Reuben on Planning

From Town Planning Review, 56(1),(1985): 5-20

This article was discussed in our week 1 Introduction last week.

I wanted to mention the article because I like how it considers the economic/political environment within which a planning system must operate, and examines a variety of arguments for and against planning in the modern industrial context.

This is an interesting window into how thinking regarding the role and form of efficient government at the time this article was published has impacted on the perceived role, status and importance of Planning as a discipline.  What is interesting is that the writer is composing this article to a backdrop of significant changes in accepted management theory, around the time when the concepts of New Public Management, with its emphasis on deregulation and privatization, and the placing of limitations on the role of government, are coming in vogue.

I enjoyed the writers consideration of the economic arguments for planning, such as lack of information and externalities, and that societies required planning outcomes could be generated through a series of appropriate quasi-markets rather than by a government controlled planning department.  The article then goes through to explore pluralistic arguments defining the role of government as an arbitrator with separate vested interests negotiating planning outcomes between then, with a basic premise similar to advocacy planning approach.  The writer goes on to contemplate Marxist Theories of Urban development in that the existing planning system exists not to serve the collective public interest, but rather to serve the needs of business elites and to assist them to amass capital and wealth at the benefit of the underprivileged.

This is not meant to be a literary review, so I wont attempt to criticise the article (actually I thought it was quite balanced and well considered) or go into too much detail, other than to say that the article really got me thinking about the greater context, and I enjoyed reading it.