In: Yiftachel, O., Alexander, I., Hedgcock, D. and Little, J. (2001, Eds).

The Power of Planning: Spaces of Control and Transformation

Kluwer Academic, pp. 1-19

INTRODUCTION:

OUTLINING THE POWER OF PLANNING

OREN YIFTACHEL1

What is the impact of urban and regional planning on social and political relations?

What are the main influences of planning on the distribution of power and resources?

Are they mainly ‘progressive’ or ‘regressive’? Does planning advance social reform or

legitimise oppressive control? What are the political, philosophical, cultural or material

roots underlying the power of planning (or lack of) in late-modern globalizing societies?

Who holds the power to use the tools and instruments of urban and regional planning?

Can we discern changes in the above over time and between places?

These broad questions have guided the editors in compiling this volume. They

emerged as a result of unease among the editors and writers of this book, to what

appears as a somewhat narrow and limiting analytical scope of planning research and

theorization. The book seeks to present a series of studies, which examine openly and

critically some of the taken-for-granted assumptions about, and approaches to, planning,

and hence assist in broadening and deepening its analytical scope.

This introduction aims to construct a critical and conceptual foundation for the

following chapters. It is not meant to offer a thorough review of the literature, but rather

to delineate five key areas of deficiency in mainstream planning research, theory and

thought. These include: (a) a confused demarcation of disciplinary boundaries; (b) a

dominance of professional perspectives; (c) a privileging of process over substance; (d)

a slighting of planning’s spatial dimensions; and (e) the unchallenged acceptance of

planning’s benevolent power.

It is the fifth point with which we engage most fully. The book seeks to openly

study the power of planning to shape societal relations, and document and the many-

fold manifestations of that power: emancipatory, reformist, progressive, normalizing,

legitimizing, regressive and oppressive. Following a brief discussion on the engagement

with the concept of power in past planning scholarship, the introduction proceeds to

1

The Introduction was written after consultation with the entire editorial team (David Hedgcock, Ian

Alexander and Jo Little) to whom I owe gratitude for their useful input. The responsibility for the text,

however, remains with the author. Importantly, the introduction also includes several ideas developed

with Margo Huxley and material from our recent joint article (see: Huxley and Yiftachel, 1999). I am

very grateful for Margo’s input and wisdom, and for her willingness to let me use material from our joint

work.

O.YIFTACHEL 2

describe how the book’s chapters and parts engage with these deficiencies, and how

they respond to the critical questions we raise about the power of planning.

1. The Canon and Its Limits

For a young discipline, ‘urban and regional planning’ (or ‘town and country planning’

and ‘city planning’ as it is also called in the UK and North America, respectively) has

developed an impressive scholarly track record. For nearly a century, highly capable

minds have attempted to analyze, comment and prescribe the ‘good city’. Their studies

and models have formed the backbone of a growing field of scholarly endeavor, as well

as given conceptual and practical tools for planners occupied with ‘real life’ efforts to

guide the development of cities and regions.

Without entering into the debate over the relative importance of specific

planning texts, it is possible to tentatively mark the seminal works of the likes of

Howard, Geddes, Stein, Perry, Garnier, Lloyd-Wright, Le-Corbusier, Mumford, Harvey,

McLoughlin, Faludi, Friedmann, Castells and Hall, among others, as having shaped the

way scholars and practicing planners have thought about the making of cities and

regions, roughly until the late 1980s (for reviews, see Cherry, 1988; Friedmann, 1987;

Hall, 1988; Sandercock, 1998, Yiftachel, 1998). Despite the necessarily contested

nature of marking any group of works as a disciplinary canon, it can be observed that

the works of these scholars (and probably of several others) have formed a frequently

quoted and used core of disciplinary knowledge especially in the industrial west.

During the last decade, a growing number of planning theorists have taken a

‘communicative turn’ (Healey, 1996), in describing and theorizing urban and regional

planning (see also: Sager, 1994, 1999; Hillier, 1998). A rapidly growing amount of

work drawing on Habermasian, ethnographic and related frameworks has prompted

some to articulate the emergence of new forms of ‘collaborative’ or ‘deliberative’

planning (Healey, 1997; Forester, 1999). The density of work using this approach

brought some to declare the ascendancy of a ‘new paradigm’ (Innes, 1995), or the

existence of ‘consensus’ among scholars about key theoretical and methodological

questions (Mandelbaum, 1996, 2000). The claims to prominence of this approach to

planning research are well articulated by Innes (1995: 183) who describes the

communicationist scholars as:

Different from their predecessors, who did primarily armchair theorizing.... The

new theorists pursue the questions and puzzles that arise from practice ... and do

grounded theorizing based on richly interpretive study of practice ... they apply

intellectual lenses new to planning ... Their work gained the attention of both

academics and practicing planners because it is accessible and interesting.

Although these declarations are contestable (Huxley and Yiftachel, 2000;

Neuman, 2000), it appears as though the ‘communicationist’ approach, in the eyes of

some, has joined the disciplinary canon.

But despite the rich and pioneering nature of the seminal studies cited above, and

despite their important role in shaping the planning discipline, as-we-know-it, several

INTRODUCTION 3

deficiencies and fault-lines are evident in that scholarship. These form the basis for this

essay, which attempt to point towards new areas of thought and research, with the aim

of enriching the body of scholarship to which I refer loosely as ‘planning knowledge’.

The following pages will thus sketch a broad critique and initial agenda which have

framed the selection of material for the book. The various chapters do not always deal

with the theoretical and epistemological issues raised in this introduction, but their

material addresses some of the deficiencies and agendas highlighted here, and may thus

be viewed as an empirical extension (from a variety of perspectives) of the present

discussion.

The present introductory essay highlights deficiencies in the prevailing body of

planning knowledge in several key areas: analytical confusion, a professional ‘straight-

jacket’, a dominance of process over substance, a diminution of space, and an

unwarranted faith in the benevolent power of planning. These deficiencies hamper, in

my view, the accumulation and consolidation of a solid body of knowledge, which can

form a credible, scholarly foundation for the planning field. Let us now turn to a brief

exposition of these areas of critique.

2. Analytical Confusion: What’s in a Definition?

It has been commented for quite some time that planning scholarship is marked by deep

analytical confusion regarding the nature, boundaries and methods of its endeavor (see,

for example: de-Noufville, 1983; Reade, 1987), leading McLoughlin (1994) to declare

that the entire discipline and concept of planning is ‘chaotic’. The analytical

shortcomings of the scholarly field loosely called ‘planning’ are too many to enumerate

here, beyond focusing on several basic deficiencies which have had a marked effect on

the field.

Let us start with the most fundamental requirement for studying a phenomenon –

its definition. A brief scan of literature pertaining to ‘planning’ would immediately

reveal that the word has a wide variety of meanings. This does not stem from

ideological or political contestation over a term, as common with analytical terms (such

as, ‘democracy’, ‘policy’ or ‘development’), but rather from basic historical and

institutional differences between the various settings where ‘planning’ is practiced.

Hence, for example, Italian scholars have often considered ‘planning’ as part of

the aesthetic design of cities; British scholars have often focused on the regulation of

spatial development in cities and regions; and American scholars have often referred to

‘planning’ as a loose concept, dealing mainly with policy efforts of disparate arms of

government, or the efforts of voluntary, community and semi-public bodies in the

governance of (mainly local) communities. In the absence of a relatively firm definition

of the phenomenon to be studied (‘what are we looking for?’), the search to explain and

improve ‘planning’ has often been akin to shooting in the dark. Nowhere has this

confusion been more evident than in planning theory, which has been unable to agree on

the very subject of its study, and has therefore been sharply criticized (see: Bureaugard,

1995; Flyvbjerg and Richardson, 1998; Scott and Roweis, 1977).

A broad definition of planning appears necessary for the development of a

credible body of knowledge about the shaping of cities and regions. Therefore, it is

O.YIFTACHEL 4

defined here, after Lefbvre (1991), as shaping ‘the public production of space’, or in a

similar vein after Friedmann’ (1998), as ‘the production of urban habitat’. Adhering to

these definitions which emphasize the process of ‘production’, planning’ is portrayed as

including both the procedural (decision-making) and substantive (material, spatial)

aspects of planners’ work.

The term ‘public’ in the definition above denotes the combination of discourses,

public policies, institutions and practices which govern urban and regional

development. These are often shaped under the (direct or indirect) auspices of the

modern state, or other public bodies and organizations. Planning here is both part of the

formal planning system (namely agencies which directly produce urban plans), and the

wider set of institutions, groups and authorities involved in the public regulation and

development of space, including housing, engineering, environmental and development

bodies. This definition attempts to demarcate a broad, yet identifiable, analytical space

within which a scholarly community can develop a common language, and engage in

the useful exchange of ideas and concepts.

Like the confusion over the definition of ‘planning’, the term ‘theory’ has found

most planning theories confused. Theory can be defined in many ways, but in the book

its prevailing meaning is closest to the one identified by Raymond Williams (1983: 316-

318) as "an explanatory scheme" (p. 316), or in the words of the Oxford English

Dictionary, "suppositions explaining a phenomenon; a sphere of speculations and

concepts as distinguished from that of practice".

This emphasis does not necessarily negate the normative or prescriptive elements

of social theories. Indeed, social analysis can never be neatly separated from normative

and ethical assumptions, as these often frame the very questions posed by researchers

and the ways in which the latter observe and interpret the social world. Yet the

explanatory, conceptual, analytical, deconstructive and critical aspects are stressed as

the main ‘pillars’ of the theorizing endeavor, without which the prescriptive and

normative aspects of theory are often shallow and ineffective (see also Fainstein, 2000;

Huxley and Yiftachel, 2000).

The need for emphasizing analytical and explanatory theories is particularly apt

for planning theory, due to its close-knit association with the professional world. As

elaborated below, this association has pulled planning scholarship towards the

prescriptive and the procedural, and away from the explanatory and the substantive, to

the detriment of the production of planning knowledge. To illustrate the need for

explanatory and substantive theories let us quote Michael Zinzun, a black civil rights

activist (cited in Sandercock, 1998: 85):

Theory is necessary to figure out what’s really going on. People always want to

be saviors for their community. It’s like they see a baby coming down the river

and want to jump and save it. We need to stop being so reactive to the situation

that confronts us. Saving babies is fine for them, but we want to know who’s

throwing the goddam babies in the water in the first place.

3. A Professional ‘Straight-Jacket’ and Prescriptive Orientations

INTRODUCTION 5

Despite the oft-heard claim that planning theory is ‘irrelevant’ to planning practice, or

that a ‘chasm’ exists between the two (see: de-Noufville, 1983; Innes, 1995; Hall, 1988:

Chap. 6), it can be observed that over the years planning knowledge has developed

through a close association with what McLoughlin (1992) called ‘the built environment

professions’ (see also Taylor, 1998: Chap. 1). This situation can be identified as a

‘professional straight-jacket’ born out of specific sets of circumstances which gave rise

to urban planning as an organized, state-sanctioned, field of human activity during the

20th

century.

Hence, planning is not an age-old discipline of relatively independent knowledge

emerging from scientific endeavor, such as history, geography or philosophy, but rather

part of the consolidation of the modern nation-state, with its dominant capitalist and

national motives to control and regulate space (Yiftachel, 1998). These motives are

often shaped and buttressed through the association of the state with stabilizing societal

elements, such as the professional middle-classes. Thus, state interests are often

articulated by professional organizations and institutions, including urban and regional

planning. The emergence of most writing with a claim to ‘theory’ in the planning field,

has thus been bound with the institutionalization of planning the need of professional

circles to develop bodies of knowledge in order to give the field depth and legitimacy.

Of course, prescriptive theories about the ‘good life’ and ‘good community’ have

existed since the dawn of human culture, and have proliferated since modernity (see

Friedmann, 1987); but their crystallization into what can be termed ‘planning theory’ is

the product of the circumstances which prevailed in the industrial and national west

around the mid 20th

century, and followed the emergence of institutions which aimed to

control, govern and shape the built environment. The emergence of educational

institutions has been of particular importance, particularly the introduction of ‘planning’

degrees in universities. The formalization of the practices, experiences, ethics and

models of these teachings and research has given us the procedures, practices and

models recognized today as ‘planning knowledge’.

But the academization of professional interests has been accompanied, naturally,

by the professionalization of the academe (see also Reade, 1987). In many respects, the

profession has created an academe which has resulted in a certain dependence of the

academe on professional circles for legitimacy, relevance and often financial backing. It

is argued here that this institutional and intellectual straightjacket caused planning

scholarship to focus on prescriptive, normative and procedural theories to the detriment

of the explanatory and the substantive. While procedural and prescriptive theories are

important, and indeed essential, in the field of urban planning, the lack of focus on

explanatory and substantive theories appears to have hampered the development of a

foundational body of knowledge. Such a body would promote an understanding of state-

sanctioned urban and regional change, or the ‘public production of space and/or urban

habitat’’, as further discussed below.

The link between the academe and the profession has thus shifted the focus and

energy of most planning scholars from the perennial question of ‘what is a good city’ to

the more vocational concern of ‘what is good planning’. These two questions have

existed in parallel in the literature (see: Hague, 1991; Yiftachel, 1989), but the weight

has shifted increasingly towards the latter. This meant that the realms of theory in urban

and regional education and thinking have been increasingly devoted to planning

O.YIFTACHEL 6

methods, processes and interactions, and far less to the substantive nature and

consequences of that activity. Planning scholarship has moved the planner to center

stage, at the expense of the city. It has thus tended to focus on the ‘how’ over the

‘what’, impeding the development of explanatory theories and critical insights. This, it

may be suggested, has caused many planning scholars to slight the study of urban and

regional change, overlook the inseparability of urban planning from spatial processes,

and downplay the importance of oppressive power, as discussed in the next sections.

4. Process over Matter

The prevalence of process over substance in most planning scholarship has been well

illustrated by the dominance of two main theoretical approaches in the short history of

planning thought. Throughout almost three decades – from the 1960s to the 1980s – the

rational planning model reigned supreme, claiming to provide theoretical, professional

and methodological foundations for planning (Alexander, 1992; Faludi, 1973). As we

remember, it was severely challenged from a variety of perspectives, most notably

materialist and feminist (see Scott and Roweis, 1977; Sandercock and Forsyth, 1992),

causing a gradual decline. Even in the words of Faludi (1987), a central figure in the

claims to dominance of rational theories (see: Faludi, 1973: 8), rational planning was

predominantly a methodology (that is, not a theory). Faludi, in his later writings (1994),

urges the integration of spatial considerations into planning theory, a point to which we

shall return below.

Following a brief period during the 1970s and 1980s when materialist theories

(mainly Marxist, but also Weberian and other traditions) gained some prominence in the

texts and discourses of planning theorists (see: Hague, 1984; Taylor, 1998),

‘communicative planning’ became the dominant approach, as discussed above. Other

approaches continued to develop in parallel, notably those influenced by concepts of

environmental sustainability, postmodern critique and feminist thought, but they

remained on the fringes of what was discerned as the disciplinary canon – the main texts

which guide the understanding of scholars, students, practitioners and the public

regarding the nature of urban and regional planning.

To be sure, the professional influence has resulted in rich and groundbreaking

scholarly activity, but one, which nevertheless tended to overlook the need to seriously

study and theorize the substantive elements of the planning endeavor. This has

ultimately weakened the field, because the emphasis on procedures and communication

has not addressed many of the deeper forces of urban and regional change within which

planning work is enmeshed. Our approach in this book attempts to ‘bring back’ a

substantive focus in the generation of planning knowledge. In addition to focusing on

the way in which planners work, scholars are encouraged to study the actual material

and political outcomes of their actions. Needless to say, the two approaches do not

stand in opposition, and cannot even be neatly separated. The process of planning is

indeed critical to the shaping of cities and regions, as well as the power relations in

them. But the dominance of the procedural and communicative approaches (with all the

significant differences between them) has tended to conceal the long-term material

changes caused by urban planning.

INTRODUCTION 7

As well articulated by McLoughlin (1992), after studying in detail the turns and

tribulations of planning in Melbourne, planners, that is the various groups of public

professionals dealing with the regulation of the built environment, tend to be ineffective

because their typical response to a failed plan is the production of yet another plan. This

reaction comes instead of substantive learning, where planners may reevaluate their

work vis-à-vis changes in the urban fabric caused by plans and policies. But such an

approach necessitates a kind of research which explores openly the material, power and

identity consequences of planning (that is, what has been the impact of policies on

cities, communities, environments), and a shift away from the procedural and

prescriptive approaches which has dominated planning thought for a long while. The

chapters in this book are written with this approach in mind.

This may also require planning thinkers not to take the societal usefulness of

planning as a given, and may cause them to challenge – under certain circumstances –

its very existence. If the theoretical literature is a true reflection, the planning

professional community, and with it leading voices in academia, have been unable, or

unwilling, to take this substantive-critical and explanatory approach.

This scholarly direction, as suggested above, has hampered the development of

planning knowledge, and has placed planners in a relatively weak professional status.

This is mainly because unlike other professions, notably medicine, law or teaching,

planning does not enjoy an independent body of knowledge regarded as ‘its own’.

Medical practitioners rely on theories, which explain the workings of human bodies,

while lawyers learn the impact of legal systems on human affairs. These professions

also study about the conduct of the practitioner, but this is not the central theory which

guides their professional activity (see also: Huxley, 1997). A parallel approach among

urban planning theorists would be to develop bodies of knowledge about change and

transformation of cities and regions, that is, to shift the focus from the planner to the

locality, region, community or environment to be planned.

Needless to say, communications, decision-processes and the imaginations of

futures are important elements of this knowledge, and can never be fully separated from

the material basis of cities, as these constitute one another in ceaseless interaction. Yet,

it may be an appropriate time to call for a material and explanatory shift in the planning

and its societal implications. This highlights the need to reintroduce space into the heart

of planning knowledge.

5. Spaceless Planning?

Much of the influential literature on planning, especially in North America, treats

planning as a generic, procedural activity (see: Alexander, 1992; Faludi 1973; Forester

1989; Friedmann 1987; Innes 1995). This approach tends to focus on important

components of the policy process such as democracy, decision-making, citizen

empowerment and the limits to state intervention. But the generic nature of this

literature raises a question: ‘What makes this knowledge specifically relevant to urban

and regional planning?’ Despite the powerful tradition of generic, a-spatial, planning

literature, its space-less nature presents a weakness, mainly because it divorces planning

O.YIFTACHEL 8

theories from fully engaging with the arena in which planners operate, namely cities and

regions. For this they must understand the processes of spatial change.

Therefore, planning is treated here as a specifically spatial practice that is related

to the state and the production of space. Within this view, ‘planning’ could not be

theorized in abstraction from the activities, organizations, and the substantive objects

being planned. If we are to make any sense of the debate around ‘planning’, we have to

be clear about what we are studying -- policies which cause urban, regional and

environmental change. The urban scene, with its clear spatial foundation of location,

development and place, is where planners have an expertise to claim, and where this

expertise can actually be tested, improved and perfected. Planning theory, which

continues to overlook the direct relevance of spatial processes, is akin to medical theory,

which ignores the human body, or legal theory which overlooks the impact of laws on

human affairs.

Leading planning theories have underplayed this context and in the process lost

much of their explanatory and prescriptive potency. Here it is somewhat ironic that

Habermas’s work forms a broad theoretical foundation of the new ‘communicative

turn’, because, as David Harvey (1996: 354) notes: "Habermas has... no conception of

how spatio-temporalities and "places" are produced and how that process is integral to

the process of communicative action and of valuation".

Given this context, most critical approaches to understanding planning, cities and

urbanization, the spatial dimensions of difference and disadvantage, power and

regulation, have recently developed in other fields, mainly human geography,

sociology, politics, architecture and law. But they have remained at a distance from

mainstream planning literature, especially in the influential American academic scene

(see Huxley and Yiftachel, 2000). As already hinted, this disciplinary isolation has

come at a substantial cost: a certain peripherialization of planning theories from the

main subject areas of the planning project: the material development processes which

shape the home, the city, the region, the territory and the state.

But the immediate relevance of spatial processes cannot be ignored for too long.

Recently, two leading theorists who had been among the main proponents of generic (as

opposed to urban/spatial) planning: Andreas Faludi (1996) and John Friedmann (1998),

have both made what may be described as a ‘spatial turn’. The first, in his suggestive

theory of ‘planning doctrines’, portrays ‘spatial organisation’ as one of the key

conceptual and material bases for planning. The latter makes a similar shift by

highlighting the importance of studying ‘the production of the urban habitat’ in a

rejuvenated planning theory, and by acknowledging the lack of due reference to this

aspect in his earlier work.

It may be high time for a ‘spatial turn’ among other leading theorists, in order to

create a shared theoretical discourse directly relevant to the actual practice and material

consequences of planning. Needless to say, focussing on ‘the production of space and

urban habitat’ does not obscure the importance of decision-making and communications

for the analysis of planning, rather it firmly incorporates the spatial and political-

economic embeddedness often overlooked in past theories. Neither does such a shift

turn planners into geographers, mainly because the latter rarely focus on the policy

arena and on the politics of policy-making. It is precisely the combined knowledge of

the substance of cities and regions, and the making of spatial policies, which demarcates

INTRODUCTION 9

the niche for planning expertise. This theoretical and practical ‘zone of knowledge’

exists in constant dialogue with neighboring disciplines such as geography, politics and

sociology. But serious engagement with these social sciences, so essential for planning

knowledge, also teaches us that no spatial change occurs outside power relations, to

which we now turn.

6. Benevolence and Power

A further deficiency evident in previous planning scholarship is a somewhat narrow,

and analytically limited, assumption about the societal power of planning. The general

story planners are told by the historical and conceptual architects of the discipline is that

it emerged out of the unacceptable and inhumane living conditions prevalent in the

rapidly expanding industrial cities of the 18th and 19th centuries. The emergence of

planning was intimately linked to a broader reform movement, which sought to redress

the ills of unconstrained capitalism, through changes to the politics, economy and

geography of cities (see Hall, 1988).

While early planning thinkers (like later ones) were clearly divided along

ideological lines, a discernible agreement underlay the development of planning thought

and the emergence of the planning profession: planning should, first and foremost, act

to improve people’s (mainly physical) living conditions. This basic assumption formed

the foundation for theories and tools, which were later developed to guide public

intervention in the land development process, and for the discourse developed by the

profession. Most of the theories and concepts developed in planning during subsequent

decades thus focused on key questions such as: what is a good city/region? How do we

make the ‘good city/region?’ what is a good planning process? (see Cherry, 1988; Hall,

1988; Schaffer, 1988; Flyvbjerg and Richardson, 1998; Sorensen and Auster, 1990;

Yiftachel, 1989, 1994).

We can therefore observe that an underlying assumption accords a benign role to

planning in society, forming a common point of departure for most planning studies.

This was not always fully or explicitly articulated, but has nonetheless been ever-

present in both scholarly and professional circles, attaching fundamentally positive,

reformist and even emancipatory qualities to urban and regional planning. This belief in

planning has ruled supreme, often without subjecting the discipline or the planning

endeavor, with its supporting sets of practices and discourses, to critical examination.

Evaluative studies on the performance of planning systems clearly attest to this

taken-for-granted perception of ‘planning as reform’. Studies, such as Pearce (1992) and

Healey (1992), Cullingworth (1994) and Taylor (1998), examine the historical

performance of planning by using analytical yardsticks pertaining to progressive goals,

such as amenity, order, efficiency, distributive justice, public participation, and

environmental protection. In these works, planning and planners are treated as ‘do-

gooders’ whose frequent failures relate mainly to ‘external’ political and economic

forces, or to technical difficulties. Even the thoroughly reflective work of Friedmann

(1987) delineates four main perspectives which have dominated the development of

planning theories and concepts: social reform, policy analysis, social learning and social

mobilization. These four concepts -- beyond their many differences -- share a common

O.YIFTACHEL 10

denominator of planning as an agent of ‘positive’ change. Taylor (1998: viii) sums up

this approach by framing planning theory about the question: “What part should be

played by planning in bringing about better cities, and better environments more

generally, for people to live in?”

Our approach in the book is somewhat different. Indeed, one of the central goals

of this collection is to examine precisely the pervasive assumption about the (putatively)

benign nature of planning. The 12 chapters of this book attempt to study the variegated

influences of planning on society, without privileging the declared benevolence of

planning. This approach thus adds to a small but growing body of scholarship, which

attempts to openly examine the role of planning – empirically and theoretically -- in

shaping and reshaping sociospatial relations.

This approach moves beyond critical comments about the conduct of planners or

planning institutions, or the deficiency of planner’s’ ideas or methods (abundant in the

literature) into a societal critique of planning, which puts the actual (rather than

rhetorical, or promised) impact of planning on the operating table. This approach, which

is still rare in the literature, is thus willing to (re)consider the legitimacy of the entire

planning endeavor, and not to presuppose its societal usefulness. It thus explores the

broader power structure and dynamics within which state, public, and commercial

planning agencies act, often venturing into ‘the dark side’ of planning (see Yiftachel,

1994, 1998; Flyvbjerg, 1996, 1998).

This brand of critical scholarship has several origins, mainly Marxist, feminist,

Foucauldian and ethnic/cultural, which converge over a critique of the relative neglect

of power as topic of analysis by mainstream planning scholarship. Here the title of a

vastly influential book, John Forester’s Planning in the Face of Power (1989) says:

power is portrayed as being an entity against which planners work. It is somewhat

external to planning and planners. Of course, it is not claimed that planning is

omnipotent, but rather that the aims and practices involved in the public production of

space is constantly intertwined with the exercise of power. Yet, the a-priori assumption

of the benevolence of a planning project allows the work of most planning scholars to

comfortably focus on issues such as: planner-client relations, technical or design

solutions, or methods of achieving a consensus of urban futures (see: Innes and Booker,

1999). But the powers that shape the urban environment can be, and often are,

regressive and exploitive. This calls for a broader framework within which to analyze

planning, not merely as a reformist profession, but as a set of institutions, practices and

discourses, enmeshed within the ‘grids of power’ which shape cities and regions (see:

Massey, 1994).

A critical - but also realistic - reading of urban and regional planning should thus

treat it, fundamentally, as a double-edged sword. Beyond its well-documented and

much discussed ability (and deficiencies) in enhancing progressive and enlightened

aims, it is often used for other, less enlightened purposes. The very same policy tools

and capabilities represented as a means to enhance social reform, that is, improve living

conditions, sustainability, community, prosperity, amenity and efficiency, can also be

used by societal powers to advance opposing goals. These policy tools can indeed harm

communities and localities, retard prosperity, intensify conflicts, marginalize minorities,

and shift resources from the weak to the strong. Further, planning’s adverse power may

also lie in its normalizing effects: it introduces a set of procedures, practices and

INTRODUCTION 11

performances which render the goals and visions of plans neutral and necessary, and

adds ‘layers’ of regulation and surveillance to the lives of communities and individuals

(Huxley, 1994). In short, planning introduces various dimensions of social control into

the project of governance of cities and region.

Yet, critical observers of planning have also realized that control is rarely exerted

openly, and is seldom officially declared as a policy goal. Neither is control a result of a

planned conspiracy on behalf of a specific self-defined group. Rather it is often exerted

as part of a broadly agreed and generally unquestioned set of their own social goals and

understandings. These tend to work in the interests of powerful groups that generally set

societal agendas (see: Lefebvre, 1996). Actors involved in the practices of social control

often conceal, ignore, or are simply unaware of the regressive consequences of their

activities. These practices are typically portrayed as part of different, and often socially

worthy, projects. For example, inner city developers would rarely promote their

proposals as ‘promoting the interests of capital over people’, or as ‘causing the

displacement of inner city residents and recent immigrants’. Yet, their projects will

often have precisely these controlling and stratifying effects.

To be sure, most social systems devise mechanisms of legitimation, which tend

to obscure, appease or even partially negate the oppressive and regressive effects of

control policies. In our example of inner city redevelopment, a discourse of ‘urban

regeneration’, ‘global image’, ‘renewal’, ‘efficiency’, or ‘correcting market failures’ is

likely to emerge, legitimising the displacement of inner city residents and the use of

public resources to benefit narrow property interests often under the veil of ‘national

interest’, ‘economic growth’, of simply ‘orderly development’ (see Bronwill, 1990).

This creates ‘surface ambiguity’ in the policy field, where official representations

conflict with the ‘actual’ processes of spatial and societal change. Flyvbjerg (1998: 227-

231) articulates well the many faces of power-through-planning:

Power, quite simply, often finds ignorance, deception, self-deception,

rationalization, and lies more useful for its purposes than the truth… Power defines

what counts as rationality and knowledge, and thereby what counts as reality.

Therefore, the study of controlling power in general, and ‘planning as control’ in

particular, maps the main social interests of the place and period in question, and traces

their practices in the actual process of spatial change (Foucault, 1991). Such analysis

would cut through legitimizing ideologies and narratives, and search below the

inevitable, and ever-existing, ambiguities of urban and regional policy. Examining the

material, political and identity consequences of spatial policies can reveal much of the

long-term role of such policies on social relations.

Needless to say, it is not suggested that the actual impact of spatial policies

should be studied in sharp dichotomous terms. The metaphor of ‘double edged sword’,

or the positing of ‘reform vis-à-vis control’, are mainly used for analytical purposes, and

aim to draw attention to the variegated possibilities of planning interventions. In reality,

of course, the consequences of planning fall in between the various poles identified in

this essay, as policies and practices meet the complex and layered reality of late-modern

societies.

The realization about the multi-faceted nature of planning is not new. The use

and abuse of power by and for planning has been documented in many foundational

studies (see: Meyerson and Banfield, 1955; Hall, 1978; Harvey, 1973; Marcuse, 1978;

O.YIFTACHEL 12

Sandercock and Forsyth, 1992; Flyvbjerg, 1998). Yet, the field of urban and regional

planning is still awaiting a coherent theoretical exposition of the ‘dark side’ of planning,

that is, the use of the legitimizing discourse of ‘progressive’ planning and planners, to

facilitate and assist the deepening of societal disparities, segregation and power

relations (for some beginnings in this direction, see; Flyvbjerg, 1998; Yiftachel, 1998).

A final word of caution is in order regarding the power of planning. While

critical scholarship can, and should, explore its ‘darker sides’, the very power of public

authorities including the state, to reshape cities and regions is itself contested. This is

the result of a recent weakening and transformation of the state in what is often defined

as the late-modern, post-fordist era (Held, 1990; Sassen, 1998). State power is

challenged first and foremost by the logic of a globalizing economy, but also by

minorities and deprived groups, which either mobilize to increase their share of public

resources (of which planning is one), or lose faith in the state-building project,

preferring alternative routes of development, identity and empowerment (see

Friedmann, 1992; Marcuse and van Kempen, 1999).

7. Critical Distance and Critical Scholarship

A final aspect in the critique and agenda outlined here, regards the place from which

planning knowledge is produced. I contend that the reconceptualization of urban and

regional planning requires a critical distance, that is, the positioning of the researcher

outside the internal discourse of planning, free from the profession’s supporting

ideological apparatus. A faith in planning, as promoted in the internal discourses of the

profession, characterizes most literature in the field, explicitly or implicitly. In our view,

it has prevented scholars from openly examining, not just the conduct of planners vis-à-

vis their clients, and not just the optimization of outcomes by rational evaluation

methods, but the taken-for-granted assumptions about the nature of planning and

planners. This applies to the analysis of both the formal planning system, and wider

circles of public bodies and entities involved with the production of the urban habitat.

But, regardless of the scale of analysis, only by treating the public production of

the urban habitat as a contingent political phenomenon (and not as a desired or

cherished intervention), and only by recognizing that ‘planning principles’ are often

used to rationalize oppressive policies, can we advance towards a robust understanding

of the societal endeavor we label ‘planning’. This is precisely the purpose of critical

theory: Testing professional concepts, models, assumptions, values and ‘gospels’,

against their ‘real world’ material, discursive and political consequences. This cannot be

achieved without ‘stepping outside’ the cozy and self-assuring professional discourse

pertaining to planning’s goals and methods.

The need to ‘step outside’ and view planning with social science tools as an arm

of the state and dominant societal interests was already advanced by early critical

thinkers. Their works have been crucially important for contemporary critical

scholarship. These emerged mainly from Marxist (for example, Harvey, 1973; Castells,

1978; Hague, 1984), and later from feminist (see, for example, Huxley, 1988;

Sandercock and Forsyth, 1992; Wilson, 1991) and multicultural, ethnic and racial

critiques (see: H. Thomas, 1995; J.Thomas, 1996; Yiftachel, 1994; Young, 1990).

INTRODUCTION 13

On these foundations there appears to be a wider circle of critical scholars whose

work challenges the conventional intellectual, conceptual and empirical foundations of

urban and regional planning. Most of the chapters of this book fall in this category, and

the sources they attest to a growing breadth and depth of this endeavor. One needs to go

back to the glorious days of the Marxist school in the 1970s to find a similar

concentration of critical analyses with planning and urban writing. The current work is

not coherent or unified by any stretch of the imagination, as it follows the diverse

influences of Foucauldian, critical-Weberian, political-economic, post-colonial, post-

modern and feminist critiques in the social sciences.

But it appears that the diffusion of these approaches into planning theory and

research makes it richer and more intellectually and analytically rigorous, thus

beginning to respond to Beauregard’s (1995) damning description of planning theorists

and ‘edge critics’. Contributors to the current volume have attempted to add new

insights into these critical efforts, from the description and interpretation of their own

case studies, and with a constant engagement with recent social theories. A common

feature of the 12 chapters is a serious and critical examination of the power of planning.

THE BOOK

The studies accumulated in the book address the various problematics and dilemmas

highlighted above. While the authors of the chapters use a variety of perspectives, they

all question openly the causes and consequences of planning, by studying its unfolding

in specific settings. They also address the more specific critique of past scholarship, by

engaging directly with the materiality of the planning project, with its spatial and

political aspects, and with the coercive, formal-legal and discursive powers embedded

in the public production of cities and regions. Together, the 12 chapters make rich and

critical statements about the actual impact of specific planning events and struggles,

thereby enhancing our empirical and theoretical understanding of planning.

The editorial team decided to design the book according to four main ‘prisms’

which reflect common sites of interaction between planning and the fabric of social life:

communities, gender, social polariזation and ethnicity/race. Each of these offers an

important arena where planning policies, practices, discourses and material reality have

a significant influence on people’s lives. The four perspectives cut across the three foci

of analysis critiqued earlier as lacking in previous planning scholarship: (a) explanatory

and descriptive accounts; (b) ‘bringing back’ the material reality (‘substance’) within

which planning procedures operate; and (c) re-emphasising the role of space in the

analysis of urban and regional planning; and (d) openly examining the nature of

planning power.

Explanatory-descriptive Community

Substantive Gender

Space Social Polarization

Critical

Approach

O.YIFTACHEL 14

Power Ethnic/Racial

The book is also designed to foster comparative learning, by systematically

positing cases from three states: Australia, Israel and England. The book does not wish

to over-emphasize the similarity of the three cases, which possess many historical,

ethnic and geographical differences. Yet, the three states do lend themselves to

potentially profitable comparison, as they all have constitutional and planning systems

based on the logic of the British system of government. More specifically, the

parameters of ‘urban and regional planning’ is quite similar in the three states, denoting

mainly public policies which formulate, shape and manage spatial plans and policies.

The instruments of planning are, therefore, quite similar in the three countries, and

include the location and character of land uses, development, infrastructure, and zoning,

as well as the governance of decision processes affecting these policies.

Notably, the comparative cases in this book also give the reader a journey into

non-American planning settings. The editors feel that the dominance of American

writings in planning in general, and planning theory in particular, presents particular

problems stemming from the very different institutional settings of planning in

American society (where it is often less formal, less backed by legal powers and further

removed from the state). Hence, the Australian, Israeli and English cases may bring new

comparable opportunities, and, thus, possibilities for generalizations and theorizations,

than the frequent use of American cases in international planning literature. The non-

American focus is thus an additional contribution of the interventions made in this

book.

Critical Assessments: Community, Gender, Class, Minorities

Each major ‘prism’ through which we examine planning is organized into one section in

the book, individually edited by one of us. Hedgcock assembled and edited the section

on communities; Little reigned over gender; Alexander was responsible for social

polarization; while Yiftachel oversaw the section on ethnic and racial minorities.

The first part of the book is devoted to the influence of planning on the

formulation, change and power of communities. Ian Alexander and David Hedgcock

compare in Chapter 1 how the implications embedded in the planning process for local

communities unfolded in two West Australian localities: one in the affluent Perth inner

suburb of East Fremantle, and the other in the (previously) low-income inner

neighborhood of East Perth. The analysis points to a much greater impact of local

residents of East Fremantle who managed to avert a redevelopment proposal in the heart

of their neighborhood, and thus preserved its historic value, and further their own

interest in maintaining the socioeconomic character of their gentrified community, as

well as their property values. In East Perth, on the other hand, a large housing

redevelopment project, promoted by the state in concert with large construction

companies, and legitimized by the ‘need’ to give inner Perth an ‘international image’,

managed to crumble the little organized resistance of its previous low-income

community. Hence “in East Perth a community was destroyed and built again”.

Alexander and Hedgcock show that on the one hand, the active and often militant

INTRODUCTION 15

involvement of residents can be interpreted as a democratization of the planning arena,

but on the other, that the uneven impact of such involvement, which accords greater

value to the more organized (and often more affluent) communities, work to widen gaps

between urban communities, much against the overall goals of most planning strategies.

In Chapter 2, Shlomo Hasson accounts for the mobilizsation of four main

Jerusalem communities vis-à -vis the urban policies of the state and the city. He shows

vividly how the history and geography of the city spawned the emergence of

communities and movements on the basis of different sets of oppositions, namely

ethnic-nationality (Palestinian-Zionist), religiosity (Orthodox-secular Jews), ethno-class

(Mizrahi-Ashkenazi Jews; that is eastern and western Jews, respectively) and life-style

(ecological preservation – development). But the public arena in which these segregated

communities operate is in a state of flux, as they resist the spatio-political order imposed

by the state, but also struggle with one another. Planning in Jerusalem thus involves the

constant challenging of the city’s geographical and power matrix, generating a space of

regular conflict and inter-communal tension. The immense importance of urban

planning is highlighted here by Hasson’s conclusion that “Jerusalem is a violent city rife

with tensions and conflicts… associated with control over land.”

The section is closed by Chapter 3 in which Phil McManus critically evaluates

the notion of ‘community’ as used in English and British planning. McManus shows

how the seemingly objective unit of ‘community’ has been used by government policy

directives to further a set of economic and political interests, all in the name of a

desired, and notionally progressive, interest in local communities. However, McManus

illustrates clearly how, like most social categories and terms, ‘community’ is a

contested, contextual and multi-faceted term, and its use by planners must be aware of

its use and abuse by societal powers. McManus details clearly how during the 17 year

reign of the Conservatives in the UK the discourse of ‘community’ overlaid a neo-

liberal economic agenda, often using the vehicle of the Urban Development

Corporations. The latter used ‘planning for communities’ as a (thin) legitimizing veil for

urban development objectives, which have worked to destablize and segregate many

inner city collectivities.

The second part places the magnifying glass on the interactions between urban

and regional policies and gender relations. Here, Jean Hillier opens Chapter 4 by

critically examining the impact of development policies and practices in Australian

suburbia, as reflected through the unmediated speech of women. She demonstrates how,

despite the increasingly reformist ‘utterances’ of planners, and despite an increasingly

articulate voice of Australian women, the planned-for unit in most Australian planning

thinking remains centered on the middle-aged, middle-class, white, suburban male.

Women’s experiences, interests and needs have largely been left out of the ways in

which planners understand the built environment. The invisibility of the difference

women make is, as Hillier demonstrates, linked directly to the grids of power which

govern the making of places and spaces.

In Chapter 5, Tovi Fenster analyzes the critical link between power and

knowledge (and ‘mis-knowledge’) -- as expressed in housing and settlement policies --

on the life chances of minority women in Israel. These women exist in a position of

double marginality, vis-à -vis dominant men in their own communities, as well as the

dominant, and often alien, ethnic majority. Fenster’s analysis of the impact of planning

O.YIFTACHEL 16

on Ethiopian and Bedouin women in Israel’s peripheral regions, clearly shows the

oppressive potential of planning, and the multiple faces of this oppression, which

reaches the home, the private and the local. But Fenster’s account also harbors new

possibilities, premised on the ability of planners to be attuned to the various voices and

needs rising from each minority community, and a shift towards planning which is

sensitive to both cultural and gender considerations.

In Chapter 6, Jo Little completes the section by charting a broad overview of

policies towards rural women in England. Little demonstrates empirically how the

growing acknowledgement of women’s needs and difference has been largely confined

to urban areas in England, and how the conservative tradition of local authority and

policy in rural areas meant that even where gender equality was recognized as a

potential problem, it was not considered one that can or should be tackled as part of

public sector policy. This was expressed by the overlooking of women’s initiatives in

the ‘rural regeneration’ programs of several British governments, especially the recent

Rural Challenge. But while Little traces important shifts in rural policy-making as part

of the new programs, she argues that these changes “could be seen as reinforcing a

masculine ethos within rural policy…[thus] failing to respond to existing gender

inequality in the construction and delivery of policy”.

In the third part, the discussion shifts to the issue of social polarization, focusing

mainly on socioeconomic and class cleavages. Margo Huxley’s chapter opens this part,

by tracing the introduction of a specific planning program known as “the Good Design

Guide” to one of Melbourne’s most established and affluent inner suburbs - Hawthorn.

Huxley accounts for the growing resistance from local residents to the introduction of

the new Guide, which was set to increase residential densities in the area, thereby

threatening its age-old character. The program aimed to stimulate the property and

development market, assist in giving Melbourne a ‘global image’, as well as open

opportunities for low income residents to move into the area. But as Huxley shows, and

much like the example of East Fremantle brought by Alexander and Hegdcock in

Chapter 1, the area’s residents campaigned effectively against the Guide, using well

their symbolic and cultural resources (that is the ‘Melbourness’) to avert the

implementation of the program. This turn of events could be seen as an empowerment

of Hawthorn’s residents, but it has also worked to increase social polarization in

Melbourne, because neighboring and less affluent or organized suburbs could not resist

the program, and the reshaping of their localities with higher densities and commercial

development.

In Chapter 8, Oren Yiftachel examines the consequences of Israeli urban

planning, by evaluating one of the country’s most ambitious planning projects – the

establishment of 28 new towns (known as ‘development towns’) during the 1950s. The

towns were mainly built in Israel’s ‘frontier’ regions as part of the Zionist Judaization

program, which has been a center-piece of the political geography of what he terms ‘the

Israeli-Jewish ethnocracy’. In the towns the state settled mainly Mizrahi Jews of low

socioeconomic standing, who arrived in Israel from the Muslim world and lacked

cultural contacts or political influence. Yiftachel traces the long-term impact of this

planning project, and finds that it generally caused geographical isolation, economic

deprivation, political dependence and stigmatized identity for the town dwellers.

Planning has thus been used as an instrument of social control, through which socio-

INTRODUCTION 17

spatial structures worked to preserve and even deepen social inequalities, with the

discursive and legal legitimacy of the settling state. Yet, this structure of control has not

remained unchallenged, and Yiftachel shows how the residents of the towns have rallied

in recent years in search of new identity and greater equality, and how the Mizrahi

ethno-class identity emerging in the town continues to form a source of inter-group

tension and social instability.

In Chapter 9, Keith Bassett shifts our attention to the urban poor in the UK. He

traces the impact of two British regimes on the plight of the poor in Britain’s large

urban centers. The chapter begins with an analysis of governmental policies during the

17-year conservative rule, which saw urban poverty increasing dramatically, under the

guise of well-marketed programs of entities such as the Urban Development

Corporations. Bassett then moves to the New Labor government, and examines its two-

pronged approach to poverty, which concentrates on inner city neighborhood renewal,

and local-employment programs. With the introduction of new initiatives such as New

Deal for Neighborhoods, Social Exclusion Unit, Employment Zones, Health Education

Zones and ‘pathfinder’ regeneration zones, Bassett notes a definite progressive shift in

inner area policy during the New Labor years. Despite the inconclusive results of such

programs, Bassett’s chapter highlights well the persisting progressive capabilities of

urban planning, and hence our analytical need to treat it as ‘double-edged’.

The book’s fourth part focuses on ethnic and racial minorities as an important –

if often overlooked – dimension of urban and regional planning. In Chapter 10, Marcus

Lane and Stuart Cowell examine Australia’s regional policies in Queensland’s northern

regions, and its impact on the area’s Aboriginal population. The authors focus the

planning process and political struggles over the construction of a large zinc mine in the

study region. They reveal that by and large, the planning system acted as an uncritical

facilitator of the interests of capital against those of the politically marginalized, and

thus contributed to the reproduction of inequality in the ownership and use of resources.

However another aspect emerges from the analysis: a gradual and incremental

incorporation of the Aborigines in the planning of the region. As the authors state:

“while state planners continue to reproduce inequality. They were forced to confront

organized indigenous participants who assiduously challenged the prevailing

orthodoxy… and the range of possible outcomes. By focusing on the agency of the

marginalized minorities, then, Lane and Cowell manage to highlight the openings –

small as they are – presented by planning for the democratization of the capitalist

development process.

In Chapter 11, Hubert Law Yone and Rachel Kalus analyze the degree of

segregation in Israeli regions and cities. They show convincingly the manner in which

Israeli space has been divided and stratified on the basis of persisting segregation

between the country’s various ethno-classes. The authors thus demonstrate the power of

planning to create long-term socioeconomic structures. Despite a very dynamic

population movement which typifies Israel, Law-Yone and Kalus show that the lines of

separation between Arabs, Mizrahi, Ashkenazi and most recently Russian-Speaking

Israelis, is linked directly to the planning and housing programs of the Israeli

government, and to the manner in which the Zionist project changed the geography of

Israel/Palestine. They show further how prevalent planning discourses systematically

obscure the oppressive effects of state strategies and hegemonic spatial practices.

O.YIFTACHEL 18

Finally, in Chapter 12, Sue Brownill and Huw Thomas examine to what extent

inner city policies in England and Wales have influenced the level of exclusion

experienced by racial (‘racialized’) and ethnic minorities. They demonstrate that despite

claims by policy makers about the ‘deracialized’ nature of policies, and the ‘ethnic

blindness’ of urban planning, minorities have been systematically excluded through the

policy-process in most English inner city areas. But Bronwill and Thomas also highlight

the openings that planning increasingly afford excluded minorities (in certain places and

times) and urge us not to look at the state as monolithic or unidimenesional in its racist

attitude. Yet, they aptly conclude that “the limited spaces thus opened up within urban

policy cannot be seen as evidence of an enlightened system, only as pointers to a more

equitable and transformatory planning policy and practice.”

In overview, the 12 chapters bring varied case-study insights under the one

umbrella of our book. There is no one, overriding conclusion to be reached from these

studies, as they demonstrate the complexity and multi-dimensionability of the planning

endeavor. Yet, the 12 chapters can teach us important lessons about the power of

planning, and the need to take it seriously as an object of analysis. The chapters have all

taken a probing and critical look at what may be taken for granted in most studies – the

benevolence of urban and regional planning and the reformist aims of spatial plans and

policies. In this manner, the chapters accumulate into a collective statement about the

multiple possibilities – progressive and regressive, reformist and oppressive –

embedded in the planning endeavor. Taking this line, the 12 chapters have placed

planning, that is, the public shaping of cities and regions, firmly within its material,

spatial and discursive arenas, where power, resources and identities are contested and

determined.

The approaches taken by the 12 chapters, in a nutshell, form our agenda for

planning studies in general, and planning theory in particular. The book can be seen as

part of an emerging wave of critical scholarship which refocuses the study of planning

policies on the materiality of social life, on the central axis of space, and on the

normalizing and legitimizing discourses that wrap and shape urban governance. This

wave engages constantly with on-going discourses in the social sciences and the

humanities. It dares to be explanatory and theoretical for the sake of establishing a

conceptual foundation for the planning field; and it dares to be empirical and critical, for

the sake of learning from the concrete consequences of past policies and programs. It

also aspires to ‘step outside’ the professional straight-jacket of the planning world by

openly examining, from a critical distance, the assumptions, methods and interpretation

of planning as-we-know-it. Hopefully, such an approach will strengthen both the

empirical and theoretical foundations of our knowledge about urban and regional

change, and ultimately work to improve the soundness, coherence and relevance of the

planning societal project.

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