From legislators to interpreters

I borrow Zygmunt Bauman’s (1987) title as it encapsulates the practice transition of planning officers from Muirhead’s programme approach of the planner as expert legislator, controlling land use and space, ordering action and designing society, to the planner as prudential interpreter of the relational multiplexities of society. Each approach is upheld by the habitus/es and beliefs of a ‘community of meanings’ (Bauman, 1987: 4).