“Anglo-American Town Planning Theory Since 1945:

Three Significant Developments But No Paradigm Shifts”

Planning Perspectives (1999)
Nigel Taylor
Editors’ Introduction Oo
In the previous selection Sir Peter Hall described the evolution of modem planning theory
from its origins through the early twenty-first century (p. 373). Most of the theorists Hall
discussed are from the UK or United States. In this selection British planning theorist Nigel
Taylor provides his own interpretation of Anglo-American planning theory from 1945
through 1999 when this article was written. Taylor argues that during this period there
were significant developments in planning theory, but no true paradigm shifts.
The ideas of paradigms and revolutionary changes in scientific thinking were best
articulated by physicist and historian of science Thomas Kuhn in an influential book titled
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1962).
Kuhn distinguished “scientific revolutions” in which revolutionary breakthroughs in
thinking about the world occur from “normal science” in which knowledge advances slowly
and incrementally. Sixteenth-century Italian astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus’s theory
placing a spherical sun revolving in space, rather than a stationary flat earth, at the center of
our solar system, for example, would qualify as a revolutionary scientific breakthrough,
while mapping craters on Mars would be normal science. The crater mapping is an addition
to human knowledge consistent with established theory, but Copernicus’s theory
represents a whole new way of looking at the universe. Urban planning is a form of
normative practice based on social science. Atheory that urban planning should be done
using computer models rather than architectural drawings might qualify as a paradigm
shift, but John Forester’s illuminating discussion of how urban planners resolve conflicts (p.
421) is a “normal science” extension of knowledge about urban planning.
Taylor discusses three significant shifts in the way urban planning has been conceived and
defined that began in the 1960s: first, from the planners as a creative designer to the
planner as a scientific analyst and rational decision-maker, second, from the planner as a
technical expert to the planner as a manager and communicator, and third, from modernist
to postmodernist ways of thinking about urban planning.
Taylor agrees with Peter Hall (p. 373) that initially urban planning theory viewed urban
planning as essentially an exercise in physical design — architecture on the scale of a whole
town, or part of a town — though he argues that this view remained dominant after World
War Il and that its continuing influence is greater than Hall describes. Taylor also agrees
with Hall that in the mid-1960s some theorists challenged this conception based on systems
theory and the rational planning model. In Taylor’s formulation, two distinct theories of
planning “the systems view” and the “rational process view” arose in the late 1960s. Both
conceptions represented a radical departure from the then prevailing design-based view of
planning. Cities were seen as systems of interrelated activities in a “ANGLO-AMERICAN
TOWN PLANNING THEORY SINCE 1945”
constant state of flux, whose ongoing processes needed to be analyzed scientifically rather
than in static, end- state, aesthetically based blueprint-like drawings.
But is this change from design-based to systems-based planning a Kuhnian paradigm shift?
Taylor thinks not. He points out that urban design continued to be an important feature of
planning through the late 1960s and 1970s and that there was a revival of theoretical
interest in urban design in the 1980s and 1990s. In Taylor's view, the systems and rational
process views of planning added to rather than ousted the incumbent design-based view.
They represented a significant change, but not a paradigm shift.
Taylor identifies the emergence of the view that planning is a value-laden political process
in the 1960s as another significant development in planning theory. At that time neo-
Marxists like Henri LeFevre, David Harvey, and Manuel Castells argued that planners should
be concerned with social justice and equity. Paul Davidoff (p. 435) and Sherry Arnstein (p.
238) pressed for processes that would include the poor and powerless or make their
interests know in planning processes.
Both the traditional design-based view of planning and the systems and rational-process
views presume that planners possess specialized knowledge and expertise that laypeople
do not. An extreme critic of this line of reasoning might argue that an angry neighborhood
resident with no knowledge of design, economics, computers, or rational planning at all
might be as (or more) qualified to articulate a plan for the neighborhood as a university-
educated planner. Arguably an impassioned tirade against a redevelopment project that
would displace most of the poor minority residents is a form of planning that might
produce a better plan than an urban renewal plan based on lots of data, sophisticated
computer modeling, and application of specialized design skills.
A less extreme theoretical position along the same lines — which Taylor notes has been
widely adopted in planning theory — is that planners’ expertise should lie mainly in
eliciting opinions and managing planning processes. According to this theory of planning,
the planner should “facilitate” planning, but not impose knowledge-based decisions. British
planning theorist Patsy Healey has developed a theory viewing planners as both
communicators and implementers: communicative action planning. US planners Judith
Innes and David Booher also argued that collaborative planning is essential to solving
complex planning problems. Is the shift to viewing planners as communicators and
managers rather than technical experts a Kuhnian paradigm shift? Again, Taylor argues it is
not. Taylor concedes that communicating and managing planning processes are important,
but argues that planners can and should bring substantive knowledge to bear so that
citizens, other stakeholders, and decision-makers understand the consequences of
alternative courses of action.
The final significant development that started in the 1960s that Taylor describes involves a
shift in planning from modernist to postmodernist approaches. The theory and practice of
architecture and urban planning that Le Corbusier (p. 336), the International Congress of
Modern Architecture (CIAM) and other modernists developed was at its height during from
the late 1920s through the 1950s. The modernists found little of value in historic city
designs, favored use of modern building materials such as steel and glass, liked aesthetically
minimalist functional plans, advocated for rational, scientific problem-solving, and wanted
big, efficient cities, built for speed. Since about 1960, modernism has been largely out of
favor. David Harvey (p. 230), Mike Davis (p. 195), Michael Dear (p. 170) and others have
developed a body of postmodernist urban theory.
Postmodernists value history and vernacular design. They like human-scale development.
They are content with mixed-use projects and complexity. Efficiency and speed are not their
dominant concerns. J.B. Jackson (p. 202) and Jane Jacobs (p. 105) reject modernist values.
The urban design theory developed by Kevin Lynch (p. 499), William Whyte (p. 510), Allan
Jacobs and Donald Appleyard (p. 518), and Jan Gehl (p. 530) reflects postmodernist values.
Taylor describes a postmodernist approach to planning developed by University of British
Columbia planning professor Leonie Sandercock in some detail. Sandercock argues that
planners should draw on experiential, grounded, contextual, intuitive knowledges
manifested in speech, songs, stories, and various visual forms more than on rational
scientific analysis. Normatively, Sandercock argues that today’s diverse multicultural cities
require postmodern community-based planning sensitive to cultural differences. Do the
postmodern values and processes Sandercock and other postmodernist planners espouse
amount to a paradigm shift? Again, Taylor says no. He argues that while multicultural,
community-based planning may be desirable and “different ways of knowing” can
ers a” on Sok
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NIGEL TAYLOR
contribute to understanding cities and making good plans, there is still a need for
overarching normative values and governmental action to implement plans.
In summary, Taylor argues that while there have been significant shifts in planning theory
since 1945, there have also been significant continuities. Overall, he concludes that changes
in planning theory since 1945 have been developmental — filling out and enriching the
rather primitive conception of planning that prevailed immediately after World War Il.
Do you agree with Taylor that the change from the conception of planning as physical
design to the systems and rational process views, while significant, did not amount to a
paradigm shift? How about the shift from the planner as technical expert to the planner as a
manager and communicator? The shift from modernist to postmodernist theories of urban
planning?
Nigel Tayor is a principal lecturer in planning and architecture at the University of the West
of England in Bristol and a visiting professor in the Department of Architecture and
Planning at the University of Bologna, Italy. His teaching and research interests include
planning theory, the history of town planning, aesthetics and urban design, and clear
thinking and reasoning in policy-making and negotiation. He is on the editorial board and
serves as book review editor of the journal Planning Practice and Research.
This selection — “Anglo-American Town Planning Theory Since 1945: Three Significant
Developments But No Paradigm Shifts” - was published in Planning Perspectives 14(4)
(1999). Taylor's planning theory book Urban Planning Theory Since 1945 (Thousand Oaks,
CA: Sage, 1998) contains a more extended discussion of the material summarized in this
article. Other planning theory books are described in the introduction to Peter Hall's
selection above (p. 373). Oo
In recent times it has become fashionable to describe major changes in the history of ideas
as ‘paradigm’ shifts, and some have described changes in town planning thought since the
end of the Second World War in these terms. In this article | offer an overview of the history
of town planning thought since 1945, and suggest that there have been three outstanding
changes in planning thought over this period. These are, first, the shift in the 1960s from
the view of town plaming as an exercise in physical planning and urban design to the
systems and rational process views of planning; second, the shift from the view of town
planning as an activity requiring some technical expertise to the view of planning as a
political process of making value-judgments about environmental change in which the
planner acts as a manager and facilitator of that process; and third, the shift from
‘modernist’ to ‘postmodernist’ planning theory. I argue that none of these changes
represents a paradigm change in anything like the strong sense of that term. Rather, they
are better viewed as significant develop- ments, which have ‘filled out’ and enriched the
rather primitive town planning theory, which existed half a century ago.
INTRODUCTION
Over the fifty-year period since the end of the Second World War there have been a number
of important shifts in town planning theory. But what have been the most significant
changes, and how significant have these changes been? In this paper I offer a retrospective
overview of the evolution of town planning thought since 1945, and an interpretation ofthe
most significant shifts in planning thought over this period. My geo- graphical focus will be
on planning theory as it has developed in Britain and North America, though the
developments I describe here have been influential elsewhere. My conceptual focus will be
on those ideas or theories that have been concemed with clarifying what kind of an activity
town planning is (and hence what skills are appropriate to its practice). In other words, I
shall concentrate on changing conceptions of town planning itself over the last fifty years.
But I shall also examine the modemist-postmodernist debate and its bearing on changing
views about the purposes (and hence normative theory) of town planning,
In studies of the history of ideas, it has become fashionable to describe significant shifts in
thought as ‘paradigm’ shifts, and some planning theorists have applied this concept to
changes in town planning thought since 1945, Therefore, in addition to offering “ANGLO-
AMERICAN TOWN PLANNING THEORY SINCE 1945”
an account ofthe main shifts in (Anglo-American) town planning theory since 1945, I shall
also assess whether itis appropriate to describe these changes as paradigm shifts. | begin, in
the next section, by describing the concept of ‘paradigms’ as employed by the American
historian of science, Thomas Kuhn. Following that, I offer, from a British perspective, an
account of the three most significant shifts in the way the activity of town planning has been
conceived since 1945. Though significant, I argue that, in anything like a strong sense of the
term as it is used by Kuhn, it is inappropriate to describe these changes in planning thought
as ‘paradigm’ shifts.
THE IDEA OF PARADIGMS AND PARADIGM SHIFTS
The use of the term ‘paradigm’ to describe major shifts in thought was first coined by
Thomas Kuhn in his account of the history of scientific thought. Before Kuhn, it was widely
assumed that scientific know- ledge had grown steadily through history as more and more
empirical evidence of phenomena had been accumulated. Kuhn’s examination of the history
of science led him to conclude that this gradualist, evolutionary view of the advance of
scientific know- ledge was misleading. For, according to Kuhn, if we examine any branch of
science, we find that there are certain fundamental theories, conceptions or pre-
suppositions which hold steady for very long periods — often for hundreds of years. These
settled views of the world become so fundamental to people’s whole conceptual scheme of
reality that it is extremely difficult (andin some cases impossible) formost people to think of
reality as being different; that, indeed, is why such views are fundamental. Because these
fundamental theories constitute people’s view of the world (or a significant part of it), they
are, literally, ‘world views’, and it is these enduring world views which Kuhn describes as
‘paradigms’. Examples of paradigms in the history of science would be the pre- Copernican
view that the Earth was flat and at the centre of the Universe, the pre-Darwinian view that
human beings had somehow been created on this planet separate from other species, and
the Newtonian model of a mechanical Universe.
Kuhn’s account of the history of science allows that, through the period in which any given
paradigm prevails, advances in scientific theory still occur as a
result of empirical research which uncovers fresh evidence about phenomena.
Nevertheless, according to Kuhn, at any time most scientific research and theoretical
development operates within the presup- positions ofa prevailing, and more fundamental,
world view or paradigm, and for the most part this latter goes unquestioned. In this respect,
most scientific research amounts to filling in some of the details of, and so further refining, a
given paradigm. Because most scientific research conforms to the norms of an estab- lished
paradigm in this way, Kuhn also describes it as ‘normal’ science.
During the long periods ofhistory in which a given paradigm prevails, scientists are often
aware of empirical evidence which does not ‘fit’ the prevailing paradigm, which the
prevailing paradigm seems unable satisfactorily to explain. However, according to Kuhn,
most scientists do not allow this ‘contrary’ evidence to unseat their adherence to the
paradigm on which they rely to explain phenomena in the world. Rather, they tend to ‘turn
a blind eye’ to these puzzling phenomena, often in the belief that one day someone will
succeed in explaining the seemingly ‘anomalous’ evidence within the frameworkof the
given paradigm. The great scientists in history, however, have typically been curious about
anomalous evidence which a prevailing paradigm is unable to explain and, as a result, have
created a radically new account of the world which succeeds in explaining the hitherto
puzzling evidence as well as the evidence previously explained by the ‘old’ paradigm. This
new fundamental theory amounts to a whole new conceptual scheme, world view, or
paradigm. In Kuhn’s terms, then, a paradigm shift is a revolutionary shift in thought,
because a whole way of perceiving some aspect of the world is over- tumed and replaced by
anew theoretical perspective. Examples ofsuch paradigm shifts noted by Kuhn were the
shift from viewing the Earth as flat and at the centre of the Universe to seeing it as round
and orbiting the Sun, the shift from a ‘creationist’ to a Darwinian evolu- tionary model
ofhuman origins and development, and the shift fromm a Newtonian to an Einsteinian view
of space and time.
It should be clear from this account that, for Kuhn, paradigm shifts are fundamental
theoretical changes. It is this, which explains why paradigm shifts typically occur
infrequently in the history of science. Any given paradigm, once established, shapes the
whole way a scientific community (and beyond that, the general public) views some aspect
of the world, and tends to
NIGEL TAYLOR
endure for centuries, not just decades. If, then, we adopt this ‘strong’ Kuhnian conception of
paradigms, it would seem initially unlikely that there would be several paradigm shifts in
the field of town planning theory over the short span of the last fifty years. Furthermore,
Kuhn was describing changes in scientific thought — that is, major changes in the way
people have described and explained some aspect of reality as a matter of fact — and town
planning is not a science. Rather, itis a form ofsocial action directed at shaping the physical
environment to accord with certain valued ideals. In other words, town planning is a
normative practice (although in seeking to realize certain valued ends town planning, like
any normative practice, draws on relevant scientific understanding).
Of course, we are not compelled to adopt the strong, fundamentalist conception of
paradigms described above. It is possible to use the concept in a weaker, more generous
sense to describe shifts of thought which are significant, but not necessarily fundamental to
people’s world view or conceptual scheme, Moreover, although town planning is not strictly
a science, the Kuhnian notion of paradigm shifts can also be extended to describe
fundamental, or significant, shifts in values and ethical thinking. However, although there is
nothing to stop us using the concept ofparadigm shifts in these more liberal ways, we need
to be alert to the dangers of over-using the concept. If every twist and tur in planning
thought over the past fifty years is described as another paradigm shift, the very notion of a
‘paradigm shift’ becomes superfluous. | therefore favour the use of the term inits ‘purer’,
more strict (and restricted) sense. Accordingly, it is in terms of this stronger conception of
the term that I shall argue that, whilst there have been some significant changes in the way
the activity of town planning has been conceived over the last half-century, none of these
amounts to a paradigm shift.
My account of town planning theory since 1945 is organized as follows. In the next section I
surmmarize what seems to me to be two significant innovations in the way the activity or
‘discipline’ of town planning has been conceived and defined, both of which emerged in
Britain and the USA in the 1960s. The first was the shift from the urban design tradition of
planning to the systems and rational process views of planning. The second was a shift from
a substantive to a procedural conception of planning. This latter evolved further through
the 1970s and 1980s, and eventually crystallized around the idea of the planner
as a manager of the process of arriving at planning judgments, rather than someone who
possesses a specialist expertise to make these judgments him- or herself. What is now
termed ‘communicative planning theory’ is the latest version of this view of planning, under
which the planneris seen as a kind of ‘facilitator’, drawing in other people’s views and skills
to the business of making planning judgments.
In the section that follows I exarnine a third sig- nificant change in post-war planning
thought which some writers have identified — the alleged shift from ‘modemist’ to
‘postmodemist’ ways of thinking. Por Sandercock, this shift from modem to postmodern
planning theory is so fundamental as to lead her to claim that ‘we are ... living through a
period of what Thomas Kuhn has called “paradigm shift” ’.
The concluding section points out some of the continuities which run through the changes
in town planning theory since 1945, and reiterates the thesis that none of the changes in
planning thought over the past fifty years represents a paradigm shift in any- thing like the
pure, or fundamental, Kuhnian sense.
TWO SIGNIFICANT SHIFTS IN THE WAY TOWN PLANNING HAS BEEN CONCEIVED
From the planner as a creative designer to the planner as a scientific analyst and rational
decision-maker
For almost 20 years following the Second World War, town planning theory and practice
was dominated by a conception which saw town planning essentially as an exercise in
physical design. In fact, this view of town planning stretched back into history, arguably as
far as the European Renaissance, arguably even further back than that. Its long historical
lineage is shown by the fact that, for as far back as we can see, what came to be seen and
described as town planning was assumed to be most appropriately carried out by
architects. Indeed, such was the intimate connection between architecture and town
planning that the two were not distinguished throughout most ofhuman history. Thus what
we call town planning was seen as architecture, its only distinctiveness being that it was
architecture on the larger scale of a whole town, or at least part of a town, as distinct from
individual buildings. “ANGLO-AMERICAN TOWN PLANNING THEORY SINCE 1945”
This conception of town planning as ‘architecture writ large’ persisted down to the 1960s,
as was shown by the fact that most planners in the post-war years were architects by
training, or ‘architect-plamers’. Indeed, because of this, the established professional body
for architects in Britain, the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), resisted the
establishment of a separate professional body for town planning, arguing that town
planning as a practice was already ‘covered’ by themselves. The close link in the post- war
years between design and town planning, and hence between architecture and town
planning, also explains why at this time aesthetic considerations were regarded as central
to town planning. Like archi- tecture, town planning was viewed as an ‘art’, albeit (again like
architecture) an ‘applied’ or ‘practical’ artin which utilitarian or ‘functional’ requirements
had to be accommodated ...
Against this background, the bursting onto the scene in the 1960s of the systems and
rational process views of planning represented a rupture with a centuries-old tradition, and
so might well be viewed as a Kuhnian paradigm shift .. .
Itis worth noting, in passing, that the systerns and rational process views of planning are
conceptually distinct, and so really two theories of planning, not one. Thus the systems view
was premised on a view about the object that town planning deals with — towns, orregions,
or the environment in general, were viewed as ‘systems’. By contrast, the rational process
view of planning was concemed with the method or process of planning itself, and in
particular it advanced an ‘ideal-type’ conception of planning as a procedure for making
instrumentally rational decisions. But setting aside this important distinction, both the
systerns and rational process views of planning, taken together, represented a radical
departure from the then pre- vailing design-based view of town planning. This shift in
planning thought can be summarized under four points.
® First, an essentially physical or morphological view of towns was to be replaced with a
view oftowns as systems ofinterrelated activities in a constant state of flux.
@ Second, whereas town planners had tended to view and judge towns predominantly in
physical and aesthetic terms, they were now to examine the town in terms ofits social life
and economic activities; in Harvey’s terms, a sociological conception of space
was to replace a geographical or morphological conception of space,
M®@ Third, because the town was now seen as a ‘live’ functioning thing, this implied a
‘process’, rather than an ‘end-state’ or ‘blueprint’ approach to town planning and plan-
making.
M®@ Fourth, all these conceptual changes implied, in tum, a change in the kinds of skills, or
techniques, which were appropriate to town planning. For if town planners were trying to
control and plan complex, dynamic systems, then what seemed to be required were
rigorously analytical, ‘scientific’ methods of analysis.
Overall, the shift in planning thought brought about by the systerns and rational process
views ofplanning can be summed up (albeit rather crudely) by saying that, whereas the
design-based tradition saw town planning primarily as an art, the systems and rational
process theorists suggested that town planning was a science.
For, on the one hand, the analysis of environmental systems (regions, cities, etc.) involved
systematic empirical — and hence ‘scientific’ — investigation and analysis of
interrelationships between activities at different locations. And, on the other hand, the con-
ception of planning as a process of rational decision- making was also commonly equated
with being ‘scientific’. An indication of how significant this shift was from ‘town planning as
an art’ to ‘town planning as science’ was that it was experienced as profoundly unsettling by
many planners and planning students reared in the design tradition of town planning —
understandably. Suddenly, within the space of a few years, town planners who had
approached their task on the basis ofan aesthetic appreciation ofurban environments, and
who saw themselves as creative, ‘artistic’ urban designers, were being told by a new
generation of planning theorists that this conception of town planning was inappropriate,
and that instead they should see themselves as —and so become —‘scientific’ systems
analysts,
However, significant though this shift in town planning thought undoubtedly was, it
remains open to question whether it should be likened to a Kuhnian paradigm shift.
Although the shift in planning thought described above did have the effect of marginalizing
considerations of design and aesthetics in planning theory for about 20 years, in British
planning prac- tice (especially in the development control sections of planning authorities)
planners still continued to
NIGEL TAYLOR
evaluate development proposals partly in terms of their design quality and aesthetic
impact... In planning practice, therefore, the design-based conception of town planning was
not completely superseded by the change in theoretical perspective described above.
Admittedly, these observations are about planning practice, not planning theory. But the
continuation of the physical design view of planning in planning practice was also
theoretically significant. For it drew attention to the fact that, at the level of ‘local’ planning
at least, many planners continued to believe that the physical form and aesthetic
appearance of new devel- opment were important concems of town planning. And although
there were lessons for small area ‘local’ plaming in systems and rational process thinking
(e.g. in giving greater consideration to the social and economic effects of development
proposals; in approaching local planning as a rational process; etc.), these lessons could be
accormmodated within an essentially traditional design-based conception of planning. At
the level of local planning, therefore, the shift in planning thought described above did not
replace the physical design view of planning; it was not a paradigmatic shift in that sense.
Furthermore, the continuing relevance of the physical design-based conception of town
planning to town planning theory has been shown by the revival of theoretical interest in
questions of urban design in the 1980s and 1990s. It was therefore primarily at the
broader, more strategic level of planning that the design-based view of planning was
supplanted by the changing con- ception of planning ushered in by the systems and rational
process views of planning. In fact, the main shift in planning thought brought about by the
systems and rational process views of planning was in clarifying a distinction between
strategic and longer-term planning on the one hand, and ‘local’ and more short- term
planning on the other. And it was at the former, strategic level of planning that the altered
conception of town planning brought about by systems and rational process thinking was
most relevant. In retro- spect, then, the shift in town planning thought in the 1960s
described above was not a wholescale revolution which completely ousted the incumbent
design-based view of town planning; rather, the systems and rational process views of
planning ‘added’ to the design-based view. The shift in planning thought described above
was not therefore a revolu- tion in thought comparable to the paradigm shifts in scientific
theory described by Thomas Kuhn.
From the planner as technical expert to the planner as a manager and ‘communicator
Although there were marked differences between the traditional conception of town
planning as an exercise in physical planning and design, and the conception of town
planning as a rational process of decision- making directed at the analysis and control of
urban systems, there was one thing that both these views had in common, Both presumed
that the town planner was someone who possessed, or should possess, some specialist
knowledge and skill — some substantive expertise — which the layperson did not possess.
It was this, which qualified the planner to plan. And since a central condition of
professionalism is the possession of some specialist knowledge or skill, it was this, too,
which justified any claim town planners might make to constitute a distinct ‘profession’.
Clearly, views about the content of the specialist skill appropriate to town planning varied
according to which of the foregoing conceptions of planning were adopted, Under the
traditional design-based view of town planning, the relevant skills were seen to be
primarily those of aesthetic appreciation and urban design. Under the systems and rational
process views, the skills were those of scientific analysis and rational decision-making. But
still under both concep- tions, the town planner was conceived as someone with a specialist
knowledge, understanding, and/or skill. However, this whole idea of the planner as
someone with some substantive expertise came in its tum to be challenged by an alternative
view of town planning.
This challenge emerged again in the 1960s, when it came to be openly acknowledged that
town-planning judgments were at root judgments of value (as distinct from purely scientific
judgments) about the kinds of environments it is desirable to create or conserve. Once this
view was taken, it naturally raised the question of whether town planners had any greater
‘specialist’ ability to make these judgments than the ordinary person in the street. Indeed,
people’s experience of much of the planning of the 1960s — such as comprehensive housing
redevelopment or urban road planning — seemed to indicate not. The emergence of the
view that town planning was a value-laden, political process therefore raised not so much
the question of what the town planner’s area of specialist expertise should be, but, more
fundamentally, the “ANGLO-AMERICAN TOWN PLANNING THEORY SINCE 1945”
question of whether town planning involved any such expertise at all.
From this radical questioning of the town planner’s role, there developed a curious
bifurcation in planning theory, which has persisted to this day. On the one hand, some
planning theorists have continued to believe that the practice of town planning requires
some specialist substantive knowledge or skills — be it about urban design, systems
analysis, urban regen- eration, sustainable development, or whatever. On the other hand,
there has developed a tradition of planning thought, which openly acknowledges that town-
planning judgments are value-laden and political. As noted above, one conclusion, which
might have been drawn from this, would be to reject entirely the idea that town planning
involves, or requires, some specialist expertise, and indeed, some ‘radical’ planning
theorists have flirted with this view. However, most planning theorists who have openly
acknowledged the value-laden and political nature of planning have developed an
alternative line of thought. This rejects the idea that the town planner is someone who is
specially qualified to make better planning decisions or recommendations — because what
is ‘better’ is a matter of value, and (so the argument goes) planners have no superior
expertise in making value-judgments over environmental options. However, the view is still
taken that the town planner possesses (or should possess) some specialist skill, namely, a
skill in manag- ing the process of arriving at planning decisions and facilitating action to
realize publicly agreed goals.
Through the 1970s and 1980s, therefore, a tradition of planning theory emerged which
viewed the town planner’s role (and hence his or her ‘professional’ expertise) as one
ofidentifying and mediating between different interest groups involved in, or affected by,
land development. In this way, the town planner was seen as someone who acts as a kind of
cypher for other people’s assessments of planning issues, rather than someone who is
specially qualified to assess these issues him- or herself. The town planner was viewed as
not so much a technical expert (i.e. as someone who possesses some superior skill to plan
towns), but more as a ‘facilitator of other people’s views about how a town, or part ofa
town, should be planned. To conceive of the town planner like this as a kind of manager of
the process of making planning decisions could easily conjure up an image of the planner as
a grey-suited chairperson of meetings. But tacked onto this view went amore
particularideological commitment which
made it more appealing and inspiring to idealists in the profession, namely, a commitment
to ensure that the process of planning was open and democratic, especially to
disadvantaged or marginalized groups who tended to be ignored or overridden in decisions
about land development.
An early version of this theory oftown planning, and of the planner’s role, was Paul
Davidoff's ‘advocacy’ view ofplanningin the 1960s. The most recent version is the
communicative planning theory inspired, particularly, by Habermas’s theory of
communicative action. In this, the skills of inter-personal communi- cation and negotiation
are seen as central to a non- coercive, ‘facilitator model of town planning, Indeed, in relation
to involving the public in planning, it has even been suggested that the kinds of inter-
personal skills needed by the communicative town planer are those of the listener and the
counsellor:
Meaningful dialogue —leaming the language of the client — is at the heart of effective
counselling. To counsel is not to give advice or push the client down a particular path, but to
let the client see himself or herself fully and through this discovery achieve personal
growth. As local government offices look for ways of including citizens in decision-making,
they must adopt many counselling skills — active listening, non-judgmental acceptance, and
the ability to empathize. How can people play a part in the decision-making process unless
we ‘enable’ therm to do so.
This view of the knowledge and skills relevant to town planning is a far cry from the view
that the specialist skill ofthe town planner resides in being either an urban designer or a
systems analyst.
In relation to this view of the planer as a manager, communicator, and ‘facilitator’ of
planning decisions, it is also relevant to note here the emergence of a concem with
implementation during the 1970s and 1980s, Perhaps the first planning theorist to
articulate this concern was John Friedmann at the end of the 1960s, when he presented a
critique of the rational process model of planning because it tended to emphasize the task
of making decisions over that of taking action. This, together with the seminal work of
Pressman and Wildavsky, drew attention to the much overlooked fact that, frequently, the
most carefully thought through public decisions and policies did not actually result in the
necessary action to realize their
NIGEL TAYLOR
intentions. This was because, in attending primarily to the business of making decisions
about appropriate policies and plans, insufficient attention was given to the problems of
how these policies and plans might get implemented. A concern with implementation —
with what John Friedmann termed ‘action planning’ — thus becarne a central
preoccupation of some planning theonsts in the 1970s and 1980s.
Although this concern with implementation had rather different roots from the view of
planning as a political activity described above, itissued in much the same conception of
planning and the skills appropriate for it. For the general conclusion of the implementa-
tion theory of the 1970s and 1980s was that, to be an effective implementer of public
policies and plans, planners needed to become effective at networking, communicating and
negotiating with other agents involved in the development process. In short, theo- retical
reflection on the problem of implementation led also to a view of the planner as one who
should be a capable manager, ‘networker’ and communicator.
Nowadays, many planners do describe themselves as managers and facilitators of the
process ofplanning rather than as people with a special expertise in planning towns. So the
shift in town planning thought described here has undoubtedly been significant. Hence
Judith Innes’s description of ‘communicative action and interactive practice’ as the new
‘paradigm’ of planning theory. However, once again a word of caution is in order before it is
too readily assumed that this change in planning thought represents a Kuhnian paradigm
shift. For it is possible to imagine some kind of rapprochement between the two views
described here. Thus one could adopt a view of the town planner as one whose role is
primarily that of a communicator and negotiator, but where, in communicating and
negotiating with others, the planner also brings to bear some specialist knowledge which,
for example, would enable him or her to point out the likely consequences of development
proposals on the form and functioning ofa town, Such a model of the town planner would be
akin to that of, say, civil servants who are experts in economic matters, and who impart
their specialist economic understanding to those they advise who make decisions about
economic policy. To be effective as an adviser, such a town planner would have to be skilled
in communicating and negotiating with others, but he or she would also have to possess
some specialist knowledge to bring to the communicating table to assist others in arriving
at planning decisions.
The alternative ‘substantive’ and ‘procedural’ concep- tions of town planning described in
this section are therefore not as fundamentally at odds, or ‘incommen- surable’, as the
paradigm shifts in the history ofscience described by Thomas Kuhn.
MODERNIST AND POSTMODERNIST PLANNING THEORY: A SHIFT IN NORMATIVE
PLANNING THOUGHT
According to some commentators, since about the late 1960s there has been a significant
shift in Westem thought and culture from ‘modemism’ to ‘post- modemism’, and some view
this as so fundamental as to constitute a shift in world view, or a paradigm shift. This
alleged paradigm shift has a special bearing on town planning, because modem architecture
and town planning have jointly provided one of the main ‘sites’ where the shift from
modernism to post- modemism is supposed to have taken place. Indeed, according to
Charles Jencks, the death-knell of mod- emism was sounded in July 1972, when the
vandalized Pruitt-Igoe high-rise housing estate in St Louis (USA) — which had earlier won
an award as an exemplar of modem architecture and town planning — was deemed
uninhabitable and dynamited by the local city authority.
At one level, postmodernism can be viewed as a movement opposed to the styles of art and
design associated with the modern movement. Thus in archi- tecture, postmodernists
rebelled against the aesthetic minimalism and anonymity of the plain geometrical buildings
(and comprehensive planning schemes) of the modern movement, and against the
modemist dogma of functionalism, which had legitimized this stripped-down architecture.
Postmodern architects therefore sought to ‘bring back style’ to conternmporary buildings to
enrich their aesthetic content and give them ‘meaning’. Thus in what is arguably the first
text of postmodem architecture, Robert Venturi famously counterposed his preference for a
stylistically more complex architecture over plain ‘functional’ modemism:
I like complexity and contradiction in architecture — Architects can no longer afford to be
intimidated by the puritanically moral language of orthodox Modem architecture. I like
elements which are hybrid rather than ‘pure’, cornpromising rather than “ANGLO-
AMERICAN TOWN PLANNING THEORY SINCE 1945”
‘clean’, distorted rather than ‘straightforward’, ambiguous rather than ‘articulated’,...
inconsistent and equivocal rather than direct and clear. 1 am for messy vitality over obvious
unity.... 1 am for richness of meaning rather than clarity of meaning...
In relation to town planning, Jane Jacobs [p, 105] and Christopher Alexander expressed a
similar preference for complexity in the city, in opposition to the simpli- fied order which
modem town planning theorists like Ebenezer Howard [p. 328] and Le Corbusier [p. 336]
had advocated. Jacobs berated the simple- mindedness of single use zoning and
‘cormprehensive’ redevelopment in urban areas, both of which showed little understanding
of, or regard for, the delicate social and economic fabric and vitality of existing city areas.
Instead, she advocated mixing land uses, and leaving many so-called slum areas alone to
‘unslum’ them- selves. Alexander similarly criticized moder town planning for seeking to
impose a simplified ‘tree-like’ structure on urban areas (e.g. by planning for ‘self- contained’
neighborhoods), suggesting that successful cities contained within them complex and subtle
‘serni- lattice’ patterns of interrelationships.
These architectural and planning ideas certainly represented a departure from the
prevailing ‘modemist’ orthodoxy. But, according to some accounts, the shift from
modemism to postmodemism goes deeper than just a preference for greater ‘complexity’ in
archi- tecture and town planning. For, itis said, underpinning and driving the modem
movementin architecture and town planning (and other developments in modem western
culture) has been a more fundamental intellectual orientation, which has its roots in the
European Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. This Enlightenment ‘world view’ has
been charac- terized as an optimistic beliefin human progress based on analytical reason
and scientific understanding. Quite apart from its ‘machine aesthetic’, modem town
planning thought and practice has been seen as expressing this more general
Enlightenment world view or paradigm, and correspondingly, postmodem planning theory
is seen by some as representing a break with this intellectual tradition.
Such a view is advanced, for example, by Leonie Sandercock. She emphasizes two important
contrasts, in particular, between the modemist paradigm of town planning which she
rejects and a postmoderm paradigm which she endorses: one conceming the
epistemological basis of planning, and the other con- ceming the values ornormative theory
ofplanning. On the first, Sandercock suggests that modernist planning has been ‘concemed
with making public/political decisions more rational’... As an adjunct to this, modernist
planning has relied largely on ‘a mastery of theory and methods in the social sciences’, so
that planning knowledge and expertise is ‘grounded in positive science, with its propensity
for quantitative modeling and analysis’. Second ... ‘the state is seen as possessing
progressive, reformist tendencies’. Accordingly, the state is vested with the authority to
undertake town planning ... to realize what is in the overall public interest.
Against each of these (epistemological and norma- tive) features of modemist planning,
Sandercock counterposes postmodern altematives. First, in contrast to the rationalist model
of planning theory Sandercock urges that whilst ‘Means—ends rationality may still be a
useful concept... we also need greater and more explicit reliance on practical wisdom’...
[S]uch practical wisdom derives from more varied kinds of knowledge and experience than
just scientific knowledge; it can also include ‘experiential, grounded, contextual, intuitive
knowledges, which are mani- fested through speech, songs, stories, and various visual
forms’. Planners should therefore ‘leam to access these other ways ofknowing’. Second,
against the ‘top— down’ state-directed model of planning, Sandercock urges a ‘move to
community-based planning, from the ground up, geared to community empowerment’. Part
of this involves a recognition that planning ‘is no longer exclusively concemed with
comprehensive, integrated, and coordinated action, ... but more with negotiated, political
and focused planning. This in turn makes it less document oriented and more people-
centred’. Part of it also involves an acknow- ledgernent that modem cities are increasingly
inhabited by different ethnic and other social groups, with a diversity of cultures and
interests. A postmodem community-based planning, which is sensitive to cultural
differences, would therefore dispense with the idea of an overarching public interest
because this ‘tends to exclude difference’. Instead, ‘planning in this multicultural area
requires a new kind of multi- cultural literacy’.
The epistemological critique of modemism for its reliance on rationality and science has
been central to some versions of postmodemism. However, many theorists have questioned
whether the postmoderm
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critique is, or can be made, coherent in its own terms. Consider, for example, the following
statement of postmodem epistemology by Michael Dear.
Postmodemism’s principal target has been the rationality of the modern movement,
especially its foundational character, its search for universal truth — The postmodern
position is that all meta- narratives are suspect; that the authority claimed by any single
explanation is ill-founded, and hence should be resisted. In essence, postmodemists assert
that the relative merit of one meta-narrative over another is ultimately undecideable; and
by extension, that any such attempts to forge intel- lectual consensus should be resisted.
Taken at face value (i.e. in terms of what it actually says), this statement implies a rejection
of rational discourse altogether. For if postmodernists believe, as Dear here suggests, that
there are literally no cnteria against which we can judge the relative merits of different
theoretical positions, then it would follow that there can be no reasoned debate about
different theories at all. However, apart from the fact that such a position is intellectually
hopeless (in the literal sense that there would be no point in hoping for greater
enlightenment through rational discourse with others), it also seems to be self-defeating ...
If, as these arguments suggest, the postmodem epistemological critique of ‘modemist’
rationality and science is itself incoherent, then the idea that post- modermism represents a
paradigmatic break with Enlightenment reason turns out to be empty. This is not to deny
Sandercock’s suggestion that there may be ‘different ways of knowing’ which can
supplement, ‘fill out’, or otherwise complement the understand- ings gained by reason and
science. Certainly in relation to making practical planning judgments, the experience and
knowledge oflocal communities, even if not strictly ‘scientific’, must be relevant to those
judgments. However, if this is what the postmodem epistemological position comes down
to, then for all its fruitfuness it does not represent an alternative to modernist
‘Enlightenment’ epistemology, but rather a supplement to it.
What, then, of the altemative values — ornormative theory — which postmodernists
advance in opposition to the values of modermism? Do these represent a paradigm shift in
normative thinking?
Broadly, postmodemists argue that the world and our experience ofit is farmore complex
and subtle than
has typically been realized in the modem age. In relation to cities and the environment,
postmodemists claim that people’s experience of places, and from this the qualities of
places, are much more diverse and ‘oper’ than was implicit in many modemist schemes for
improving the city — and especially in the bombastic simplicities of modemist architectural
schemes for the ideal future city, such as Le Corbusier's radiant city, In place of the
modemist architect’s and planner's emphasis on simplicity, order, uniformity and tidiness,
postmodemists typically celebrate complexity, diversity, difference, and pluralism. This
echoes Jane Jacob and Christopher Alexander's celebration of urban complexity and
diversity more than thirty years ago, Postmodernists therefore argue that there can be no
one type of environment, which is ideal for everyone, no singular conception of
environmental quality. Thus whilst some may continue to hold as a planning ideal Howard’s
vision of garden cities, others will prefer the buzz and excitement of what Elizabeth Wilson
calls the ‘teeming metropolis’. Hence, too, Sandercock’s view that the ideal postmodern city
is a multicultural city.
This postmodern emphasis on diversity, difference, pluralism and multiculturalism chimes
with the political ideals ofliberalisn. For liberals also celebrate the plural society in which
individuals have the opportunity to determine and ‘realize’ themselves in different ways
through the exercise of free choice. From this point of view, the normative position of
postmodemism might seem to accord with a liberal, market-sensitive system of planning in
contrast to the ‘statism’ of socialist and social democratic forms of planning (which have
been associated with modernism),
But do these postmodem values amount to a paradigmatic break with the values of so-
called mod- emist planning? Two points can be made to dispute this. First, in relation to the
general value stance of diversity and pluralism espoused by postmodernists, this can be
taken to an extrerne where any ‘difference’ is accepted or permitted; in other words, a
position of complete moral and political relativism, And such an extreme ethical relativism
is open to criticisms similar to those raised earlier against postmodem epistemological
relativism. To be sure, we may endorse amore complex, variegated and ‘multicultural’
conception of environmental quality, but this need not exclude a commitment to some
overarching — even universal — normative principles of planning. For “ANGLO-AMERICAN
TOWN PLANNING THEORY SINCE 1945”
example, shouldn’t town planning, wherever it is practiced, do what it can to help bring
about economic- ally and environmentally sustainable development, development which is
not socially divisive, and development which is experienced as an aesthetic delight? In fact,
for all her celebration of difference and multiculturalism, even Sandercock acknowledges
that herideal ‘cosmopolis’ would require some overarching normative principles, such as
some overall principles of social justice, and a democratic polity which fosters ‘dialogue and
negotiation as the habit of political participation’.
Second, with respect to the liberal inclinations of postmodemism, whilst the kind of
centralized ‘statist’ planning of Soviet-style socialism and even post-war social democracy
in the West may have been discredited, the idea that a liberal, market- supportive style of
planning produces better environ- mental outcomes has by no means been universally
accepted. Sandercockherselfargues for a ‘bottom-up’ community-based style of planning as
being the required antidote to ‘top-down’ statis. Yet even she insists that this
is not to argue for the rejection of state-directed planning. There are transformative and
oppressive possibilities in state planning, just as there are in community-based planning.
Victories at the community level almost always need to be con- solidated in some way
through the state, through legislation and/or through the allocation of Tesources.
The idea, then, that either a kind of postmodem liberalism or some version of community
planning constitute a paradigmatic break with social democratic politics is, to say the least,
premature (consider, in this regard, Giddens’s recent argument for a ‘renewal’ of social
democracy).
CONCLUSION: CHANGE AND CONTINUITY IN TOWN PLANNING THOUGHT
Unquestionably, there have been significant changes in town planning thought since the
end of the Second World War, and (for all the talk of the gulf between planning theory and
practice), these changes have affected planning practice. Thus town planners now
operate with a very different conception of town planning, and bring to it quite different
skills, from the architect-planners of fifty years ago. The idea, for example, of town planning
as an exercise in ‘manag- ing the process of arriving at planning decisions’ and ‘negotiating
agreements for action’, and hence of the town planner as someone who is primarily a
communicator and a ‘facilitator’, would not really have occurred to early British post-war
planners like Thomas Sharp, Frederick Gibberd or Lewis Keeble. Contrariwise, the idea that
the prime task of town planners is to undertake surveys of the physical and aesthetic
characteristics of towns, and then sit in front of drawing boards drawing up master plans,
would strike most present-day planners as hopelessly limited, naive, and outmoded.
Similarly, the ‘modemist’ ideas that better cities can be created by drastic surgery and
‘comprehensive’ development has long been discredited.
These are significant changes in people’s concep- tion of the activity of town and country
planning, and the values, which should inform it. And there isno harm in describing these
changes as ‘paradigm shifts’, so long as we appreciate that we are employing this term in a
fairly loose or weak sense. However, in anything like the strong sense of the term as used by
Thomas Kuhn to describe revolutionary changes in thought in the history of science, itis
doubtful whether any of the changes in town planning thought since 1945 are appropriately
described as paradigm shifts. For in the strong sense of the term, a paradigm shift is marked
by a fundamental change in world view — a kind of Gestalt switch in people’s whole
conceptual scheme. And whilst there have been significant discontinuities in planning
thought since 1945, there have also been continuities across these changes.
For example, whilst, on the face of it, the shift from the physical design view of town
planning to the systems and rational process views of planning might look like a change of
world view (and hence a Kuhnian paradigm shift), the systems and rational process views
of planning did not completely supersede the urban design conception of town planning.
Thus, at least at the ‘local’ level of small area or ‘district’ planning and the control of
development, good urban design (and design control )is still regarded as central to good
town planning; indeed, a concer with urban design within town planning has experienced
something ofa revival since the mid-1980s. Arguably, a more likely candidate for a Kuhnian
paradigm shift has been the
397
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NIGEL TAYLOR
shift from a view ofthe town planner as an expert to the planner as amanager and facilitator
—the shift, in other words, away from a view of the planner as the supplier of answers (in
the form of ‘master’ plans) to that of the planner as someone skilled at eliciting other
people’s answers to urban problems and somehow ‘mediating’ between these. But even this
view of town planning as aspecies of ‘communicative action’ is compatible with the view
that town planners should possess at least some area of expertise, for exarnmple about the
likely effects of proposed changes on urban environments. Similarly, the postmodem
emphasis on complexity, difference and relative values is not completely incompatible with
a commitment to some overarching, universal principles of environmental quality, still less
with a reliance on (sophisticated) reason and scientific understanding.
Looking back over the changes in town planning theory since the end of the Second World
War, some
planning theorists have suggested that planning theory has fragmented into a plurality of
diverse and even incompatible theoretical positions or ‘paradigms’. However, this article
has expressed scepticism with this idea. Although there have been significant shifts in
planning thought since 1945, there have also been significant continuities. Indeed, the shifts
in town planning thought over this period can be regarded as developmental rather than as
ruptures between incompatible paradigms of planning. In other words, the changes to town
planning theory described here can equally well be viewed as ‘filling out’, and thereby
enriching, the rather primitive conception of planning which prevailed in the immediate
post-war years. On this account, the story of town planning theory since 1945 has been one
of developing sophistication as we have learnt more about the greater complexity of urban
environments and the diverse values of different cormmunities.