Planning theory: reconstruction or requiem for planning?

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Franco Archibugi, University of Naples, Planning Studies Centre Rome Postgraduate School of Public Administration, Prime Minister's Office, Via Federico Cassitto 110, 00134, Rome, Italy. Email: [email protected]

Consolidated through university course offerings, academic journals, congresses, and even academic associations.

Despite the risk of being irreverent, it seems to me that planning theory debate has arrived at something similar to these conclusions (see also alternative interesting considerations on this subject in Taylor, 1984; Simmie, 1989). As a general repraisal of the debate on planning theory, I recommend the collections of papers edited by Burchell and Sterlieb (1978) and by Healy et al. (1982).

Faludi, 1973, p. 21. For the position of Britton Harris on these and other issues, see Harris, 1967 and Harris et al, 1977.

Of course the Faludi work was a product of its time. It profited from many other works oriented in the same direction (MacLoughlin, 1969; Cantanese and Steiss, 1970; Chadwick, 1971; Dimitriou, 1972). The companion book of readings, edited by Faludi himself, is a good example of the wide context of a ‘planning theory’ as the logical reorganization of the practice of planning in several directions (Faludi, Ed., 1973).

By ‘consistency’, I mean the capacity of a plan feature or decision to fit with environmental constraints that are beyond and outside the delimitation of the system or unit under planning. I recall one clamorous example of the kind of inconsistency from Italy: some decades ago, a research project of the Planning Studies Centre tried to extrapolate the whole pattern of the individual demographic forecasting drawn from the existing (master) plans of Italian municipalities (around half of the approximately 7000 in all of Italy), through an appropriate weighted evaluation. The result was that around the year 2000 Italy should shelter 400 million inhabitants! You can imagine, what other results, in terms of capital investment, infrastructure, housing, land use, etc. were reached. Who can assert—honestly—that this sounds only like a typical Italian case? (Archibugi, 1979). See also P. Hall (1973).

As any scholar who has a real familiarity with the course of philosophical thinking (from Plato to Aristotle, Kant to Hegel) knows well, only in a vulgar (not really philosophical) version of our language is the ‘rationalist’ in opposition to the ‘realist’.

In effect, he stated that the distinction between theory in planning and theory of planning (the latter being planning theory) should not result in an entirely separate development of the two; and also that “clearly, both types of theory are needed for effective planning”. He also stated that “planners should view procedural theory as forming an envelope to substantive theory, rather than vice versa”. But independently from the question about which should be the ‘envelope’ of the other, his main attention in his book, (and in further works) has been given to the procedural and—later—to the epistemological aspect of the planning knowledge and action, as a process, and poor attention to the substantive interrelations among different aspects of planning. Anyhow Faludi provided a very important contribution toward clarifying the procedural aspects of planning, and to formulating the foundations of a theory of planning in the substantive aspects. It is not his fault if the further development of the theory of planning has not taken this direction.

Because many of the topics of Faludi's book deal with methodological aspects of planning that have a substantial validity in the preparation of plans, i.e. in their substantive capacity to be effective and feasible in their contents and not only in their procedure or implementation.

Friedmann, 1987, Part 1.

And given the vast boundaries attributed to this ‘eclectic field’, I do not understand why we should ‘exclude’, in his opinion, other disciplines (see footnote 16), such: “psychology, cultural anthropology, geography, history, political science, micro‐sociology, and the humanities, including design theory”.

It is not by chance that an explicit trend—and for this reason much more consequential and consistent than other equivocal manifestations of a generalizing politology on planning—to see the task of the ‘theorist’ (a disconcerting thesis for one who is bound to the Greco‐Roman etymons, but anyhow suggestive) limited to that of ‘telling stories’, in the conviction that “… planning arguments are characteristically expressed as stories. As they both tell and manage these stories, planners maintain and redesign communities” (Mandelbaum, 1992); or the task is that of ‘reading plans’ as they are developed and located in the urban history (Mandelbaum, 1990, 1993). And it is not by chance that this reduction of the planners' professionality to the telling and reading of urban stories and plans (‘planners as writers’; ‘plans as narrative’) be sustained by a professor of Urban History (Mandelbaum, 1985). At least in this case people know from the beginning—with clarity, sincerity, and intellectual honesty—what is intended by ‘planning theory’ (see also Thorgmorton, 1993, 1996). My only divergence is that all this could be named ‘Urban History’; then—with some reserve—‘(Urban) Planning History’; then, perhaps (but it would be an unsupportable sophistication), ‘Theory of Planning History’; but certainly not ‘Planning Theory’. And as a final result of those kinds of elaborations, I can discern a product of amusing weekend reading for urban planners (but only for those who have enough sensibility and imaginative acumen to penetrate and understand them as hermetic poetry); but I am scared to consider them as the basis of a professional know how for young professional planner candidates!

And this has nothing to do with the vexata quaestio of the origins of knowledge and its connection with action. The entire history of philosophy has dealt with this question, to attempt to deal with it in a few pages. I persist to follow the idea that knowledge and action are intimately related and we have to tailor, to calibrate our cognitive analysis to the definition of our action objectives (decision‐oriented analysis), and this offers or obliges us to have a certain awareness of the relativity of the planning objectives. (See Faludi, 1978, 1987 and 1989). But, I repeat, this calls for another level of reasoning, and has nothing to do with my previous sentence.

This occupies two thirds of Friedmann's book (1987, Part 2) and even the rest is a continuous coming back to the historical bases (Part 3).

I think, for instance, of the work of Vico, Locke, Hume, Turgot, Rousseau, Kant, Wegelin, Condorcet, to mention the first that come to mind, and which deserve no less than the other to be included in the list of the unaware progenitors of planning theory.

In the approach named as ‘policy analysis’: from Adam Smith, to J.S. Mill. Jevons, Walras, Marshall, Pigou, Keynes, until the new ‘welfare economics’, and in the same time all school of system analysis and engineering, policy science and public policies.

In the approach named ‘social learning’: from the engineering method of Taylor, with derivations from and connections with ‘organization development’ (OD), and other issues of educational psychology.

In the approach named as ‘social reform’: the entire tradition of sociology from Saint‐Simon to Comte, Durkheim, Max Weber, Mannheim, until Popper and even modern American sociology; as well as the entire tradition of institutional economics (from the German historic school to Veblen. Commons. Mitchell), and American pragmatism (James, Dewey).

Encompassing from the Utopians to Marx and Marxists; but also Radicals and Anarchists, until the ‘Frankfurt School’ (Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Habermas).

With this trend, we can expect to find soon in our journals (nominally specialized)—as turn the wind of fashionable subjects—papers on Christianity, Buddhism. Zionism, the evolution of Eroticism, the culinary Art and the Diet issues. Bio‐ethics, Cosmopolitanism and so on: all subjects about which I foster my sincere and deep personal interest.

More details on this new discipline can be found in the literature (Archibugi, 1995).

The separation of ‘selection’ from the ‘implementation’ problem, has been one of the leit motif of methodological reflections of a great planologist. Ragnar Frisch (1970).

See for instance the work of G. Benveniste and its reception in our community (the comments dedicated to him in issue 8 of the journal Planning Theory). Frankly I do not find anything new in this work compared to the past work of Banfield and Wilson (1963), Etzioni (1968, 1969) Rabinovitz (1967, 1969). Dennis (1970, 1972), Dror (1968, 1971, 1987), Goodman (1971); and in comparison to the simple, complete and elegant synthesis of the problem made by Faludi, in the last chapters of his first work (1973).

The best synthesis of all the current strands of thought on planning theory is in Alexander's book (1992, second improved edition). Therefore I have preferred to use this book for comments, even if other books have an equivalent validity in representing the current trend of thinking.

Frisch (1970, 1971, 1976) and Seers (1972).

Always we refer to Alexander (1992, p. 2).

See Clyde Woods' (1995) very interesting paper on the Blues Epistemology and Regional Planning History (the case of the Lower Mississippi Delta Development Commission): and the equally fascinating Moira Kenney's invitation to understand the urban aspects of Gay and Lesbian Marginalization. Both papers are in the (supposed specialist) journal Planning Theory (Vol. 13, 1995).

See for other points of view Thorgmorton (1993, 1996).

See always Faludi (1973): the last chapter. And, for a wider scope, Faludi (1978).

On this point see the contents of integration outlined in my previously quoted paper prepared for the “first world‐wide conference on planning sciences” (Archibugi, 1992), but also my obstinate researches from the past (1969, 1974, 1989) to present (1994).

Just to site one glaring example, how familiar are planning theorists coming from the conventional town planning point of view with the work of the planning theorists coming from the economic point of view, such as Frisch, Tinbergen (Nobel prize winners), Leif Johansen, and many others? And in reverse, how familiar are those theorists coming from the economic point of view with the important contributions to planning theory by town planners of quality, such as Doxiades, Chapin, Perloff, and many others? With the last generous effort by John Friedmann (1987)—one of the ‘planning theorists’ most engaged in an integrative approach (I wish to remember one of his papers of 1973), we can—as seen—refer ourself to the origins, or roots, of the historical disciplines, in order to find a significant common field of analysis and to synthesise an interdisciplinary approach. But the reconstruction of the present status of real comprehensive planning is very poor. The important work of Nathaniel Lichfield (1996)—summarizing his many years of professional experience—covers this lack, concerning however mainly the field of economic evaluation of plans, and less the interrelationship of plans among different levels and scales.

With the French Commissariat au Plan's multi‐year plans, the ‘Neddy’ in Great Britain, the experiments with economic programming in Italy and Spain, and the even more advanced methods developed in the Netherlands, Norway, Belgium, Denmark, others countries, and even at the European Community scale. For a rapid appraisal of these experiences as a whole, see a paper of Albrecht's (1992).

This was also the epoch when, to use an expression by Alonso in a paper dealing with the integration problem, the ‘regional science’ as a ‘meta‐discipline’ was born. The title of his paper (presented in Japan in a academic meeting of ‘regional sciences’) was, ‘Beyond Interdisciplinary Approach to Planning’ (1971).

The example that I know better, obviously, is the Italian ‘Progetto 80’. But other attempts have been developed in Netherlands, in France, and in the 1970s, also in Germany, with the Federal ‘Raumordnungprogramme’ (1975), that later has been put aside. Some critical surveys of these experiences in Europe are in a book of Stuart Holland (1977). For the US experiences see an enlightening essay by Beauregard (1992) presented to for the ‘First World Conference on Planning Science’.

It is well know that attempts were made to introduce such methods into many governmental agencies. These include the PPBS (Planning Programming Budgeting System) and similar procedures for evaluation in the US, and the RCB (Rationalisation des Choix Budgetaries) in France. All these attempts failed, in my opinion, because of the lack of connections to macro‐economic planning (and not only with a budgetary policy at the national scale, which was even missed).

This is the case of the experimental analysis by the British IOR Group (Institute of Operational Research), which was very influential, at that time, on Faludi's methodological reflections as a good test of the benefits of an interdisciplinary acquaintance (Friend & Jessop, 1969; Friend et al., 1974).

In respect to this experience. I conjecture that the difficulties met by the ‘structure plans’ to become a stable operating system, are due to the fact that they were not framed in a national, multi‐county scenario, capable of controlling the consistency between county design and national decisions and design.

Two academic journals born in the 1960s, Socio‐Economic Planning Sciences published by Pergamon and Environment and Planning published by Pion, were aimed at fulfilling the role of fostering an academic integration of planning theory. (The first included, on its editorial board, economists of the level of Ragnar Frisch and H. Darin‐Drabkin, town planners such as Britton Harris, Martin Meyerson and John Dyckman, and systems analysis such as R.H. Howard and H.G. Berkman. The second had economists such as Peter Nijkamp, town planners such as Peter Hall, system analysts such as R. Quandt, etc.) But, the expectations in this direction were largely frustrated. These journals have developed their own ‘core focuses’: Socio‐Economic Planning Sciences deals mainly with conventional ‘operational research’ disciplines (even if applied to the public and social sectors), and Environment and Planning covers conventional ‘regional science’ with a strong orientation towards a positive, neo‐classical, economic approach and therefore with scarce interest in planning (until more recent years with the editorship of another accompanying journal on planning). And, I believe that this has happened, not due to the responsibility of the editors (or their respective editorial boards, of which, incidentally, I have been a member since their beginnings), but due to a lack, within the academic and professional worlds, of a real tendency towards important integrated experiences in planning.

Soon. I hope to publish a critical survey of the more meaningful research strands which have contributed, consciously or not, to the realization of a certain integration, either disciplinary or operative, of various fields and approaches of planning. The purpose would be to set the foundations of a new ‘science’ or ‘theory’ of planning. I will call this work, on which I have been working for some years, ‘Introduction to Planology’. To me, this word ‘planology’ seems useful in indicating this attempt to unify, within a general historical‐cultural perspective, all of the sectorial or substantive approaches belonging to the planning sciences in the last decades, and to examine their connections and the convergence towards a new unique discipline. There is a draft version of this survey, published by the Planning Studies Centre (Archibugi, 1992).

Even this article, I agree, belongs to this kind of literature. I must confess that I am writing it with a certain uneasiness. Shortly, I would prefer to occupy myself—and it is what I have tried to do in a certain extension—in proposing something different, didactically and scholarly, on how to prepare and how to manage a plan, in terms of consistency and relationship with the outer environment, instead of engaging in meta‐talk on plans.

And I felt that this Oxford conference would be the appropriate place to do that.

This is how the idea of the planning activity was presented by a MIT professor, John T. Howard in the entry for ‘City Planning’ in the Encyclopaedia Britannica in the 1930s. This quotation is taken from a work of mine on the ‘Theory of Urbanistics’ (forthcoming in English).

I refer again to the ‘Introduction to Planology’ (Archibugi, 1992), in which critical illustrations of different cultural and scientific strands that have lead to the conception of an integrated and unified approach to planning have been identified. I also examine the articulation of the contents of Planology, in general, and its evolutionary relationship with others disciplines and with the fields and strands on which it is based.

For many years, in cooperation with a group of colleagues and friends, I have been working to build a treatise on general planning (hoping to have time ahead to achieve it) epitomizing systematically principles, criteria, and methods of planning at different scales and facets of community life. I believe that the best way to move towards the improved performance of planning as a new discipline (planning science or planology) is to give a systematic outline of its foundations.

We wish to remind you that in the origins of economic accounting related to the nationwide system, this accounting has also been called social accounting. (See especially the preferred language of Richard Stone (1959, 1967) and the Department of Applied Economics at the University of Cambridge several years ago.) But, since the conventional denomination of that accounting has become economic or national, we prefer to reserve the expression social accounting for the new attempts to create an integrated accounting system outside the national accounting system, capable of reaching the non‐economic (or as I would prefer, the non‐monetary) phenomena of welfare. By this, I mean that they are not measurable with the help of actual or simulated prices of the market, but rather through other indicators of output or of utility (see for these aspects Archibugi, 2000).

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Franco Archibugi

Franco Archibugi, University of Naples, Planning Studies Centre Rome Postgraduate School of Public Administration, Prime Minister's Office, Via Federico Cassitto 110, 00134, Rome, Italy. Email: [email protected]