Planning Theories

Approaches to Participation in Urban Planning Theories
Raine Mäntysalo
Artikkeli julkaisusta: Zetti, Iacopo & Brand, Shira (toim.) 2005: Rehabilitation of Suburban Areas - Brozzi and Le Piagge Neighbourhoods. Diploma Workshop in Florence - 2004/05. Department of Technology of Architecture and Design "P.L. Spadolini", University of Florence, ss. 23-38 The purpose of this article is to make anoverview of postWWII urban planning theories from the point of view of participation. How have the ideas of public accountability, deliberative democracy and involvement of special interests developed from one theory to another? The urban planning theories examined are rational-comprehensive planning theory, advocacy planning theory, incrementalist planning theory and the two branches ofcommunicative planning theory: planning as consensus-seeking and planning as management of conflicts. My overview is not strictly chronological in relation to the historical development of these theories per se. Instead I will concentrate on the development of the ideas of participation in connection to these theories. From the normative point of view of openness and the democratic ideals of civil society, ahistorically earlier planning theory may be “more advanced” than a later one, even though in respect to other aspects and normative goals, relevant to the realm of urban planning, the latter one may have proved more progressive. Furthermore, the aim is not to introduce all relevant urban planning theories from the last fifty years, but to present the main approaches to participation in thetheoretical work of urban planning. his time, to a field that we now know as sociology. He believed that persistent social problems might be solved by the application of certain hierarchical rules. With the aid of the science of sociology, Comte believed that mankind would progress toward a superior state of civilization. Some key ideas introduced by Comte were maintained in the rationalcomprehensiveplanning theory that gained ground in the 1950s and 1960s – the ideas which, to a considerable degree, are still at the core of urban planning thought. First and foremost, Comte’s association of the methods of classical science with the study of societies and social phenomena is central to the theory of rational-comprehensive planning. The thought models of classical science involve the dissociationof the observer from the observed – the notion of the neutral observer seeking knowledge of the truth that is “out there”. However, this search for knowledge of the facts of the outer world is, according to classical science, endless, since the methods of collecting information can never be exhaustive. Measurements can always be made more accurate, more samples could be taken, more tests run, newvariables taken into account. We may get closer and closer to the absolute truth, but we can never reach it. Knowledge of the world can never measure up
Approaches to Participation in Urban Planning Theories

Rational-comprehensive planning theory
The development of rational-comprehensive planning theory can be traced back to Auguste Comte (1798-1857), often regarded as the “father ofsociology”. Comte sought to apply the methods of observation and experimentation, familiar to the classical science of

Raine Mäntysalo, D.Sc. (Arch.), senior lecturer, University of Oulu, Department of Architecture, Finland

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with the information concealed in the world itself; it has to be a reduction. But the search for absolute knowledge was nevertheless the goal of classical science: morecomprehensiveness in observation, experimentation and calculation meant better science. Similarly, the theorists of rationalcomprehensive planning thought that the more comprehensive the analyses of the planning problem were, the better the plan would be. The planner-analyst regarded himself as the neutral observer of the urban life and its various problems. Through analyses formulated and...