Discovering and Working With Irrationality in Planning

Abstract

This article reflects on the author's 40 years of teaching, studying, and practicing planning. Baum begins by discussing the ambitious concept of systemic, multisectoral societal planning he learned in the university setting and then describes the complex, puzzling realities he found in planners’ observations about their work, students’ reactions to their internships, and community planning cases. While graduate education and professional planning norms encouraged a belief that rational analysis could understand conditions and influence decisions, realities of irrational thinking by planners and community members called for a psychological perspective to understand how planning actually proceeds and how it could be strengthened. In this article, Baum discusses how fantasies, anxieties, and unconscious thinking influence planning and what planners should know and students should learn to make planning more reasonable.

Keywords :

• rationality
• irrationality
• psychology
• planners
• planning education

Acknowledgments

I gratefully acknowledge helpful discussions with Martin Bierbaum, John Forester, Charles Hoch, and Michael Teitz.