The interpenetration of politics and planning
Abstract This paper argues that judgement on the wider claims of systems planning should be suspended until a fuller evaluation has been completed. As part of this evaluation, it is argued that the relation between the activities of politics and of planning will remain ambivalent so long as the two concepts retain their elastic definitions. In this context this paper examines the British literature on systems planning and concludes that conflicts generated in the formulation of goals cannot be imploded, from the political arena into planning and resolved there through the application of deductive logic. It is argued that goal formulation needs to be reconceived as an activity where the deductive logic of systems planning and the interactive logic of politics interpenetrate and permeate each other. It is argued that neither is it desirable that deductive logic should dominate political activity, nor is it feasible that the interactive logic of politics should dominate the activity of planning. Interpenetration may be seen in the activity of representation, where although the represented are capable of acting, their representatives act for them (not instead of them) in other arenas. It is argued that ultimately, though politics is a logically prior activity and though planning is instrumental, they need to be conceived as interdependent but semi-autonomous activities, linked by the process of formulating desirable goals which are also feasible.
Urban and Regional Planning
1. Planning, Planners and Plans 2. The Origins: The Urban Growth, From 1800 to 1940 3. The Seers: Pioneer Thinkers in Urban Planning, From 1880 to 1945 4. The Creation of the Postwar Planning Machine, From 1940 to 1952 5. National/Regional Planning, From 1945 to 2010 6. Planning for Cities and City Regions, From 1945 to 2010 7. Planning in Western Europe Since 1945 8. Planning in the United States Since 1945 9. The Planning Process
Suburban Land Conversion in the United States: An Economic and Governmental Process
This comprehensive study of land use on the suburban fringe analyzes the complex relationships that underlie land conversion in the United States. It contains a detailed examination of the northwestern urban complex; some nationwide projections for the future; and a list of measures that, singularly or together, may change the nature and results of the suburban land conversion process. Originally published in 1971