74 cweTeR2 Planning in the Public Domain: Discourse and Praxis University of California ‘This scleotion isa reprint of @ speoch delivered by Joha Friedmann upon receiv- ing the Distinguished Planning Educctor Award of the Association of Collegiate Scicols of Planning. In his comments, Friedmana contends that planning is ‘inherently moral practice. In the absence of absolutes, what is morally defensi- ble practice? Friedman's answer is thatthe planner must "make common cause" withthe excluded and disaffected and join the people's siruggle for “col- Ictive self-empowerment and partiipstion” (pp. 77-78) Ithas become commonplace to say that we are living in postmodern tines. And the postmodern temper tells us: anything goes! The ent of philosophy has been pro- claimed (by philosophers) as a misguided search for absolutes in metaphysics and epistemology. ‘The Fashionable term today is hermeneutics, which is a way of Knowing that is said to be posteempitical. We borrow freely from the past, recom bining fragmented memories in ways that seem arbitrary and playful. Aesthetic standards have gone by the board. At best, We have Kaleidescopic Vision. At Worst we are lost in a house of mirrors, with ever-shifting perspectives. Imposter and genuine value are bard to distinguish from one another. The fake is real, and the real is fake. . Unless you want to be a public laughingstock, itis quite impossible, in the face of this explosion of certainties, to expound old dogmas and verities. All standards, all absolutes, have been relativized. Iis therefore not surprising that a vulgar pr matism has moved to center stage: what works, works. And what works is money. technology, brute power, the magic of the media to create believable worlds, But that road leads to aisilism and, ultimately, self-destruction, There is another “high- ex” pragmatism, however, whicl may show us a way out. Its most lucid exponent is Richard Bemstein, who, in a series of luminous books, has been attempting to rescue for contemporary usage the Aristotelian distinctions among techne, epis- teme, praxis, and phronesis (technical knowledge, theoretical knowledge, moral public action, and everyday judgment or practical knowledge). ‘The “higher” pragmatism of Bemstein—wino draws on Pierce, Dewey, and Habermas—does away with Truth writ large, focusing our attention instead on hhow human beings create a sense of community, on that which makes possible human speech—dialogue—and thus underlies the very essence of our humanity the need to share, to communicate, to reach out to other human beings and touch them deeply. The term community, however, suggests a misleading homogeneity Reprinted by pemistion ofthe Jouma of Planning Education and Research $ (1689), copyright ‘owned and publshed by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning,PLANNING THEORY AND ETHICS 75 and solidarity. The essence of communication is to begin with difference, with nonconcordance searching for concordance or agreement. Ard that is also what brings a public space into existence. For itis only by appearing in public space, as Hannah Arendt reminds us, that we acquire a truly human face. T want to focus on praxis, or moral public action, because itis here that I see a direct link to planning. Planning, I shall argue, is an inherently moral practice—a praxis—in the sense that it affects the way we live—relations among people-and heir institutions. ‘The question immediately arises: if planning is @ moral praxis, hhow shall we ensure a morally defensible practice inthe absence of absolutes? As planners, we are concemed with social change, more specifically with willed or intended social change (measured from whatever may be the status quo). But we ‘also want this change ‘o be morally-defensible; we want it to be “good.” “There was a time when planners’ lode star was a notioa of die common good, ‘That notion turned out to be deveptive. What we imagined as the common good of the polis was always contested terrain. The common good cannot be assumed a pri- fi, noe can it be determined by research. It is not a given. The public goed is notion of process; it emerges in the course of planning itself. and its concrete meaning is constantly evolving. Tn wha Tliave just said, there is a basic assumption that the polis, what I have called the public domain, actually exists. But this is by no means a certainty, It pre- supposes a teritorally organized society (neighborhood, city, province, or nation- al alate), a scuse of citizenship (rightful belonging), and legitimate voice. It pre supposes democratic freedoms and rights, Not all societies are so organized, For a sense of public to exist, there has to be a measure of sharing: cultural predisposi- tions, a common past, cherished institutions, a legitimate authority. But where these conditions exist, there too exists a public domain and the possibility of reach ing @ shared understanding of what, in particular instances, may be called “the ‘common good.” Issues rise to public attention, For a period of time, they become the talk of the political community. And itis in relation to issues that perplex the polity that planning comes into its own, Planners have a certain knowledge of things without which they would not have a moral praxis at all, but would be like ordinary citizens, searching for answers without knowing where to look. It is this special knowledge that distinguishes / planners from other professionals and gives them whatever authority they may have: Lerme begin; ir-talking about What planers Know, by suggesting that plan= Fiing discourse—which is the intellectual tradition inio which we fit, which colors ‘our vocabulary, the way we think, and the community of discourse to which we relate ourselves—is nourished by thee strcams,-separate yet stemming from a common source. The central siream & moval discourse and is concerned. with eth ical choice, or how we shall live with off€ another; the second streantis technical discourse, or how we may effectively (and efficiently) relate means to ends; and -the third stream (S'wopian discourse, which is concemed with visionary images of the “good life.” ~ “Although these streams or traditions of discourse are interconnected, they some- times seem to have an existence of their own, each pre-empting the space of the wv76 ourrene ‘others. But how shall we judge technique that is deprived of vision and ethical judgment? We can admire its virtuosity but ultimately must reject it, Beeauise pure technique means to slash blindly into the life of living communities. AV the other extreme, utopian vision divorced from technical discourse and ethical judgment is ‘but « harmless play of the imagination with no practical consequences. In between them, moral discourse by itself quickly degenerates into Sunday morning. ser ‘menizing. It is priggish and judgmental. In planning, the three separate streams of discourse must be brought together. That ithe speciatvirte-of the prexis-of plan- ning —Latme clarify what I mean by the centrality of moral discourse in planaing. , Gone are the times when planners thought that making choices for others is sim= ply the privilege of those having technical knowledge. The sentence, “I am tech- nically competent; therefore, [can tell you how to live,” simply lacks the power to perstiade. Since there are no technicians of life (either individual or social), we ‘must assume a vast snultiplicity of skills that bear on what we call “life.” But even iff we could imagine a situation in which 1,000 “doctors of life” were to tll us how to live “correctly” (according to the technical norms of efficacy and e'ficiency), and they could do so with each doctor's own special “know-how” without running into contradictions, and without the uncertainty that is constitutive of life, they ‘would still not be able to make a complete prescription, For there are no experts on human subjectivity. Bven psychologists catut Uliaub inky the eR a9 the souive UE Juman choice. ‘These sorts of considerations bear directly on the uncomfortable questions familiar to all planners: planning for whom, withwshom, and imbalance of power is.a-condition-of life. And planners often find themselves on the side of those with power. specifically the powers ofthe state. (There are other planners who opr for the side of the weak, and T shall return TO thei later.) So we know that planners have an ability to impose their plans (assuming they can get them by the politicians). But that is not the whole of the story, because moral dis- course raises for us the unavoidable question of citizen participation. Unfortunstely, to tum planning over to the people in a sort of self-management euphoria does not work either, because again, self-management is not an absolute and has its limitations, to0. Like itor no, the state is inevitably a player, but only fone among several. And the stage, we must confess, is getting more and more crowded witha consequent dilution of state power. All cifective planning is therefore a negotiated process among affected parties cho have different values, concems, and interests st stake. What do planners bring to this process? What special knowledge is theirs? I want to become a little more specific now than merely to assert that they bring moral, technical, and utopian knowledge into the negotiated process we call planning, What special skills do planners have? + Planners know, or ought to know, how to facilitate the process we call negotiated planning so that people can resolve their differences and move forward. + Planners know, or ought know, low to defing problems in the public domainPLANNING THEORY AND ETHICS 7 (ie, problems that have risen tothe surface of public discussion and concern) in ways that make them tractable. OF course, some problems are so deeply rooted that it would be foolish to think they can be dealt with successfully without major political changes, for even changes in public attitudes and opinion. To point this out and perhaps search for seconsl-bes! solutions is a planning skill, foo. In defining what the problem is, plan- ners typically use comprehensive criteria: historical, spatial, economic, cultural, and political, among others. In their description of the problem, however. planters will seize upon these dimensions of the problem which are critical from a viewpoint of action. “+ Planners know, or ought to know, about the efficacy (and relative efficiency) of the intervention strategies potentially available + Planners know, of ought to know, about the political dynamics that bear oa a solu- tion of the problem. + Plannets know, oF ought to know, how to get new and pertinent knowledge. For example, they know how to research the possible impacts of proposed intervention strategies on the interests and Values of the relevant authors, on the environment, and ‘on other concerns people may have. + Planners know. or ought to know, how problem dynamics and intervention strate~ ‘ies relate to images of the good society. Will they move us closer to or Further from, ‘utopian visions? To say that planacrs knw livw w do these many things (or even that they ought to have this kind of knowledge) is to employ-“know’” in the weak sense, for plan- rers’ knowledge is never absolute, nor does itcarry the authority of the True Word. Planners’ knowledge necessarily involves a great deal of experience, guesswork, intuition, and risk-taking (hence, also a knowledge of what the risks are). Above all, it involves a willingness to engage the other players in the planning game inva ‘common discourse and to be guided by their wisdom as well. Planners must be rad- ically open to new facts, new insights, new understandings. If this renders problem solutions more complex, so be it. Nothing will be gained by simple formulations when the reality is not simple. ‘And 50, when we ask for whom planners plan, the answer is not the traditional cone of the public interest, or the “common people,” or some such convenient phrase. In any planning game we are likely to find many players, ard each player is likely to bring along a crew of planners that will see the world from their own perspective. Planners in America do not occupy a monopoly position of power (not even so-called central planners) and they never did; they are moving instead in a field of rapidly shifting forces that reflects the fluid power positions (and different configurations) of the players in the game. The public interest, or the common ‘good, is an emergent. It is that toward which the game, or process, is oriented, ‘which gives it meaning, and which makes it, indeed, the central process of a demo- cratic polity. “This formulation, of course, presupposes that all the interested players are allowed to play. And this, we know, is not typically the case. A good part of what wwe call planning has therefore to do with people’s strugele for collective self-REFERENCES 78 chaoTens empowerment and participation. It isa struggle for a change in the political con figuration, fora change in the rules that govem the game, for new understandings and reinterpretations of familiar shibboleths. Planners alone cannot change the rules of the game that are changed only under massive public pressure. But they an make common cause with the excluded and disaffected groups in the society. working with them in ways that lead to their greater access to the bases of social power und the conversion ofthat power into power that is also politically effective ‘With the planning geme a multiple dialog, what is it that prevents the game from: degenerating into a free-for-all in which the most powerful, the most ruthless. inevitably get their way? There are several possible answers to this, including (and not least importantly) the formal constraints of a strong democratic tradition. But Part of the appropriate answer is also, I believe, that all the planners in the game. regardless ofthe players they work for, participate in the three streams of common planning discourse: the technical, moral, and utopian. Although they will not nec essarily sce things the same way, planners share a common language and approzc which can help hold chaos at bay. This is another way of saying that planners are professionals. Rational planning was one of the triumphs of the modem age. It prided itself ia being the scientific way to guide society’s future course of progress. But in the end. like so many myths of modernity, planning, (00, had 10 bite the dust. Science, # tamed out, was not the One True Way; and neither waa planning. If we begin to see planning (now with cifferent eyes) as a form of praxis in Aristotle's sense, as “fice” moral and political action informed by knowledge and understanding. we shall discover that planning is as alive as ever and, perhaps for the first time, trae to itself as one of the healing disciplines, like medicine and teaching. A teacher does not teach but educate—that is, bring out whatever is best in the student in process of gradual self-discovery. Nor does a physician heal except as he (or she) cooperates with the natural processes of healing where they exist. In this image then, the planner does not plan but works with the special skills and knowledge planners have fo bring us eloser to the vtopias of our imagination. Planning dis course ties us back into old traditions of philosophy and practice, of which we are the contemporary embodiment, Planning discourse is the ground on which we stand, ‘Arendt, H. 1958. The Human Condition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Bemstein, R. J. 1971. Pravis and Action: Contemporary Philosophies of Human Activ Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press Bemstein, RJ. 1985. Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Friedmann, J, 1987. Planning in the Public Domain: From Knowledge to Action, Princeton, NJ: Princeton, Habermas, J. 1981 and 1984. The Theory of Communicative Action, 2 vols. Boston: Besco= Press.