ABSTRACT
Much of the existing literat.ure on urban planning theory proceeds by adopting a 'theoretical' perspective that treats urban planning as an abstract analytical concept rather than as a sociohistorical phenomenon. Accordingly, conventional planning theory tends to proceed by initially positing formal and linguistic definitions of planning that have a purely apriori or nominalistic character. For example, one repeatedly encounters in the literature such global descriptions of phinning as these: "Planning is a goal-orientated process that seeks to achieve specified desired objectives subject to given constraints"; or, "planning is an attempt to apply rational decisionmaking procedures to the guidance of social change"; or, "planning seeks to promote human growth". Now statements of this sort (that is, formallinguistic definitions) are in one sense unexceptionable. Yet this precise quality of unexceptionableness is gained at the cost of any sort of substantive specificity or predictive power. They may well be unassailable statements, but this is only by reason of their essential vacuousness. If we scrutinize these statements by confronting them with such questions as: According to what social logic are 'desired objectives' determined? What social processes set the constraints? What might be some of the typieal constraints? What, in sociohistorical reality, establishes the specific nature and content of rationality? etc; then we can readily begin to see how empirically myopie and empty these statements really are. As a result they can tell us very little that is worthwhile about the empirical domain of urban planning. This remark is reinforced by the further observation that although the three defmitions of urban planning given above are all quite different from one another, nevertheless it is difficult to think of any empirical test that in principle might refute any one of them.
