18. How public norms help to cope with uncertainty in complex practices of planning
Date
2021
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AESOP
Abstract
Planning has become more fallible in the transitional stage of post-modernity. Facing errors and increasing uncertainties does not give an alibi to abandon purposive planning strategies. The public would not accept a flaw of public action when social problems increase. Rather, it is an incentive to make planning strategies more resilient and corrective. Planning always has been tentative and adventurous rather than relying on given certainties. When the problems of time become more intractable, more agility of pragmatism is in the line of expectation. However, what if the purposes and solutions become part of the problem instead of bringing relief? Today, planning and public action are challenged in depth. In his main work Public Norms and Aspirations (2018) Willem Salet argues that improving on pragmatic agility is a permanent drive for planning, it is necessary and worthwhile but not adequate and might even become a problem in itself when taken as the sole point of orientation. The lone preoccupation with problem solving and targeting purposive aspirations has become one of the main concerns of planning practices today. It has become matter of urgency to re-appreciate the role and the meaning of public norms in planning and public action. Public norms differ strongly of goal-specific or problem-solving aspirations; they are normative conditions to social interaction rather than performing purposive action and solving problems. They provide a normative antenna of the public in its permanent search to value 'what one might expect from another' providing reliability in uncertain situations, justifying what is 'appropriate' to do rather than performing outcome oriented planning processes. Both processes of social normalisation and purposive strategies of problem solving are needed in planning: it is in their dialectic interaction that the answers must be found for the problems of planning in our time. However, the normative dimension of planning is deeply neglected today in the prevailing managerial practices of planning and public action (and even in law and legislation). As a result, the purposive and problem solving strategies themselves have become nomadic and fragile. Willem Salet will discuss the contemporary dilemmas of planning by confronting the prevailing approaches of urban and regional planning with challenges of public norms and social normalisation. He will discuss major topical issues of public planning practices in city-regions and raise attention to the normative dilemma's with regard to recent climate policies; the normative dilemma's regarding housing policies for low- and middle-income groups in European city-regions; the normative dilemma's of mobility planning, facing particularly challenges of multimodal infrastructures; and the normative conditions of landscape and heritage to purposive processes of urban development.
Video available at: https://youtu.be/u8QHC_Nuzis
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CC - BY