ABSTRACT
RESPONSES TO NEW TIMES: different paradigms for a new planning 2
Following a burst of activity during the late 1980s the interface between the postmodern and planning has largely gone quiet (Soja, 1997 and Sandercock, 1998 notwithstanding). However, it is perhaps not surprising that like the postmodern, postmodern planning is gloriously eclectic and vague. One looks in vain for a ‘postmodern planning’ after wading through countless critiques that purport to reflect upon the postmodern (as new times and social theory) and planning. Again, this is hardly surprising as the very essence of the postmodern is its penchant for difference and its distrust of imposition. Soja (1997) claims that part of the reason for this lack of engagement between planning and the postmodern is also because of planning’s essentially practical nature that calls for praxis as well as theoretical pondering. This practical nature has focused theorists’ minds on the day-to-day work of planners in the ‘real world’ rather than giving them time to reflect as much as, say, geographers. There is undoubtedly something in this but I would contend that planning theorists have also been reticent in transforming ideas into practice because practice exposes the redundancy and impractical nature of their thinking. A far more important reason for this hiatus is that the force majeure of current planning theoretical debate has taken on board the libertarian aspects of postmodern new times thinking but shied away from the consequences of a postmodern alternative which is seen as likely to involve either no planning or a less progressive, conservative approach. For example,
the uncritical adoption of postmodernist assumptions would bring us to the brink
of an abyss of indeterminacy, impairing our ability to maintain social continuity
through change, to treat each other in a just and fully human way, and to justify
public planning (Harper and Stein, 1995: 233).
