfect of society's members. As authority and influence accrue to a profession, public expectations rise. This public trust imposes increased responsibility on planners to offer an example of impeccable conduct.

Why this Publication was Prepared and How to Use it

Most of those in the planning profession accept the concept of ethical conduct for planners as important. Most planners also believe that what they do is ethical simply because they deliberately chose a specific course of action. At the same time, in any office, one will observe a variety of different behaviors provoked by the same circumstance. For example, Sandy rigidly insists that each issue can be properly analyzed and that any course of action can be determined to be either right or wrong. Gary is more elastic in his views: life consists of variables, not constants. Mike is skeptical that a workable ethical code can be formulated for the entire planning community. Paula snickers at the lofty aspirational tone of the AICP Code. Caroline thinks that no planner, threatened with job loss, can afford the luxury of ethics. And Bernie rejects the entire concept of ethics. He says that life, planning included, is a zero-sum game. In his view, bluffing, deception, and corner cutting are acceptable to achieve planning objectives. The attorney, meanwhile, advises that it is sufficient to stay within the letter of the law.

Some benchmarks are needed to sort through this plethora of perspectives. Trying to ignore ethical problems is akin to getting rid of a boomerang by throwing it away. Ethical dilemmas just keep intruding. That's why this publication was prepared. It is designed to give planners a way to hone their ethical skills and develop a workable scheme for responding to ethical problems. A chapter in a separate publication, Planning Made Easy, by the author and Robert M. Joice, AICP, focused exclusively on ethics for planning commissioners. It is available from APA's Planners' Book Service.

As an ethical resource, this publication is intended to encourage discussion, It does not contain the definitive answer to every ethical question or problem. There is no such tiling. The publication can help professionals clarify their ethical responses to the ever-present challenges of practicing planning. For example, you are the planning director and it is your job to make a recommendation on a conditional use permit for a manufacturing plant that emits a chemical not regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency. Project opponents present information showing that the emission is a health hazard.

• What are the facts? Is there a health hazard?
• Is this an ethical issue for the planner?
• Are there genuine moral issues at stake?

Suppose the compound is a virulent carcinogen and is emitted in large quantities. Most people would probably agree it should be stopped. The general prohibition against knowingly harming other people would necessitate this conclusion. But, suppose the emission produces only mild respiratory problems in a small percentage of the population. Further, suppose that removing the compound is so expensive that the plant could not be built at all. Additionally, imagine there is a severe unemployment problem in your community. Will there be serious disagreement among the planning staff about the appropriate recommendation?

Planners rightly believe that they have an obligation to protect the physical health of the community. But doesn't the staff also have an obligation to be concerned with the economic health of the community as well?

In this instance, there are conflicts among competing obligations, both of which appear to be valid. The conflicts that give us trouble are not those between good and bad, but between competing goods, both of which cannot be fully realized.

When faced with two competing obligations, each of which appears to be justified, one approach is to try to find a way to satisfy them both. While it often is not possible to satisfy all moral requirements in a pure form, it sometimes is possible to satisfy them in a modified form.

Most general moral rules have an "all other things being equal" qualifier implicitly attached to them. In real life, all things are often not equal. For example, the threat to the safety, health, and welfare of the public may be both uncertain and minimal. Whether or not the emissions are in fact harmful may be a matter of controversy, and there may be, as of yet, no evidence that the emissions produce fatal diseases, only significant respiratory problems in a certain small percentage of the population. Furthermore, the obligation to the community may include an obligation to its economic well being. So, the question is what in this case is the planner's obligation to the public?

This issue involves morals, ethics, and the law. The term "morals" refers to generally accepted standards of right and wrong in a society. Ethics refers to more abstract principles that appear in a religious, societal, or professional code. Moral and ethical statements are distinguishable from laws. The fact that an action is legally permissible does not establish that it is morally and ethically acceptable. The fact that it may be legal for the plant to emit the chemical doesn't mean that it is morally permissible to do so.

People often view ethical reasoning as fuzzy and imprecise, and it certainly is true that the qualitative thinking involved in ethics is not susceptible to the same kind of precision that can be achieved in arithmetic. For example, factual disagreements may be a component of an ethical dilemma. Answers are based on what can be known and documented. In evaluating moral disagreements, appeals are made to broader and more basic moral principles that are organized into theories. The three most common moral theories are utilitarianism, the Golden Rule, and deontological principles or:

• end-based decisions
• care-based decisions
• rule-based decisions

In end-based decisions (utilitarianism), actions are right when they produce the greatest total amount of human well being. A utilitarian analysis of a moral problem consists of three steps. The utilitarian must determine:

• the audience of the action or policy in question — those who will be affected for good or ill;
• the positive and negative effects of the alternative actions or policies;
• the course of action that will produce the greatest overall utility.

There are two drawbacks to the utilitarian perspective on morality. First, implementation of the utilitarian perspective requires extensive knowledge of facts, and sometimes this knowledge is not available. If we do not know the long-term positive and negative consequences of an action or policy, we do not know how to evaluate it from a utilitarian perspective. Sometimes utilitarians are reduced to a best-guess approach. This is not very satisfactory. Utilitarianism also can lead to injustice for some individuals. Mining operations that cause black lung disease in some of the miners may produce more utility than harm from an overall standpoint, but would be unjust to the miners.

In making care-based decisions (following the Golden Rule), actions are right when they equally respect each human person as a moral agent. To consider the effects, you must place yourself in the position of those who could be affected by your actions. Philosophers have proposed a hierarchy of rights that should be protected through the application of the Golden Rule. The first is the most basic: life, physical and mental health. The second involves maintaining self-fulfillment through honest and truthful interactions. The third involves rights necessary to increase one's self-fulfillment, such as the right to property and to equal treatment.

Application of the Golden Rule morality involves these steps:

• Determine the audience for the action. (Similar to the audience whose rights are under the utilitarian analysis.)
• Evaluate the seriousness of the rights infringements each action will impose
• Choose the course of action that produces the least serious rights infringements

There are two principal difficulties with Golden Rule morality. First, it is sometimes hard to apply the rule in a way that leads to a clear conclusion This is especially true if the rights violations are merely potential rather than actual, or if the action is only a slight infringement on a right. Also, Golden Rule moral philosophies can produce implausible results. To protect lives, cars can be made so safe that no one would be able to afford one.

Following rule-based analysis, or deontological principles, our actions must be translated into universal principles of action without regard for the consequences. For example, it is right for me to toss my biodegradable lunch leftovers out of the car window only if I believe it would be correct for everyone driving on this road every single day to do the same. Critics of this method of decision making argue that it can result in a mindless bureaucracy.

For most choices to be made by planners, the utilitarian model, with its emphasis on information, is the most useful. Let's return to the problem facing our planning director and briefly analyze the dilemma in terms of this theory.

End-based Decisions/Utilitarianism

Who is the audience for the conditional use approval? (Who will benefit and who may be harmed?)

Beneficiaries:

• Contractors who will build the plant
• Business owners from secondary and tertiary economic spending
• Residential property taxpayers as a result of an improved tax base that may reduce their burden
• Other companies that may now be able to locate in the community given that a precedent has been established
• Schools as a result of an increase in the tax base
• The unemployed and their families
• Purchasers of the product made by the plant
• The manufacturing company

Losers:

• Those with existing health problems that may be exacerbated or those who will have new health problems — primarily the elderly and children
• Adjacent property owners who may see the value of their property decline because of their proximity to a perceived health hazard
• Taxpayers who may have to cover the cost of increased health and social services to the ill, and the families of those who become sick
• Those who will pay higher taxes and utility rates to cover new infrastructure costs to support plant and related economic/residential development

Consider the positive and negative effects of the alternative actions:

	Positive	Negative
Approve	Jobs	Loss of reputation as clean community
	Tax base	Some air pollution
	Economic development	Probable health effects for some percentage of the population
Disapprove	Protected health for the most vulnerable members of the community — elderly & children	Loss of jobs
	Avoid increased public health care costs	Discourage future economic development of similar jobs
	Preserve and build upon reputation as clean community	Loss of investment and spin off opportunities

Decide which course of action produces the greatest overall utility. In this case, are there ways that the negative outcomes or costs can be shifted to the project and away from the community? If so, the end-based decision may be even easier, particularly if the plant were to offer to sign a legally-binding agreement with the community stipulating that it would:

• continue to look for new technologies that might, in the future, eliminate emissions of potential hazardous materials;

• fund annual physicals for those affected by the plant and be responsible for long-term health care for those individuals whose health is harmed by the plant;

• pay development impact fees to cover infrastructure improvements needed to support the plant;

• agree to operating stipulations that limit emissions during active daytime hours and permit them only during the night when children and the elderly are less likely to be outdoors.

With such an agreement in place, and considering the need for jobs in your community, it would be much easier for you as the planning director to recommend the approval of the conditional use permit for the manufacturing plant.

The Sources of Our Ethics

An ethical framework for decision making helps us respond to the feelings we have of being responsible to someone or something. We acquire such sentiments through the process of socialization. These feelings are manifestations of values and beliefs that we have acquired from family, friends, religious affiliations, professional training, and organizational involvement. Values are the most basic kinds of belief and they help determine how we behave. Over time, our values become more systematized and create within us a predisposition toward courses of action.

Internal

Our most basic orientation to what is right and wrong is not derived from reading the AICP Code of Ethics. It comes, instead, from the conscious and unconscious lessons we were taught as children by our parents, our religious institutions, and our schools. We were in...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Scenarios
• 3. Discussion Scenarios
• Appendix
• Index