PLANNING THEORY SINCE
1945
Pwk Pmd ft ub – planning theory
‘System view’ of planning: Early post war
planning theory: Cognitive rationality

1.
2.
3.
Conception of planning:
Town planning as physical planning.
Design as central to town planning.
The assumption that town planning necessarily involved
the production of 'master' plans or 'blueprint' plans
showing the same degree of precision in the spatial
configuration of land uses and urban form as the 'endstate‘ blueprint plans produced by architects or
engineers when designing buildings and other humanmade structures.
Town planning as physical planning



Physical planning as opposed to 'social' and 'economic'
planning. Keeble (1952, p. 1) put it on the first page of his
book: “Town and Country Planning might be described as the
art and science of ordering the use of land and the character
and siting of buildings and communicative routes . . .”
Keeble suggested that town planning “may greatly assist in
the realisation of the aims of these other kinds of planning'.
Then implicit in this statement is an assumption that social
and economic ends could be advanced by physical means
This thesis was appropriately termed physical, architectural
or environmental determinism (see Broady, 1 968, Chap. I)
Town planning as physical planning


The third point concerns Keeble's assertion that town
and country planning is not 'political' planning ?.
Assuming that town and country planning was
conceived of as physical planning, the question
naturally arises as to what technical skills were
thought relevant, which brings us to the second
component of the post-war conception of planning.
Town planning as urban design


The term 'civic' design was also much used
Town planning was regarded as an 'extension' of
architectural design (or to a lesser extent civil
engineering) in the literal sense of being concerned
with the design of whole groups of buildings and
spaces - with 'townscape‘ rather than the design of
individual buildings and their immediate sites, and
also in the sense that architecture too was seen to
be an exercise in the physical design of built forms.
Town planning as urban design

Architects who worked as town planner:
 GB:
Patrick Abercrombie, Frederick Gibberd and
Thomas Sharp
 Netherland: H.P. Berlage
 Europe: Le Cor busier

Books written specifically about urban design, such
as Frederick Gibberd's Town Design ( published
in1953) , were regarded as standard texts on town
planning
Town planning as urban design
Shops
Offices
Government
Entertainment
Education
Dwellings
Centres and sub-centres
Industry
Open space
Theoretical new town
Source: Keeble, 1952 (1969), Figure 30
Town planning as urban design

Raymond Unwin - a leading exponent of this
concern with aesthetics - stressed the need for
beauty in urban life: 'Not even the poor can live by
bread alone' (cited in Creese, 1967, p. 71).
Town planning as urban design
A plan for an urban region
Source: Keeble, 1 952, Figure 1 1
Town planning as urban design
A design for the centre of a theoretical new town
Source: Keeble, 1952, Figure 78
The covers of Lewis
Keeble's Principles and
Practice of Town and
Country Planning ( 1969
edition)
Town plans as detailed blueprints or
'master' plans




Plans were seen as 'blueprints' for the future form of
towns - as statements of 'end-states' that would one day
be reached.
The first generation of development plans local
authorities were required to produce under the Town
and Country Planning Act 1947 also adopted this
approach.
Detailed zoning plans specified how particular sites
were to be used and developed
'programming' plans that showed the stages at which
the envisaged development of different parts of the
plans would be carried out to 'complete' the plans.
Town plans as detailed blueprints or
'master' plans
Example:
•Soria y Mata's nineteenthcentury plans for linear cities
•Le Corbusier's plans for the
'contemporary city' (and later
the 'radiant city')
•Frank Lloyd Wright's plans for
'Broadacre City
•Ebenezer Howard's 'Garden
City'
Conclusion

The plan was not just an approach to town planning
as an exercise in physical planning and urban
design but also a normative concept of the ideal
urban environment. In other words, the tracts and
textbooks published at the time not only advanced
an extended definition of planning but they also
embodied certain values about the kinds of
environment which, it was believed, should be
realised through town planning.
The values of post-war planning theory



The normative context: a culture of social reform and
conservative sentiments.
A 'formal‘ or 'definitional' theory of planning: Town
planning as an exercise in physical planning and design
represented a particular theory of what kind of an
activity town planning is.
Post-war planning was also driven by a distinct set of
values: They reflected the responses of social reformers
and middle-class intellectuals to the dreary industrial
cities which had grown up in the Victorian age, and
were a curious mixture of radicalism and
conservativism.

radical Utopianism:
 Robert
Owen – the creator of the famous model
settlement of New Lanark - was both a pioneer of the
model village movement, which aimed to improve the
living and working conditions of working-class people,
and an early socialist.
 Ebenezer Howard's ideas for the creation of completely
new 'garden cities', in which land would be collectively
owned, came to represent at the end of the century the
distillation and most complete expression of this radical
Utopian socialism

Howard combined radical socialist proposals for the
collective ownership of land in his garden cities with
very traditional and, in this respect conservative,
notions of urban size and form (the socalled 'social
democratic‘)
THE NORMATIVE THEORY UNDERLYING (BRITISH) POST-WAR
PLANNING

A normative theory of town planning:
a theory of how town planning should be approached
 a theory of the kinds of urban environments town planning
should seek to create



The deep values we hold often take the form of takenfor-granted assumptions and norms and, because of
this, our values are often not explicitly articulated or
analysed.
These values become apparent when we examine the
kind of urban environments that were judged by
planners at the time to be of high quality or 'ideal'.
THE NORMATIVE THEORY UNDERLYING (BRITISH) POST-WAR
PLANNING

Four broad planning principles of post war planning:
the general approach to creating better cities. This
approach can be described as 'Utopian comprehensiveness‘.
 the general aesthetic values which informed (British) postwar planning.
 the view most town planning theorists took of the ideal
urban structure, namely, a highly ordered view of urban
structure.
 a general assumption that all these principles were selfevident and thus 'commonsense' principles in themselves,
commanding a consensus amongst all sections of the
population (assumed consensus over the aims of planning.)

Utopian comprehensiveness


Three aspects of the post-war 'Utopian
comprehensive' approach to planning:
typical expressions of modernist 'functional' design
and aesthetics (e.g. Antonio Sant'Elia's La Citta
Nuova, Tony Garnier's La Cite Industrielle and Le
Corbusier's Ville Radieuse). In appearance, the form
of the modern city was one of plain, geometrical,
'functional‘ buildings standing at regular intervals in
a sea of 'free-flowing' space.
Antonio Sant'Elia's sketch for La Citta Nuova, 1914
RATIONAL PLANNING
SINCE 1960S
Pwk Pmd ft ub – planning theory
System Theory and Rational Pl theory


Pendekatan Rational
planning dicontohkan pada
text book karya Brian
McLoughlin's Urban and
Regional Planning: A Systems
Approach (1969); dan karya
Andreas Faludi, melalui
bukunya yg terkenal:
Planning Theory and A
Reader in Planning Theory.
Teori ini merepresentasikan
optimisme dari modernist.
System theory

Ide dasar dari System Theory adalah anggapan
bahwa desa, kota dan wilayah adalah sebuah sistem
yng tersusun dari bagian-bagian yang saling
berhubungan (interconnected and interdependence).
System: A City is as a living organism:

1.
“A city can be viewed as a system in which its parts are
different land-use activities interconnected via transport and
other communications media, i.e. a land-use/ transport system
(page 62)”
Ketika dipahami bahwa kota merupakan sistem yang
komplek, maka planner harus benar paham ‘how cities
worked’
2.
3.

Ketika dipahami bahwa kota merupakan interrelated
system dari tempat dan kegiatan maka perubahan
dari satu bagian akan mempengaruhi bagian lainnya.
Ditandai dengan berkembangnya ‘teori lokasi’ dan
kebutuhan disiplin planner dg latar belakang
economic geography dan social sciences.
Dipahami bahwa planning is not end state blueprints.
“Systems theory, with its emphasis on activity, dynamism
and change, suggested the need for more adaptable
flexible plans”



Pemahaman terhadap planning sebagai ongoing
process of monitoring, analysing and intervening in
fluid situations.
‘Quantitative revolution’ dipromosikan oleh
geographers (location theory – menggantikan
design theory) sehingga planning lebih ‘scientific’
than ‘art’.
Pada akhirnya adalah pemahaman terhadap
ecological setting.
Rationality in planning:
Cognitive
rational
Procedural
Communicative
Rational planning process was described as a model of
rational decision making process (rather than a rational
action model)
Rational planning

“Melvin Webber: 'I understand planning to be a
method for reaching decisions, not a body of specific
substantive goals . . .planning is a rather special way
of deciding which specific goals are to be pursued
and which specific actions are to be taken . . . the
method is largely independent of the phenomena to
be planned' (Webber, 1 963, cited in Duhl, 1963, p.
320 )” .



Andreas Faludi membedakan antara 'substantive‘
planning theories about the object ( i.e. planning
deals with the environment) dan 'procedural'
planning theories about the process or procedures of
going about planning.
Faludi mendeskripsikan substantive theories sbg
theories in planning, dan procedural theories as
theories of planning.
Planning as a process diawali oleh dictum Patrick
Geddes: Survey – Analysis – Plan (SAP)
The quantification
of factors relevant to
policy ( such as traffic
flows) was the hallmark
of 'being scientific';
hence, if something
could not be quantified
(such as the beauty of
a place) then it was not
considered to be
scientific (and hence
often marginalised in
policy-making).

Tiga kondisi yang harus dipenuhi oleh rational
planning:
 pertama,
alasan keputusan perencanaan harus
dipikirkan secara mendalam - decisions should be
arrived at by considered reflection rather than by
guesswork, 'hunch' or intuition alone.
 Alasan pengambilan keputusan haruslah explicit.
 each and every stage of a planning process should be
carefully and explicitly thought through.

The rational process model menyatakan diri
sebagai model normatif atau theory of planning dan
ini dilakukan oleh para ahli teori rational process
tahun 1960an dan 1970an sebagaimana Faludi
mengatakan ( 1973a, p. 116 ): 'It i s only as a
normative model that the rational planning process
has any meaning at all.‘
Rational Comprehensive vs Disjointed
Incremental Planning (as being ‘strategic’)
issues:
 persyaratan bahwa rationality memerlukan comprehensiveness
 keterbatasan waktu, sumber daya, dsb merupakan kenyataan
bahwa comprehensiveness adalah imposible
Lindblom menyampaikan proposal berupa suatu pendekatan
yang dia klaim lebih relevan thd perencanaan dan
pengambilan keputuan di dunia nyata. Dia mengusulkan
bahwa “in most situations, planning has to be piecemeal,
incremental, opportunistic and pragmatic, and that planners who
did not or could not operate in these ways were generally
ineffective. In short, Lindblom presented a model of the 'real
world‘ planning as necessarily 'disjointed' and 'incremental', not
'rational' and 'comprehensive' “.
conclusion


Berdasarkan pendapat Faludi ( 1973, Chap. 1)
terdapat perbedaan antara substantive dan
procedural planning theories: “the systems view of
planning, being a theory about the 'substance' (the
environment) which town planning deals with, was a
substantive theory, whilst the rational process view
was clearly a procedural theory of planning”.
Rational-cybernetics-modernist
Radical planning


berkembang pada era 1990an. Dalam buku Montgomery,
J. and Thornley, A. 1 990: Radical Planning Initiatives: New
Directions for Urban Planning in the 1 990s, Aldershot,
Gower.
berkembang sebagai aliran neomodernist. Lahir sebagai
suatu protest thd modernity. “Philosophically such modernity
has proved disappointing; and the citizens of settler societies
are now aware that it creates generational and ethnic
disparities and a form of consumerism which is neither
improving nor uplifting, and an ever-increasing resource
degradation where demand exceeds the potential to supply,
and a level of pollution where dumping exceeds the
environment’s absorptive capacity.” (Riddle, 2004 page 22)
Radical ‘A’ Conscience-raising theory (Habermas 1979,
1984, 1986)
The Habermasian emphasis on ‘communicative action’ in
association with ‘instrumental action’ (the Frankfurt School
1951: Adorno and others) is concerned with connecting
improved and undistorted communication (‘idealspeech’) to
better social science. This, for planning, means a raising of
the level of social conscience for planners, their political
mentors, and the participating public. This positions planners,
in particular, to operate as both mediators and critics. In the
context of the Jungian mantra ‘thinking feeling sensing
intuiting’ to raise the level of participatory conscience (social
listening) and to recognize unconscious distortions and miscommunications. A planning (non-philosopher) connection can
be traced to the ‘advocacy’ writings of Davidoff (1965)
and Healey (1996).
Radical ‘B’ Liberty–equality theory (consult Rawls
1971)
This is the most ‘ethical’ of the philosophies which transect
with planning, because it incorporates the dominant
moral ideals of ‘liberty and justice’ with
transdisciplinary ideals for social opportunity, fairness
and equality. Harper and Stein (1993) hold to the view
that Rawls ‘offers the most promising procedural NET
(normative ethical theory) for planners’ which
practitioners in Australasia should be cautioned to
appraise ‘regionally’ relative to this theory’s derivative
association with a wider basis of recognition of
inequality in the USA. Urmson and Ree (1989) identify
a philosophical trace from Locke, Rousseau and Kant
through to Rawls.
Radical ‘C’ Social transaction theory (consult
Popper 1974)
To planners on both sides of the Atlantic (Friedmann, USA,
1987; Reade, UK, 1987) a Popparian transect with
‘best practice’ for local planning can be identified.
Popper’s approach is dialectical, involving ‘piecemeal
social engineering’ as a transactive process. And
although planners will discern much in common between
Habermas, Rawls and Popper, all three found it
necessary to disagree, as philosophers are wont. A
difficulty presented by Popper’s dialectical approach
for active planning practitioners is his clear abhorrence
of proactive embodiment in preference to an
individualized discursiveness ‘out of the collective loop’.
Traditional theories
Development-led
Target (selective)
Master-lineal (blueprint)
Determinist
Programmed
Orthogonal (technocratic)
Safety net
Conservative
Resource strategic
Iterative
Physical science
Policy analysis
Land-use planning
Local
One option (fixed)
Radical theories
Community-concerned
Comprehensive
Multiplex (hi-med-lo options)
Corporate
Utopian
Organic (reformist)
Innovative
Re
Socially transformingvolutionary
Parallel
Social science
Cybernetics
Social provision
Regional
Variety (flexible)
OUTCOMES
ANTICIPATED
Traditional
operational
practice
Low variety
Logical (step-bystep)
Technological
Will be done
About decisions
Target-led
Attainments
Lineal
Structural
‘What’ to think
Radical operational
practice
Complex (variety)
Creative (multiphase)
Humanist
Agreed to do
About values
Goal-led
Alternatives
Multiplex
Procedural
‘How’ to think
DESCRIPTIVE
CHARACTERISTICS
Traditional operational
practice
Radical operational
practice
Rational (one answer)
Radical (several answers)
Top-down
Bottom-up and top-down
Received
Grounded
Coarse-grained
Fine-grained
Extrapolates
Invents and improvises
Pessimistic
Optimistic
Normative
Varietal
Deterministic
Prbalistic
Specific and rigid
Considers alternatives
Computes answers
Thinks alternatives
Reductionist
Responsive
For ‘me’
For ‘us’
Specific
Generalist
Conventional
Interactive
‘Masculine’
‘Feminine’
DESCRIPTIVE
CHARACTERISTICS
Traditional operational
practice
Radical operational
practice
Rational (one answer)
Radical (several answers)
Top-down
Bottom-up and top-down
Received
Grounded
Coarse-grained
Fine-grained
Extrapolates
Invents and improvises
Pessimistic
Optimistic
Normative
Varietal
Deterministic
Prbalistic
Specific and rigid
Considers alternatives
Computes answers
Thinks alternatives
Reductionist
Responsive
For ‘me’
For ‘us’
Specific
Generalist
Conventional
Interactive
‘Masculine’
‘Feminine’
DESCRIPTIVE
CHARACTERISTICS
Traditional operational
practice
Radical operational
practice
Rational (one answer)
Radical (several answers)
Top-down
Bottom-up and top-down
Received
Grounded
Coarse-grained
Fine-grained
Extrapolates
Invents and improvises
Pessimistic
Optimistic
Normative
Varietal
Deterministic
Prbalistic
Specific and rigid
Considers alternatives
Computes answers
Thinks alternatives
Reductionist
Responsive
For ‘me’
For ‘us’
Specific
Generalist
Conventional
Interactive
‘Masculine’
‘Feminine’
TECHNOLOGIES
INVOLVED
Traditional operational
practice
Radical operational
practice
Problem-solving
Potential-realizing
See you in week 3