Digital knowledge technologies in planning practice: from black boxes to media for collaborative inquiry

Abstract

Digital knowledge technologies such as urban computer models, geographic information systems, and planning support systems are often critiqued as black boxes whose use in planning results in the domination of expert views over stakeholder perspectives. These concerns are not adequately addressed by collaborative planning theory, which reflects Habermas’s problematic assumption that technology is primarily associated with instrumental rationality. Within the realm of planning discussion Habermas’s concept of media provides a description of how to draw insights from technologies while minimizing their potential for oppression. However, conducting democratic inquiry with knowledge technologies requires moving beyond discourse ethics and fostering critical interaction between technology creators and planning stakeholders, where choices about the process, goals and scope, representation, and epistemic norms are made jointly. These ideas are illustrated with three examples of knowledge technologies used at different scales of planning practice: a sketch-planning workshop, a regional planning process, and a planning institution. Collaborative planning practices must pay greater attention to the design and use of digital knowledge technologies by rethinking – but not abolishing – the division of labor between professionals and stakeholders.

Keywords:

• Knowledge technologies
• planning support systems
• GIS
• collaborative planning theory
• communicative rationality
• Jürgen Habermas

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the students of UP 614 and Peter Pelzer for providing comments on earlier versions of this paper, Planning Theory & Practice editors Heather Campbell and Robert Upton and three anonymous reviewers for providing constructive comments, Julie Steiff for editing assistance, and Betsy Cooper for contributing Figure 1.

Notes

1. For examples in planning that do not focus on planning tools, see Beauregard (2015) and Lieto and Beauregard (2016).

2. Some authors have introduced alternative terms for these categories, such as Healey’s “technical,” “moral”’ and “expressive.“ However, I have chosen to keep the original (translated) terms due to their suggestive associations, such as the role of practical reasoning and aesthetics in planning.

3. For a further critical discussion of this table see Feenberg (1996, pp. 50–55).

4. This echoes the findings of researchers interested in the role of information in collaborative planning. Innes argued that “information does not influence unless it represents a socially constructed and shared understanding created in the community of policy actors” (Innes, 1998, p. 56). Information matters in collaborative planning when planners and technical experts engage in dialog with participants, discussion shapes ongoing management and resulting plans (Hanna, 2000), and information more reliably leads to action when it is discussed by a diverse stakeholder group (Kartez & Casto, 2008).

5. For example, on average participants responded that they “somewhat agreed” with the statement “I am familiar with the terms and concepts used by the computer tool,” a question that relates to the concept of comprehensibility, and with others related to the legitimacy of the tool, such as “The computer tool reflects my unique issues and concerns” (Goodspeed, 2015).