Pragmatic Spatial Planning

Practial Theory for Professionals

Charles Hoch

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367075385
• eBook ISBN: 9780429664755
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

Instead of seeking theory to justify practical professional judgments this book describes how professionals can and should use theory to guide these judgments.

Professional spatial planning in the US, and globally, continues to suffer from a weak conceptual grasp of its own practice. Practitioners routinely recognize the value and wisdom of practical judgment finely attuned to context, nuance and complexity; but later offer banal testimony and glib stories of 'just so' best-practice discrediting the ambiguity of their own experience. The chapters in this book provide a vocabulary tailored to the conventions of practical judgment, challenging students and practitioners to treat professional expertise as work in progress rather than 'best' practice. Instead of seeking theory to justify practical professional judgments, Hoch describes how professionals can and should use theory to guide these judgments. The pragmatist plan helps cope with complexity rather than control it, making it invaluable in the anyone's pursuit of a planning career.

This book will appeal to a wide cross section of students and scholars, especially those working in urban planning, public policy, and government.

Part I

1 Practical Judgment and Planning

Introduction

Professional spatial plans take for granted the expectation that a plan provides a guide for the future. The architect provides a blueprint, the social scientist a policy, the public bureaucrat a regulatory protocol and the politician some provisional combination of them all. The meaning a plan inhabits varies with provider, sponsor and clientele. But regardless of this diversity composing public advice about the future requires backup – a rationale that can pass professional muster even as it speaks to all the diverse voices and interests that set the plan in motion. Professionals routinely claim rationality as a foundation for these sorts of claims.

Professional planners may disagree about the kind of rationality a plan includes, but few would support a plan that lacks reason. Reasons justify the content of the plan, providing arguments for the quality of the advice. This protocol deserves our attention and respect because it offers coherent reflective advice about what to do in the future to coordinate multiple purposes in a complex spatial context. Disputes between substantive and procedural rationality or between modernist and postmodern rationality matter because the kind of rationality we adopt shapes the kind of planning advice we give – the kinds of plans we make.¹

This rationality places planning outside the reach of religious prophecy or sentiment, emotional attachment or intuition, and other sources of judgment considered irrational or non-rational. Much planning theory takes this distinction for granted as analysts offer competing conceptions of rationality (e.g., instrumental versus substantive). The emphasis on rationality generates a separation between rationality and other kinds of thought. Rational theory tells us how to think about planning, but not how to do it. Rational theory discerns the truth, but not what to do with it. Theory and practice travel different paths. Furthermore, the association with rationality holds planning hostage to the debates about rationality as form and guide.

Instead of arguing that rationality shapes planning, I will argue planning shapes rationality. In a nutshell the argument goes something like this: As humans we learned to make plans to anticipate future events and coordinate actions as a matter of inescapable habit. We communicate plans to others and in so doing coordinate conduct about and towards our respective goals. We deliberate together about future options and outcomes. In so doing we use plans to help turn desires into intentions; intentions we may also use to construct a rationale for what we do.² Instead of modeling plans on rational belief, we use plans to organize rational intentions. This pragmatic approach uses plans to bind ideas and feelings about what to do as intentions for practical judgment.³

The argument does not discredit debates over planning theory but implies that the outcome of such debates may not be important for how professionals do planning – but mainly about our beliefs about important social purposes and methodological technique. This shift provides a strong rationale for the value of historical and other types of case study research in addition to more conventional tools of analysis. We learn to improve how well we anticipate and cope with complex problems – whether making plans or planning – comparing how others cope in very specific contexts with similar problems. The context might include the analysis of probabilities for sample data, but it may also include relevant interpretations of a problem using prior experience and case comparison. How did you solve that rush hour traffic congestion problem or reduce the incidence of homelessness among the urban poor? The research allows for the inclusion of the full range of human emotional responses and values. As we get contextual and relevant, the details of narrative, dialog, and the full complement of human interaction provide useful insights about the meaning and motivation of our plans and the planners who make them.

Planning and Practical Reason

People possess the capacity to act purposively; and to form and execute plans (Bratman 1987, p.2). Other animal species act purposefully, but none plan (Mithen 1999).⁴ Planning grows out of the cognitive powers of our species that enable us to attend to time and others as we make our way in the world. We anticipate future action making our own plans and so coordinate our action in relation to the plans of others.

We rarely make deterministic or complete plans (aka blueprints), but provisional ones that we adjust in response to unexpected obstacles in our path or changes in other plans that conflict with our own (Sunstein 2000).⁵ We also form habits that turn what were once planned decisions into a predictable routine. As we commit to following a plan the situation that prompted the effort disappears from attention, at least until unexpected changes generate new forms of uncertainty.⁶

Planning analysts adopting popular conceptions of rational decision making often presume that plans follow preferences linking desires with belief. A pragmatic approach views plans actively shaping intentions by anticipating and comparing future consequences and relationships.

Theories of rationality conceive of rational action as the employment of appropriate means for achieving a desired end. Rational action is thus thought of as a product of two vectors. One is the vector of belief, or knowledge, or probability. The other is the vector of desires, or wants, or utility. I act rationally when I act to promote what I want on the basis of what I know (Ullmann-Margalit 1999, p.73).

Instead of conceiving cognition as mental modeling that represents the world, the pragmatist approach conceives cognition as actively using the world to inform and assess judgments about what to do. Cognition uses memory of behavior in similar situations to construct and assess imaginary options testing and comparing consequences. Research on judgment uncovers a more complex set of influences shaping how people respond to uncertainty about the future. The inferences we draw about possible actions and consequences flow from emotional responses following the contours of social convention and experience.

As we seek to coordinate our conduct with others we do not deliberate about what to do from moment to moment but use plans to guide our choices.⁷ Pragmatist conceptions of cognition presumes: the cognitive agent joins or inhabits a task domain, system states acquire meaning in the context of action, and the functioning of cognitive systems inseparable from embodiment (Engel et al. 2013); extends to social interaction (Clark 2008; Gallagher 2013). Plans provide scaffolding for joint coordination. We each form our provisional plan and then follow it jointly until we encounter problems that require adjustment.⁸ Plans shape conduct, resist reconsideration and provide inputs for further practical reasoning.

Plans are also provisional. We do not fill in all the possible details – but leave room for revision. Plans typically exhibit a hierarchical structure. Some aspects are more important than others. Provisional and hierarchical plans enable us to assess the consequences of different goals using the same means; review how different means might achieve the same goal and more. The deliberate comparison of the differences in anticipated effects informs my intention.

Using provisional, hierarchically organized plans has a pragmatic rationale. The complexity, uncertainty and ambiguity of our social world make unilateral versus joint planning too rigid. The incomplete and hierarchical format of small p planning enables us to cope with a changing world and social partners with diverse goals. We use planning to guide our daily conduct, but also to set and fill in the larger and more general plans for our future and that of others with whom we associate. The research by cognitive and social psychologists provides evidence supporting the role for plans shaping intentions, but also the follow through associated with execution. Evidence from social psychological research on counterfactual thinking demonstrates that people do anticipate and prepare for future action. How people value plans depends on their conception of the future; a conception shaped by the plans they make (Kahneman & Lovallo 1993; Roese & Olson 1995).

Stability, Confidence and Commitment in planning

We do not deliberate from a blank slate, but in the context of predispositions tied to earlier plans, the taken for granted plans we follow all the time. How do we describe the reasonableness of such plans? We envision taken-for-granted plan following as the execution of deliberate decisions that meet the consistency and coherence tests without encountering disruptive problems. We recognize that people follow reasonable plans that might be revised using different goals offering more advantageous outcomes. Changing plans has costs that may not balance reconsideration and redirection. The less stable my current plans, the more susceptible they become to distraction based on new opportunities or difficulties. But if the stability becomes too great, so great that the coherence of the plan no longer holds, then I cannot describe my action as reasonable. “That was just a fantasy.”

The stability of a plan may not dispose each individual in the same way or to the same extent. We may hold different beliefs even as we cooperate. We possess different levels of sensitivity and competence that lead us to act differently even though we hold the same beliefs and plans. The plan does not predict action, but shapes the intentions that motivate action. I may not possess the competence to sustain the plan we share and so turn away or drop out.⁹

Evaluating Plans

How do we know when our plans work well or fail us? Plans need to meet two types of demands: consistency constraints and means–ends coherence. We do not make a plan to take parallel routes on our journey to work. We must choose one or the other. Insisting that we take both is inconsistent with regard to constraints.¹⁰ As for means, choosing air travel for a ten mile commute is inconsistent and incoherent. It makes no sense. A plan need not spell out all means ahead of time, but it should include enough means to support the underlying intention, otherwise the plan becomes means–ends incoherent. [Plans that say little about how to turn policy into projects may be said to lack means–ends coherence.] Dewey argued that we can also reconsider ends if the means entail unacceptable consequences. He envisioned the relationship as a means–ends continuum. For instance, supporters of home ownership for all Americans learn about implementation costs using current housing industry and market practices and revise the goal downwards to 65 percent (Blanco 1994, pp.68–69).

These two demands reflect a pragmatic orientation. You cannot coordinate and control future conduct if your plans are not consistent with constraints (realistic) or means–ends coherent. Our fantasies or utopias (which are unconstrained by reality and do not worry about how ends follow from means) do not qualify as plans informing our intentions. When we intend to do something, we place this intention within our planning framework and the intention is subject to the demands of consistency with constraints and means–ends coherence (Bratman 1987, p.32).

Prior plans channel future deliberations in effect narrowing the scope of what options we need to consider in coordinating our conduct. The consistency and coherence filter the options we consider based on prior plans.¹¹ Preferences and interests may generate expectations that motivate action; but the expectations do not become intentional without a plan (Hendricks-Jensen 1996). Planners often imagine that the meaning of the planning effort flows downward from goal to policy. But reasoning practically uses planning to move in the either direction. We learn to articulate and clarify our purpose as we form a plan. How we do science and present our scientific findings differ, and so does planning conduct and plan presentation. We put the fully articulated goals at the beginning of a finished plan, but these goals did not appear so vivid and complete at the outset of the planning process.¹²

Planning Makes Practical Reasoning Work

We make plans not to reduce complexity into predictable routine, but to anticipate, prepare for and cope with complexity in ways that better meet our needs, fulfill our purposes and respect our limitations. Plans combine instrumental inquiry with deliberation to form intentions that guide joint action and improve coordination. Deliberation invites participants to persuade one another to adopt a modified version of the descriptions, analysis, programs and policies that compose a plan, and to inspire a willingness to treat these versions as a guide for the practical judgments used to put the plan elements into action (Forester, 1999, Hoch 2002).

Once we recognize planning as a crucial ingredient for practical judgment then we no longer need to find a theoretical justification for planning. We need not search out some foundation for planning, some deeper or wider rationale beyond the practical anticipation we use every day. When analysts argue that planning need apply the rules and conventions of rationality used in the sciences they are not providing a foundation or justification for planning but trying to squeeze a practical and robust planning activity into a too specialized theoretical framework.¹³

How do we make plans that improve the rational coordination of the purposes of many people who do not know one another? How do we make plans that improve the rational assessment and inclusion of a variety of desires, purposes and beliefs held by many different groups of people? Rationality is not something we need to make sure we possess before we plan, but a practical accomplishment that may help or hinder the plans we make. Susan Haack offers a wonderful analogy to capture how we compose epistemic judgments – a socially constructed crossword puzzle. The gradual testing of words tied to the ongoing interdependent meaning across the assembly of prior commitments combines experiential evidence with the demands of a coherent fit (Haack 1993, p.120). How do we take the wisdom of the practical deliberations we use to make plans and use it to provide rational plans for more complex relationships?

In the next chapter, Chapter 2, I explore how emotions shape human judgment. The findings and insights provide a much more robust account of the ways that intuition and feelings shape not only expectations, but the very organization of how humans think and judge. Feelings shape how people compose and use plans. Professionals should understand and include their experience and knowledge of emotions as they compose plans for...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Book chapters drawing from prior published work
• Introduction
• PART I
• PART II
• PART III
• PART IV
• Index