Post-Pandemic Planning: Beyond “Stifling Paradigms”. Achieving Transformation Requires Grappling with the Tiresome and Low Profile

A year ago the vast majority of us had never heard of coronavirus or covid. Currently (January 2021) our lives are more different than we could have ever imagined, with the extent of governmental interventions in excess of anything a democratic politician would have considered including in a manifesto. This state of affairs is grafted on top of and intensifies trends within a pre-pandemic planning world that was already highly challenging, uncomfortable and divisive. To reflect a little. In our lived worlds, a very few have much and many have little, and those with little have few expectations that this order of things will alter anytime soon; climate change is happening, meaning life-changing weather events are regular occurrences; and young people feel abandoned and left to sort out the mess of previous generations, while older people have been abandoned to the fate of dysfunctional ‘care’ systems. In our public discourse, rancour, resentment and rudeness dominate, to the point that being confrontational, regardless of the available evidence, has become normalised. In our working lives, we continue to see siloes, rather than joins and connections; competition and group advancement, rather than collaboration in a shared endeavour; short termism driven by numerical targets, rather than longer term systemic transformation driven by ethical values; and individual self-preservation, with an ever watchful eye that there is someone else to blame, rather than shared collective responsibility and learning. In our intellectual endeavours, we draw boundaries around disciplines and sub-disciplines; compete for methodological supremacy as to whether we should count, account, engage, listen, observe, experiment, simulate, model and/or theorise; and develop ideological enclosures where for me to be right, you must be wrong, and the rightness or wrongness of my argument is inextricably connected to presumptions about my identity and in turn my moral worth. And all that before the world woke up to the most deadly pandemic for a century.

There are, of course, exceptions and more positive trends, perhaps best exemplified in the way many individuals have been willing to step in and assist those most vulnerable to and isolated by the covid-19 coronavirus pandemic, and more generally there are the glimmers of a new tone to the narratives of governments and businesses in relation to carbon emissions, inclusion and economic growth. Inevitably, however, the implications of the pandemic have both mirrored and exacerbated existing societal problems and cleavages. The health crisis has already brought with it an economic crisis, and the impact of the latter will cast a dark enduring shadow that will challenge and stretch individuals and communities, and test the capacities of our institutions. The record of the latter may be chequered at best, but delivering better outcomes will be hugely dependent upon effective public institutions. Will the shared global horror of the coronavirus pandemic and its consequences provide the necessary jolt to existing norms, and more specifically, how should planning respond and contribute?

In the editorial in the last issue Jill Grant provided a formidable overview of the evidence thus far gathered as to the implications the pandemic is having for communities and cities across the globe (Grant, 2020). The editorial highlights that, while the storm unleashed by the covid-19 pandemic is experienced as much by the residents of palaces as temporary shelters, the urbanite and the farm worker, north and south, east and west, we are certainly not all in the same boat. The effects of the pandemic land unevenly and the aftermath will do too. It is already clear that the way life-styles and livelihoods are conceived is being individually and collectively reconsidered, even inter-generational, inter-community and inter-national relationships and responsibilities are being subject to re-appraisal. In this editorial I want to pick up on Grant’s challenge as to how far the pandemic can act as a fork in road, and more specifically challenge the fundamentals of planning. She concludes with a striking indictment of existing planning theory and practices, as she ponders: “Perhaps the pandemic offers planning a chance to move beyond the stifling paradigms that have dominated the field for so long without producing the kind of communities many people desire.” (p. 663).

A radical step would be to start by recognising that none of us has all of the answers. There is no complete theory of how to plan for all times, places and circumstances, no template for decision-making, no perfect policy-process, no ideal model of implementation, no supreme ideology. How many times do we need to return to Rittel’s and Webber’s (1973) seminal paper articulating the nature of ‘wicked problems’ to realise that magic bullets do not exist, neither in terms of policy solutions nor the decision-making systems through which policy is determined? Ideal templates did not exist the last time we attempted to grapple with a complex multi-faceted, inter-connected societal problem, and they still do not. There are few significant policy interventions in the planning domain that can be effective in isolation from other policies and the supporting resources and capacities of a wide range of individuals and institutions. An understandable response to the complexities of a wicked problem, and perhaps the organisational challenges associated with taking action, is to place it in the “too difficult to deal with” pile. As a result, attention is focused on the bits of problems that can be readily defined and acted upon by a particular group of specialists; more often than not, the symptoms of the problem rather than the underlying cause. A symptom-focused approach can only ever offer partial and temporary respite.

A fascinating aspect of the coronavirus pandemic has been to glimpse inside the policy-making process in real time, as national and local governments across the globe have grappled, for better and worse, to prevent the spread of infection and to mitigate the accompanying consequences. We see differing organisational arrangements of politicians, officials and expert advisory bodies. As policy analysts we often ask: who gets to contribute and who not, and with what outcomes? Those questions detain policy-makers too, but they do not have the benefit of hindsight. They ask in real time: which scientists and experts from what sub-disciplines with what experience should be consulted? Who to listen to, and who not? Whose advice is valuable and whose is not, amid the cacophony of differing perspectives? Who should form the half dozen members of the core team? What are the primary goals, and which will have to wait? What is known and how should that data be interpreted, and by whom? Should action be taken today, tomorrow or next week? Is there the capacity to implement the actions deemed necessary, and if not, what is to be done? What will be the indirect consequences of the actions taken and for whom? What should the public be told and how should the actions needed be explained and justified? How far will citizens curtail their individual liberties for the benefit of the collective good? What matters and who is essential? And also, how will the voters and history assess our actions?

A recurrent theme of politicians during the last few months has been that they are ‘guided by the science’. Certainly, such phraseology has been deployed in an effort to provide politicians with a protective shield and to deflect culpability. However, what is abundantly clear is that evidence, scientific or otherwise, is not determinative, even in the face of a pandemic. Policy-making is about judgement, whether in the face of a health crisis or housing crisis. It is undoubtedly highly desirable to be well-informed, in terms of evidence and the experience and knowledge available, to interpret and explain the implications of that evidence, but there are no formulae or templates to answer the questions posed above; no guarantees of particular outcomes, far less success. However, recognition of this uncertainty should not lead to a counsel of despair, for what is also clear – as policy-makers around the world are observed struggling with much the same problem and similar evidence – is that judgements can be better and worse.

If judgement, more grandly practical wisdom, is key to policy-making, then planning theory, practices and education need to give better consideration to its art and craft. Planning research tends to focus attention on the ‘what’ of policy-making after the event and based on recollection, rather than the ‘why’ of policy decisions, the reasoning (high-minded or instrumental) in the moment leading eventually to action, or at least as likely non-action. Certainly, consideration of ‘why’ type questions are examined by planning theorists and retrospectively through empirical studies in relation to, for instance, larger political-economy discourses (take neo-liberalism). This body of work provides important insights about exclusion and unequal outcomes, but limited attention has been given to the reasoning leading to the policy choices of policy-makers in real time. How did they address the sorts of questions outlined earlier in relation to the pandemic decision-making? Such a focus would likely shift the gaze from assessment and culpability to understanding and awareness of constraints and opportunities, from singular answers and policy-process templates to rich nuanced insights of the art of minute-by-minute improvisation. More especially, the numerous daily judgements about when, where and how to apply the full planning theory repertoire. It would move attention away from the existing ‘stifling paradigms’ and sterile debates for intellectual supremacy, to those most tricky of matters, the nature of good compromise, and the art of connection and joining up. This in turn would raise to the surface, the seemingly most tiresome of matters, organisational innovation and administrative competence.

The notion of compromise is often viewed with suspicion, yet it is in the nature of a wicked problem that compromise will be necessary. This is where the antagonistic nature of current public discourse and the competitive and divisive nature of the organisational arrangements of many of our public institutions come into stark and perturbing focus. In The Spirit of the Good Compromise, tellingly sub-titled, Why Governing Demands It and Campaigning Undermines It, Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson (2012) argue that the confrontational, over-simplified and glib political discourse of campaigning is not suited to the more nuanced and complex requirements of governing. Moreover, even in 2012, they were concerned that policy-makers were failing to distinguish between the two, and that the campaign mode had become the default way of working. Campaigning and protest are important facets of any democracy, but for meaningful policy change to happen they must be accompanied by an appreciation of the nature of a good compromise, not any compromise, and the organisational and institutional infrastructure necessary to support policy-making as well as implementation and learning. Campaigning as a mode of governance leads to stasis in relation to the problems that really matter, and the redirection of attention and resources to neat definable problems with immediate, too often numerically measurable, ‘solutions’. At best, this results in time and finance being devoted to the symptoms of societal problems, while the underlying systemic issues remain undisturbed.

The campaign mode of policy-making has a tendency to reverberate further than merely the determination of policies into the soul of public institutions and their organisational practices. It is arguable that the metric obsessed culture of much of the public sector, which pitches units and individuals in competition with one another, is a reflection of governance as an endless campaign. While the campaign model holds sway there is widespread recognition that existing policy practices are not delivering in relation to the grand challenges of our times. To do differently, however, requires more than exhortation and criticism of current processes and outcomes. It is frequently argued that in order to deal with the systemic roots of current societal challenges requires ‘joined up’ approaches that break apart siloes and divisions, whether they be professional, disciplinary, organisational or governmental, or between communities.

The language of transformation is accompanied by a sense of confrontation and high visibility. It may be that confrontation is necessary, but it is rarely sufficient for meaningful change. Transformative change requires institutional graft. Take the seemingly straightforward example of seeking to encourage inter-professional and inter-disciplinary learning in planning education. Few would dissent that breaking down professional and disciplinary siloes in education is an entirely desirable goal. However, such a goal is rendered extremely difficult, if not impossible, by the institutional arrangements of most universities, not because of a lack of appreciation of the educational merits, but because financial structures dictate that if, say, a planning student takes a course in civil engineering or public health, the planning school loses money. There is of course a logic to this framework, as it would be entirely unfair if the home department received funding for a student, while being reliant on other departments to educate their students. Institutional structures, frameworks and incentives may not be headline grabbing, and maybe regarded as tiresome, but they are the bread-and-butter of transformative change. Similarly, administrative competence tends not to draw the acclaim it should as a contributor to effective change.

The very essence of planning, as a discipline and practice, is about joining up and making connections, even the art of the good compromise. In 2014, I wrote an editorial (Campbell, 2014) taking as its starting point Isaiah Berlin’s book The Hedgehog and the Fox (1953). In that book Berlin uses the metaphors of the hedgehog and the fox to explore differences in intellectual style: to oversimplify somewhat, the hedgehog knows a great deal about one thing and the fox knows a little about many things, a juxtaposition between the specialist and the generalist. While both intellectual styles are necessary, it seems evident that the hedgehog has become more highly valued than the fox. It is perhaps not therefore surprising that the generalist capacity to join up, to synthesise, and on that basis lead, seems to be missing within many institutions. This also has implications for the nature and capacities of the leadership within our organisations and institutions. If the intellectual styles and capabilities within our institutions, including amongst the leadership, have become somewhat one-dimensional, then the insight, and more especially wisdom necessary to deliver transformative change is likely to be lacking. This suggests that there is a hugely important educational and intellectual task to be addressed.

Wicked problems are clearly difficult for policy-makers to get traction on, but perhaps the planning discipline needs to re-focus and energise such debates. Have researchers been too willing to place such problems in the “too difficult” pile, content to critique and to select a form of ‘campaign’ mode as battle lines are joined over the supremacy of one theoretical perspective, one method, one policy framework, over others? The post-pandemic condition demands more than the existing ‘stifling paradigms’ have offered, and planning should have more to contribute. I look forward to seeing papers coming forward for publication in Planning Theory and Practice that push the boundaries of the way debate is constructed within the academic planning discipline, in terms of research, theory and education, and hence how practitioners can lead and support the transformative change necessary in order to address the pressing issues facing the post-pandemic world.

In This Issue

In this issue of Planning Theory and Practice there is plenty of evidence of the need for more joined up policy-making, the challenges of institutional processes and the need for greater inter-disciplinarity. Judith Phillips, Nigel Walford, Ann Hockey and Leigh Sparks focus on rethinking the future of the high street, most especially in terms of the role and contribution of older people. If the need for creativity with regards to the purpose of the high street in the context of age-friendly environments, was timely and pertinent before the pandemic, it is even more so now. Chris Boulton, Aysin Dedekorkut-Howes and Jason Byrne examine how local governance frameworks, including issues of organisational leadership and culture, influence the provision of greenspace, based on a case study of the City of Logan in Australia.

Leonora Angeles, Victor Ngo and Zoë Greig take us to the Philippines, and, through detailed case study investigation, demonstrate how bureaucratic inertia embedded within various institutional processes can thwart transformative agendas in relation to climate change. The exclusionary capacities of institutional and administrative practices also come under the spot-light in Daniela Morpurgo’s paper which explores how claims for non-Catholic places of worship in north-east Italy are being actively evaded. The final paper in the Articles section of this issue by Silvano De la Llata focuses on public spaces, and more especially seeks to show through a study of the use of squares by protest movements in Barcelona and New York, that narrowly prescribed definitions of public spaces can be transformed into a concept which is more fluid and emergent.

The Interface in this issue speaks of the power to silence, in its many and disturbing forms and contexts. The editors of the Interface, Libby Porter, Ananya Roy and Crystal Legacy with their contributors Tanja Winkler, David Kelly and Kiera Chapman starkly draw attention to planning’s (active) complicity in dispossession and marginalisation. In the Debates and Reflections section Christopher Hawkins and Rachel Krause examine how, in the absence (thus far) of a national policy framework in the United States, attempts are being made at the city level to tackle sustainability, and Tom Becker and Markus Hesse consider how the German idea of an International Building Exhibition is being used to open up a space for policy innovation on the border of France and Luxembourg.

Finally, Patsy Healey uses a review of Gavin Kitching’s (2020) Capitalism and Democracy in the Twenty-first Century, which explores how the current global political economy is evolving, to urge planners to reflect critically on the harmful impacts of current economic practices, while also engaging with the potential for new forms of institution building. There seems to be a theme.