2
Knowledge Power Outcomes
The Theory Fundamentals
This chapter, about ‘knowledge power and outcomes’ examines
the principles and constructional theories of planning practice.^1 It
is presented relative to such transformative factors as enablement,
empowerment and fulfilment. It is also concerned with the pro-
cedures engaged to bring into effect progressive planned out-
comes within a multiple belief society. With deference to both
design and practice, this passage examines traditional lineal
methodology and offers a reconstruction of radical planning
theory on a multiplex (sustainable) basis, for Anglo settler soci-
eties where development practice and conservancy management
is being continuously repoliticized, recombined and recalibrated.
Incursion into other statutory and professional stakeholdings induces propri-
etary confusion over disciplinary boundaries, imparted in planning schools, for
planning, as a ‘franchise’ understanding.
Characteristically plan-making activities and planning processes have always
been around in these pragmatic contexts:- International security(army, navy, air force: operations research, customs and
immigration) - Within-nation security(police, fire service, terrorist surveillance: inter-service
networks) - Economic development (trade policy, future studies, GATT, WTO, NAFTA,
APEC, CER) - Social welfare(education, health, welfare; and the likes of drug abuse and
prison programmes)
As a novice practitioner I mostly worked on the assumption that ‘real planners do not do theory’,
a sentiment identified in Breheny and Hooper’s Rationality in Planning(1985) positing that theoreti-
cians ‘retreat from practice’ and ‘are opposed in principle to the idea of prescribing for practice,
but are equally unhappy about what appears to be a consequence of not doing so’. This situa-
tion calls for an identification of foundation principles and practice specifics. Readers with an
understanding of lineal and multiplex planning theory and practice could move directly to the
Charter, and the Regional and Urban pragmatics outlined in chapters 3 through to 6.
‘The future presents
itself as an impenetrable
medium, an unyielding
wall. And when our
attempts to see through
it are repulsed, we
become aware of the
necessity of wilfully
choosing our course.’
Ideology and Utopia,
Karl Mannheim, 1929