ABSTRACT
The previous chapter tried to map the complex relationship between the modern and the postmodern and concluded that it was difficult if not impossible to separate the two. Nevertheless, I concluded that while we may not be living in new times, we are certainly living in different times and that the label postmodern was as good as any to describe this. The question that arises, therefore, is how does planning relate to these changes? Has it adapted? Does it need to adapt and if so, how? At a broad level, for example, the Thatcher years provide evidence of significant change in many areas of public policy including welfare, housing, policing, etc. and planning was no exception to this. As I go on to argue later in this chapter, at a broad level, the new right can be seen as a political manifestation of the postmodern as new times. By manifestation, I mean that it emerged as a political force out of the political milieu of post-Keynesian politics and sought to reorientate the UK economy towards what was described in Chapter 3 as post-Fordism (flexible, non-unionised, market orientated, etc.). As I argue in Chapter 6, public choice theory can similarly be seen as postmodern with its emphasis on the role of the individual. But Thatcherism also sought to tackle what it perceived as the downside of postmodern times – the vacuous moral framework – by ‘strong-state’ conservatism. Planning too was subject to this dual approach with an often schizophrenic attitude that sought to deregulate it and at times strengthen it through, for example, green belt or list building control. At one level, then, planning has undergone change that could be characterised as ‘postmodernisation’. But the picture is not that simple. While the new right in Britain (and elsewhere in the world) can be characterised as a reaction to and part of the postmodern, it is only so in parts. As I mentioned above, it comprised two distinct parts, a neo-liberal market emphasis and a strong-state authoritarian streak. Planning, as a state activity was at the same time both anathema and necessary to the new right, depending on which wing held sway over a particular policy issue. The changes that planning underwent in the 1980s and 1990s remain a mixed bag (Allmendinger and Thomas, 1998, Allmendinger and Tewdwr-Jones, 1997). Brindley, Ryin and Stoker (1996) rightly point out that there were many ‘plannings’ during this period depending on the locality. Planning changed, but the direction, significance and trajectory of that change is unclear. What is clear (or so I argue) is that planning
remains a complex alloy of different traditions and practices that could be labelled either or both as modern/postmodern. Further, that although over-rated in its significance, the trajectory of planning under the new right and latterly under New Labour seeks both a modern and postmodern future. While there is nothing wrong with this per se, it is this future or, more accurately, the emphases within it that is causing the problems, contentions, tensions and dissatisfactions with planning at the moment. Consequently, if we are to rethink planning, then an understanding of its theory and practice in relation to the debates on modernity and postmodernity are necessary.
