ABSTRACT
Not so long ago, in the bad old days, most planners, when asked what values informed their work, would have answered that they were champions of the public interest. But if pressed further, they would have retreated into generalities and soporifi c clichés. The public interest was essentially an a-political construction empty of specifi c content, at best a vague imaginary of suburban, middle-class life. In the sprawling American metropolis – the 21st century cosmopolis – multicultural by the very fact of its demographic composition and further divided by (pre)conceptions of race and ethnicity, who was to say where, in any given situation, the public interest might lie? Moreover, for many decades now, many professionals who had been educated as planners no longer worked exclusively in the municipal bureaucracy but also in non-profi ts on behalf of dozens of different causes: bicycle paths, food security, urban agriculture, the social integration of new immigrants, the re-naturalization of old stream beds, youth programs, affordable housing, combating homelessness, community development and similarly focused programs chiefl y undertaken by agents of civil society in urban neighborhoods. They were active on behalf of causes each of which required special justifi cation in its fund-raising efforts. Slow to respond to the new realities, professional organizations eventually recognized that planners who had initially been drawn into the profession “to do good competently” needed a more compelling expression of professional values than a mere wave in the direction of an eviscerated notion of the public interest.
