Communicative Planning

Seminar 3
Speakers: Rachelle & Angus

“The Communicative Turn in Planning Theory and Its Implications for Spatial Strategy Formation” (Healey, 1996)

There is an increasing contemporary interest, particularly in Europe, in the spatial organisation of urban regions and in spatial strategy. The text The Communicative Turn in Planning Theory and Its Implications for Spatial Strategy and Formation outlines public policymaking as communicative argumentation, as well as a communicative approach to spatial strategy formation.

Communicative Planning

Communicative planning is about engaging and interacting with those involved in a planning process. It requires planners to reach out to the public and ask for their wants, opinions and suggestions in terms of their environment. Throughout the text, Healey discusses a growing lack of consistency within urban spaces during the Post War Era. He states that, 'in their place, urban regions have become containers within which coexist a diversity of social and economic relations, linking people in a place with those in other places, but not necessarily with those in the same place.' This results in a less communal environment with those in the same area, and the mixing values between places and networks creating tensions and conflicts.

A Shift in Communicative Planning

During the second half of the last century, planning experienced two paradigm shifts. The first change introduced the typical strategic planning processes language that was based on modelling and dynamics of urban systems. The second change introduced criticism to the planning community of policies and activity through a shift in power relations in communities. This shift developed from a need to reanalyse the layering of demographics through planning, and look at the vulnerability of some economies. These shifts in communicative planning influenced an escape from strategic formal planning by recognising the diverse people amongst communities.

Communicative Argumentation

Habermas (1984) believed that 'our sense of ourselves and of our interests is constituted through our relations with others; through communicative practices. Our ideas about ourselves, our interests, and our values are socially constructed through our communication with others and the collaborative work this involves.' He discussed the need to reconstruct planning policy to allow outcomes that reflect the diversity of values and demographics among communities. Planning practice began moving away from tradition to more inclusionary argumentation, which is a more participatory method of debate. These involved 5 different levels of participation:

1.      Informing – keeping the community up to date with plans through fact sheets, websites

2.      Consultation – done through surveys

3.      Involving – the community can suggest ideas in workshops or can have a say through voting

4.      Collaborate – planners are working alongside the public and with stakeholders

5.      Empower – the community calls the shots through juries and delegated decisions

Spatial Strategy Formation Through Communication

1.      Where is the discussion to take place, in what forums and arenas; how are the community members to get access to it?
2.      In what style will the discussion take place? What styles will most likely be able to ‘open out’ discussion to enable the diversity of ‘languages’ among community members to find expression
3.      How can the jumble of issues, arguments, claims for attention, and ideas about what to do which arise in discussion be sorted out?
4.      How can a strategy be created that becomes a new discourse about how spatial and environmental change in urban regions could be managed?
5.      How can a political community get to agree on a strategy, and maintain that agreement over time while continually subjecting it to critique.