Includes the Planning History in times of Thomas Kuhn, Antonio Faludi, Friedmann..etc. Adjunct Faculty: Omkar Parishwad.

1. Defining Planning Theories..
• Thomas Kuhn
• Planning..
• Top down vs. bottom up approach.
• Friedmann’s Classification of Planning Theories.
• Paradigm (A. Faludi) – Hydra Model
College of Engineering, Pune

2. Planning and Science..
Thomas Kuhn and the structure of the scientific revolutions
points out that scientific inquiry is a process:
1. Pre-paradigmatic ( searching for a theory)
2. Normal science (developed a theory & method)
3. Anomalies emerge
4. Paradigm shift
5. Return to normal science
Expand our accepted knowledge, not question the validity of our
fundamental assumptions. Science can return to a situation of
normality.
COEP

3. • How and how much planners could affect decision making?
• Inclusion of Social science, especially political science.
• Planners first learn from sharing experiences and building
consensus.
• Citizens and Civic leaders vs. Planners: core of planning
• Friedmann’s “Transactive Planning”- Planners should carry
out decisions of citizens rather than making plans by
themselves in a top down pattern.
• Chris Argyris’s “Theory of Action”- Planners act as catalysts
to create a self-correcting decision structure capable of
learning from their own errors.
COEP

4. What is Planning?
• Friedmann states that "..all planning must confront the meta-
theoretical problem of how to make technical knowledge in
planning effective in informing public actions"
• In sum, Friedmann defines planning as the component that links
knowledge & action.
KNOWLEDGE ACTION
• Planning cannot be isolated from the political context of the city or
region because the policy decisions affect local interests. Thus,
planning becomes a practice of what is feasible politically instead
of what is technically efficient and effective.
• The question of power becomes relevant in the planning process.
COEP

5. • K A (Rational Planning)
• K A (Incremental Planning)
• K A (Transactive Planning)
• K P (Activist Planning)
• P A (Radical Planning)
1. Every planning activity involves a territorial/spatial component
2. Planning activities respond to a social rationality
3. Planning facilitates market activities while restricting noxious
ones or even substituting the market
4. Planning in the public domain is political and therefore
conflictive
5. Planning requires massive support and ability to mobilize society
in order to be successful.
Friedmann’s Planning aspects..
COEP

6. Policy analysis emphasizing tool rationality is more conservative
Knowledge to action CONSERVATIVE RADICAL
In societal Guidance Policy Analysis Social reform
In societal transformation Social Learning Social Mobilization
• The fields of policy analysis are system analysis, welfare & social
choice, and policy science.
• Emphasizes the application of scientific knowledge to social issues.
• Searches for “correct” solutions to social problems becoming “social
physics”
• The planner becomes a technocrat whose role is to “serve the existing
centers of power”
COEP

7. Social Learning focusing on value rationality is moderate
Knowledge to action CONSERVATIVE RADICAL
In societal Guidance Policy Analysis Social reform
In societal transformation Social Learning Social Mobilization
• It is draws from the organization development theory
• How society learns to solve its problems
• Learning comes through an iterative process of trial and error
• The planner becomes a community facilitator, instead of the scientist, whose
role is to promote community participation in the search for solutions.
• Emphasizes a bottom-up approach and attempts to empower communities to
solve their own problems. Planning’s gravity center is moved from
government and City Hall to the community. COEP

8. Social reform intending to pursue reform within the existing
institutional setting is relatively progressive.
Knowledge to action CONSERVATIVE RADICAL
In societal Guidance Policy Analysis Social reform
In societal transformation Social Learning Social Mobilization
• This tradition draws from the fields of sociology, institutional economics and
pragmatism.
• Social reform is concerned with how to reform government to behave in a rational
way (efficiency, effectiveness, and transparency).
• It is concerned with what is the proper relationship between planning and politics
and whose ultimate goal is to institutionalize planning as a governmental function.
• The key goal is what government can do to achieve its goals of economic growth
and prosperity. It coincides with public policy in the idea of making planning a
scientific endeavor applied to solve social problems. COEP

9. Social mobilization encouraging political movements is most
radical
Knowledge to action CONSERVATIVE RADICAL
In societal Guidance Policy Analysis Social reform
In societal transformation Social Learning Social Mobilization
• Traces its roots to utopian socialists, radical anarchists, historical
materialism, and Neo-marxism.
• “Planning appears as a form of politics, conducted without the mediation
of science”
• Planning also moves away from the notion that the state is neutral and
attempting to mediate competing interests.
• Perceives the state as an instrument of a social class whose sole purpose
is to facilitate capital accumulation against the interest of labor. COEP

10. Paradigms in Planning: Andreas Faludi
• Contradictory to Kuhn’s model, we have an accumulation rather
than evolution of theories.
• Hydra Hypothesis (Hydra is a mythical creature with many heads):
Urban Planning also has several major theoretical views that
simultaneously exist and they all have a contribution to make.
• When the discipline experiences an important development, what
normally occurs is the emergence of a new theoretical standpoint,
not the suppression of the existing ones: the Hydra gets another
head.
COEP

11. Its not easy to anticipate where conformance should be
considered more important than performance..
Difficult to adopt certain approach and discard the others..
COEP

12. Lessons learned..
• The real driving force behind the development of planning theory
is social change including economic, social, and political
developments. So, the situation makes the development of
planning.
• The planning profession has a common core as an applied science.
Planning focuses on resource allocation (land and space in
particular) and redistribution among various interest groups to
pursue a balance between the segments of society and society as a
whole, and between current and future costs and benefits. But the
core itself is also context-defined instead of fixed—the variation in
social—cultural development in different contexts requires
planners to define their core work differently.
COEP