storming synectics and other forms of heuristic and symbolic reasoning are the
key to creative and progressive practice, although they are perplexing to incul-
cate, except by working through examples. Also to be included, for the neomod-
ernist new-age logic it heralds, is the holistic soft systems methodology and the
likes of de Bono’s Parallel Thinking(1994). These approaches look afresh at ‘the
real world’ via an adaptation of the means available to us through systems-
enhanced planning techniques, added to a conceptual prognosis which leads to
improved design and better outcomes.
Of serious concern within radical planning practice is the confusion which
arises between ‘certainty’ (as, for example, with means–ends zoning), and
‘hunch’ (such as the assumption that higher-density urban living is inherently
better than lower-density urban living). Here I am not merely critical of ‘action
planning’ proponents wrapping some theory and philosophy around proposals
after the planned event. What is more deeply worrying is when, despite a
consultative and inter-discursive search for fitness, the message-receivers are
transmitting and working on hunch rather than proven, or at least tested, fact. For
example, the claim that higher-density urban living (merely an illustrative
example) is ‘better’ than life in suburbia, remains for me a personal persuasion,
namely that well-designed higher-density living ispreferable to tract suburbia.
Yet it also has to be admitted that when one looks toward low-density sub-
urbanity and some broad-acre living, a lot of good-quality patterning comes into
view!
Something else: in a quasi-public role as whistle-blower of sorts, I have occa-
sionally raised enough breath to produce a peep! Why only ‘occasionally’? Well,
for the reasons put clearly by Henry Mintzberg in his Rise and Fall of Strategic Plan-
ning(1994) which caricatures whistle-blower good intentions as being exacerbated
by:- Entanglements; getting discouraged and disillusioned by the procedural
labyrinth. - Inefficiency;the lack of utility of obfuscating data sets and questionnaire
procedures. - Objectivity;the removal of passion from planning – the acceptance of an oper-
ationally desultory situation.
Radical planning must avoid groping through the consultative and inter-
discursive motions. It must ‘talk-the-talk, and then walk-that-talk’, fully testing
alluring hunches, and above all avoiding the intrusion of smoke-and-mirror
landowner and developer deceptions into the community discourse.
The point of an improved understanding of theory is that it indicates the modus
operandifor aligning sustainable urban planning into corporatist civic life via the
creative engagement of ‘empowerment’, ‘capacity building’, ‘vertical and hori-
zontal integration’, ‘participation’, ‘conflict management’ and ‘mediation’– and,
overarching all, ‘sustainability’. A core purpose underpinning the sustainable
approach to urban planning, and indeed the point of this approach, is the actual-
ization of national and community improvement, inducing greater variety and68 Principles