Shadows of Power

An Allegory of Prudence in Land-Use Planning

Jean Hillier

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9781134519781
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

Shadows of Power examines public policy and in particular, the communicative processes of policy and decision-making. It explore the important who, how and why issues of policy decisions. Who really takes the decisions? How are they arrived at and why were such processes used? What relations of power may be revealed between the various participants?Using stories from planning practices, this book shows that local planning decisions, particularly those which involve consideration of issues of 'public space' cannot be understood separately from the socially constructed, subjective territorial identities, meanings and values of the local people and the planners concerned. Nor can it be fully represented as a linear planning process concentrating on traditional planning policy-making and decision-making ideas of survey analysis-plan or officer recommendation-council decision-implementation. Such notions assume that policy-and decision-making proceed in a relatively technocratic and value neutral, unidirectional, step-wise process towards a finite end point. In this book Jean Hiller explores ways in which different values and mind-sets may affect planning outcomes and relate to systemic power structures. By unpacking these and bring them together as influences on participants' communication, she reveals influences at work in decision-making processes that were previously invisible.If planning theory is to be of real use to practitioners, it needs to address practice as it is actually encountered in the worlds of planning officers and elected representatives. Hillier shed light on the shadows so that practitioners may be better able to understand the circumstances in which they find themselves and act more effectively in what is in reality a messy, highly politicised decision-making process.

PART 1


INTO THE SHADOWS

CHAPTER 1

SHADOWS OF POWER: an allegory of prudence in land-use planning

PREAMBLE

More years ago than I readily admit, I came fresh out of university to my first job serving as a planning officer with a county council planning authority in a then de-industrialising South Wales in the UK. The person who would now be known as the executive manager (planning), then simply the deputy chief planner, amused the department with his constant use of the terms ‘political will’ and ‘prudence’.

Political will and prudence were always together, so much so that the departmental cartoonist depicted them as an old, somewhat argumentative couple. This pair was the departmental joke, regularly signing memos and being responsible for all the mistakes or oversights we made. Yet I have to admit that I never really understood the meaning of this old couple until I embarked on this current research and realised just how important is planners’ use of prudence¹ in dealing with the vagaries of political will.

I hereby dedicate this book to political will and prudence.

INTRODUCTION

The reality of planning often disappoints. In its operation and its outcomes, planning practice fails to live up to its promise. Into an ideal thought-world of planning policy and decision-making come political realities. This book is concerned with public policy, and in particular, the communicative processes of policy- and decision-making. My background in the area of urban and regional planning has led me to develop an interest in the important who, how and why issues of policy decisions. Who really takes the decisions? How are they arrived at and why are such processes used? What relations of power may be revealed between the various participants?

‘In the shadow of power’ is a Mexican proverbial expression implying the subtlety of power, rather than overt power. John Forester’s seminal work talks about planning in the face of power (1989). I believe that the power and power-plays which planning practitioners both ‘face’ and engage in are subtle. Instances of power include power games between elected representatives, from which planners are excluded; power struggles within the authority’s bureaucracy; pressure from ratepayers, developers, etc.; power struggles between practitioners and elected representatives. I explore all of these shades and shadows of power using actual stories from planning practice, i.e. practical public action or the micropolitics of practice.

A basic tenet of my work is my belief that local planning decisions, particularly those which involve consideration of issues of ‘public space’ cannot be understood separately from the socially constructed, subjective territorial identities, meanings and values of the local people and the planners concerned. Planning cannot achieve empirical reality through the work of planners alone. It is essentially intertwined with a whole range of other participants and their networks, each bringing to the process a variety of discourse types, lifeworlds, values, images, identities and emotions. I therefore explore ways in which different values and mind-sets may affect planning outcomes and relate to systemic power structures. By unpacking these and bringing them together as influences on participants’ communication, we may come to see influences at work in decision-making processes that were previously invisible.

As an educator of planning students I hear far too many complaints from ex-students that what they learned in the classroom bears little relation to the reality of practice. They tell of frustration and anger that elected representatives or their boss can simply change their mind or make a decision and undo what may be months of a planner’s hard work. Classical educational approaches to planning narrate an essentially linear planning process. However, a concentration on traditional planning policy-making and decision-making ideas of survey–analysis–plan or officer recommendation– council decision–implementation obscures the complexity of the process. Such notions assume that policy- and decision-making proceed in a relatively technocratic and value-neutral, unidirectional, step-wise process towards a finite end point. There the line stops – until students enter the world of practice and recognise the gaps in their knowledge, the gaps in planning theory and the shadows which fill those gaps.

If planning theory is to be of real use to practitioners, it needs to address practice as it is actually encountered in the worlds of planning officers and also of elected representatives. In this book I aim to shed light on the shadows so that practitioners may be able to better understand the circumstances in which they find themselves, to anticipate reactions and conflict and to act more prudentially or effectively in what is in reality a messy, highly politicised planning decision-making practice. I aim to link, in John Forester’s words, ‘practical action’ with ‘political vision’.

I unashamedly admit that I have been inspired by the work of Patsy Healey, Judith Innes and John Forester in particular, and like Forester, I hope in this book to show how insights from practice can lead to stronger and deeper theory. I hope to open a window onto practical decision-making, public participation and governance.

Bagnasco and LeGales (2000: 26) refer to governance as the capacity to organise collective action towards specific goals. This capacity involves the mobilisation of a range of networks of actors with varying understandings and representations of the issue/s under consideration. The actors will sometimes engage each other positively in a search for an outcome in which differences are minimised and ‘injustice, oppression and exploitation are muffled’ (Body-Gendrot and Beauregard, 1999: 15). On other occasions, conflicts will be too deep-rooted and ‘togetherness’ becomes extremely narrow, if not impossible.

Citizens are becoming increasingly active, not simply through consumerist power, or as relatively passive electors at periodical representative democratic elections, but as agents who challenge the activities of the institutions and organisations which shape their lives. The ideals and practices of planning come increasingly under local scrutiny.

I agree with Forester (1999: 3) on the importance of planners dealing with ‘far more than “the facts” at hand’. If planning is to be taken seriously in the future, Albrechts and Denayer (2001: 371) suggest that planners must adjust their ‘toolkits’ or mindsets to the changing needs and challenges of democratic society. As Young (2000: 4) points out, however, ‘we have arrived at a paradoxical historical moment when nearly everyone favours democracy, but apparently few believe that democratic governance can do anything. Democratic processes seem to paralyse policy-making’ (emphasis in original).

That some practitioners will resist is inevitable. Making decisions inclusively is difficult. ‘Working with others that we disagree with, that we do not understand, that we do not have much respect for, or that we might even dislike is just plain hard.’ In addition, elected representatives want results and they want results immediately. Time is of the essence. Added to this, for many professional planners, the ‘solution’ to the ‘problem’ is obvious. ‘We think we know what should be done, and we do not want to listen to other people’s views.’ Alternatively, some planners may be happy to talk and spin out information seeking so that they seem to be doing something without actually risking anything. Performance-measurement is important and mistakes must be avoided. ‘Or perhaps we don’t want to take responsibility’ (all quotations from Briand, 1999: 8).

The above presents an appealing case for a habit or disposition based theory of planning agency which I explore through the chapters of this book and which I aim to develop into a theory of discursive democratic planning praxis in a society characterised by power structures. I use the term ‘discursive’ rather than ‘deliberative’ or ‘communicative’ for my theory for several reasons, summarised as follows. Discursive processes are social and intersubjective. They involve communication which may be rhetorical or irrational rather than necessarily being calm and reasoned. Finally, discussion allows unresolved contestation across discourses (Dryzek, 2000).

TOWARDS CONSENSUS? FROM HABERMAS TO HEALEY

Early public policy in the field of urban and regional planning was related to municipal reform. In the later nineteenth century in Western Europe urban areas were suffering problems of over-rapid development. High incidences of disease were related to air and water pollution, poverty and overcrowding. Solutions were sought through physical manipulation of the environment. Surveyors, architects and engineers thus founded the discipline of planning, emphasising virtues of technical expertise, certainty, large-scale ‘God’s-eye’ vision. By the same logic, the complex machine (Simon, 1982) of society could also be reconstructed through ‘social engineering’. Such a view of planning and public policy is rooted in the enlightenment traditions of scientific knowledge and reason.

In the twentieth century, Mannheim (1940) advocated a form of planning based on the notion of ‘rational mastery of the irrational’. Through the use of scientific knowledge (linked to the increasing availability of computers in the 1960s and 1970s), professional planners could supervise economic and social development.

Planning policy-making was an essentially modernist project bringing reason and technical rationality to bear on capitalist urbanisation. Planners produced and implemented blueprint master planning schemes physically arranging land uses to achieve functional objectives. Acting in the belief that reality could be controlled and perfected once its internal logic was discovered, planners believed they could ‘liberate through enlightenment’ (Beauregard, 1989: 385).

Corresponding to their belief in the liberating potential of knowledge, planners maintained an allegedly critical neutrality. They thus disengaged themselves from the interest of any particular group, taking decisions on behalf of the ‘public’ in the ‘public interest’ as a reductionist whole: ‘the public interest would be revealed through a scientific understanding of the organic logic of society’ (Beauregard, 1989: 386). Public participation was extremely limited, largely comprising information as to decisions already taken, or choices offered between alternative options structured in order to produce the ‘correct’ result, further legitimating the role of the planners. Technical rationality was regarded as a superior means of making public decisions to asking the uninformed public themselves.

Such models of ‘rational decision-making’ dominated public policy in Western Europe in the 1960s and 1970s. Their influence is still felt due to inertia of the ‘system’ both in Europe and to a greater extent in countries such as Australia which developed their practices from a British foundation. However, the last twenty years have witnessed the ‘dissolution of the landmarks of certainty’ (Lefort, 1986: 29). Fordism has given way to new flexible structures of capital and labour; nation states have broken apart and restructured; there is an increasing globalisation of capital. Philosophically, French and German authors in particular have challenged

the dominance of the modernist values of science and reason. In their stead authors have turned to historical allusion and spatial understandings and multiple discourses embracing difference.

The concepts of active citizenship and public participation have been reborn, together with new interpretations of democracy as being inclusive rather than representative. Language has become a central concern. Since social actions are more satisfactorily explained in terms of the motives and beliefs of the participants, and since valid knowledge is derived not from mere facts but from a situated understanding of information, language is of key importance in helping us understand our lives and surroundings.

In the public policy sphere there has been increasing disillusionment with planning (Goodchild, 1990), both in its process of reaching decisions and in the outcomes of those decisions. Planners have found themselves the targets of protest against residential demolition for freeway and redevelopment programmes, and against loss of green areas. People want to be more than political spectators, to be a part of the decision- making process rather than discover what is happening to them and their areas when it is too late. People were ‘taught that planning is technical and methodological, but [have learned] that it is political and manipulative’ (Throgmorton, 1991: 2).

Planning practice increasingly comprises notions of mediating between participants in a policy decision-making process, talking, explaining and listening to a multiplicity of different stories and options. Yet decision-making involves far more than weighing the merits of respective arguments. As Forester (1989) asks, what about the place of value judgement, accountability, the power of information, political, social and economic power relations between participants? Who participates? Does the form of participation oppress or exclude some groups and allow others, more articulate, to dominate?

Democratic decision-making practice, however, cannot stand alone, It must be informed and guided by appropriate theory if it is not to become ‘visceral, opportunistic and reactive’ (Friedmann, 1987: 389). Such theory cannot be arbitrarily invented. It must evolve from critical analysis of experience and social vision whilst being dynamic enough to continuously absorb new learning.

Political theorists have thus launched what Fischer (1993: 166) terms ‘a frontal attack’ on the dominant conceptions of liberal democratic theory. Such theorists maintain that the top-down structures of liberal democracy have turned away large numbers of people from political processes (especially voting at local elections) and have led to the development and implementation of policies which benefit only the elite few.

In this regard, Jürgen Habermas has demonstrated how technocratic decision strategies confer scientific legitimation on decisions which would not generate consent in open public deliberation. His counter to such scientistic practices is for revitalisation of the public sphere to include communicative discussion and opinion formation leading to consensual agreement on decisions.

Michel Foucault has also examined the relationships between power and knowledge to demonstrate the control functions of professional expertise. Foucault shows how, far from being value-neutral, disciplines such as planning serve particular power interests. Planning discourse does not simply distort communication: its discursive practices constitute the very objects of communication themselves.

In this book I develop a new discursive theory of local land-use planning decision- making. In Chapter 2 I attempt to reconcile the ideas of Jürgen Habermas’ theory of communicative action with Michel Foucault’s attention to the power relations underlying decision-making and to issues of asymmetry, non-reciprocity and hierarchy. I identify points of contact between the work of Foucault and Habermas and the gaps between them. There are important areas of congruence and comple-mentarity which, in combination, serve to strengthen a new critical model. Habermas, for example, provides the normative dimension lacking in Foucault’s work, and in turn, the universalistic theories of Habermas lack the particularistic analyses of power provided by Foucault. Neither scheme alone provides an adequate framework for critical social inquiry. However, I believe that the strengths of both theories are complementary and it is possible to ‘reconcile’ them in the construction of a theoretically informed model of discursive democracy relevant to planning practice.

The adaptation of Habermasian ideas for planning practice owes much to the work ² of John Forester (1989, 1999), Patsy Healey (1992a, 1992b, 1997a, 2000), Judith Innes (1995, 1996, 1998, 2000) and Leonie Sandercock (1998).

Forester’s critical pragmatist approach recognises how the communication of planning officers serves to shape actors’ attention, hopes and expectations through speaking and listening, asking and answering, acting practically and communicatively in claiming, counterclaiming, promising and predicting (1989: 20–21). Forester not only recognises planners’ effic...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• DEDICATION
• PREFACE
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• FIGURES
• TABLES
• PART 1: INTO THE SHADOWS
• PART 2: SHADOW TALK: CONVERSATIONS WITH HABERMAS AND FOUCAULT
• CHAPTER 3: DISCUSSING MICHEL FOUCAULT
• CHAPTER 4: PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER: DEVELOPING THE FOUNDATIONS OF A NEW THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
• PART 3: CHIAROSCURO PRACTICE: THE SHADES AND LIGHTS OF PLANNING
• CHAPTER 6: TENEBRISM IN THE NORTH EAST CORRIDOR
• CHAPTER 7: SFUMATO IN THE FORESTS
• PART 4: SHADOW NEGOTIATIONS
• CHAPTER 9: NEGOTIATING THE GAP
• CHAPTER 10: PLANNERS AS MISSIONARIES OR CHAMELEONS?
• PART 5: OUT FROM THE SHADOWS
• CHAPTER 12: ON SLIPPERY ICE: BEYOND CONSENSUS
• PART 6: SHADOW PLAY
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• END NOTES