Sustainable Urban Planning

58 Principles

The Radical-Multiplex Approach

The post-World War II emergence of a sensitive, discursive,

open and above all democratic and grounded approach to

development planning and conservancy practice can be linked,

causally, with the decolonization, emancipation, and liberal

education movements. It is also associated with the modern-

ization and enlargement of local government, and with the

linkage to world changes, world markets and world informa-

tion. Behind all can be identified the vast additional amount of

knowledge and understanding society now has obtained from

the Marxist, feminist, libertarian theology, first peoples and

environmental movements.

It is important to distinguish between two streams of

‘radical’ conscience: that which identifies with a largely

spontaneous activism; and that which is neomodern and

democratic. Radical conservancy with development enables

planning operatives to stand back from being ‘part of the

problem’ in a manner which ensures that they can be identi-

fied as a truly objective and facilitative ‘part of the solution’.

Traditional, markedly physical planning in its various styles

continues to be applied because it has the appealing ‘positivist’ virtue of being

easily understood and readily operated across a broad public policy spectrum. It

is, after all, the underlying format for urban planning-as-zoning activity. Radical

planning is more substantive than traditional practice because it exhibits connec-

tive understandings and incorporates cyclical progressions; accepting that (from

Schneekloth and Shibley 1995) ‘we can no longer assume that...professionals

“know” and others “don’t-know” ’: to which simplification must be added a com-

plexity; namely that there are considerable social risks and operational pressures

associated with development planning and conservancy prac-

tice. In Low’s phrasing (1991 emphasis added) ‘the more open

the debate the better, the more informed the debate the better,

the more equal the opportunity to participate in the debate the

better...[for]...justice is a matter of fair outcomesas well as

fair process’. Clearly communication skills are of importance

in the furthering of debate and discourse within any multiple-

belief system.

Another commentator, Hillier (1993), delineates the prob-

lematic for what is depicted here as radical planning prac-

tice, as lying within a framework of ‘discursive democracy’,

which

Accepts the inevitability of conflict and obstacles to transparent

decision making such as hierarchy, inequality in the ability to

make and challenge arguments, political strategising, decep-

tion, the exercise of power, manipulation, entrenched ideas and

RADICAL-MULTIPLEX ‘KEY

OPERATOR PHRASINGS’

Empowering: sensitive:

participatory

What for? – What if?

Neomodern:

sustainable

Mitigating:

ameliorative

Open: interactive:

enabling

Fair process:

equitable outcomes

Mutually beneficial

Facilitative: discursive

Social-economic-

environmental

Variety and choice

NEW WORLD PARADIGM

SHIFT

Policy analysis

Decolonization

Emancipation and civil

rights

Democratization

Liberation theology

Environmentalism

Information-sharing

Technological

advances

4 Statement of

intentions and a

programme for

implementation.

5 Summation of the

resources required

to implement the

plan.