The Routledge Handbook of Institutions and Planning in Action

Willem Salet, Willem Salet

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351618434
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

The Routledge Handbook of Institutions and Planning in Action contains a selection of 25 chapters prepared by specialized international scholars of urban planning and urban studies focusing on the question of how institutional innovation occurs in practices of action. The contributors share expertise on institutional innovation and philosophical pragmatism. They discuss the different facets of these two conceptual frameworks and explore the alternative combinations through which they can be approached. The relevance of these conceptual lines of thought will be exemplified in exploring the contemporary practices of sustainable (climate-proof) urban transition. The aim of the handbook is to give a boost to the turn of institutional analysis in the context of action in changing cities.

Both philosophical pragmatism and institutional innovation rest on wide international uses in social sciences and planning studies, and may be considered as complementary for many reasons. However, the combination of these different approaches is all but evident and creates a number of dilemmas. After an encompassing introductory section entitled Institutions in Action, the handbook is further divided into the following sections:

• 
  
  

• Institutional innovation
• Pragmatism: The Dimension of Action
• On Justification
• Cultural and Political Institutions in Action
• Institutions and Urban Transition

Part 1

Institutions in Action

1

Institutions in Action

Willem Salet¹

Relational Analysis of Planning: A Common Denominator

Since Melvin Webber produced the first studies on non-place urban realms (in the early 1960s), the territorial concepts of city and place have been progressively deprived of their static, place-bounded substance matter (Webber, 1964). Numerous trans-scalar relationships of urban activities have been empirically demonstrated in the relational geographies of the last decades (LeGalès, 2002). Nowadays, urban place might be characterized dynamically as the “diversity of the complex co-location of multiple webs of relations that transect and intersect across an urban area, each with their own driving dynamics, history and geography, and each with highly diverse concerns about, and attachments to, the places and connectivities of an urban area” (Healey, 2007, p. 3; see also Healey, 2004). As a consequence, the planning and public guidance of places has to be understood as an active arrangement of focus within frameworks of multi-actor and multi-level governance. Healey wrote: “Places are created by socio-political processes through which places and their qualities are drawn into attention, to become a nodal force among multiple, dynamic, co-existing but not necessarily spatially contiguous webs of relations” (Healey, 2016, referring in particular to Healey, 2010). The new trans-local reality urges urban planning to define itself in this dynamic and multileveled context.

A genuine relational analysis of planning goes deeper than just adapting the focus of study to a more complex reality. Relational analysis requires a radical contextualization of the planning subject. The crux of relational planning analysis is that it does not accept the explicit or implicit assumption of an autonomous planning subject (Salet, 2014, 2016; Savini et al., 2014). If the post-war gulf of planning modernism and its recent failure have demonstrated anything, it is the vulnerability of the alleged planning subject. The problem of planning subjectivism is that it explicitly or implicitly postulates the planner as the ‘agent of change’ who is moving the ‘object of change’ into a desired state. Obviously, planning is intentional and it has the function to guide, but the real world does not turn around a planner’s lever. The world is not an object, it consists of social subjects and structures with its own conflictive order and conditions for planning (Gualini, 2001). Public guidance or planning may catalyse or constrain ongoing social processes but planners cannot create a social order of their own. The real challenge of public guidance and planning is not to invent a new desired state of the world but to discover and reflect on its normative direction in deep interconnectivity with this complex and contentious social order: both in terms of acquiring legitimacy and effectiveness. This is why relational planning research does not start its analysis by outlining the desires and resources of planning subjects but first examines the actual intercourse of the social subjects, the problems and the normative patterns in society. The crucial premise of relational planning analysis is that the role of public guidance and planning originates in this social intercourse and that its legitimacy and its ultimate effectiveness are to be analysed through the complex fabric of social interaction in society. The use of this analytical framework facilitates the exploration of a wide array of issues concerning public guidance and planning, ranging from civic public initiatives to interventions by the state. It does not exclude hierarchical forms of planning or legislation but it rests in all empirical cases, the hierarchical included, on the analysis of processes of legitimation and effectuation reasoned from the social intercourse instead of an autonomous planning authority.

Investigating planning from a relational perspective is not new, but it is in need of a renaissance, especially following the epoch of expansive modernist planning which has taken place since the 1960s. This study has two fundamental orientations: institutional thought and philosophical pragmatism, both of which adhere to the premises of relational analysis.

In institutional studies, it is almost self-evident that institutional patterns of social norms depend on underlying processes of social interaction. The analysis of institutional norms cannot be framed in a ‘subject–object’ scheme because these norms are produced and reproduced in interaction between subjects (Moroni, 2010b; Salet, 2002). Without recognition and acceptance in the relevant constituting social intercourses, institutional norms would simply not come into existence nor continue to be sustained. Having said this, however, that does not mean that all subjects are equal or that all social norms are fair and just. Processes of social normalization reflect the dominant social characteristics of societies, including inequalities and asymmetries of power (Bolan, 2000). For instance, the institution of private property in Western societies is not known for its fairness or social equality. However, this institution has been ‘normalized’ through time and it is widely recognized and accepted, not just by those in power but – even more important for the underpinning of the premise of inter-subjectivity – also by social subjects. Without the latter, this particular norm would not have survived as an instituted norm. Citizens do not necessarily agree with social norms (consensus is not a premise) but they should at least recognize and accept these norms as being appropriate (March & Olsen, 1989). Processes of normalization, socialization and internalization may take generations and are continuously refined by passing through different situations and social conditions. A fascinating example of this is the mainstreaming of language during the nation-building processes of national states. Bourdieu analysed the processes of power behind the institutionalization of a particular dialect as the official and general language of France (Bourdieu, 1991). Another example is Thompson’s deep analysis of the “making of the English working class” (Thompson, 1963). Or, see Habermas’s examination of the institutionalization of the rule of law tracing back to the ‘Declaration of the Rights of Man’ by Thomas Paine in 1791 (Habermas, 1996). The setting of institutions is an active and continuous process of institutionalization, reproduction and adaptation in new situations. The processes of normalization are undergoing all sorts of social influences (political and economic, educational, incidental occurrences, etc.) but the framework of subject–subject relationships is key in all stages of genesis.

Pragmatism is also explicit – if not radical – in its relational focus (Dewey, 1920/1964; James, 1909/1963; Mead, 1934). Philosophical pragmatism is rooted in pre-war communitarian America. It is fascinating to see how this pre-modernist thought of public action survived planning modernism (Harper & Stein, 2006; Healey, 2009; Hoch, 2007, 2016) and has now widely been rediscovered as a source of inspiration in mainstream planning approaches, and even in recent ‘post-political’ theories (Marres, 2007), precisely because of its radical premises of relational analysis. The pragmatist forerunners Dewey and James declined abstract sources of knowledge and instead made real, empirically observable problems related to social interaction central to their theory of knowledge and consequentially directed action (Dewey, 1929/1960, 1991/1927; James, 1909/1963). Dewey explained the need of all public action out of the need to solve the uncontrolled consequences of social intercourse (Dewey, 1991/1927, p. 15). His starting point for analysing public action is definitively not in the considerations of the policymakers but it is in social interaction itself. If the consequences of social interaction must be responded to but are beyond the control of the subjects involved (which would be the source for private action), a public of the indirectly affected arises and intends to find solutions for the problematic consequences (public action). The intentions and problem perceptions of ‘the public’ are crucial in this approach. The public may arrange the search for solutions via civic cooperation or via public sector agency but in all cases they should define and try to solve the problems that are felt as problems by those affected in the social intercourse. Dewey consequently refused to analyse problems which are autonomously defined as problems by politics, public agency or planning authorities. He does not investigate an independent or autonomous planning subject because it is too abstract and it does not know the real problems that come as a consequence of social interaction. Planning agency is instrumental to the intentions and the problem perception of the public, and not the other way around. Also technical expertise and law are positioned as means to be arranged by the public rather than serving the established powers. Dewey’s concept of state as such was made changeable and dependent on the intentions and problem perceptions of the public. His concept of ‘state’ was never the same, it had to be rediscovered and rearranged time after time by the problem-shaped public instead of progressing autonomously (Dewey, 1991/1927, p. 34). It is a radical (and not uncontentious) position of relational analysis. Dewey explicitly considered planning, state and law as instruments of a public that intends to find effective solutions for their perceptions of problems. While thus mobilizing the government and other arrangements to solve problems, Dewey criticized the self-centredness of modernist planning and the administrative state before it was even invented! There is much more to say on the pragmatist premises, but for the present argument it is important to understand the crucial notion of inter-subjectivity in the relational framework of analysing public policy and planning. This basic premise has been sustained throughout the twentieth century. Pragmatism and institutional thought differ deeply in many regards but the fact that both orientations are rooted in a relational framework of analysis is a welcome common denominator in the search for the potential of dialectical co-evolution.

Fundamental Differences in Pragmatism and Institutional Thought

Before explaining the relevance of both classic orientations for the contemporary research of public action and planning and the exploration of options for mutual cross-pollination, we have to make explicit the different meanings and the different functions of the two conceptual streams in planning research. Pragmatism and institutional thought employ different rationalities of public action that are prone to clashes. In order to investigate this systematically, we make an analytical distinction between the two underlying rationalizations. The level of abstraction is different and thus public action is justified in different ways. Not infrequently are these two ideas opposed to one another. The two orientations employ two fundamentally different rationales:

a.Purposive and consequential relationships;

b.The patterning of public norms, imposing conditions.

Purposive and Consequential Relationships

Pragmatism is committed to purposive relationships: purposive in the sense of the intention to remove problematic obstacles. The pragmatist orientation is essentially intentional, problem-led and solution focused. And it is consequential, in the sense that its practical judgement in the pursuit of public purpose is informed by comparison of the consequences of different options (Hoch, Chapter 8, in this volume). It does not delve into historical causes, ideologies, underlying social structures of action, or other external appeals and possible causes of social problems but situates the problem of public action in concrete settings of social interaction and focuses the attention on the consequences of an action, linking purpose, context and expected outcome (Hoch, 2002; see also Hoch, Chapter 8, in this volume). These problems are not abstract: they are empirically observable in situated contexts as the uncontrolled consequences of social interactions between people in their environment. These consequences are perceived by the affected public as a concern which necessitates public action. As far as wider causes and normative backgrounds (including institutions) play a role, they have to be perceived in this concrete setting of social interaction. Politics and planning is a matter of practical inquiry, integrating all sorts of values and motives in a practical judgement about the meaning of a problem and specific purposes in a particular context. The public arranges strategies in order to search, imagine and compare the consequences of alternative solutions (see Hoch, Chapter 8, in this volume). The justification of the public action is in the deliberate intention to remove the obstacles under the instigation of the public. The ethics of public action is also instrumental to the consequences of action (consequentialism): many solutions may be attempted but ethically relevant and good ones are only those solutions that prove to be effective. So, within pragmatism, there is not a separate world for deliberating about objectives, planning knowledge and the means of planning, etc.; instead, the origin and ultimate meaning of public action and all its ingredients (ethics, knowledge, etc.) is in precisely situated practices and their consequences.

The Patterning of Public Norms: Imposing Conditions

Institutions also legitimate the behaviour of participants in processes of social interaction. Institutions may be made up of principles, normative rules, patterned values or patterned social norms. These institutional norms may be informal or formal; they may be economic, political or cultural. We define in...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsement
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures/tables
• Contributors
• Preface
• Foreword
• Part 1 Institutions in Action
• Part 2 Institutional Innovation
• Part 3 PragmatismThe Dimension of Action
• Part 4 On Justification
• Part 5 Cultural and Political Institutions in Action
• Part 6 Institutions and Urban Transition
• Reflection
• Index