Responsibilities of theorists: The case of communicative planning theory

Progress in Planning 72 (2009) 1–51 www.elsevier.com/locate/pplann

Responsibilities of theorists: The case of communicative planning theory Tore Sager * Department of Civil and Transport Engineering, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway

Abstract This paper analyses the responsibilities of planning theorists, with emphasis on issues pertaining to communicative planning theory (CPT). Four techniques of analysis are employed: discussion of examples of alleged misuse of CPT, comparison with strategies for analysing and preventing socially undesired effects of new technology (dual-use technology, technology assessment, engineering ethics), analysis of unintended use of theory following from creative reading and re-writing, and probing into concepts that are at the core of CPT (such as dialogue, inclusion, toleration and autonomy) by contrasting Habermas’s ideas with those of Derrida and Levinas. The first half of the paper focuses on theorists’ responsibility for end-uses of theories they produce. Recent criticism of CPT suggests that it may sometimes serve authorities in repressive ways (as can other planning theories), and thus not always fulfil communicative planning theorists’ aim of empowering the citizenry. This is the background for introducing the concept of ‘dual planning theory’, which is compared to the dichotomy of light/dark sides of planning. What should planning theorists do to protect against misuse of their ideas? Responsibility for consequences depends on theorists’ possibilities of predicting and affecting end-uses, and difficulties such as unintended effects are discussed. The analogy with participatory technology assessment clarifies the problems of monitoring theory construction in liberal democracies. The second half of the paper analyses three issues: communicative planning theorists’ responsibility for inclusive dialogue, the possibilities of making responsible decisions in accordance with theories of planning, and theorists’ responsibilities as teachers and university academics. The uncompromising inclusion and hospitality advocated by Levinas and Derrida is a challenge to liberal democracy. The hope of reconciling Levinas’s belief in responsibility for the Other with practical applications of CPT lies in his admission of the need for making compromises in the political realm. There, the planner has responsibilities towards several people and therefore cannot give unlimited attention to a single Other. The question of what is meant by responsible planning decisions is studied by employing Derrida’s concept of undecidability. Planning theories offer rules and guidelines for how to design processes, for instance, but Derridean responsibility requires that planners in addition employ their inventive reflection and intuition to make decisions. Finally, planning theorists’ obligations as educators and academics are discussed in light of Derrida’s ideas of responsibility and the university. # 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Planning theory; Dual theory; Responsibility; Communicative planning; Unintended effects; Misuse of theory

* Tel.: +47 73594651. E-mail address: [email protected]. 0305-9006/$ – see front matter # 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.progress.2009.03.002

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Contents 1. 2.

Introduction on responsibility and communicative planning theory. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Critique of communicative planning theory: Four examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1. Co-optation example. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2. Neo-liberalism example. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3. Consensus example. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4. Walking-through-walls example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. Potential equivocalness of planning theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1. Dark underside and shiny surface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2. Dual communicative planning theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. Analogy: Technology assessment and responsibility for end-use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1. Engineering ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2. Technology assessment with lay involvement. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3. Inverse anticipation and feedback: Technology forcing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4. Graded learning and feedback: Strategic niche management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5. Loci for reflexivity and feedback: Alignment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5. Unexpected effects of creative reading and writing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1. Unintended consequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2. Writing: Relational responsibility and reality construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3. Creative reading and re-writing cloud foresight of end-use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6. Responsibility for inclusive planning dialogue: A Levinasian perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1. The Other and difference in dialogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2. Levinasian responsibility versus freedom and autonomy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3. Instrumentality versus non-reciprocity: Listening . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4. Politics and planning: Consequences of the presence of the Third . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5. Responsibility and inclusion: Hospitality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.6. Responsibility and inclusion: Toleration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7. Derridean responsibilities of planning theorists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1. Can Derridean responsible decisions be made in familiar modes of planning? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2. Responsibility of planning theorists as educators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3. Responsibility of planning theorists as university academics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8. Concluding remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.1. Concerning planning theorists’ responsibility for end-uses of their theories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.2. Concerning communicative planning theorists’ responsibility for inclusive dialogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.3. Concerning the possibilities of making responsible decisions in accordance with theories of planning 8.4. Concerning theorists’ responsibilities as teachers and university academics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1. Introduction on responsibility and communicative planning theory This paper discusses in what circumstances and in what sense planning theorists are responsible for enduses of their theories and for the consequences of designing planning processes in accordance with theories they have constructed and offered to the public. In addition, responsible decisions and responsibility for inclusive planning dialogue are analysed. Questions of responsibility usually arise when certain actions cause problems for another party, especially when the problems were foreseeable to some extent,

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and it might have been in the power of the actor to prevent them. Can planning theorists be morally blamed for theories they produce or for the use of these theories when socially undesirable consequences appear? Gunder and Hillier’s (2007) recent paper in Progress in Planning was mainly preoccupied with the responsibilities of practising planners, while the present paper concentrates on planning theorists. The purpose is to stimulate further debate on ethics in the field of planning theory, by encouraging planning theorists to reflect on the social impact of their research and on the proper response to various kinds of applications.

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It is instructive to outline the conditions for ascribing moral responsibility, as a point of reference for ensuing examples and analysis. Forester (1989: xi) linked responsibility to power when telling the reader what his book is about, namely: ‘the vulnerabilities of democracy, about power and professional responsibility. . .’, and responsibility can indeed be seen as the ethical side of power. Planning theorists are here considered responsible for particular consequences insofar as (1) their theoretical work is a cause of these consequences; and (2) their theoretical work is not carried out in ignorance of these consequences or under compulsion. Very similar claims are put forward by Jonas (1984:90) and Thompson (2005:18), and accepted by Mitcham (1987:22). Jonas (1984:123) sums up the two points by stating that responsibility is a function of power and knowledge. There are strong and weak causal links, and there are degrees of knowledge of these links and degrees of power to affect consequences. Hence, there are degrees of moral responsibility. Condition (1) above can be met, even if several other causal factors would also have to be present for the particular consequences to follow. Requiring that the consequences in question would not have been realised but for the work of the planning theorist, might be too strong. Responsibility can follow from facilitating a certain consequence, even if not being decisive in bringing it about. The degree of compulsion in condition (2) is usually linked to the theorist’s role in a research project or an educational programme, and the pressure to participate would rarely be strong enough to exempt theorists from moral responsibility. The point is that construction of the theory in question must be under the planning theorist’s control for questions of responsibility to arise. The problem of ignorance in condition (2) will be dealt with in the section on unintended consequences. Suffice it to state here that ignorance counts as an excuse only if the ignorance is not negligent (Thompson, 2005:19). Many aspects of planning theory have been criticised—for example, the weak link between planning theory and planning practice, and the undue preoccupation with process at the expense of substance. Recently, accusations of universalism have been topical. There is an alleged tendency to write as if the theoretical analysis and procedural recommendations are equally relevant everywhere, both in the global North-West and the global South-East (Watson, 2002, 2006; Yiftachel, 2006). Responsibility-claims on the

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theorists can be derived from much of this critique. The weaknesses just mentioned pertain to all procedural planning theory and indicate that the need for thinking through responsibilities applies to planning theorists in general. This paper nevertheless focuses on theorists writing about communicative (collaborative) planning, which is the mode of planning that has been most discussed over the last couple of decades. Although communicative planning theory (CPT) has been subjected to some criticism for inviting misuse (see the next section), there is no reason to assume that CPT has led to more undesirable social effects than other approaches to planning. Rationalistic (synoptic) planning, for example, is blamed for repressive practices in Israel, South Africa and Zimbabwe, among other places (Christopher, 1987; Kamete, 2007; Laburn-Peart, 1997; Misselwitz & Weizman, 2003; Potts, 2006; Yiftachel, 1995a). CPT can be founded on the ideas of John Rawls and other scholars of liberal democracy (Harper & Stein, 2006), but the variant adhered to here is built on Habermas’s (1999) theory of communicative action. Communicative planning demands more than communication with stakeholders and an involvement process merely informing the public. This planning style is commended as a respectful, interpersonal discursive practice adapted to the need of liberal and pluralist societies, where one social group cannot legitimately force its preferred solutions to collective problems on other groups. The aim is to promote the deliberative aspect of democracy and create and protect the conditions for deep and genuine civic discourse. Communicative planning is an open and participatory enterprise, involving a broad range of affected groups in socially oriented and fairness-seeking developments of land, infrastructure or public services, guided by a consensus-building process designed to approach the principles of discourse ethics. The process of communicative planning is open in the sense of being inclusive and transparent; the public can gain knowledge of what is going on. Development efforts are socially oriented when they aim to further the interests of large segments of society rather than the interests of a few stakeholders only. Development is fairness seeking when it aims to improve the living conditions of deprived groups, and when its substantive results observe the rights of all groups. The principles of discourse ethics state that the communicative process should be open, undistorted, truth seeking, and empathic—in line with (A)–(D) below (compare Allmendinger, 2002:188; and Innes & Booher, 1999:419):

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(A) Openness as formulated by Habermas (1990:89): 1. Every subject with the competence to speak and act is allowed to take part in a discourse. 2. (a) Everyone is allowed to question any assertion whatever; (b) everyone is allowed to introduce any assertion whatever into the discourse; (c) everyone is allowed to express his attitudes, desires and needs. 3. No speaker may be prevented, by internal or external coercion, from exercising his rights as laid down in (1) and (2). (B) The communication between participants should be comprehensible, factually true, sincere, and legitimate within the normative context of public planning. (C) Nothing should coerce a participant except the force of the better argument. (D) Participants should be committed to reaching mutual understanding in dialogue free from strategic action. The idea is that, with communication approaching the principles of discourse ethics, participation would more likely be empowering, and decision-making would be deliberative and democratic. The ideal of deliberative democracy is to reach a decision through debate rather than voting, although practice calls for both modes of making decisions, most often with careful exploratory debate preceding voting (Bohman & Rehg, 1997). Four techniques of analysis are used throughout the paper, in the same order as listed below:  Discussion of examples of alleged misuse of CPT.  Analogy with concepts and methods for analysing and preventing unwanted effects of new technology.  Conceptual study of unintended consequences and mechanisms of creative reading and writing that can weaken relations between theory and end-use.  Contrasting implications of Levinas’s ‘responsibility for the Other’ and Derrida’s ‘responsible decision’ with ideas that are central to the Habermasian version of CPT. Under the last point, comparison of the requirements for inclusion and hospitality (Levinas and Derrida) with the requirements for dialogue (Habermas) is a main theme. The train of thought throughout the paper goes as follows. The next chapter discusses features of CPT which critics think have detrimental effects that are in

stark contrast to the good intentions of planning theorists, and raise issues of responsibility. Thereafter, the concept of ‘dual planning theory’ is introduced to complement the light-side/dark-side dichotomy and help analyse the equivocalness that affects responsibility by making prediction of end-use more difficult. Analogies are drawn between responsibility for new technology and responsibility for new theory, as well as between participatory technology assessment and possibilities for monitoring theory construction. Unintended consequences make prediction a very blunt tool with regard to both technologies and theories. Planning theories are read, re-read, circulated, picked up in new settings, and re-written. Reading and re-writing are creative actions, in the sense that new meanings are created. Simultaneously, new possibilities for applications emerge, which may have been wholly unintended by the author publishing the theory in its original form, thus affecting their responsibility. Separate chapters present the thoughts of two prominent scholars who have made substantial contributions to the understanding of responsibility. Both Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida identify inclusion as a central theme, which it is in CPTas well. Levinas analyses the ethical relationship between the subject and the Other. The implications for face-to-face conversation are here compared with the requirements for Habermasian dialogue. Derrida touches on the problems of responsibility in a number of writings. The essence is that responsible decisions can only be made when the subject is in a situation where no authority or rule proposes which option to choose. Derridean concepts are employed to discuss planning theorists’ responsibilities, not only as researchers but also as teachers and university academics. 2. Critique of communicative planning theory: Four examples The purpose of this chapter is to show examples of criticism levelled against CPT as a backcloth for analysing the responsibilities of planning theorists. The four types of criticism illustrate that CPT can serve masters with contrasting goals, and the examples will be used in the next chapter to explain the concept of ‘dual planning theory’. Three of the examples criticise CPT for co-optation of activists, for facilitating the development of neo-liberal economic governance, and for an illusory search for consensus across incompatible value positions, respectively. The walking-through-walls example is in a special position, as it outlines a very indirect and controversial application of CPT, which can be used as a critique of CPT only by stretching the cause–effect relationships. The example is nevertheless

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helpful when examining the limits of planning theorists’ responsibility. 2.1. Co-optation example This section considers the criticism raised against advocacy planning theory and CPT for leading spokespersons of protest groups into long-lasting and pacifying processes of deliberation and negotiation. Involvement in such processes tends to co-opt group leaders and take the sting out of local direct action. This criticism against CPT is chosen because it is a well known point of departure, because it sheds light both upon responsibility and the ambiguous effects of theory, and because it is the only example in this paper where it is obvious that the communicative planning theorists knew about the problems at the root of the criticism. Advocacy planning has been criticised for diverting the poor from their most effective forms of action. After having presented several discouraging cases, Piven (1970) goes on to say that: What all of this suggests is that involving local groups in elaborate planning procedures is to guide them into a narrowly circumscribed form of political action, and precisely that form for which they are least equipped. What is laid out for the poor when their advocate arrives is a strategy of political participation which, to be effective, requires powerful group support, stable organization, professional staff, and money—precisely those resources which the poor do not have. . . (T)he planning advocates. . .have not added to the political force of the ghetto. Quite the contrary, for the advocates are coaxing ghetto leaders off the streets, where they might make trouble. The absorbing and elaborate planning procedures which follow are ineffective in compelling concessions, but may be very effective indeed in dampening any impulse toward disruptive action which has always been the main political recourse of the very poor. (Piven, 1970:35) According to Piven, the effect of advocacy planning may well be to absorb slum leadership and render it ineffective. Conflict is deflected by preoccupying protesters with procedures that pose little threat to entrenched interests and instead promote the political stability that serves the city elites. Does planning, as opposed to protest, have any useful part to play in improving the living conditions of

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the deprived and left-out? Several contributors to the debate following Piven’s provocative paper thought so, as did most contributors to the ‘Longer view’ section on Davidoff’s (1965), seminal paper on advocacy planning which the APA Journal organised 30 years after its publication.1 Arnstein (1970) and Hartman (1970) both thought that the co-optation problem could be solved. They suggested an advocacy model that does not preclude street strategies, and a model where the advocacy planners employ their professional skills as a node around which political organising can take place, respectively. Marris (1994) finds that the co-optation that Piven observed had much to do with the type of plan that was often drawn up, its comprehensiveness, the lack of actors powerful enough to impose the coordination it required, and insufficient regard for the inadequate resources that would be made available and which made implementation unlikely. If these writers are right, only a particular version of advocacy planning, applied in a specific context, brings out the cooptation potential of advocacy planning theory. In their comment to Piven, Davidoff and Davidoff (1970:34) argued that ‘(t)he difficulty Piven perceives—the waste of the limited resources of the poor and non-white on the non-productive procedures of plan development—should not really be directed against advocacy’, and I agree with them on this point. The critique against distracting deprived groups from effective forms of action can be directed at any kind of planning theory which suggests involving such groups in lengthy cooperative processes organised on the terms of mainstream society; hence, also CPT. There is a recognised relationship between advocacy planning and critical communicative planning. One can imagine a style of planning relaxing the loyalty-claim of advocacy planning (Sager, 1998), while upholding its insistence on the non-neutral position of the planner and its social consciousness, which for many implies affinities with equity planning (Krumholz & Forester, 1990). These are also features of critical communicative planning, and Forester (1989:46) holds that this ‘planning practice represents a refinement of traditional advocacy planning, a refinement based on the practical recognition of systematic sources of misinformation’.

1 The first comment and a response from Frances Fox Piven followed directly as a tail to her paper in the first issue of Social Policy. The debate on ‘whom does the advocate planner serve?’ continued with six short entries in the next issue of Social Policy 1970, 1(2), 33–41. The Journal of the American Planning Association summed up 30 years of experience with advocacy planning in 1994, 60(2), 139–161.

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Critical communicative planning decreases the difficulties caused by loyalty-claims on the planners, while still helping them: to anticipate and counter the efforts of interests that threaten to make a mockery of a democratic planning process by misrepresenting cases, improperly invoking authority, making false promises, or distracting attention from key issues (Forester, 1989:46–47). Furthermore, it is most important in the present context that communicative planning pulls protesting local people into the same sort of long-lasting deliberation and negotiation as does advocacy planning. In fact, this critique can be strengthened in the case of communicative planning and, especially, collaborative planning: The more emphasis that is put on communicative rationality and consensus building, the less room is left for partisan protests and the fight of the underprivileged for their own interests without modifying their grievances into politically correct public interest terms. The main source of inspiration for CPT, Ju¨rgen Habermas, has been criticised for setting up the ideal of discussing political matters in the style of academic seminars, and this is not a style in which leftout groups are accustomed to express themselves. If the above critique is valid, communicative planning—like Davidoff’s (1965) theory of advocacy planning—can be used to weaken spontaneous protest and direct action as weapons of deprived groups, and thus make it harder for them to enhance their living conditions. CPT might then support city authorities through top-down initiatives, as well as backing bottomup efforts initiated by citizens. This is later referred to as the co-optation example. Even if Marris (1994), as outlined above, described the planning context in which he found co-optation to be most likely, the details of context dependency are not fully worked through. In these circumstances it is plausible to see co-optation as a risk that communicative planning theorists should be aware of. Yet the fuzziness of the causalities makes it unclear whether they can be held morally responsible. The work of communicative planning theorists is a cause of the involvement of deprived groups in lengthy and exhausting deliberation and negotiation processes. As Piven-inspired criticism and the experience from advocacy planning had been available to the planning community for a decade or more when CPT began to spread through planning journals, communicative planning theorists can hardly claim ignorance of the possibility that similar criticism might apply to communicative planning. The co-optation issue is

still contested, however, and this diminishes any responsibility of communicative planning theorists, should spokespersons for underprivileged groups be co-opted through the communicative processes prescribed. 2.2. Neo-liberalism example The general problem exemplified in this section is that well meant contributions to deliberative democracy at the local level might have adverse effects on democracy at the superior level and in the long run. This situation paves the way for theories that serve incompatible interests. Standard Marxist critique of public land use planning argued that the social function of planning is to make the capitalist markets run smoothly (Scott & Roweis, 1977). Bengs (2005a, 2005b) puts forward a recent restatement of this critique, specifically targeting communicative planning. He contends that CPT flourishes due to ‘the prevalence of neo-liberal ideology, and in particular. . .the need to establish social institutions consistent with the neo-liberal society’ (Bengs, 2005b:6); that is to say, institutions that match and advance urban land markets and the free flow of investment: A new planning regime with a minimum of predefined restrictions and guidelines and ample possibilities for striking deals on the local level is in conformity with the neo-liberal ideals. (Bengs, 2005b:6) A direct involvement of elected bodies is being replaced piecemeal by a planning system where ‘stakeholders’ rather than the democratically elected representatives of the population as a whole hold sway. (Bengs, 2005b:1) Bengs seems to believe that writing planning theory that has such a political bias is an intended act of planning theorists. Thus, he affirms that ‘(p)lanning reduced to communication is a political statement in line with the building of a neo-liberal society’ (Bengs, 2005a:3).2 Bengs is not the first to suggest that those opposed to a rigorous planning regime based on general statutory 2

A response to Bengs is given by Sager (2005). Several other planning scholars envisage connections between CPT and neo-liberalism that are in line with Bengs’s view, and Sager (2006b) offers an overview.

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provisions might see their interests served by more locally negotiated solutions. One of the clearest cases of support comes from Elwood’s (2002) analysis of neighbourhood revitalisation through collaborative planning in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She indicates that the conclusions on the relations between neo-liberal interests and the collaborative efforts might be generalised to other revitalisation programmes throughout the US. The collaborative programmes fit the neo-liberal agenda because: (1) Devolution and collaborative public–private partnerships are means for downsizing the state, giving citizens and civic organisations growing responsibility for local urban planning and service delivery (Elwood, 2002:121). (2) Grassroots organisations may be co-opted into reproducing neo-liberal priorities and policies at a highly localized level, such as entrepreneurialism, market-driven competition, and diminished state involvement within neighbourhood level revitalisation (Elwood, 2002:122). These viewpoints are repeated by Ghose (2005), who is also analysing inner-city revitalisation in the US. However, both Elwood and Ghose admit a certain ambiguity, in that the allegedly neo-liberal planning initiatives they study have afforded new opportunities for participation, enabling some community organisations to contest state agendas. Hence, they moderate the contention of some scholars, ‘that collaborative planning and revitalisation initiatives are a way of pacifying community action and co-opting resistance’ (Elwood, 2002:128). The critique of CPT for serving neo-liberalism gains credibility if communicative planners invite local people affected by proposed land developments to join in consensus-building dialogues without having an effective strategy for how to help them stand up to the power of investors and other resourceful stakeholders. This is exactly the objection most often raised against CPT (Flyvbjerg & Richardson, 2002; Huxley & Yiftachel, 2000). The problem is how to hold back those trying to influence the planned solution by leaning on their power base instead of the force of the better argument. For all its good intentions of counteracting such behaviour by fighting communicative distortions through critical questioning (Forester, 1993) and by decreasing the political transaction costs of fair-playing actors and groups that stand to lose from the project (Sager, 2006a), critics are not convinced that such measures can be used by communicative planners in ways that are effective.

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The combination of Bengs’ critique and this alleged impotency of communicative planners in the face of strong actors playing power games to advance their particularistic interests, to the extent that it is valid, readily identifies CPT as a theory which diametrically opposite interests might try to exploit to their advantage. CPT is meant to back bottom-up planning, but it might also, according to the critics, support top-down planning serving the entrepreneurial interests of private business and public authorities. This is later referred to as the neo-liberalism example. This example is all the more interesting as opinions on neo-liberalism’s influence on living conditions are strong and conflicting. When reading Bourdieu (1998) or Saad-Filho and Johnston’s (2005) introduction on neo-liberalism’s allegedly miserable track record, one gets the impression that it is lethal on a grand scale, especially to the extent that it is allowed to shape the economic processes of globalisation. Bourdieu describes the effects of the neo-liberal utopia as the poverty and suffering of a growing proportion of the population of the economically most advanced societies, the extraordinary growth in disparities in incomes, the progressive disappearance of the autonomous worlds of cultural production,. . .and above all the destruction of all the collective institutions capable of standing up to the effects of the infernal machine. (Bourdieu, 1998:102) Dangerous is also, by implication, any theory that helps to implement neo-liberal policies—for instance CPT, according to Bengs. At the opposite wing regarding neo-liberalism is McCloskey (2006:248– 249), asserting that neo-liberalism has ‘helped hundreds of millions of people attain higher standards of living, beyond what they, or most economists, thought imaginable but a short while ago’. Gerring and Thacker (2008) also hail neo-liberalism for promoting human development across the world by lowering the rates of infant mortality. What if the planning theorist warns about the advantages that developers with access to money and expertise can have from dialogical, consensus-building processes instead of strict laws, rules and politically binding plans? What if the theorists try to devise ways for counteracting developer power in planning processes? Critics might say that this is all very well but it is not a solution to the problem. It does not change the logic of the game between developers, planners, politicians and local people. Warnings and theoretical analysis of interactions do not necessarily change anything in practice, as inadequate information might

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not be the reason why outcomes tend to be biased in favour of developers. Even with clearer warning and more critical analysis, it might well be rational for the players of the planning game to go on acting as they already did. In order to produce outcomes that are contrary to neo-liberal interests, one might have to change institutions (the rules of the game)—for example, by introducing a less flexible planning regime—and this is not what communicative planning theorists are doing. So, is it at all possible for communicative planning theorists to avoid moral responsibility for promoting neo-liberalism in their writings? The position taken here is that theorists writing as protagonists of communicative planning have some moral responsibility, to the extent that there is a causal relationship between the implementation of CPT and a stakeholderled regime for land development and thus facilitation of the neo-liberal society, and to the extent that such a relationship could be foreseen by the theorists. However, it is controversial both whether there is such a causal relationship between CPT and neo-liberalism and, if there is, whether communicative planning theorists could reasonably be expected to foresee it and act upon it. One element, both in the co-optation critique and the neo-liberalism critique, is that local people who feel threatened by a plan are somehow led to sit peacefully at the table and let themselves be outmanoeuvred by their stronger counterparts. Some scholars blame the emphasis on consensus building in CPT, and the criticism of this practice is delineated in the next section. 2.3. Consensus example This section considers the critique raised against CPT for stimulating planners to aim for unrealistic and harmful consensus, downplaying inherent problems of exclusion (Connelly & Richardson, 2004). Except for the bracketing-of-power critique, this is the objection most often launched against CPT. It is briefly explained why critics see the aspiration for consensus as damaging. This clarifies what communicative planning theorists might be held responsible for. The example is the only one in this paper where the criticism put forward, even if it should be proven valid, does not give reason to reprove CPT for serving mutually opposing masters. An overview of arguments against consensus building as a general and central planning practice is given below. I do not attempt to distinguish between

more and less reasonable claims. The idea is simply to arrive at some formulations of what might be conceived by scholars in the field as the responsibility of planning theorists, and to see if the criticism points to CPT as being in the service of conflicting interests. Even if some nuances are ignored and slightly different arguments are put in the same category, some arguments on the list below still overlap.  Consensus is always shallow and does not respect difference (Gunder, 2005:98; Hillier, 2003:43; McGuirk, 2001:213; Pløger, 2004:87). There is no possibility of retreat into an inter-subjective communicative rationality that does not bring power, difference and conflict along with it. ‘Political consensus can never be brought to bear in a manner that neutralizes particular group obligations, commitments and interests’ (Flyvbjerg, 1998:229).  Consensus is a threat to freedom (Tewdwr-Jones & Allmendinger, 1998:1979). The privilege to engage in conflict is part of freedom, and therefore attempts to vanquish conflict suppress freedom. ‘If societies that suppress conflict are oppressive, perhaps social and political theories that ignore or marginalize conflict are potentially oppressive, too’ (Flyvbjerg, 1998:229). Hillier (2003:41) holds that democracy without institutionalised normative disagreement is simply not democracy. ‘Conflicting differences between different groups’ conceptions of the ‘‘good’’ are not negatives to be eliminated but rather diverse values to be recognized in decisionprocesses.’  Consensual discourse necessarily involves the exclusion of some voices and the foreclosure of certain possibilities (Hillier, 2003:53; McGuirk, 2001:213; Pløger, 2004:87; Tewdwr-Jones & Allmendinger, 1998:1979). Consensus might silence rather than give voice.  Consensus building in accordance with communicative rationality implies public exposure of the inner self. ‘(O)ne may wonder whether the transformation of personal and cultural issues into public ones will not lead to the further ‘‘colonization of the lifeworld’’. . .’ (Fischler, 2000:364).  There are multiple heterogeneous publics who are not necessarily well served by CPT’s politics of consensus (McGuirk, 2001:214).  Consensus building comes with political costs (Fischler, 2000:364–365). Local consensus can undermine representative democracy and state intervention. ‘Without state intervention, civil society would soon be reduced to a marketplace (or a jungle),

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in which the vulnerable would fair (sic) extremely poorly’ (Fischler, 2000:365).  Consensus is utopian. ‘In such a heavily politicised arena as planning, consensus is completely utopian— there will always be winners and losers—and it will never be possible for all individuals to abandon their political positions and act neutrally’ (Tewdwr-Jones & Allmendinger, 1998:1982). As a whole, the above criticism implies that consensus can only be illusory or shallow, which is just as well, because actually achieved consensus would be increasingly repressive the more significant the differences eradicated in the process. In any case, consensus formation as an emancipating and empowering project cannot succeed, according to the critics. Communicative planning theorists would be responsible for leading practitioners astray if the critics are right, and if the theorists should have foreseen the difficulties of obtaining meaningful consensus. Moreover, if assimilation of identities and harmonisation of interests are furthered by planning processes to the extent that consensus is occasionally achieved, these processes of deliberative democracy would challenge other aspects of democratic systems—for example, the authority of representatives elected by majority votes. As several of the critics see it, communicative planning theorists would be responsible for eroding the foundation of freedom more than they strengthen it. Should the criticism in this consensus example be considered valid, it still does not show CPT to be indiscriminately at the side of both top-down state initiatives and bottom-up planning processes initiated by local civil society. It is not obvious that political and economic authorities stand to gain if representative government is undermined. Besides, it might be easier for elites to govern by central directives than having to trust the outcome of myriads of local consensus processes. Furthermore, in consensus building modelled on communicative rationality, the authorities’ superior availability of legal and economic expertise would mean less, since local conceptions of fairness might easily deviate from legal reasoning. It would vary with the situation at hand whether authorities or grass roots would reap the benefits from reconciling differences in a consensus-building process instead of treating them as ‘agonic strife’ (Pløger, 2004). The next section deals with the role of CPT as a possible source of inspiration in development of the urban warfare tactics of ‘walking-through-walls’. This and the neo-liberalism example above suggest that CPT may serve authorities as well as grass-roots organisations.

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2.4. Walking-through-walls example This section continues the exemplification of CPT being used for surprising purposes by agents whom communicative planning theorists did not imagine to be likely users. The exposition draws on papers by Weizman (2006a, 2006b). The discussion here does not spring from a criticism of CPT, but from what appears to be a rather obscure application of that planning theory, which is nevertheless both controversial and thought-provoking. The example is preceded by an introductory comment on a pre-emptive measure meant to forestall destructive use of urban planning knowledge. The connection between urban warfare and urban planning is not of recent origin. Cities were always exposed to war and organised according to the logic of defence. Some examples are mentioned by Misselwitz and Weizman (2003), while Graham (2004, 2006) deals with the current problematic under the ‘War on Terror’. A recent reminder of urban planning’s relevance for destructive schemes was received by the US planning community after the September 11 attacks. Mohamed Atta was named by the FBI as the head suicide terrorist of the first aircraft to crash into the World Trade Center. Atta had studied urban planning at the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg and graduated there in 1999. These facts prompted the inclusion of urban planning on the US Technology Alert List. On 29 October 2001, President George W. Bush issued a Homeland Security Presidential Directive intended ‘to help combat terrorism through more effective immigration policies and practices’. Among the provisions in the directive was one that would ‘prohibit certain international students from receiving education and training in sensitive areas of study with direct application to the development and use of weapons of mass destruction’. The Technological Alert List was set up to assist consular officers in preventing sensitive technology or material from falling into the wrong hands. The list is described as a valuable tool for recognising possible illegal technology transfer. It records disciplines which students from some countries might be prohibited from studying in the US. Category O reads: ‘Urban planning: Expertise in construction or design of systems or technologies necessary to sustain modern urban societies’ (ISSS, 2006). Inclusion on the list does not imply that urban planning has both military purposes and civil commercial applications (although it might have). It only indicates that learning urban planning can give the student access to knowledge that can cause great harm if deliberately misused. Practical knowledge of the urban

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infrastructure is assumed to give students an idea of where the city is most vulnerable; how bridges and tunnels, public mass transit, electricity supply and drinking water reservoirs can be targeted most effectively (Neiman, 2001). There are several security objectives behind the Technology Alert List, one of which is to prevent the transfer of arms and sensitive items with civil and military use to states that support terrorists. This brings us to the papers by Weizman (2006a, 2006b), which indicate that urban planning theory can be of interest to the military and can just as well be applied by national authorities against insurgents and terrorists as the other way around. Military interest has usually been with the potential of practical planning to change the physical features of cities. One ingredient of Weizman’s papers that is new is his report on how quite abstract urban theory and planning theory caught the interest of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF). Weizman reports ‘on the ways in which theoretical discourse is being used by the IDF, with a focus on the conceptual frameworks that its strategists claim have been instrumental in the development of contemporary urban warfare tactics’ (Weizman, 2006a:55). One of the tactics, used for example in the city of Nablus on the West Bank in April 2002, is labelled ‘walking-through-walls’: During the battle, soldiers moved within the city across hundred-meter-long ‘overground-tunnels’ carved through a dense and contiguous urban fabric. . .(S)oldiers used none of the streets, roads, alleys, or courtyards that constitute the syntax of the city, and none of the external doors, internal stairwells, and windows that constitute the order of buildings, but rather moved horizontally through party walls, and vertically through holes blasted in ceilings and floors. (Weizman, 2006a:53) Usually, mobility is realised in the public sphere, while family life takes place in the private sphere. There have long been exceptions, with poor and desolate people living on the pavement, in railway stations, etc. The IDF urban warfare tactics cross the divide between public and private spheres in the opposite direction. Walking-through-walls turns the city inside out and is described by IDF as ‘inverse geometry, the reorganisation of the urban syntax by means of a series of microtactical actions’ (Weizman, 2006a:53). Walkingthrough-walls shifts mobility to behind the fac¸ades, making soldiers invisible. It is new, shocking and humiliating to the inhabitants, and surprising to Palestinian insurgents, which is exactly the point. The invading army splintered into small cells, avoiding

a classical linear progression through dangerous streets. Instead they entered through the side of buildings and violently progressed through internal walls, ceilings and floors. In this warped form of mobility, walls of internal and private rooms were blasted into thoroughfares, while exposed external and public thoroughfares were treated as ‘walls’. The tactic of walking-through-walls is the outcome of a new way of reading the city. Streets and open space do not mean ‘go’, and walls do not mean ‘stop’. The physical structures of the city are turned into ‘the very medium of warfare—a flexible, almost liquid medium that is forever contingent and in flux’ (Weizman, 2006a:53). The importance of untraditional and creative interpretations of urban structure is accentuated in Weizman’s interview with Brigadier General Aviv Kokhavi, IDF’s commander of the Nablus operation: Do you interpret the alley as a place, like every architect and every town planner does, to walk through, or do you interpret the alley as a place forbidden to walk through? This depends only on interpretation. We interpreted the alley as a place forbidden to walk through, and the door as a place forbidden to pass through, and the window as a place forbidden to look through, because a weapon awaits us in the alley, and a booby trap awaits us behind the doors. This is because the enemy interprets space in a traditional, classical manner, and I do not want to obey this interpretation and fall into his traps. (Weizman, 2006a:55–56) The ability to come up with reinterpretations that are operationally rewarding for the military made IDF’s Operational Theory Research Institute (OTRI) successful in Israel, and able to export its ideas abroad, for example to the US.3 In order to create the intellectual foundation for reinterpretations, faculty and the officers studying at the Institute read widely outside traditional military disciplines. Works on psychology, cybernetics and poststructuralist theory were on the reading list, as well as works on urbanism, planning theory and architecture. As Shimon Naveh, Director of OTRI until the end of May 2006, told Weizman4:

3 Caroline Glick: ‘Column One: Halutz’s Stalinist moment’, Jerusalem Post, 8 June 2006. Online edition: http://pqasb.pqarchiver. com/jpost/advancedsearch.html (accessed 9 June 2009). 4 Shimon Naveh is a retired brigadier general in the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF). The Operational Theory Research Institute is affiliated with the military and trains staff officers from the IDF and other militaries in operational theory.

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We attempt to teach and train soldiers to think. . .We read Christopher Alexander (can you imagine?). We read John Forester, and other architects (sic). We are reading Gregory Bateson, we are reading Clifford Geertz. Not just myself, but our soldiers, our generals are reflecting on these kinds of materials. (Weizman, 2006a:59)5 According to Naveh, the IDF units influenced by his ideas try to shape the operational space in such a manner that borders do not affect them. Rather than contain and organise the units according to existing borders, such as fences, walls, ditches and roadblocks, the aim is to move through them. Naveh makes it clear that walkingthrough-walls is a tactic for transgressing boundaries which follows from OTRI’s theoretical reinterpretation of the city: ‘Traveling through walls is a simple mechanical solution that connects theory and practice’ (Weizman, 2006a:59). Naveh’s viewpoints have much in common with Gregory’s (2006) interpretation of late modern war. The high degree of terror (whether caused by government troops or insurgents) isolates people in fragile shelters, forcing the city into a state of exception in which even the rules of war are suspended and the whole targeted space becomes a blank canvas devoid of human relations, magically emptied of all human beings (Gregory, 2006). Without human relations there are no civilian voices building common meaning. In Gregory’s image of late modern war, the category of the ‘civilian’ is dissolved, and what is left are enemy warriors, piles of rubble (concrete and human), and the blank canvas that sets only bulldoze-able physical restraints on the advancing war machine. Weizman’s interview of Naveh shows that CPT entered into a curriculum that facilitated a broad

5 This was said by Shimon Naveh in the discussion following the talk ‘Dicta Clausewitz: Fractal manoeuvre: A brief history of future warfare in urban environments’, delivered in conjunction with ‘States of emergency: The geography of human rights’, a debate organised by Eyal Weizman and Anselm Franke as part of Territories Live, B’tzalel Gallery, Tel Aviv, 5 November 2004 (Weizman, 2006a:59). The reference to John Forester is also found in Weizman (2006b) and in shorter papers by Weizman, such as ‘The art of war’, http:// www.frieze.com/issue/article/the_art_of_war/ (accessed 9 June 2009). In the Norwegian version, ‘Byen som selve krigens medium’, printed in the Scandinavian edition of Le Monde Diplomatique (September 2006, page 16), the reference to Forester is highlighted in bold and enlarged font. Chapter 7 of the book Hollow land (Weizman, 2007) is titled ‘Urban warfare: Walking through walls’ (pp. 185– 218). It does not contain the reference to Forester, but is updated with the fate of OTRI-type theory in the IDF after the failure of its Lebanon campaign in 2006.

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reorientation of how to conceive the urban structure. It was part of the theoretical platform on which the tactic of walking-through-walls was somehow built. The causal chain from theory to practice is weak and unclear, however. Neither Weizman nor Naveh explain how any of the theories are linked to the military practice causing destruction to more than half of the buildings in the old city centre of Nablus (Gregory, 2006:57)—not to mention civilian deaths and suffering.6 This puzzling link between IDF practices and OTRI’s teaching of CPT is later referred to as the walking-through-walls example. The example illustrates a more general mechanism, whereby researchers contributing theoretical work knowingly or unknowingly help the stronger party in a relationship to continue its domination, by refining its models of the system in which the parties interact, thus enabling the stronger party to improve its tactics. Bra˚ten (1973) analyses systems in which one party is model-strong and the other is model-weak. Theoretical models are required in order to utilise new information and reinvent one’s tactics in changing circumstances. There is a risk that the model-weak will gradually come under control of the party with model power. The IDF with OTRI and other institutions for advanced military training, on the one side, and the Palestinians with scant possibility of theoretical military education, on the other (Weizman, 2006a:56), is a case in point. ‘Model power’ is a useful concept when considering, in light of the walking-through-walls example, whether CPT can serve contending social forces. Brigadier General Kochavi briefed his officers in terms (as paraphrased by Naveh) which made quite clear the importance of having model power: The Palestinians have set the stage for a fighting spectacle in which they expect us, when attacking the enclave, to obey the logic that they have determined. . .to come in old-style mechanized formations, in cohesive lines and massed columns conforming to the geometrical order of the street network. (Weizman, 2007:193)

6 For direct mentioning of ‘walking through walls’ and its effects, see also Amnesty International (2002b:8–9). In its report on the IDF incursions in Jenin and Nablus, Amnesty International (2002a) reminds the reader that: ‘Article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention lists ‘‘extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly’’ as a grave breach of the Convention. It is therefore a war crime.’

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Instead, the IDF applied a fractal manoeuvre, swarming simultaneously from every direction and through various dimensions of the enclave, using the tactics of walking-through-walls to get in and proceed through the dense urban structure. In a description of the attack, Konchavi said that he not only wanted to avoid falling into the enemy’s traps; rather, he wanted to surprise the enemy, and found this to be the essence of war (Weizman, 2007:198). To the extent that CPT contributed to a reinterpretation of dense city texture and inspired a rethinking of the meaning of urban infrastructure, by accentuating communication networks and webs of human relations, it appears to have helped build IDF’s model power, which in Nablus was translated into the new practice of urban warfare. However, for planning theorists (John Forester in this case) to take moral responsibility for this, would require a much stronger causal chain and higher predictability of consequences than is the case in the walking-throughwalls example. There is not any evidence on how CPT played a part in the rethinking that took place in the development of the walking-through-walls tactic. This example nonetheless illustrates that a planning theory meant to generate activity from below (CPT) can also be found interesting by authorities, and that, when this is the case, end-uses of the theory can be very hard to predict.

3. Potential equivocalness of planning theory This chapter analyses concepts that express the ambiguity of planning theory. The first section comments on the dichotomy of the light-side/darkside of planning. The ‘dark side’ is usually associated with repression, control and exclusion, and the concept warns the planner that public plans sometimes have effects other than the fulfilment of standard social democratic goals, such as economic development, liveable cities and equal possibilities for all social groups. The second section discusses what might be gained by introducing an analogy to ‘dual-use technology’ in planning theory. The question is whether the idea of dual use can improve the description and analysis of equivocalness concerning the masters, purposes and ideologies that planning theories serve. These issues are of interest in the present context, as it is hard to foresee end-uses of equivocal planning theories, and because work on theories with dark-side potential is more likely to expose theorists to assertions of responsibility than

is work on theories that are unambiguously for the best. 3.1. Dark underside and shiny surface Many philosophers once held the illusion that their discipline was inherently good and able to refine the lovers of wisdom, the philosophers, to become the only truly virtuous human beings (Behnegar, 1999:109). The term ‘philosophical’ was surrounded by quiet contemplation and gentleness. The illusion dissolved as ideas from Rousseau and Kant were seen to have influenced Robespierre, as Marx and Engels inspired Stalin and Mao, and as Nietzsche was dimly seen behind Hitler. This experience signals that theories, including communicative planning theory (CPT), might have a Janus face. Whether the theme is communicative planning, trust, network forms of organisation, social capital, or other phenomena with agreeable connotations, there is an optimistic bias in the scholarly literature (Gargiulo & Ertug, 2006:165). However, the enthusiasm may be followed by a period of multifarious studies of pro and contra. ‘Dark side’ studies usually crop up in this period (Kessing, Konrad, & Kotsogiannis, 2007; Mann, 1999; O’Neill, 2005), which is also the case in planning theory (Allmendinger & Gunder, 2005; Flyvbjerg, 1995; Flyvbjerg & Richardson, 2002; Gunder, 2003; Yiftachel, 1995a, 1998). Dark-side studies have more often focused on planning practice (Graham, 2005; LeVine, 2004; Yiftachel, 1995b, 2000) than on planning theory. Nevertheless, it is Allmendinger and Gunder’s (2005) critical study of planning theory that is most useful here, as it contains a conceptual discussion of what ‘the dark side of planning’ might mean. Referring to Yiftachel (1995a,1995b), the starting point is the widely shared interest in individual liberties and social equity, environmental sustainability, and improved quality of places, including residential amenity. The term ‘darkside planning’ denotes practices that are contrary to these causes of action and instead involve social repression, exclusion, economic retardation or environmental degradation (Allmendinger & Gunder, 2005:97). The distinction of light and dark planning reflects opinions of what enhances or degrades people’s living conditions, hence ‘our ideological illusions and fetishes as to what constitutes good or bad’ (Allmendinger & Gunder, 2005:108). While, for example, civil/military is a bisection of categories that can be distinguished by using criteria approaching objectivity, the dichotomy of

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light/dark planning is based on a normative and subjective categorisation. Allmendinger and Gunder (2005:105) seem inclined to delimit use of the term ‘dark side’ to planning with a systematic orientation towards repression and exclusion. It is this kind of planning they find particularly appropriate for academics and others to explore and expose. Plans that degrade living conditions can also follow from the hijacking of planning by powerful stakeholders. This, however, seems to Allmendinger and Gunder ‘a price we sometimes pay for having an ‘‘open’’ process focused, initially at least, at the local level’ (Allmendinger & Gunder, 2005:105). The labelling of this more haphazard phenomenon as ‘dark-side’ planning is to them like paying too little respect to the cases revealing ‘systematic and procedural prejudice’ (Allmendinger & Gunder, 2005:105). Although Allmendinger and Gunder’s distinction is useful, the line between systematic orientation and hijacking by powerful stakeholders in special situations is not always easily drawn. Somehow the situation at hand often tends to seem special. The ‘haphazard’ hijacking of urban plans by strong developers in ‘special’ situations might turn out to be typical. Despite the pedagogical helpfulness of the distinction, there are shades of grey between light and dark. It should also be noted that some dark-side and some light-side features—such as control and flexibility, respectively—can have both benevolent and malevolent consequences. Control is more than a mechanism for exclusion; it can also be controlled that certain groups are included the way they are supposed to be. As for flexibility, it paves the way for solutions offering something to dark-side (repressive) and lightside (emancipatory) interests alike. Accordingly, Allmendinger and Gunder (2005:100) see the discretionary nature of the UK system as a double-edged sword. To the extent that dark-side manifestations of planning occur systematically, they can hardly be characterised as unanticipated or even unintended by the planners. Planning theorists are also more plausibly held responsible for consequences of their theories when they are realised on a regular basis, than for effects occurring sporadically only as unpredictable byproducts. 3.2. Dual communicative planning theory The term ‘dual-use planning theory’—or ‘dual planning theory’ for short—is adapted from ‘dual-use

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technology’, which refers to tools and techniques that have both military purposes and civil commercial applications (Alic, 1994; Molas-Gallart, 1997). Considerations of dual use play an important role in technology transfer policy. For example, the International Atomic Energy Agency attempts to monitor Iran’s nuclear programme, which is allegedly based on dual-use technology. And the technology used for synthesising polio virus in the laboratory and producing weakened vaccine strains fast, can also help terrorists manufacture viruses such as smallpox (New Scientist, 2006). ‘Military’ is too narrow a category for characterising the authorities whose interests are served by various planning theories. When importing the term ‘dual-use’ to planning theory, it is therefore proposed here to substitute the duality civil/military by bottom-up/topdown; that is, civil society at the grassroots as opposed to civil and military authorities defined as the upper echelons of formal hierarchies. Planning theory underpinning bottom-up initiatives organises the strategic efforts of a variety of civil society actors, such as local protest groups, national environmental associations, residents’ associations, NGOs and social movements. Their purposes are sometimes insurgent or counter-hegemonic, thereby challenging established systems or protecting life-worlds. Planning theory espousing top-down initiatives organises the strategic efforts of public or private authorities in politics and the economy. Policies managed from the top might favour the elites, paternalistically aim to benefit ordinary people, or actually reflect the stated needs of the populace. ‘Dual planning theory’ is defined as planning theory with both top-down and bottom-up applications; it offers insightful descriptions and recommendations for organising important aspects of both kinds of processes. Authorities and grass-root organisations can both see their interests well served by processes moulded from dual planning theory. Because of this, it is hard to foresee who will apply a dual theory, which purpose it will serve, and which interests will reap the biggest advantages from it. This uncertainty is what makes dual planning theory a potentially interesting concept in the context of responsibility. The above definition of dual theory does not deny that planning from the top can provide benefits to the public at large, or that authorities can give street-level planning initiatives sympathetic consideration. There is no basis for associating top-down with ‘bad’ and bottom-up with

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‘good’.7 The purpose of introducing ‘dual planning theory’ is to offer a conceptual tool that is less valueladen and normative than the light/dark distinction, but which still draws attention to the unpredictable outcomes of actions derived from planning theory. The concept of dual planning theory would not deserve much attention if the interests of government and governed were always in harmony; in such a perfectly functioning democracy there would be no real duality. As it is, however, it is worth pondering how one and the same planning theory can be found suitable for organising processes initiated and managed from the grassroots as well as from head offices in ‘agonistic’ societies characterised by conflicting interests (Hillier, 2003). Since the duality of some theories adds to the difficulty of predicting applications, researchers working on dual theories can to a lesser degree be held responsible for practical impacts. Awareness of possible dualities should nevertheless alert planning theorists to what Alpern (1983) calls the Principle of Care: ‘Other things being equal, one should exercise due care to avoid contributing to significantly harming others’ (Alpern, 1983:41). Not only should one try to foresee the harm that may result from one’s theoretical work; one should also take precautions to avoid such harm, and be ready and willing to make sacrifices in order to minimise it. As a corollary to the Principle of Care, Alpern (1983:42) states that: ‘When one is in position to contribute to greater harm or when one is in a position to play a more critical part in producing harm, one must exercise greater care to avoid so doing’. This corollary warns influential planning theorists to take extra care when potentially harmful dual use is suspected. But how far should planning theorists go to protect against misuse of their ideas? They must situate themselves on the spectrum of responsibility between the legally

7 The relationships between authorities and the multitude of organisations for ordinary citizens are complex and diverse. Representatives of grass-root organisations are not necessarily shut out from the management meetings of top-down processes, and vice versa. There are hybrids between top-down and bottom-up processes, suggesting careful use of this dichotomy. As is the case with the light/dark dichotomy, the binary concept of bottom-up/top-down planning theory is clearly a problematic simplification. Society consists of several domains of social practice, each with its own tops and ground levels. Friedmann (1992) distinguishes between state, political community, corporate economy and civil society. Theories for organising topdown processes may well differ between the state domain and the corporate economy. And theories for organising bottom-up initiatives in civil society might be different from theories pertinent to the political community.

narrow and the impossibly demanding. The aim should not be to become ‘moral saints’ (Wolf, 1982). Criteria for deciding whether one and the same theory guides the design of both top-down and bottomup processes can presumably be made less arbitrary and subjective than criteria to distinguish the politically good and bad. This is one difference between deciding if a planning theory has a dual character and deciding if a theory promotes dark-side planning. There is also another difference: demonstration of the dark side of a planning theory requires that the theory, when informing planning practice as intended, systematically leads to deteriorating living conditions. Demonstrating that a planning theory is dual requires showing that it inspires both bottom-up and top-down practices, which are not inherently good and bad, respectively, and which are not necessarily planning practices.8 It is time to look back and sum up what the four examples in the previous chapter say about CPT as a dual theory. The criticism in the co-optation example suggests that CPT is not unambiguously to the advantage of street-level activists, but can also work as a co-optation tactic that authorities may use for pacifying unruly protesters. The criticism in the neoliberalism example indicates that the flexibility and locally adapted solutions that follow from communicative planning, while intended by theorists to give ordinary citizens more influence, can also serve the interests of developers and growth-oriented, neo-liberal local regimes. In both examples, the criticism provides arguments for regarding CPT as dual theory. In comparison, what is new in the consensus example is that the criticism does not lead one to expect that CPT is a dual theory. A local consensus on a planning issue, which is established outside the representative democratic system, is usually a challenge to elected politicians and top-down policy implementation. Finally, the reason why the walking-through-walls example points to CPT as dual-use is that communicative planning theory is shown to be part of officer

8 Allmendinger and Gunder (2005) argue that the concept of the dark side of planning needs to be replaced. They would not be likely to accept the bottom-up/top-down distinction as an improvement or substitute, though. Even this duality will probably be seen as ‘a bifurcation that belongs to a modernist’s mind-set’ (Allmendinger and Gunder, 2005:106); that is, the kind of analytic tool which they criticise. Fundamentally, they say, ‘few, if any, binary positions attributable to human values can ever be certain, fixed or absolute’ (Allmendinger and Gunder, 2005:107). This includes the light/dark distinction, and it also goes for the pair of categories used to identify dual planning theories.

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education and assumed to be an inspiration for topdown tactics serving the interests of military authorities. This comes in addition to CPT’s original aim of mobilising lay people and local interest groups in order to make local planning deliberative and dialogical. Taken together, the examples make it reasonable to classify CPT as dual theory. Dual planning theory and the dark side of planning theory both hint at problems regarding the relationship between theory and practice. The theory–practice relationship has long been a source of worry among planning theorists. Most practising planners just do not seem to find planning theory relevant. However, complaints do not primarily come from planners missing a steady supply of useful theory, but from theorists missing the feeling of being useful, of making a difference in society. This does not fully grasp the seriousness of the situation, though. Not only is there a lack of demonstrably helpful, intended effects of planning theory; there is instead an alleged abundance of detrimental, unintended effects—as exemplified in the dark-side literature and in the preceding chapters of the present paper. This underscores the impotence of planning theorists: we are incapable of tossing planning theory into the toolbox of the practitioners standing next to us, and we are even more helpless in preventing players of more dubious games from picking it up instead. The following chapter considers whether this state of affairs can be improved if planning theorists develop tools analogical to those designed to check the harmful effects of new technologies. We turn to one of planning’s neighbouring disciplines, technology assessment, to explore analogies that can shed light on planning theorists’ responsibility for the consequences of their work. While this section compared dual-use technology and dual-use theory, the task is now to consider the relevance and feasibility of introducing to the planning field something similar to the analytic tools for assessing and monitoring the effects of new technology.

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theory in ways clearly deviating from what the researchers had in mind when the technology and the theory were first developed. The present chapter considers what can be learned about planning theorists’ responsibilities from comparison with two approaches analysing the responsibilities of technologists: engineering ethics and technology assessment. One easy way for theorists and technologists to avoid many moral dilemmas would be to adhere blindly to the ‘Galilean Imperative’: belief in the need to explore every domain, unravel every mystery, penetrate every unknown, explain every process—and giving this pursuit of truth priority above other considerations (Lakoff, 1980:111–112; see also Mitcham, 1987:8–13). J. Robert Oppenheimer’s explanation before the Atomic Energy Commission follows readily from this imperative: ‘When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success’ (Lakoff, 1980:103). If the Galilean Imperative is to be rejected, what criteria should be used in deciding whether a given line of research should be pursued? And what affects the engineer’s and the technologist’s responsibility for the outcome? This is where engineering ethics and technology assessment (TA) come into play. Engineering ethics and TA are informative analogies to CPT when discussing theorists’ responsibility. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, technology is a step towards abstraction compared to concrete products, and planning theory is an abstraction compared to planning practice. Secondly, the serious problems of predicting the consequences of new technologies are similar to the profound difficulties of anticipating the consequences of planning theories. Thirdly, considerable efforts have been made to change TA into a participatory method, comparable to the way planning theorists have aimed for the participation of lay people in planning processes, in order to assess plans. 4.1. Engineering ethics

4. Analogy: Technology assessment and responsibility for end-use Much of engineering ethics is concerned that conscientious engineers and technologists should reflect on their ‘responsibility as a means to someone else’s ends—sometimes objectionable or unimproved ends’ (Rogers, 1980:476). Such reflection is highly relevant also for planners and planning theorists. Externally given ends might be pursued by using technology or

In a short paper from a generation ago, Ashkinazy (1972:46) ventures to say that ‘engineers have been the willing associates (if not accomplices) of industrial and governmental leaders in constructing our technological society, and therefore are equally accountable for the problems that technology has wrought’. Is there an analogy to theory here? Can communicative planning theorists plausibly be said to cooperate informally yet smoothly with developers and city

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politicians to create the kind of local plans and planning processes common at the beginning of the 21st century? And if so, are the theorists partly responsible for the outcome? Addressing fellow engineers, Ashkinazy (1972:47) goes on to declare that ‘to do nothing, to not communicate with engineers who are working on a socially detrimental project, constitutes implicit support for their actions’. The first difficulty with this to a planning theorist is how to identify a socially detrimental theory. Is it detrimental when directing attention to the presence of power in every relationship (in the spirit of Foucault) and thereby making some people feel hopelessness? Or is the theory detrimental when propagating consensus building (in the spirit of Habermas) and pursuit of ‘the common good’ to an extent unwarranted in heterogeneous and multicultural societies, thus necessarily producing disappointment? Ashkinazy’s request for communication is readily transferred from engineering projects to planning theories, and debate on normative questions routinely takes place when theorists meet. Those who attended the planning theory tracks of the AESOP or ACSP conferences on a regular basis during the 1990s will recall the endlessly recurring and repetitive clashes between theorists inspired by Foucault and Habermas, respectively. Habermasians were routinely accused of not dealing with power in a responsible way (Yiftachel, 1999). Calls for communication are often found in works on engineering ethics. Ladenson (1980:242) strongly recommends that ‘engineers and scientists voluntarily assume the task of educating the public about important but relatively remote consequences of various technological and scientific developments’. Sometimes the calls are very demanding, as when Unger (1994:281) presents a Model Ethics Code starting with the claim that ‘(e)ngineers shall regard their responsibility to society as paramount and shall. . .(i)nform themselves and others. . .of the consequences, direct and indirect, immediate and remote, of projects they are involved in’. For projects developing new technology, no amount of communication would provide the information requested by Unger, just as the best of dialogues cannot tell researchers all about how a new planning theory is going to be used. Flores (1980:213) asserts that the engineers are: in a unique position to recognize advantages and limitations inherent to a particular technology long before the general public learns of or suffers its consequences. This authoritative position naturally

warrants ascribing greater responsibilities to engineers for how technology is used. An analogous assertion is only to some extent plausible for planning theorists. The link between technology creation and application is more direct than between planning theory and practice, especially where planning theory is critical or evaluative. Too much depends on the creativity of the theory consumer to place planning theorists in an authoritative position as informants of the social consequences of theory consumption. Ascribing responsibility for theory use is even more problematic, as the planning theorist cannot usually prohibit or admit particular applications. Writing about atomic science just after World War II, Bridgman responds to exaggerated claims on the responsibility of researchers: (I)f I personally had to see to it that only beneficient uses were made of my discoveries I would have to spend my life oscillating between some kind of forecasting bureau to find what uses might be made of my discoveries, and lobbying in Washington to procure passage of special legislation to control the uses. In neither of these activities do I have any competence, so that my life would be embittered and my scientific productivity would cease. (Bridgman, 1948:70) This alludes to a conflict between at least two responsibilities: to society for the consequences of research and to oneself and the research community for making use of one’s abilities to do high quality theoretical work. Compare the atomic scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who in the same period proclaimed that ‘the true responsibility of a scientist, as we all know, is to the integrity and vigor of his research’ (Mason, 2006:73). Oppenheimer directed the construction of the atomic bomb at Los Alamos from 1943 to 1945. Mason (2006:84) remarks that ‘(t)he actual consequences could not have been predicted, although it might have been reasonable to expect that newly invented weapons in wartime would be used somehow’. It is not equally reasonable to expect that newly developed theories about urbanism and city planning will somehow be used to form operational strategies and tactics in a time of urban warfare, as suggested by the walking-through-walls example. Prediction of end-use is increasingly hard in a period of globalisation. Planning theories have always travelled, but they do so much more easily with the growing number of international journals, the availability of international databases, and the enormously increased efficiency of search motors such as Google

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Scholar. This notwithstanding, Perry (1995:36) contends that ‘whenever theory travels, its movement from one place and time to another is never unimpeded; both its mode of representation and its pattern of institutionalization are different from those characteristic of its point of origin’. The specific ways in which a theory of planning collides or colludes with the meanings which circulate in the milieu that it enters may be ‘thoroughly social and highly structured processes’ (Perry, 1995:36), but the resulting use of the theory might still be unpredictable for its originator. This brief account has shown that the ethics of technology and engineering deals with problems of responsibility that are highly relevant to planning theorists, and that participation in communication with other societal actors is seen as part of the experts’ responsibility. The academic debate on how to acquire and establish ‘knowledge for decision-makers facing the ambivalence of technology is sectoralized into two branches: the ethics of technology and technology assessment (TA)’ (Grunwald, 1999:170), and we now turn to the latter. 4.2. Technology assessment with lay involvement Encyclopaedia Britannica Online defines ‘technology’ as the application of scientific knowledge to the practical aims of human life or, as it is sometimes phrased, to the change and manipulation of the human environment. Wikipedia (2007) adds that technology can encompass systems, methods of organisation, and techniques. In line with these encyclopaedias, planning can be seen as a technology for collective action aimed at improving the physical environment. Planning theory is theory about how this particular technology should be designed and used. In the following, some strategies for assessing technology are discussed in relation to assessment of theory. Technology assessment (TA) has been widely adopted during the last three decades for mapping the probable consequences of various technological options and giving early warnings of harmful impacts. The task of TA is ‘to reduce the human costs of trial and error learning in society’s handling of new technologies, and to do so by anticipating potential impacts and feeding these insights back into decision making, and into actors’ strategies’ (Schot & Rip, 1996:251). This points to TA as a planning tool.9 The 9 The link between planning and TA has explicitly been made by Grunwald (1999:178), asserting that ‘rationality in shaping technology can be reconstructed as planning rationality’.

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basic problem, and the aim of TA, is to improve the integration of technology and society. The seemingly perpetual problem of bringing together planning theory and the social practice of planners forms part of the difficulties of integrating theory and society. Ideally, in TA as well as in planners’ assessment of projects and policies, being responsible entails taking all effects into account, although this is not a sufficient requirement for responsible action (Mitcham, 1987:26– 27). It is acknowledged in the TA field, however, that the consequences of new technologies can be predicted only to a limited extent. Alternative rationales have therefore been developed for TA, such as identifying problem areas for further research, and negotiating the controversial issues. However, the TA discipline has not quite succeeded in becoming independent of forecasts. Many recent reformulations of its aim suggest that predictions are still needed, for example:  Anticipatory policy-making.  Developing ‘lead visions’ reflecting the demand for research (Cuhls & Georghiou, 2004).  Establishing a foresight process identifying trends of technological innovation.  Identifying the fields of scientific and technological research that will bring social and environmental benefits. Various forms of TA with involvement from lay people have been developed, corroborating the analogy with CPT. Examples are participatory TA (Joss, 2002; Rowe & Frewer, 2000), constructive TA (Schot, 2001; Schot & Rip, 1996), and ethical TA (Palm & Hansson, 2006). This turn towards lay participation came partly because ‘TA conducted by technical experts has proven ineffective at predicting social responses or unexpected consequences’ (Schot, 2001:39). Moreover, TA is also about assessment of social consequences and about recommendation of policies, and technical experts should not handle these tasks alone in a democracy. In the following it is considered whether procedures proposed in variants of TA in order to prevent socially adverse effects of new technology, can also serve the same purpose in the assessment of planning theories. Non-academic participation in the assessment of theories is very rarely institutionalised in liberal societies; neither is ethical assessment. Scholars are usually left to develop their theories and make them public on an individual basis or with a team of academic colleagues, without any controlling interference from the government or other authorities. Hence, analogies to participatory TA and ethical TA aiming at integrating

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planning theory with socially desired practice would be unprecedented. Nevertheless, to accentuate the contrast with the present situation, the focus will here be on procedures of ‘constructive technology assessment’ (Schot, 2001; Schot & Rip, 1996). Constructive TA brings external influence to bear on the monitoring process from the early phases of technology design. Transferred to theory construction, this would open up possibilities for radical forms of intervention. Constructive TA proposes bringing together all interested parties early in the process and regards feedback of TA activities into the actual construction of technology as crucial. It is assumed that end-users, as well as other interested parties, will make valuable contributions to the design process, even opening up new areas of innovation. Their ideas and values will be negotiated and renegotiated throughout the course of the technology development process (Schot, 2001:40– 41). Implementation of similar procedures in theory construction would transform work on planning theories into collaborative processes and thus break with much of established practice. To the extent that external participants could censor the theorist’s writings, it would be contrary to liberal ideals. Schot and Rip (1996) propose three generic strategies for making an impact on new technology throughout the design process. It is briefly explained below how these strategies work, and how they would fit with the aim of integrating planning theory and practice. 4.3. Inverse anticipation and feedback: Technology forcing This strategy is the inverse of standard TA, which takes the technology as given and explores its potential impacts. Here, desired impacts are stipulated, and technologists are challenged to come up with solutions that fulfil these requirements (Schot & Rip, 1996:258). The policy is often to set standards that new technology has to comply with. In the context of planning theories, the requirement might be, for example, that procedural planning theory should be participatory. Under a liberal regime granting freedom of research, ‘theory forcing programmes’ would be an alien substance. 4.4. Graded learning and feedback: Strategic niche management This is orchestration of the development of new technology by setting up a series of experimental settings (niches) in which participants learn about the design, user need fulfilment, cultural and political

acceptability, and other aspects of prospective technologies (Schot & Rip, 1996:261). In the context of planning theory, the analogous strategy would be to support theoretical development in institutional settings (niches) where planning practice is not well underpinned, and in niches where there is a need for new theory as a springboard for new planning practice. Theory for the planning efforts of social movements might be a case in point. This kind of theory initiation and design is compatible with liberal democracy. 4.5. Loci for reflexivity and feedback: Alignment This strategy aims at creating arenas for interaction and debate between technologists and other societal actors. It balances the previously mentioned strategies, the supply efforts triggered by technology forcing and the demand identified through niche management (Schot & Rip, 1996:262). The alignment strategy is feasible also in the context of theory assessment. The purpose would be to bring planning theorists and practising planners (and other end-users) together in suitable forums. The felt needs of planners and the theorists’ focus of attention can be aligned in dialogue workshops (Helman, 2002), consensus conferences (Brown, Crawford, Carley, & Mackway-Jones, 2006), group processes (Sager, 2002: chap. 3), or by using other participation methods (Rowe & Frewer, 2000). The alignment efforts aim to bring the theory assessment process into the public sphere (Joss, 2002), an effect that would presumably be readily endorsed by communicative planning theorists. The concept of the ‘public sphere’ characterises the framework for ‘the manifold interactions taking place between people in public to discuss, contest, and shape socially relevant issues and to scrutinize the actions and decisions of state and market economy actors’ (Joss, 2002:222). Ideas about the public planning of society should reach beyond formal assessment procedures to wider discourses taking place in the public sphere. Many TA activities and discussions on public involvement in technological development are guided by a wish to enhance democracy (Schot, 2001:42). However, when transferring the democratising strategies of TA to planning theory assessment, it is not at all clear that the result will benefit liberal democracy. The main reason is that freedom of expression might be threatened by theory assessment procedures adopted from TA. Summing up this section, the following conclusions can be drawn from the comparison of technology assessment and theory assessment and monitoring:

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1. TA as a tool for prediction of social consequences has failed. It is even less likely that institutionalised planning theory assessment would succeed in predicting end-uses, as much of this theoretical work is even further away from practice than technology is. 2. There has been a movement in the direction of making TA participatory in order to further the integration of new technology and society’s needs and values. This idea is easily recognised by communicative planning theorists. The analogy would be to establish more, or more effective, forums for dialogue between planning theorists and end-users like planners, policy-makers and public administrators. 3. There have been ideas of expanding broad public participation from the control of application of technologies to the entire process of designing and developing technologies. This has potentially farreaching consequences in itself, and even more so when transferred to planning theory construction, partly because the control element is deeply problematic. External interference with what planning theorists want to present in their writings would easily conflict with freedom of expression and hence be a practice unworthy of liberal societies. In contrast to the development of technology, there has rarely been a clash of interests between democratic society and researchers regarding development of planning theory. Surely, some theories of planning came into being as critical responses to deplorable social conditions. For example, Friedmann (1973) developed transactive planning theory as a reaction to a perceived crisis of knowledge in US cities throughout the 1960s and the concomitant need for societal guidance. Radical planning theory was part of the opposition to what was seen as inhuman and exploitative capitalism (Scott, 1980). However, society’s disparagement of planning theory was nearly always directed at rational-comprehensive planning, as in the ‘freeway revolts’ of the 1960s and 1970s (Mohl, 2004) and the general discontent with modernist city planning (Jacobs, 1965). Moreover, there are few pecuniary temptations that might make theorists fail their responsibility to society. The conclusion is that there is little need to introduce formal assessment or monitoring of planning theory, and that much restraint should be exercised, as control of this sort can challenge rights to freedom of expression and opinion. The present as well as the preceding chapters have shown that unintended consequences are common in the

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development and use of technology and theory. The next chapter focuses more directly on this phenomenon and its significance for the responsibilities of planning theorists. The role of unintended consequences is underscored by linking this theme to the fact that surprises can follow from creative reading and rewriting of planning theory. 5. Unexpected effects of creative reading and writing The purpose of this chapter is twofold. It is shown how the writing of theory affects responsibility through reality construction and, more specifically, by forming relationships. Subsequently, it is discussed what makes for weak relations between theory and end-use. The first section is an account of unintended consequences, however, as these drive the mechanisms linking creative reading and re-writing to theorists’ responsibility. Along the way it is questioned what planning theorists are responsible for. Is it for ‘telling the truth’, providing the most reasonable interpretation of their chosen section of the world? Are theorists responsible for underpinning planning practice meant to improve the achievement of the political goals of the government, or for developing the theoretical basis of public planning processes, for example, in the spirit of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights? Or can theorists be held morally responsible for the enduses of their theories? Responsibility is a multifaceted concept, and only a few of its meanings and aspects can be dealt with here. Gunder and Hillier (2007) offer a more extensive discussion, primarily directing attention to the practising planner rather than the planning theorist. The situation of the two can be very different. Consider a planner working in a textbook-like rationalistic (synoptic) planning process. The goals of both the plan and the planning process are externally given. The planner comes up with recommendations but does not decide on the plan. The task assigned to the planner is to tell the politicians how available means can best be combined and used in order to reach the goals set by them. Judicially, although perhaps not morally, the planner avoids some responsibility because goals are formally set by others and the important decisions are formally made by others. Planners are not entirely exempt from moral responsibility, as their expertise and agenda-setting power are likely to influence decisionmakers. Moreover, it is not responsible behaviour to mindlessly let the goals of others determine one’s own work. In any case, the situation of the planning theorist

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is usually different from the one just sketched for the planner. The purpose of theory building is often determined by the theorist herself. Furthermore, the theorist is also most often the decision-maker, in the sense that she decides whether the theory she has in mind should be developed and made known to others. Hence, the theorist cannot usually deny responsibility on formal grounds. 5.1. Unintended consequences This section on unintended effects links the problem of the manifold end-uses that can be spawned by dual planning theory and the question of planning theorists’ responsibility for the use made of their ideas. Theorists can hardly be held morally responsible for consequences that could not be anticipated at the time the theory was first published. Unintended consequences are a recurrent topic in the planning literature (Burby, 1999; Sager, 1994:187– 189), and a recent contribution ventures to say that ‘there is hardly a corner of program or policy planning that has not seen analyses of unintended consequences’ (Morell, 2005:444). The general significance of such consequences is illustrated by the unending stream of noteworthy examples reported in the scholarly literature, such as development aid promoting arms races (Collier & Hoeffler, 2007), and raised legal minimum drinking age increasing the prevalence of marijuana consumption (DiNardo & Lemieux, 2001). A third example concerns military planning. During the military campaign against the PLO in Lebanon in 1982, captured Palestinian fighters were sent to the Ansar prison camp, where the internal inter-human dynamics engendered profound social integration and subsequently a solid social, political and military coherence. The unintended effect was, as retired IDF Brigadier General Dov Tamari complained, that ‘(a)t Ansar, we established the military of the future Palestinian state’ (Tamari, 2001:45). Morell (2005:456) maintains that ‘circumstances force continual revision in any plan that was fixed at any point in time’. The phenomenon of unintended consequences is not made interesting by the obvious fact that pundits occasionally fail to foresee even firstand second-order impacts of planned actions. What makes the theme an essential one to planning and social theory is the far stronger claim made by Sartre (1982:38–39): in the dialectic inherent in the interrelations between individuals, the consequences of our actions always finally escape us. The core message is aptly restated by Jonas:

The consequences of the single action enmesh with the immensity of strands in the causal fabric of the whole, which defies analysis even for the now, and exponentially so into the future. . .(A)lmost every purpose is destined to become estranged from itself in the long run. (Jonas, 1984:117) Vernon (1979:57) imparts that for Sartre as well as for Popper, ‘(u)nintended consequences figure as an explanatory bridge between the ‘‘human’’ character of action and the ‘‘alien’’ character of history’. Prominent scholars have singled out unintended consequences as the main target for social research. Merton (1957:66) suggests that ‘the distinctive intellectual contributions of the sociologist are found primarily in the study of unintended consequences. . .of social practices, as well as in the study of anticipated consequences. . .’. He points to evidence that the major contributions of sociologists were made when they shifted their attention to consequences which were neither intended nor recognised. Popper has put the matter more squarely: (I)t is one of the striking things about social life that nothing ever comes off exactly as intended. Things always turn out a little bit differently. We hardly ever produce in social life precisely the effect that we wish to produce, and we usually get things that we do not want into the bargain. . .To explain why they cannot be eliminated is the major task of social theory. . .The characteristic problems of the social sciences arise only out of our wish to know the unintended consequences, and more especially the unwanted consequences which may arise if we do certain things. (Popper, 1972:124, emphasis in original) To the extent that planning is accepted as a social science, the statements of the above authors place it in a peculiar position. Planning is the study of anticipated and primarily intended consequences of deliberate action, and hence there is a contrast to social science in general, according to the above quote. The formulations of Merton and Popper indicate an ex post approach, as unanticipated effects have to be studied after the event. Contrary to this, planning is essentially an ex ante activity, preparing for the event. Procedural planning theory is therefore about the best institutions for preparing collective action. The ontological question concerning dual planning theory is whether these institutions (rules, procedures) are designed in such a way that only bottom-up applications or only top-down applications of a planning theory are realised. The

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preceding chapters show that this is not the case for CPT. There are connections between unintended consequences, on the one hand, and dark-side planning and dual planning theory, on the other hand, although the linkages are not unambiguous or obvious. Dark-side planning effects would habitually be seen as unintended only by a profession used to seeing itself in a heroic light. Should this happen to be the situation in planning, the profession would do well to heed Reade’s (1991:186) warning, that prominent planning theorists are ‘very much in a tradition absolutely central to planning, the tradition in which planners search endlessly for a more glamorous way of presenting themselves’. In a liberal democracy with strong private business interests involved in a number of urban land-use planning processes, Allmendinger and Gunder (2005) are right to say that these interests’ occasional hijacking of local processes is to be expected. Hence, plans with detrimental effects on living conditions can be due to authorities misusing power from the outset of the planning effort, or self-interested parties sabotaging well-intended strategies in the offing. In this last case, socially destructive effects would be unintended as far as the planners are concerned. The Israeli Defence Forces’ use of CPT in the ‘walking-through-walls’ example can stand as an example of haphazard, repressive consequences of theory for those who believe that the unexpected penetration of war into the private domain of the home is a profound form of humiliation and trauma. CPT’s potential facilitation of neo-liberalism is an example of dark-side effects of planning theory to those who believe that neo-liberal policies degrade living conditions. The way dual planning theory was defined in the chapter on the potential equivocalness of planning theory makes unintended consequences a potentially important notion. Dual planning theory is found useful, both in organising top-down planning processes and in bottom-up planning initiated by ordinary citizens. One might assume that those starting up a planning effort have the knowledge and power to implement a plan limited to serving their own interests. However, it is often not the party launching the plan whose interests are being served by the unintended consequences; these can strike in all directions. A planning theory may be intended to have favourable effects on the emancipation and empowerment of a particular group if influencing planning practice. It might nevertheless be known to the planning theorists working on this theory that its implementation is likely to have the side-effect of

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underpinning a market-based political–economic system that undermines public planning in the long run (compare the neo-liberalism example). When theorists continue working on such a dual theory and encourage its practical use, they allow the detrimental side-effects to happen, and thus have some responsibility for them. This is all the more so if theorists do not warn practitioners about the predictable long-term side effects and take no measures to prevent them. Intending the good does not necessarily exonerate from responsibility for the bad (Thompson, 2005:37–41). Researchers might be morally responsible for the consequences of their theory if these consequences were foreseen, even if they were not intended. The word ‘might’ in the previous sentence indicates that the consequences in question must be sufficiently likely to occur for the theorists to be held responsible (Baldwin, 1979:354). What if the repressive consequences of using a particular theory can be predicted? Assume that favourable as well as unfavourable effects may be anticipated, and that the overall decision is to go ahead with theory building because the desirable is thought to outweigh the undesirable. In this case, the theorist would be partly responsible for dark-side use. However, the ubiquity of unintended consequences implies that the knowledge/power/action complex at the planner’s disposal (Sager, 1995) is usually not effective enough to bring about exactly the results aimed for. It then becomes more likely that the constructs of planning theorists are considered helpful even by groups whose interests usually deviate from the interests of those expected to be primary users. The implications of this for planning theorists’ responsibility for the use of their ideas are discussed in the next sections. 5.2. Writing: Relational responsibility and reality construction Responsibility as ability to respond is crucial to communicative planning theorists. There can be no dialogue without mutual responses. A minimum content of responsiveness is that planners and theorists answer complaints, enquiries, requests, proposals, etc. The result is two-way communication meant to create a sense of trust and support in the relationship between the experts and the populace. Responsibility as answerability is absent when planners refuse to address protesting groups, pretend not to have heard objections, ridicule a competing proposal for lacking realism, or intimidate opponents by answering in inaccessible technical jargon. Communicative planners have a duty or moral responsibility to counteract such impairments

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of dialogue, and planning theorists should supply strategies for succeeding in this endeavour. Planning theorists might be seen as responsible for informing practising planners and other parties to planning processes about how their theories can be transformed into actions for designing and guiding planning processes and for making plans. This task seems to be particularly hard to evade for communicative planning theorists. It is an aspect of ‘relational responsibility’ (McNamee & Gergen, 1999), a concept that is of particular interest to communicative planners because so much of their work is tending relationships. In relational responsibility, the relational process replaces the individual as the central unit of concern. This invites practices that put meaning-building dialogue in the place of isolation and alienation. Participants in dialogue have relational responsibility for the ‘means of valuing, sustaining, and creating forms of relationship out of which common meanings— and thus moralities—can take wing’ (McNamee & Gergen, 1999: xi). To write communicative planning theory is implicitly or explicitly to write about relations and with relationships in mind. The planners are usually not the decision-makers and therefore—to the extent that they are not neutral—often write to persuade and convince principals. Furthermore, the public planner is not alone in the planning process. There are always some people adversely affected by the recommended plan, while others are favourably affected. Doing planning theory thus implies writing about power, conflict, trust and other relational concepts. In a critical tone, Tsivacou (1996:71) notes, however, that ‘the subject of planning theory is the speaking not the writing man’. This tendency is undoubtedly strengthened with the current predilection for communicative planning and dialogue. Planning theorists can write the various parties into their models in several ways. Affected local people can, for example, be written in as citizens, clients or consumers. Other parties can be imagined as stakeholders (evoking business connotations) or team members. Planners can be seen as mediators, handmaidens to special interests, neutral technocrats, or caretakers of the common good. The relationships between planners and others involved in the planning process will vary with the roles ascribed to them, and the planners’ relational responsibility will vary accordingly. Mediating communicative planners might regard others in the process as team members in a common search for creative solutions accepted by all involved (collaborative planning). The planner’s responsibilities can then be formed by the tenets of discourse ethics

(Habermas, 1993).10 Relational responsibilities are likely to be less demanding in a planning theory describing planners as bureaucrats protecting the interests of state, county or municipality from the egoistic actions of profit-seeking stakeholders. Writing theory is not only a way to model and paint a simplified picture of an already existent reality; but also reality construction (Berger & Luckman, 1966; Mallon, 2007). Therefore, theoretical development is not only an attempt at more advanced reflection or explanation. It also changes people’s view of the physical and social materiality, processes and events that plans aim to alter, and thus implants new ideas in change agents of what might be possible and desirable (Rhodes & Brown, 2005). Tsivacou (1996) explicitly notes that ideas and meanings do not precede the very act of writing plans: ‘the written form of planning generates a new kind of logic which guides the behaviour and worldviews of the actors today’ (Tsivacou, 1996:72). This means that writing planning theory is a creative act that has consequences and thus potentially evokes questions of responsibility. The creative aspect of writing, ‘writing as a method of nomadic inquiry’, is emphasised by Richardson and Adams St. Pierre (2005). They commend the inquiry of flux, becoming and heterogeneity, as opposed to the stable, eternal and constant. Writing is not only representation; it can also be used to disrupt the known and the real. In so doing, they say (with reference to Foucault), that we might loosen the hold of received meaning limiting our work and our lives and investigate to what extent the exercise of thinking our own histories can free thought from what it thinks silently and allow it to think otherwise (Richardson & Adams St. Pierre, 2005:969). This emancipative aspect of writing reinforces the idea that the resulting theory is the writer’s own product and hence—in some sense—her responsibility. In fact, were planning theorists unwilling to accept and recognise their role in the construction of reality, merely purporting to represent a reality existing ‘out there’ as a fact, they would be irresponsible (Rhodes & Brown, 2005:476). It would amount to insisting on equivalence between an externally located reality and planning theories as representations, thereby rejecting the main mechanism by which theorists 10

The moral principle of discourse ethics—the Universalisation principle—states that: Every valid norm must satisfy the condition that the consequences and side effects its general observance can be anticipated to have for the satisfaction of the interests of each could be freely accepted by all affected (and be preferred to those of known alternative possibilities for regulation). (Habermas, 1993:32).

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influence the lives of others, namely by constructing reality by generating and disseminating ideas and concepts by which the world is conceived and manifested in language. It follows from this constructivist standpoint that the work of planning theorists is partly fictional. Truth telling cannot be the only or even the predominant goal for planning theorists. Paradoxically, for planning theorists to be responsible, they must not claim to convey truth in any objective sense (Rhodes & Brown, 2005:480). If the planning theorists’ situation were such that they had to adapt to a predetermined programme for representing ‘the true reality’, little room would be left for responsibility.11 (See also the later section on Derridean responsibilities of planning theorists.) But if planning theorists cannot demonstrate responsibility primarily by telling the truth, it needs to be clarified what they are responsible for (Rhodes & Brown, 2005:478). 5.3. Creative reading and re-writing cloud foresight of end-use If plans sometimes do not change the world, but remain forever on the office book-shelf, it seems even less likely that the theory behind the plans tends to have practical significance. At least real-world impact of theory would be modest, to the extent that effects come via implemented plans, as planners seem to make little explicit use of planning theory (contrasting points of view are offered by Friedmann, 2008; Sanyal, 2002). The social effects of planning theory do not always rely on plans as an intermediate link, though. For example, those familiar with communicative planning theory are exposed to arguments for participation and dialogue likely to influence the practices they will advocate, both inside and outside planning processes. The walkingthrough-walls example also indicates that plans are not necessary for generating real-world consequences of planning theory. Theories travel and might be put to use in disciplines and problem areas thematically far from their origin (Perry, 1995). In case planning theory was assumed to be without effect, it would not be of much interest to raise questions of responsibility for its applications. ‘The first and most general condition of responsibility is causal power, that is, that acting makes an impact on the world’ (Jonas, 11 Rhodes and Brown (2005) and Gunder and Hillier (2007) reach similar conclusions on this point by drawing on Derrida’s concept of ‘undecidability’ (Bates, 2005).

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1984:90). Responsibility is a correlate of power and should be commensurate with the latter’s scope and that of its exercise (Jonas, 1984: 90). The position taken here, in light of the examples of CPT critique given in a preceding chapter, is that planning theory does indeed affect the real world. As Friedmann (2003:9) answers the question of why do planning theory: ‘because. . .it does matter, because it is essential to the vitality and continued relevance of planning as a profession’. It may sound immediately unreasonable in general to hold theorists responsible for what happens in the wake of applications of their ideas, as there often seems to be too weak and loose a cause–effect relation between the original theory construction and particular end-uses. It is nevertheless worthwhile to think systematically on what makes the relation weak. First, the problem of many hands must be taken into account when ascribing responsibility to theorists (Thompson, 2005:11–32). A theory often results from the work of many researchers. Even if there is a leading figure, an initiator digging out the diamond, many others might have helped to cut and polish it.12 It may not be possible to identify one single theorist, or even one particular team, who was in control of the construction of a theory. The process of refining and perfecting the theory can take years, and researchers influence each other in the mutual learning process. Each theorist must still answer for his or her own written work, but when CPT is used or misused, it is nevertheless hard to know how much responsibility should be ascribed to single individuals. How much weight would be put on causal effectiveness as a criterion? An academic who does mediocre research and has the capacity to improve CPT only insignificantly may be less responsible for its use in planning practice and other applications, and thus be less morally responsible for its consequences. Second, there is often the presence of an intermediary actor in the causal chain from the researchers’ publication of their theory to the end-use. The practising

12 The average number of authors to peer-reviewed journal papers is steadily increasing in many academic fields, for example ecology (Weltzin, Belote, Williams, Keller, &Engel, 2006), bioethics (Borry, Schotsmans, & Dierickx, 2006), physics (Tarnow, 2002) and medicine (Bennett & Taylor, 2003). The life sciences experience a rapid increase in the number of papers with more than 100 authors. Papers published in, for example, The Lancet, have more than six authors on average. The risk is that the high number of authors pulverises responsibility for the published text. If there is a trend towards multi-author papers in planning, it has not yet been regarded as a problem.

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planner is often in that position. When intermediaries are identifiable, the quality of applications can be safeguarded by disseminating among them information on the reasonable and effective use of the theory in question. The researcher producing procedural planning theory can be seen as an adviser to the planner, and the latter might be responsible for how the planning process is actually designed. The question is what significance should be attributed to the argument that advisers are not responsible for the results of policies, since the person whom they advise is free to accept or reject their counsel (Thompson, 2005:33–49). Third, numerous studies in administrative and political science have shown that plans, programmes and policies are frequently imperfectly implemented, if at all. DeLeon and deLeon (2002:469) warn of ‘the immense vale of troubles that lay between the definition of a policy and its execution’. This means that the theorist will in many cases not be responsible for physical and economic consequences, even if his or her theory was used as a ‘template’ for designing real-world planning processes. DeLeon and deLeon argue that the probability of seeing physical–economic effects is highest when the planning theory is mainly deployed as inspiration for bottom-up processes (DeLeon & deLeon, 2002:477–478). Implementation of plans can be hampered because ‘the planning staff. . .is often composed of different individuals than the implementing staff. In the transition between these two groups responsibility is often lost’ (Gottschalk, 2001:208). Fourth, consider the problem of unintended end-use from the point of view of the theory builder. Are planning theorists more responsible for the consequences of intended end-use than for other applications? In that case, communicative planning theorists would be more responsible for co-opting protest leaders and for facilitating neo-liberal policies (if Bengs’ critique is valid) than for surprising turns of events such as the development of IDF’s walking-through-walls tactics. The two first effects allegedly follow from implementing CPT in planning practice, an application that was wholly intended. Connecting the third effect to planning theory depended on officers importing CPT to the field of urban warfare theory, where communicative planning theorists presumably never intended that it should play a role. In all cases, however, the mentioned consequences of the end-use were unintended. Fifth, there is the problem of unpredictable applications or consequences. In the cases mentioned above, inspiring walking-through-walls tactics was unpredictable, and the allegation that CPT furthers neo-liberalism is controversial. Such a consequence was not to be

imagined initially, and now that the critique is known, the facilitation of neo-liberalism can still be foreseen only as a possibility and not as a fact. This is a stronger argument for exempting planning theorists from responsibility than the fact that the consequences were unintended. If detrimental consequences of particular end-uses were foreseen, the planning theorist might in principle be able to take action to forestall these applications, whether intended or not, whereas unpredictability impedes theorists from taking such action. There are several reasons why some consequences of theory use cannot be predicted:  Generally, in the long chains of cause and effect, the final outcomes escape us in the end, as argued in the section on unintended consequences.  Other theorists might develop the theory in question further in directions unknown to the theorist originally constructing the theory. This is the argument of creative re-writing, ‘writing as a method of nomadic inquiry’, presented above. There is also a link from this point back to the acknowledgement that planning theories are not primarily ‘telling the truth’. When theories are not presenting an externally given reality, but contain elements of fiction, it is easier to adopt a theory and transform it to serve one’s own purposes, causing the original theory builder to lose control.  Certain applications of a theory might deliberately be kept secret, or for other reasons not become known to the original theorist. Even if it is known that a theory can have dark-side applications, the theorist might be unaware of the bids to put the theory to bad use. Hence, areas of potential misuse might be known, but not the actual attempts to exploit them.  Users might openly apply the theory in unexpected ways, for example, occasioned by their creative reading of available material, as explained below. Creativity can be found in theory consumption as well as in theory production (Jones, 2003:513). This is emphasised by De Certeau (1984), who questions the association of reading and passivity, asserting that every reading modifies its object. The reader—the theory user in the present context—invents in texts something different from what the theory builder originally had in mind. The reader combines the fragments and aspects of the text with personal intuitions and creates something new and unknown in the space organised by the text’s capacity for allowing an indefinite plurality of meanings (De Certeau, 1984:169). As Adams St. Pierre (1996:537) professes, ‘(b)eing a responsible reader

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becomes crucial in that relation where theories ricochet and have the power to inscribe and reinscribe lives’. Theories may be transformed into actionable knowledge due to the conditions of their dissemination and the needs of the users, not necessarily because of any intrinsic properties or claims to truth (Gabriel, 2002:136). Compare this to the ‘garbage can’ model of organisational decision-making (March & Olsen, 1986), according to which events are determined by the arrival and departure times of problems, resources, decision-makers’ attention, and choice opportunities. In the context-dependent flows of these ingredients for choice, intention is lost, and a temporal order is substituted for the causal order usually taken for granted by planners. In the present context, ideas can be reinterpreted and customised by the theory consumers (readers) and incorporated into their repertoire of actions. This kind of ‘creative bricolage’ implies that the researcher originally constructing the theory loses control of its application. Moreover, it opens for darkside use, as it is ‘(a) fundamental feature of bricolage. . .that it does not worry about ‘‘proper’’ and ‘‘improper’’ uses of objects’ (Gabriel, 2002:139). These musings on the ambiguities created by reading and re-writing ideas end the analysis of planning theorists’ responsibility for end-uses. The remainder of the paper brings the thoughts of two very influential philosophers to bear on planning theory. Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida have both written extensively on responsibility, and the thinking of the latter is clearly influenced by the former. The next chapter discusses the significance of Levinas’s concepts of hospitality and responsibility for the Other to the dialogue recommended by CPT. This is followed by a chapter built on Derrida’s idea that responsible decisions must be made without guidelines from authority of any kind. The chapter also deals with the responsibilities of planning theorists as educators and university academics. 6. Responsibility for inclusive planning dialogue: A Levinasian perspective Inclusion is at the core of democratic theory (Young, 2000). Democratic political movements and designers of democratic processes and institutions can promote greater inclusion in planning and decision-making as a means of advancing more just outcomes. The guiding intuition in Habermas’s work is that the legitimacy of democratic political authority has to be secured by broad popular involvement in public deliberation and decision-making. Dialogue between the parties parti-

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cipating in planning or affected by public plans is part of such deliberation. The World Planners Congress Vancouver Declaration 2006 states that: ‘We stand for planning as an inclusive process’ (Harper, Gar-On Yeh, & Costa, 2008:4). Even so, Allmendinger and Tewdwr-Jones (2002:19) question whether publicsector urban planners actually have a moral obligation to enhance community participation. In this chapter, it is seen as the responsibility of theorists working on participatory and communicative planning to develop and analyse models inspiring and preparing for inclusive planning processes. Inclusion is a central theme not only for Ju¨rgen Habermas, but also for Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida. It is often discussed under headings of welcoming, hospitality, toleration, recognition or multiculturalism. This chapter explains the implications of Levinas’s ethical relationship between the subject (self) and the Other for face-to-face conversation, and then compares such Levinasian conversation with the Habermasian dialogue often aimed at by communicative planning theorists. The differences between the ethical and the political realms are highlighted. The purpose is to analyse the implications of Levinasian ethics for the responsibility of planning theorists to prepare for the inclusion of very different others in public deliberation and dialogue. With this limited intention, there is no need here to attempt a broad introduction to Levinas’s ideas (see Critchley, 1999). The following starts with the concept of ‘the Other’, and additional notions are brought into the discussion only if they shed light on the links between otherness, inclusion and dialogue. 6.1. The Other and difference in dialogue Dialogue is pivotal in CPT, and the Habermasian principles of discourse ethics state that the communicative process should be open, undistorted, truthseeking and empathic, as explained in the introduction of the paper (compare Allmendinger, 2002:188; Innes & Booher, 1999:419). Openness implies that communicative planning must be inclusive and admit radical otherness (alterity) into dialogue. It is the responsibility of communicative planning theorists to develop frameworks for public planning that invigorate democracy by rendering the public realm more conducive to lay involvement and deliberation. The relationship to the Other is the main theme of Emmanuel Levinas, considered by many to be among the leading ethicists of the 20th century (Arnett, 2003; Critchley, 2004). It is appropriate to draw on Levinas

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here, as his ideas about responsibility for the Other have implications for inclusive dialogue in planning, and because he was an important influence on Jacques Derrida, to whom we return for a discussion of hospitality later in this chapter, and for the discussion of responsible decisions in the next chapter. The Other is what the subject is not, ‘(a)nd the Other cannot be wholly interpreted or translated into the language, experience, or perspective of the self since it would, at that point, no longer be other’ (Critchley, 2004:139). Moreover, as argued by Hendley (2000), Levinas’s preoccupation with language as exposure to the Other provides an important corrective to Habermas’s focus on the procedural aspects of communication. Levinas (1969) analyses ‘the Other’ in Totality and Infinity, and brief accounts of his ideas on this topic are offered by Arnett (2003), Barnett (2005), Gunder and Hillier (2007:21–22), and Murray (2000). The future of the Other, not the past of what the subject has already done, is the focus of Levinasian responsibility, and this is well in line with the future-orientation of planning. In Levinasian ethics the subject is subordinated to the Other through an ethical injunction to respect him or her as an absolute alterity. The idea of subordination to others is foreign to Habermasian discourse ethics, which instead aims for equal status and reciprocity. Power relations are ideally levelled out in Habermasian dialogue, while they are constituted by moral obligations in Levinasian face-to-face conversation: Indeed, whoever advocates a Levinasian ethics will be confronted with a merciless irony as soon as he or she comes up to someone else and face-to-face declares, ‘You should subject yourself to the Other’, which then literally means, ‘You should subject yourself to Me, you should obey My law’. (Ha¨gglund, 2004:53) Levinas’s ethical relation is one in which the Other is passively granted his or her alterity. Taking responsibility for the Other is part of the human condition and is not a commitment freely chosen by the subject. The challenge for the self is to come into dialogue with, and unmask the ‘face’ of, an individual who cannot be fully conceptualised in its otherness. To use language in order ‘(t)o intervene or establish common territory would be to conceptualize alterity, which is tantamount to enacting its violation’ (Trey, 1992:417). This is far from Habermas’s aim of using dialogue for establishing mutual understanding. Trey explains how respect for the absolute alterity of the Other makes the consensus-building efforts of communicative planning suspect, as interpreted from a

Levinasian perspective. This line of reasoning underscores the critique of consensus building put forward in the preceding chapter on critique of communicative planning theory. Trey fears, in line with Levinas, that ‘Habermas’s normative accord involves a political subsumption of alterity into rational agreement’ (Trey, 1992:421). Rationally deliberated consensus seems to close off dissent, resistance and alterity—establishing the absolute authority of reason. But here, Levinas would claim, a power strategy is enacted. By introducing content into the discursive relationship between I and the other, and by formulating that content in such a way that it can be shared, the alterity which originally situated the relationship is excluded. By appealing to the authority of ‘we’, the other to whom I am responsible becomes mine. (Trey, 1992:421) However, such an adoption of the Other by the subject betrays the ethical relationship, which is utterly independent of any active force and ‘situated in terms of domination free speech’ (Trey, 1992:417). Critics of Habermas’s handling of otherness in the theory of communicative action object that full acceptance of otherness in dialogue would make rational consensus all but impossible. It would require exclusion or modification of alterity, thus necessitating an exertion of power from which the theory dissociates itself. For example, Coole (1996:221) concludes that Habermas ‘is unable to attribute any emancipatory potential to alterity, or otherness,. . .because his basic ideas concerning communicative reason and an emancipatory project of modernity are predicated on its exclusion’. Scepticism to alterity based on nonrational, mystical or unverifiable beliefs is at the heart of Habermas’s opposition to post-modernism. 6.2. Levinasian responsibility versus freedom and autonomy Responsibility and freedom are both key notions in ethics; and surely, ‘if the main paradigm of how to understand human action is that of mechanistic causality, freedom and responsibility become increasingly problematic notions’ (Zaborowski, 2000:48). Most modern Western philosophy links the subject’s responsibility to its freedom; one needs to be free in order to be held responsible. Levinas inverts this relationship in a manner that undercuts the free/not free distinction altogether. The experience of being in ‘proximity’ to the Other is an event that arrests the subject in its freedom and makes it stand in front of the

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Other in a state of guilt: ‘My arbitrary freedom reads its shame in the eyes that look at me’ (Levinas, 1969:252). Proximity refers to the state of soul of the subject approaching an Other (Levinas, 1981:86) rather than measured distance. In proximity there is still difference, but also non-indifference and responsibility. The proximity of the subject and the Other never stands for a situation in which they are close enough, according to Levinas. There is always the need for disclosing more of the ‘face’ of the Other in dialogue, in order to clarify and deepen the responsibilities of the subject. The face is a metaphor for the other person in all his or her vulnerability, which presents itself to the subject as a moral summons to be acknowledged. Proximity does not refer to geographical distance, but to the immediacy of the engagement with difference, the immediate demand for responsibility expressed in the face of the vulnerable Other (Popke, 2003:304). The metaphorical face cannot be reduced to a fully knowable content, as the alterity of the Other should not be violated. Levinas’s ethics begins with answering the call for responsibility from the face of the Other, and he holds that the identity of the subject (self) is shaped as a byproduct in this process. The ‘face’ is the very essence of the other human, prior to any cultural coding—the face is meaning all by itself. The presence of the face is in language, in the sense that—for Levinas—‘it is the way in which we find ourselves related in speech to the face of the other that we find ourselves obliged to the other’ (Hendley, 2004:153). Seeing the face is a dialogical event; the face of the Other is always essentially the face of the one who addresses the subject in speech. It is the relation with the Other in discourse and dialogue that questions my freedom and calls me to responsibility (Levinas, 1969:213). Hence, the dialogues of communicative planning necessarily draw the planner into new relations of responsibility. The ethics of Levinas is contrary to Western individualism; the subject cannot be free until it answers the Other’s call, and this task is never finished. The self is accountable to the Other prior to its freedom as a subject. Subjectivity can arise only through responsibility to the Other. It does not give meaning inside Levinas’s theory building to suggest that the subject would be freer without responsibility, as the responsible relationship with the Other is what constitutes the subject: ‘instead of offending my freedom it calls it to responsibility and founds it’ (Levinas, 1969:203; and 1981:124). This leads to a troubled and contradictory relationship between freedom and responsibility in Levinasian ethics, as is evident from his own words:

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The freedom of the subject that posits itself is not like the freedom of a being free as the wind. It implies responsibility—which should surprise, nothing being more opposed to freedom than the nonfreedom of responsibility. The coinciding of freedom with responsibility constitutes the I, doubled with itself, encumbered with itself. (Levinas, 1969:271) If one does not take care of the Other, one puts one’s own identity at stake, as the subject (self) finds renewed life and new insight in meeting the radical alterity of the Other (Levinas, 1969:40–41). The presence of the Other in face-to-face encounters, the experience of difference embodied in the conversation of concrete engagement, teaches us something and enhances understanding of our place in society. ‘(T)he face of the Other is a metaphor for knowing’ (Levinas, 1969:49). ‘(O)therness refers to the dimension of surprise that overtakes the self’ (Barnett, 2005:10). Raffoul (1998:278) points to a problem which is essential to the relationship between critical communicative planning and responsibility. Critical communicative planning aims for empowerment of deprived groups participating in, or affected by, the planning effort. When successful, the planning makes such groups more autonomous; that is, less dependent on others’ decision to give assistance (Tengland, 2008). But how far can this process be taken in a society ruled by Levinas’s ideas? Responsibility does not arise in decisions taken by a subject contemplating freely (Levinas, 1981:112), so how can moral behaviour on the part of self be combined with freedom of choice? The Other’s needs set the priorities of the responsible subject. The autonomy of self is then lost, for ‘(i)n the ideal autonomous life, what is achieved must have been chosen, what is chosen must have been preferred and preferences must be ‘‘of one’s own’’’ (Bavetta & Guala, 2003:428). In this respect, the ambitions of communicative planning theorists run contrary to Levinasian ethics. Hendley (2000:90) asserts that the ethics of Levinas grants private autonomy: ‘Our respect for the private autonomy of the individual is simply an expression of the unconditional mode of consideration of the other to which we find ourselves called’. In my view, the status of private autonomy in Levinas’s ethical universe is far more ambiguous, as the subject is not only expected to have the decency to show respect, but also has the ethical obligation to take responsibility. This responsibility is unlimited, according to Levinas, so that the freedom of the subject never has the last word. In proximity to the

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Other, it is always the Other who has the final say. ‘My responsibility for the other is ever ‘‘increasing’’ insofar as I can never be done with it, never fulfill it in a way that would free me of my responsibilities’ (Hendley, 2000:90). Levinas (1981:112) even holds that the unlimited responsibility places the subject as a hostage to the Other. Habermas distinguishes between public and private autonomy. The degree of public autonomy is determined by citizens’ capacity to participate in processes of democratic will formation and exchange of opinions. It may be possible to maintain this capacity even under Levinasian responsibility to the Other. Private autonomy, on the other hand, has to do with the individual’s capacity to pursue her own conception of the good life (Cooke, 1997:272). It is hard to see how individuals can have private autonomy in Levinas’s ethical model. Every Other is also a self; ‘the Other’ is an interchangeable term that shifts point of reference, depending on who pronounces the words (Ha¨gglund, 2004:53). Everybody will therefore be steered by the needs of an Other. The empowerment gains made by critical communicative planning are likely to improve the subject’s capacity to serve the Other, but the final result would be a society of non-autonomous people, even if they might be functioning at a higher level of welfare. The empowerment efforts of critical communicative planning are trumped by the ethics of responsibility, and ‘autonomy. . .is incapable of accounting for responsibility’ (Raffoul, 1998:278). 6.3. Instrumentality versus non-reciprocity: Listening Levinas makes demands on face-to-face communication, as does Habermas. Levinas wants to establish a mode of communication that is free from ideological distortion, that is not masking the Other’s face. But the non-instrumental types of dialogue aimed for in Habermas’s discourse ethics and in Levinas’s ethics of responsibility are still different, as shown in this section. Listening is, however, seen as a responsibility in all dialogue. What is required in the Levinasian face-to-face relation with the singular interlocutor, the one who addresses the subject in speech, is much like the requirements for Habermas’s ‘ideal speech situation’ in insisting on avoiding all instrumental thinking. No means-ends rationality guides the ethical relationship between self and Other in Levinas’s account. ‘(A)ny attempt by a subject to rationalize or to calculate their obligations to others negates the ethical relation

itself. . .’ (Barnett, 2005:8). Focusing on one important form of instrumental relationship, Howitt (2002:300) contends that: The economic relationship of possession, which underpins so many dimensions of human relationships, reduces the other, and in many circumstances the landscapes that are the other’s nourishing places, to the indifferent, interchangeable facelessness of a market commodity. Inclusion means engaging with the Other in dialogue. As there cannot be any instrumental thinking in the ethical relationship, the subject is not to expect reciprocity in the dialogue; to recognise the Other is to give and not at all to consider what is in it for oneself. As soon as calculation enters the scene or reciprocity is sought, the pure alterity of the Other disappears and the actors exit the ethical plane. The Other may be responsible for me, but that is his or her own affair and of no consequence in defining my moral obligations. The ethical relation is irreducibly asymmetrical and unidirectional; it leaves the subject as a ‘hostage’ to the Other. ‘(E)very communicative orientation to another person has this sort of sacrifice as its potential’ (Hendley, 2004:161). Actually, what is required in Habermasian dialogue concerning the repression of strategic thinking and instrumental rationality might lead to consequences for the subject that are similar to the consequences of complying with Levinas’s demands for being hostage to the Other. The willingness to bow unconditionally to the force of the best argument and show deep empathy often comes at the expense of achieving personal, self-centred goals. Nevertheless, the need for technological mastery and political self-preservation cannot be ignored: Indeed, without these political and technological structures of organization we would not be able to feed mankind. This is the great paradox of human existence: . . .to ensure the survival of the other we must resort to the technico-political systems of means and ends (Levinas & Kearney, 1986:28). Note, however, that this admission is about instrumentality in the political sphere, not the ethical (a distinction to which we will shortly return). In the ethical realm, Levinas is sceptical about any organised infrastructure of laws and rights, because it ‘is thought to contravene a principle of unlimited responsibility towards otherness by introducing a degree of calculation into the practice of care’ (Barnett, 2005:14).

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Lipari (2004:127–128) lists four key contributions of dialogic philosophy to communication ethics: (a) Acknowledging radical alterity. (b) Decentring egoistic subjectivity. (c) Emphasising the constitutive over the symbolic dimensions of communication. (d) Privileging the moral obligation. All these points were briefly dealt with above. The privileging of moral obligations is closely linked to the question of reciprocity or asymmetry in dialogue, which reveals a difference between the communicative ethics of Levinas and Habermas. For Levinas, the Other figures in relations to alterity that exceed a reciprocal dynamic of dialogue or recognition. Reciprocity is not expected or required in the full opening up to the Other; the subject has asymmetrical responsibility for the Other. Bernstein (1992:74) insists that, contrary to Levinas, there is a reciprocity between the subject and the Other which is compatible with their radical alterity. ‘For both stand under the reciprocal obligation to seek to transcend their narcissistic egoism in understanding the alterity of the Other’ (italics in original). The self and the Other should both bracket status differentials and deliberate as if they were social equals. The problem of the Other is fundamental, not only for Levinas but also for Habermas. The primary concern of Habermas is with the personal Other as he or she appears in communicative action, that is, with reciprocal communication in achieving mutual understanding (Bernstein, 1992:229). The two approaches supplement each other in that Habermas emphasises reciprocity, symmetry and mutual recognition, while Levinas accentuates non-reciprocity, asymmetry and faulty recognition. ‘Being communicatively rational involves justifying my position in the light of whatever challenges might come from others, not merely those which are easily assimilated to my own point of view’ (Hendley, 2004:159). The challenge is formidable when indiscriminately opening up for the Other, that is, when welcoming any value differences into the dialogue. The Other, whom Levinas insists that the subject regard as master and teacher, might not aim for mutual understanding or communicative rationality at all. The self is encumbered with a commitment which is unintelligible in means-ends logic insofar as it exceeds and potentially undermines achievement of the subject’s more self-interested, or what Habermas characterises as strategic, objectives of speaking. Drawing on Lipari’s four points (a)–(d) above, one

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might reach the Levinasian conclusion: making sense of the strategically unintelligible commitment of rendering oneself hostage to the Other ‘demands a substantive recognition of the unconditional worth of the other as the point of such a commitment, the reason why we might regard that commitment as appropriate despite its lack of strategic utility’ (Hendley, 2004:159). What interrupts dialogical engagement is often not speaking, but the failure to listen for the Other’s alterity. Lipari (2004) focuses on listening as a mode of giving— the giving of attention. Listening can make dialogue reciprocal although one of the interlocutors stays silent. The asymmetry remains; my-listening does not depend on the Other’s listening. The communicative planning theorists’ responsibility for including the Other has as its corollary the responsibility to listen: Listening, in contrast to hearing, is an enactment of responsibility made manifest through our posture of receptivity, a passivity of receiving the other into oneself, letting them enter into oneself without assimilation or appropriation. The listening is a process of contraction, of stepping back and creating a void into which the other may enter. It is the distance ‘I’ create so that ‘you’ may come forward. (Lipari, 2004:137) Listening thus involves opening up to the Other despite lack of conformity with ourselves, despite profound alterity; it ‘involves giving the other meaningmaking rights by renouncing one’s own inclinations to control and master’ (Lipari, 2004:138). Instead, the responsibility is for creating a space ‘to receive the alterity of the other and let it resonate’ (Lipari, 2004:138). Listening has been a theme in CPT from the start (Forester, 1980). Even then, three decades ago, listening was associated with responsibility. When not listening, ‘(w)e shirk the responsibility of responding genuinely when spoken to—as if we could extend into a way of living the perpetual refusal to respond when being greeted’ (Lipari, 2004:221). In fact, Forester anticipates several of the themes in Lipari’s Levinasian analysis: listening as active involvement at the risk of making the subject vulnerable, listening as adducing care, listening as part of a non-instrumental relationship. ‘Listening can be an act of respect, making manifest that we ‘‘take the Other seriously’’, rather than treat them instrumentally, bureaucratically, inhumanely’ (Lipari, 2004:224, italics in original). Forester even underscores—like Levinas—the Other’s significance for constituting the self, for developing our subjectivity:

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By not listening we deny ourselves the insight, vision, compassion, and ordinary meaning of others. We deny our own possibilities of learning, growing, understanding who we are—collectively and individually. And so we undermine our understanding of who we are and can be. (Forester, 1980:221) For Levinas, the priority of the Other is absolute in dialogue between self and Other. Influenced by Habermas, Forester might not endorse Levinas’s rejection of all expectations of reciprocity in the ethical relation with alterity. Nevertheless, Forester reminds us that, however salient the process (the dialogue), people come first: ‘Listening means paying attention to people—and not subordinating care for them. . .to an interest in the abstract qualities of argument’ (Forester, 1980:228). At the end of the day, the point of dialogue is to enhance people’s living conditions through communicative power and not to fulfil some procedural commitment. ‘If we listen so we may respond with sensitivity and care, our actions may be freeing, enhancing life rather than generating ‘‘feedback’’’ (Forester, 1980:219). Levinas constructs his ethics from the infinite responsibility of the face-to-face relation. If communicative planning theorists were to subscribe to his claim for infinite responsibility to the Other, one implication would be non-reciprocity and hence rejection of Habermasian dialogue. Discourse ethics, as outlined in the introductory chapter, would no longer be valid as a guideline. Point (D), with its aim of mutual understanding, would be unsupported, and the subject would be guided not by the quality of arguments but rather by the call of the Other (point C). The ensuing paragraphs deal with Levinas’s ideas of the Third and the political, in order to examine whether these ideas point to a strategy for narrowing the gap between Levinasian responsibility and Habermasian dialogue after all (Levinas, 1969, 1981). 6.4. Politics and planning: Consequences of the presence of the Third Focus on the relationship of responsibility between the subject and a singular Other has triggered the question of whether Levinas’s philosophy is not a ‘solipsism for two’ and therefore incapable of properly understanding responsibility in social settings (Zaborowski, 2000:56). This is a salient question when using Levinas’s ideas to illuminate the responsibilities of planning theorists, as planning is always a collective affair. Part of the rationale for public planning is exactly

its identification and management of consequences to third parties. Hence, if Levinas is to have anything to offer planning theorists, his theory building must show a way out of the infinite responsibility for a singular Other. The introduction of the Third, and the distinction between the realms of ethics and politics, opens up such an escape route. It was nevertheless necessary to start with Levinas’s ideas about responsible relationship between the subject and a singular Other, both in order to introduce his concepts and because political interactions cannot do without corrective from this fundamental dyadic relationship. There are often several people in proximity of the self, so the attention of the subject cannot be undividedly directed to a single other. Since the Third exists in a condition of parity with respect to the Other, the subject is no less responsible for the welfare of the third party than it is for the other person. The Third is not necessarily a singular person; it might in principle represent the rest of humanity (Gauthier, 2007:165). There is always a Third, although not necessarily in proximity. Hence, in the meeting with another person’s naked face, the subject is confronted with other people, who may be just as much in need of consideration and help as the one who is in proximity. The planning theorist is responsible not only to the PhD student visiting her office, but to all her students; she is responsible not only to the one colleague who poses a question after her conference presentation, but to everyone in the audience; and she is responsible not only to the reader e-mailing a comment on her latest paper, but to all her readers. In short, the Third introduces the realm of politics, in which responsibility extends to all humanity. This has consequences for the theory and practice of inclusion, to which we return later in this chapter. A wholly new communicative situation arises with the recognised presence of the Third. Intimate one-onone discourse is no longer sufficient. ‘Faced with two parties who simultaneously vie for its attention and concern, the self is compelled to weigh competing ethical obligations’ (Gauthier, 2007:166). The sphere of moral concern is thus enlarged. (T)he third party ensures that [self’s] attempt to satisfy its asymmetrical obligations to the other person will not be pursued at the excessive expense of the mass of humanity. In this sense, the Third serves as a corrective to the danger of ethical myopia. (Gauthier, 2007:167) As the Third inspires the creation of institutions, laws and the state, the presence of the Third projects the

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subject into the realm of politics. While ethics concerns the unique imperative arising from a unique Other, politics concerns the negotiation of multiple and competing imperatives. Politics is understood as the (epistemological) realm of decision-making—in contrast to ethics, which belongs to the (phenomenological) realm of the encounter with the Other (Murray, 2003b:41). By virtue of their general quality, laws make no allowance for human alterity and uniqueness. Even in the most enlightened and liberal societies, laws oppress the individual as seen from a Levinasian perspective. Laws belong to the political, and as Levinas writes, ‘politics left to itself bears a tyranny within itself; it deforms the I and Other who have given rise to it, for it judges them according to universal rules’ (Levinas, 1969:300). Hence, there is a lacuna between ethics and politics, and politics cannot be derived from ethics in Levinas’s conceptual universe. In everyday interaction with others, moral responsibility is mediated by ‘the political world of the impersonal ‘‘third’’—the world of government, institutions, tribunals, prisons, schools, committees, and so on’ (Levinas & Kearney, 1986:30). In daily life, we have to compare the needs and wishes of different individuals, set priorities and make decisions that will inevitably reflect the fact that we are unable to fulfil everybody’s needs. Planners find themselves in this situation, and public planning is embedded in the realm of the political. Dialogical planning processes always involve more than two individuals and are preoccupied with justice, fairness and equity. However, (t)here is a certain measure of violence necessary in terms of justice; . . . if one speaks of justice, it is necessary to allow judges, it is necessary to allow institutions and the state; to live in a world of citizens, and not only in the order of the Face to Face (Levinas, 1998:105). Even if inevitable, justice and politics in all its forms must always be held in check by the responsibility inherent in the initial dyadic relation. There is a neverending oscillation between ethics and politics in the theory and practice of planning. The norm that must continue to inspire and direct the moral order of the political realm is the ethical norm of the inter-human (Levinas & Kearney, 1986:30). In politics, the Other, whoever he or she is, is bound by the same institutions, laws and norms as the self. Politics forms a sphere in which the subject can reasonably expect to be treated with reciprocity from the others (Simmons, 1999:94). The self is restored to a

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position where it may now demand suspension of unidirectional responsibility. ‘Reciprocity emerges here as impartiality demands that I take the interests of every other into account, including myself, as an other to the others’ (Hendley, 2000:48). In order to encompass those Others who cannot be reached in face-to-face encounters, ethics must be transfixed into language, justice and politics; hence ethics needs politics. Politics also needs ethics, and it is useful to note one similarity between Levinas’s and Habermas’s views on language in the realms of political/strategic action and ethical/communicative action. Habermas holds that there can be no completely strategic use of language that could be abstracted from its communicative use. Levinas contends that interhuman relations cannot be purely political; they have to retain elements of the ethical and must be formed on the basis of the subject’s responsibility for the Other. Even as we use language strategically, we must also use it communicatively. Even as we use language politically, we must also use it to reveal the face of the Other (Hendley, 2000:18–19). Universalisation of responsible actions into common norms and rules of conduct distances self from Other, but is nevertheless required to reach the other Others (Simmons, 1999:97). In the state’s web of generalisations, classifications and power relations, the subject is unable to respond directly to the face of the unique Other. Response is institutionalised and formed by the rights and duties of broader categories of people. ‘Even when the state functions perfectly it is, by its very nature, opposed to ethics’ (Simmons, 1999:98). Public planners thus have a role that is partly at odds with Levinasian ethics, and so have planning theorists as teachers and researchers for the state. This is not the full picture, however, as theorists of communicative planning may help to answer the question of how to set priorities between competing obligations and duties in order to act in line with principles of ethics in the public arena. According to Levinas (1969:298): ‘Justice consists in. . .making possible expression. . .Justice is a right to speak.’ This does not answer the question, but hints at the inclusion of others in dialogue as part of the solution. Murray (2003a) suggests that the competing calls of multiple Others can be prioritised not by invoking an external hierarchy of principles, but through dialogue. This attributes an important role to dialogue in the realm of politics, in addition to its role of unmasking the face of the Other in the ethical sphere. Murray holds that something like Habermas’s ‘ideal speech situation’ would be required for dialogue to fulfil its political role,

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and, furthermore, a model of justice that seeks a dialogical prioritisation of calls is also needed but not yet developed (Murray, 2003a:4). Murray tries to explain why dialogical engagement with Others can reveal the relative moral force of an ethical summons. ‘(T)he stronger voice, understood as a reflection of ethical priority, will prevail precisely through its greater capacity to unsettle the self’s own preconceptions, justifications, arguments, and rebuttals’ (Murray, 2003a:19). The face of the Other is experienced as a calling into question of the self, ‘an uprooting of the I’ (Levinas, 1969:83). Murray proposes that the degree to which the Other’s testimony disables and disrupts the rhetoric of the subject ‘is a reliable, though by no means assured, measure of the relative ethical priority of that call’ (Murray, 2003a:18). Murray makes the point that this use of dialogue differs from Habermas’s (1990:198) claim that ‘(a)rgumentation insures that. . .nothing coerces anyone except the force of the better argument’. It is also worth noting that the use of dialogue for calling into question the argumentation and rhetoric of the subject turns on its head John Forester’s strategy for counteracting misuse of power in planning processes. Forester (1989:109–111) suggests that the critical communicative planner should foster open and authentic political debate by questioning possibilities and shaping responses in the face of societal values and norms restricting openness, power relations maintaining domination, and conflict repressing legitimate interests. In this power-equalising strategy, the planner (the self) questions the arguments and rhetoric of supposedly strong actors in the process, while in Murray’s revelation of the urgency of calls, the arguments and motives bringing the planning subject into the conversational relationship are themselves questioned. In any case, the Third is ‘the birth of the question’ (Derrida & Dufourmantelle, 2000:5), opening for divided attention in dialogue and for reciprocity requiring that questions be answered. Forester’s strategic use of questioning is foreign to Levinas’s ethical relationship. There is, however, sometimes a fine line between questioning for strategic reasons and for reaching mutual understanding, and it is hard to see how Levinas can wholly dispense with the subject’s questioning of the Other. Through this aspect of conversation, and by taking the Other’s response into consideration, the subject can develop with the Other a shared sense of context. Then a more or less univocal meaning of what is said can emerge for the two interlocutors (Hendley, 2000:7).

6.5. Responsibility and inclusion: Hospitality The contradiction that links Levinas’s theory to the responsibility theme is this: to act morally, according to Levinas, is to give total attention to the Other. When there is a Third, as there always is in the real world, acting morally implies acting unresponsively, in the sense of not responding to the Third. The Third is then ignored, and this is irresponsible action. The introduction of politics and justice in Levinas’s system of ethics is essential in order to navigate out of this dilemma. It is the responsibility of planning theorists to develop models for including the Third in public deliberation and dialogue and to analyse how this can be done with the least relaxation of ethical principles. This section presents Derrida’s analysis of the Levinasian obligation to welcome the Other. The open dialogue is the paradigmatic form of interpersonal action in CPT, but there are dangers with indiscriminate entry to planning dialogue. In a few places, for example, in Totality and infinity, Levinas (1969:254) applies the terms ‘hospitality’ and ‘welcome’ of the Other, but this is not typical. These terms will nevertheless be used in the remainder of this chapter, as they are convenient for analysing inclusion of the Other and the Third in planning dialogue. Use of the terms does not mean that I stray far from Levinas’s ideas, rather it means reading Levinas through the glasses of Jacques Derrida (Derrida, 1999, 2006; Derrida & Dufourmantelle, 2000). Derrida writes that: ‘Although the word is neither frequently used nor emphasized within it, Totality and Infinity bequeaths to us an immense treatise of hospitality’ (1999:21, italics in original). Derrida understands Levinas as attempting to elaborate an interpretation of welcoming and hospitality. According to Derrida, Levinas offers us a genuine ethics of hospitality, even ethics as hospitality (Raffoul, 1998:275). Against the conception of hospitality as a capability or power of the subject, based on control of a self-assured proper place, Derrida (1999) emphasises, on the contrary, the originality and radicality of Levinas’s concept of hospitality, which result from the subject’s infinite responsibility for the Other. In the realm of ethics, the self welcomes the Other beyond its own capacities of welcoming. The subject receives beyond its capability. When hospitality, like responsibility, is infinite, the subject opens to an Other which is greater than itself. In planning dialogue this would be tantamount to inviting anyone in unconditionally, putting the new entry in the position of a master.

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The Other is for Levinas and Derrida unidentifiable and unforeseeable. The alterity brought into the planning process by the Other may not further or even go in for rational analysis (of any familiar sort). Therefore, the otherness induced by unconditional hospitality undermines planning as a predictive tool, whether recommendations are made on the basis of communication or calculation. When trying to accommodate pure otherness in their theories, communicative planning theorists may run into conflicting responsibilities. For example, the responsibility for fully open planning dialogues can make it more difficult to fulfil responsibilities for preparing planning input for political decision-making.13 The idea of unconditional hospitality can be criticised for an ‘ethical overload’ (Critchley, 2006:103), and the infinity of responsibility and hospitality must be modified in the political realm. Invitation into planning dialogue is thus not necessarily unconditional. In setting conditions, the planning theorist should, however, be very alert to respecting alterity. All limitations of hospitality are exposed to what they seek to exclude, haunted by those who question the legitimacy of the restrictions. CPT and Habermasian dialogue aim to be inclusive, while Derrida holds that ‘the ethical question concerns the relationship to an other who ultimately escapes inclusion because she cannot be included and remain other at the same time’ (Thomassen, 2006a:115). This is the same warning against levelling difference as was listed against consensus in the preceding chapter on critique of CPT. Derrida (2006:225) admits that hospitality has a paradoxical trait, and the title Hospitality plays on this by combining the extremes of hostility and hospitality. Hospitality should be unconditional from the ethical point of view, but Derrida concedes that he would nevertheless be unable to open up or offer hospitality without reaffirming that he must be the master of his house, without being ‘assured of his sovereignty over the space and goods he offers or opens to the other as stranger’ (Derrida, 2006:225). He sees self-limitation or self-contradiction in the demand for hospitality; in the political realm, where there should be reciprocity, and

13 Spivak (1994:43–64) writes about a planning case, the Flood Action Plan in Bangladesh. He studies how responsibility is associated with a consultation process (dialogue) in this case. It is described how dialogue collapsed when otherness posed a challenge. This happened when an ‘authentic’ representative of the Bengali peasants got the floor (Spivak, 1994:60–62). See Thomassen (2006b) for a discussion of dilemmas concerning unlimited inclusion.

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where one expects ‘being oneself in one’s own home’, even when hosting a stranger, hospitality ‘remains forever on the threshold of itself’ (Derrida, 2006:225). Differentiation is necessary, as Ha¨gglund (2004:66) writes: (I)f I did not discriminate. . .between what I welcome and do not welcome, what I find acceptable and unacceptable, it would mean that I had renounced all claims to be responsible, make judgments, or pursue any critical reflections at all. Moreover, it would mean that I had opened myself without reservations to whatever is violently opposed to me and can extinguish everything that is mine, including my principles of hospitality. Ha¨gglund (2004:52) criticises Levinas for having nothing to say regarding all the situations where the subject is confronted with an other who assaults her, turns down the offered hospitality, and in turn denies to help when the subject needs it. The same contrariety is inherent in planning dialogue. From the principles of discourse ethics in the introductory chapter, it is seen that Habermasian dialogue aims to be open and inclusive, as is also recommended in CPT. Everyone is welcome to participate, but those entering the dialogue must follow the rules of discourse ethics. Communicative planning faces the democratic dilemma at the micro level: dialogue should not include individuals out to destroy dialogue. Hence, participation in planning dialogue is not unconditional, the insiders remain masters. There seems to be an analogy with political rationality which protects the capacity to make collective decisions by means of political institutions of the type desired (Diesing, 1962). The responsibility of communicative planning theorists is not only to the singular Other, building theory to support her welcome into dialogue. The theorists are also responsible for keeping up deliberative democracy, by fortifying the institution of dialogue in planning. This implies some gate-keeping, maintaining the threshold of compliance with the tenets of discourse ethics. There must be an extended welcome into planning dialogue, though. For it is in the welcoming of the face of the Other that equality is founded (Levinas, 1969:214)—and thus justice. The credibility of the claim made by CPT that it seeks fairness in public planning—both in procedure and substance—depends on our willingness to let the Other reveal herself to us and, according to Levinas, let the Other command the relationship; otherwise equality ‘is but an abstract idea and a word’ (Levinas, 1969:214).

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In analysing hospitality, Derrida negotiates between two seemingly contradictory imperatives; the obligation to unconditionally welcome the Other before any knowledge, recognition or identity, on the one hand, and the moral command of welcoming and effectively interacting with someone in particular, someone with a name, an identity and a social origin, on the other hand. Hospitality requires compliance with both imperatives (Derrida & Dufourmantelle, 2000). Surely though, the hospitable question for a name, for information opening the subject up to difference and surprise, can turn into an interrogation bent on closing doors and raising the threshold for entry into dialogue. This may be the effect of asking about the Other’s interests in the planning process at hand, her partiality, objectivity and willingness to contribute to mutual understanding. As Derrida stresses: ‘The question of hospitality is thus also the question of the question’ (Derrida & Dufourmantelle, 2000:29). The disputed issue of whether participants in dialogue should be questioned and possibly contradicted, or whether they should be offered unquestioning welcome, seems analogous to the difference between politics and ethics. In the realm of ethics, the responsibility of the subject to the Other ‘is prior to dialogue, to the exchange of questions and answers’ (Levinas, 1981:111). In the realm of politics, on the other hand, if someone disagrees with me, I should not automatically accept this criticism as a law that is not to be questioned or counterattacked—as such an indulgent stance could harm both myself and the Third. The strategy of ‘questioning and shaping attention’, recommended by Forester (1989:109–111) to counteract misuse of power in critical communicative planning, belongs to the realm of politics. The strategy of questioning and shaping attention is valuable to communicative planners. It is their primary tool for reducing the political transaction costs of deprived groups and augmenting the political transaction costs of groups misusing their sources of power to shift planning towards recommendation of an alternative that further builds their power base (Sager, 2006a). Nevertheless, this flexible strategy is compatible with the entire gamut of welcomings, from real inclusion to formal invitation followed by disregard. This last type of reception, inclusion as pure formality, would result from a questioning process leaving the arguments of the ‘welcomed’ group with zero weight, and from an attention-shaping process that allows the interests of the group to be completely ignored in the plan-making. In practice, the ‘exigencies of political community require some form of closure, exclusion,

and calculation. But these nonetheless offend against a norm of unconditional welcome that continues to serve as a principle of immanent critique of existing practices’ (Barnett, 2005:14). Questioning and shaping attention necessarily introduces a degree of calculation into the practice of care. Summing up: planning always takes place in the political realm. Therefore, opening up the dialogue implies welcoming others into both ethical and political relationships. The planner (the host) has a complicated role. She cannot escape from the responsibility of the face-to-face relationship, although her attention has to be shared between the Other and the Third. Her behaviour must be formed by her participation in asymmetric ethical relations. It is nevertheless also her task to ensure that the dialogue fulfils its political purpose, enhancing mutual understanding and exploring the possibilities for approaching consensus on matters related to the plan. In her capacity as facilitator and mediator, the planner must arrange for symmetrical, reciprocal relations between the parties. She must work politically while attending to her moral obligations. Contradictions between the responsibilities of the ethical and political realm force the planner to live with double binds. 6.6. Responsibility and inclusion: Toleration This section on toleration presents a mostly Habermasian analysis of Levinas’s welcoming theme. As shown in the preceding sections, Levinas makes a distinction between the ethical and the political realm, and is thus able to circumvent the ethical injunction of infinite responsibility for the Other. Habermas also needs to delimit the ethical, and does so by contrasting it with the moral. The ethical point of view concerns what is good for a person in the long run; that is, goals relative to a particular subjective history, tradition, or way of life. The moral point of view, on the other hand, concerns what is equally good for all, and as such, not relative to a particular subject (Thomassen, 2006b:442). By moral reasoning one can achieve political integration: for example, inclusive dialogue in planning processes. Moral reasons trump ethical ones, and so Habermas’s emphasis is on political and rational self-legislation rather than ethical self-expression. He seeks ‘a nonlevelling and nonappropriating inclusion of the other in his otherness’ (Thomassen, 2006b:442, italics in original). Inclusive dialogue in politics and planning allows for difference and otherness in the ethical realm, but the inclusion of the other in her ethical difference is

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conditional on her acceptance of the ethical–moral (political) distinction and on her acceptance of the common political culture, for example, the principles of the constitution (Thomassen, 2006b:443). A political community along these lines will not exclude a priori persons with different values or ethical backgrounds. ‘Inclusion’, Habermas writes, ‘means that the political community stays open to include citizens of any background without confining those Others within the uniformity of a homogeneous national community. (Habermas, The postnational constellation, page 73, cited from Thomassen, 2006b:443; italics in original) Successful inclusion in planning dialogue is essential to comply with the tenets of discourse ethics. Each group partaking in dialogue must be willing to listen and respond to viewpoints from every other group, even if the listener finds the arguments ill-conceived or of little merit. It is worth examining whether toleration is the right criterion for deciding who should participate in planning dialogue. Jones (2007:384) identifies two standard conceptual features of toleration: First, toleration in its orthodox sense entails disapproval or dislike. We tolerate only that to which we object; if we find something unobjectionable, we have no occasion to tolerate it. Thus, when people conform to the model case of toleration, they are usually thought to possess two sorts of reason: (a) a reason for objecting to and so for preventing x and (b) a reason for not preventing x. Their reason not to prevent x overrides their reason to prevent it; hence they tolerate x. Secondly, we can tolerate only what we are able to prevent. If we object to x, but are powerless to prevent it, we cannot tolerate x. This is in accordance with Cohen’s (2004:69) definition, that: ‘an act of toleration is an agent’s intentional and principled refraining from interfering with an opposed other (or their behaviour, etc.) in situations of diversity, where the agent believes she has the power to interfere’. Borradori (2003) points to the religious origin of the notion of toleration. She holds that this origin makes toleration ‘the remnant of a paternalistic gesture in which the other is not accepted as an equal partner but subordinated, perhaps assimilated, and certainly misinterpreted in its difference’ (Borradori, 2003:16). Derrida and Habermas both acknowledge that, traditionally, toleration is conceived as an asymmetrical and

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one-sided relationship, where the tolerated depends on the tolerating bestowing toleration upon her as an act of grace. This view of toleration as paternalism makes Derrida reluctant to accept toleration as much better than a form of charity (Borradori, 2003:127), while Habermas seeks to develop the concept and provide an intersubjectivist interpretation grounded in dialogue. Derrida sees toleration as inextricably linked with biased power relations: Tolerance is always on the side of the ‘reason of the strongest’, where ‘might is right’; it is a supplementary mark of sovereignty, the good face of sovereignty, which says to the other from its elevated position, I am letting you be, you are not insufferable, I am leaving you a place in my home, but do not forget that this is my home. . . (Derrida in Borradori, 2003:127) As the visitor metaphor in the above citation shows, Derrida finds it reasonable to juxtapose toleration and hospitality. However, he regards toleration as the opposite of hospitality, or at least its limit: ‘Tolerance is a conditional, circumspect, careful hospitality’ (Derrida in Borradori, 2003:128). Derrida describes toleration as a scrutinised hospitality that is always under surveillance; it is parsimonious and protective of its sovereignty. Toleration as conceived by Derrida is sufficient neither for inclusive dialogue, as prescribed by discourse ethics, nor for the reciprocity between interlocutors of equal standing aimed for in Habermasian planning dialogue. This points to a dilemma, as conditional hospitality is all one can hope for in practice: ‘An unconditional hospitality is, to be sure, practically impossible to live; one cannot in any case, and by definition, organize it’ (Derrida in Borradori, 2003:129). It would, moreover, eliminate the predictability required for planning: whatever happens, happens; whoever comes, comes. Conceptual development of toleration is required because deliberative democracy demands the critical engagement of citizens with each other; ‘toleration in the sense of non-interference is too minimal for cooperative and yet engaged deliberation’ (Bohman, 2003:758). Arguments must be taken seriously and not be disqualified ex ante, but this does not entail that we refrain from criticising them. Indeed, the opposite is true, according to Bohman, since without criticism ‘others will not form the expectation that their reasons as publicly expressed shaped the course of the debate’ (Bohman, 2003:764, italics in original). Habermas develops the non-interference conception of toleration by analysing how this process of mutual criticism

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should be designed. One weakness of the standard formulation is that the threshold of toleration, which separates what is acceptable from what is not, is arbitrarily established by the existing authority. In contrast, Habermas argues for a deliberative democracy, where ‘tolerance emerges from the parties’ mutual recognition as equal partners in a dialogue over the norms that should govern society’ (Thomassen, 2006a:195). Habermas maintains that: ‘Within a democratic community whose citizens reciprocally grant one another equal rights, no room is left for an authority allowed to one-sidedly determine the boundaries of what is to be tolerated’ (Borradori, 2003:41; italics in original). For Habermas, toleration is defensible if practised in the context of a democratic community, where the limits of toleration are dialogically determined through rational exchange of arguments among citizens. When toleration is embraced as an integral part of CPT, it is at the same time conceded that planning dialogue cannot be fully inclusive. Habermas (2006:197) articulates the paradox: ‘(E)ach act of toleration must circumscribe the range of behaviour everybody must accept, thereby drawing a line for what cannot be tolerated. There can be no inclusion without exclusion’ (italics in original). If the democratic state is to prevail, it must resort to intolerance toward enemies of the constitution (Habermas, 2006:198), and if inclusive dialogue is to be feasible in planning, all parties must reciprocally take the perspectives of the others. Indifference to the Other is contrary to Levinas’s demand for responsibility and welcoming. It is also contrary to Derrida’s idea of hospitality, even conditional hospitality. Moreover, indifference to the Other’s opinions and attitudes exempts the subject of the obligation to be tolerant. We can only exercise toleration towards other people’s beliefs if we reject them for subjectively good reasons. Two kinds of reason have to be involved to make toleration a suitable political option: ‘reasons to reject the convictions of others and reasons to accept nevertheless common membership of essentially disagreeing people within the same political community’ (Habermas, 2006:199). However, civic inclusion is not only about overcoming controversy caused by different convictions and opinions. Equally important and problematic are different identities, and inclusion of different identities in planning dialogue entails recognition rather than toleration. In fact, the norm of mutual recognition of all as members of the political community—with equal rights—must be accepted

before all of us can mutually expect one another to be tolerant. ‘Thus, tolerance only begins where discrimination ends’ (Habermas, 2006:200). The toleration of identities is not primarily about extending the range of liberties available to certain groups, according to Jones (2006:125). Rather, it is about granting recognition to those groups. The primary concern when aiming to make planning dialogue inclusive is, most often, ‘not to allow people to do something to which others might object but to accord respect and standing to their identities so that there is no bar to their full inclusion in society’ (Jones, 2006:125). The toleration of others’ perspectives is part of recognising them as equal members of a political community, as Bohman sees it. Recognition should be granted, despite the potential for persistent disagreement and deep conflict. What toleration expresses is recognition of others as entitled to contribute to the definition of our common society (Bohman, 2003:765). In the context of cultural difference, Taylor (1994:64) insists that the politics of recognition demands ‘that we all recognize the equal value of different cultures; that we not only let them survive, but acknowledge their worth’ (italics in original). However, the combination of toleration and recognition creates a puzzle, as Jones (2006:128) brings to our attention: ‘According recognition to a group entails ascribing it some sort of positive value. Yet we can tolerate only that to which we object’. This puzzle is not troublesome when recognition is only associated with, and given to, identities, while toleration is associated with opinions, beliefs, and behaviour—but not identities.14 Some conclusions on communicative planning theorists’ responsibility for inclusion are listed below:

14

This delimitation of toleration is defended by Churchill (1997:201), who claims that the ‘objects of toleration. . .are not persons per se, but beliefs, attitudes, behavior (including verbal), and practices subject to change or alteration by the persons who hold these beliefs and attitudes or exhibit or participate in the behaviors in question’. This also seems to be Habermas’s solution:tolerance can only come to bear if there are legitimate justifications for the rejection of competing validity claims: ‘If someone rejects people whose skin is black we should not call on him to be ‘‘tolerant toward people who look different’’. . .For then we would accept his prejudice as an ethical judgment similar to the rejection of a different religion. A racist should not be tolerant, he should quite simply overcome his racism.’ In this and similar cases, we consider a critique of the prejudices and the struggle against discrimination to be the appropriate response— and not ‘more tolerance’. (Habermas, 2006:200, quoting R. Forst; italics in original).

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 First, indifference cannot be an attitude commended by planning theorists. Indifference would drain motivation from participants in the planning process for responding to Others, as it would not matter who Others are or what they say.  Second, lack of recognition, that is discrimination against cultural or ethnical identities, excludes a group from dialogue even before its arguments are heard. Hence, fighting discrimination should be part of the responsibility of planning theorists, as such struggle is crucial for making planning dialogue inclusive.  Third, intolerance ‘is evidenced in the inability of citizens to raise vital and significant concerns in deliberation, in the exclusion of relevant reasons, and in the illicit and unspoken generalization of the dominant or majority perspective’ (Bohman, 2003:775). These features of intolerance break with the tenets of discourse ethics and represent distortions of dialogue which communicative planning theorists have the responsibility to counteract.  Fourth, communicative planning theorists are responsible for promoting toleration, in the Habermasian sense. This means arguing for institutions working in line with discourse ethics, in order to let the various parties to a planning effort reciprocally determine whether certain opinions, beliefs and behaviours should be tolerated. The overall conclusion of this chapter is that, even in light of Levinas’s ideas of responsibility, the CPT ideal of Habermasian dialogue turns out not to be unreasonable as a lodestar in the political realm of urban planning. 7. Derridean responsibilities of planning theorists This chapter serves several purposes. While the responsibilities of planning theorists in their capacities as researchers and writers have been analysed so far, the present chapter also studies theorists’ responsibilities as educators and university academics. Furthermore, the aim is to extend the Derridean enquiry undertaken by Gunder and Hillier (2007) on the responsibilities of planners to deal more directly with theorists. This is potentially rewarding, as Derrida wrote repeatedly about the responsibility of the university, the theorists (philosophers), and the teachers. Gunder and Hillier offer an informative account of Derridean responsibility, and only the basics required for understanding the following exposition are reiterated below. Derrida

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touches on problems of responsibility in most of his writings, so there is no need to rely on the same sources as Gunder and Hillier. Instead, I select some publications in which Derrida directly addresses responsibility in the university and the research community (Derrida, 1983, 1986, 1995, 2002, 2003, 2004a, 2004b). Connections are drawn back to the notions of dual theory, unintended effects, consensus building, inclusion of the Other, and other themes already mentioned. Responsible action requires that a decision has to be made, and in the conceptual system of Derrida this can only happen when the actor faces an aporia, that is, an impasse or a contradiction (Sokoloff, 2005). This refers to situations in which no rule or similar guideline applies, and established knowledge does not inform the actor how to proceed. Neither does any authority tell the actor how to choose. The situation is marked by undecidability, meaning that the decision-maker has to invent the reason for choice (Bates, 2005). If I choose on the basis of a rule and employ the rule as a reason for my ‘decision’, then I let the rule—and the authority that supports it—take some moral responsibility for the choice. When the choice is taken on the basis of doctrine, tradition, rule or other authority, it is not entirely my choice, and then I cannot be fully responsible. This I can be only if not offered a handhold by any institution (set of rules); that is, when I find my own way out of a situation of double-binds and undecidability (Gunder & Hillier, 2007:78–81). Were planning to consist only of applying rules, it would create nothing that is new. It would merely impose ‘a stale past onto the future that annihilates the possibility that is promised by it’ (Sokoloff, 2005:345). If rules are imposed without acknowledging their contingent origin, they may become repressive and reactionary. Derridean ‘decision’, on the other hand, is an act of invention that cannot be fully grounded on anything that precedes it. As opposed to maintaining the political order, decisions have the potential to transform it (Sokoloff, 2005:345). Derrida’s concept of decision can therefore prove helpful in critical planning theory. The chapter reflects the belief that if the problems of ethics, justice and responsibility could be solved by the mere use of rules and algorithms that produce certain results with certain kinds of data, there would be little reason why learned persons should bother to make so much fuss about these notions in politics and planning research. Dividing the responsibilities of theorists into obligations they have as writers, teachers and university academics, respectively, makes it easier to see who planning theorists are responsible to. The accountability

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aspect of moral responsibility suggests that scholars may be requested to explain (to account for) their actions ‘by an audience presumed to have some capability or moral authority to pass judgment’ (Deetz & White, 1999:113). Several types of audience can call on the planning theorist to explain and defend his or her theoretical contributions. Academics must try to make their theories stand up to scrutiny by their colleagues at internal seminars, answer students at lectures, and counter the critique of the research community at conferences. As writers, theorists must account for their reasoning to referees, editors and the research community in the capacity of readers. Theorists are responsible to the research community for making their reasoning comprehensible and for putting forward only theories that can be defended (that are reasonable in this sense). However, the argument does not have to be fully developed when the theory is first presented. In the early stages of evolution it is hard to imagine what criticism will be raised against the theory. When this becomes clear, the theorist has a moral responsibility to respond to criticism, as this exchange of views and mutual examination of pros and cons constitute the logic by which the research community expands its knowledge.15 Finally, planning theorists are responsible to practising planners for providing theories that produce favourable consequences when applied in planning processes. Judging from the seemingly low use of planning theory among planners, this is an area where planning theorists have not met their responsibilities and, accordingly, where they face their greatest challenge. This seems to be true despite the fact that most theories of how planning should be conducted present rules for decision-making, as shown in the next section, and thus attempt to facilitate the work of planners. 7.1. Can Derridean responsible decisions be made in familiar modes of planning? Traditionally, planners are apt to regard planning as rational. It is difficult to harmonise this ingrained image of planning as rational action with the idea of planners

as responsible actors in the Derridean sense. Responsible action means breaking out of an impasse without relying on knowledge, principles, rules and the other intellectual authorities that join to make up the infrastructure of planning rationality. Derrida (1995:291) underlines this by insisting that a certain ‘madness’ must watch over thinking. ‘Rational decision’ is an oxymoron in the vocabulary of Derrida, where making a decision implies experiencing the impossible (Derrida, 1995:288), inventing something out of the impossible (Wang, 2005:52). Other than this, no general contradiction mars the relation between planning and Derridean responsibility. Planners rely on knowledge as far as it goes, but knowledge is always incomplete, which opens up for responsible decisions. What planners cannot do while acting responsibly, is deploy knowledge or rules in such a way that the choice of a particular plan follows as a consequence. Planners do not have to disregard rules to act responsibly, but they should realise that rules do not take all situation-specific facts, considerations and contingencies into account. Rules are never fully adequate; the rule of setting investment priorities according to benefit/cost ratios derived from cost– benefit analyses is a case in point. Such analyses never include everything that is relevant for the political decision and, besides, the included items are not calculated from perfect data.16 There is not a fixed pool of responsibility attributed to a particular decision. Responsibility is not distributed between actors influencing the decision in a manner that makes one actor less responsible if another actor is found to be more so. Analogically, a planner is not less responsible the more knowledge is accumulated about the case in question. In fact, the opposite would often be true; it might be irresponsible not to take available knowledge into account. On the other hand, using this knowledge is not sufficient for responsible action, according to Derrida. More knowledge limits the scope for judgement on many details, but one cannot evade judgement and thus responsibility when deciding on complex matters.

16

15

It is common to distinguish between pure and applied theory, see for example Mason (2006). The idea is that when writing applied theory one is closer to see its area of use, and thus more responsible for consequences. ‘Planning theory’ is always applied to some extent, as the term itself suggests the area of application. However, the range of activities that can be planned is so wide that end-uses served by planning theory are not always predictable.

Based on recent research, it could be argued that, for example, the Norwegian parliament’s Standing Committee for Transport and Communications decide responsibly on highway projects even if they demand cost–benefit analysis of each project. The reason is that there are huge discrepancies between the project ranking list and the rankings suggested by the size of the benefit/cost ratios (Sager & Ravlum, 2005). No other rule has been found to determine the choices of the committee members.

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Friedmann’s (1987) main traditions of planning thought all ‘revolve around one core concern: how knowledge should properly be linked to action’ (Friedmann, 1987:73–74). Planning, as Friedmann defines it, attempts to link scientific and technical knowledge to actions, to processes of societal guidance, or to processes of social transformation—all in the public domain (Friedmann, 1987:38). In Friedmann’s terminology, action means to set something new into the world, and is associated with decision-making. He sees planners as merely informing action without making the decisions, and they are therefore contrasted to actors. Friedmann touches on the problem of responsibility: ‘The only fixed requirement for an action is that it can be attributed to an actor who can be held accountable for at least its proximate consequences’ (Friedmann, 1987:44). He poses the question whether ‘planners have any responsibility for the knowledge and values they press upon actors’ (Friedmann, 1987:46), but leaves the answer open. The relationship that links knowledge to action is decisive for what kind of planning will result. The planning style that Friedmann sees coming, and which he professes, ‘turns both scientific and planning inquiries into a dialogic process between the researcher/planner and the subject/actor, who typically proceeds on the basis of unarticulated, tacit knowing’ (Friedmann, 1987:415). If tacit knowledge implied some kind of rule, this rule could be formulated, and the knowledge would not remain tacit. Hence, tacit knowledge is here interpreted as rule-less, based on intuition rather than forms of authority. Action and decision cannot then follow directly as a consequence of planning knowledge in Friedmann’s preferred mode of dialogical planning. Tacit knowledge and intuition affect the relationship between the planner’s processed knowledge, on the one hand, and action, on the other hand, and thereby open the way for decisions that are responsible in Derrida’s sense. Friedmann’s unwillingness to regard planners as actors seems quite strict. For the sake of argument, one can imagine that planners are faced with two different situations, with opposite consequences for the responsibility expected from them, although many cases of practical planning lie in between. In one type of situation the planners are decision-makers (deciding on aspects of the planning process, for example), while in the other situation they prepare for decisions to be made by their principals, the politicians deciding whether to implement the plan or not. In this second type of situation, the role of the planners does not make them responsible for decisions in the Derridean

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sense. The planners are nevertheless expected to be accountable and make the reasons for their recommendations transparent. The principal should be able to check that, if the planners actually applied the rule they claimed to be using, this would lead to the planning alternative that the planners in fact recommended. The recommendation should not be influenced by the private goals of the planners, and their strict use of rules enables the political principal to check this. As agents, the planners should not be responsible, but their principals should. Several theories of planning assume that the decision situation is not one of undecidability, and recommend rules for how to proceed, as in the following four examples. First, disjointed incrementalism advises the planner to take the next incremental step in the direction which provokes least resistance, and never to opt for larger change than can be corrected should something go wrong. Second, synoptic (rationalistic) planning is purely instrumental and recommends the planner to choose the bundle of instruments that gives the highest achievement of the given goal(s). That is, the planner should select an evaluation technique, such as the goals achievement matrix or cost–benefit analysis, and act according to its results. This is similar to what is prescribed by New Public Management, with its emphasis on management by objectives and results, in which cost–benefit analysis plays a prominent role in many countries. Undecidability, on the other hand, is foreign to calculation and derivation of final answers from algorithms. Advocacy planning is a third example. The rule guiding the planner is to choose the planning alternative preferred by the client group. There is, in general, a sharp contrast between loyalty and Derridean responsibility. Loyalty, implying that the planner ranks policy alternatives in the same order as the client group (Sager, 1998), means that the planner abdicates from the role of responsible professional. The theorist propagating advocacy planning recommends such an abdication. (Compare the co-optation example of CPT critique in Section 2.1.) The fourth example is collaborative planning, which is not oriented towards calculation. The planner might form a personal opinion on which alternative is best, without letting this standpoint follow directly from knowledge or rules. The next step is to recommend or decide which alternative should be implemented, if any. For clarity, it is assumed that collaborative planners require consensus on a planning alternative before they recommend implementation (whether the planners are a party to the decision—a stakeholder—or assigned the

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role of neutral mediators). In this case, the planners act upon a rule telling them to recommend plans with unanimous backing from the involved parties, and abstain from recommendation in all other situations. Thus, collaborative planners do not escape deployment of a rule for concluding on a case, and so do not act in a fully responsible way. (Compare the consensus example of CPT critique in a Section 2.3.) Critical communicative planning relies neither on the rule of loyalty, as in advocacy planning, nor on the rule of consensus, as in collaborative planning. The justice and fairness that are aimed for need to be transformed into concrete solutions in a process of collective deliberation. The outcome of deliberation frequently turns out to be ambiguous. CPT does not prescribe any specific action on the part of the planner in such situations. To further explore the role of planning theory in relation to Derridean responsibility, a dictum of John Forester’s is used as a springboard: ‘good theory is what we need when we get stuck’ (Forester, 1989:12). Planning theory is assumed to be helpful in situations where no rule applies and no practical knowledge tells the planner how to proceed. Yet, in order to preserve the possibility of responsibility, planning theory cannot remove the planner from a tight spot by completely filling the gap between practical knowledge and action. Rather, planning theory must facilitate reformulation of the problem or devise frameworks for seeing practical problems from new perspectives. The responsible planner cannot let decision follow directly from planning theoretical insights without further reflection. However, with a theoretical foundation to draw on, the final judgement that the planner has to make may look less frightening, less impossible, closer to problems the planner has dealt with before, and therefore less paralysing. The situation in which planning theory is pivotal, according to Forester, is thus similar to the situation in which ethics and responsibility become possible according to Derrida: . . .I have to invent the rule; and there would be no responsibility if I knew the rule. . .There is responsibility only because there are these aporetic structures in which I have to respond to two injunctions, different and incompatible. That’s where responsibility starts, when I don’t know what to do. If I knew what to do, well, I would apply the rule, and teach my students to apply the rule. But would that be ethical?. . .Ethics start when you don’t know what to do, when there is a gap between knowledge and action, and you have to take

responsibility for inventing the new rule which doesn’t exist. (Derrida, 2003:31–32) In order to break an impasse, it might be useful to know how to use planners’ knowledge to, for example:  affect the preferences of the client group in advocacy planning;  reduce resistance against incremental steps in directions the planner finds promising; and  build consensus in collaborative planning. It is in deciding how to deal with such tasks that Derridean responsibility can be exercised. Once client preferences are fixed, or the level of political resistance against each feasible incremental step is known, or consensus is achieved, respectively, undecidability vanishes, and—as already shown—there are rules for proceeding towards a decision. Even if ethics and responsibility both require undecidable situations, Derridean responsibility does not necessarily rely on codes inherited from ethics. For example, the planner cannot responsibly choose the alternative that is expected to give the highest aggregate utility, even if this is the utilitarian ethical rule. Neither can the planner responsibly refer to the rule of egalitarian ethics and choose the alternative that gives the largest improvement to the group that presently has the lowest welfare. For justice and fairness to occur, there must be active judgement and not only reliance on rules, knowledge and authority (Bates, 2005:6). This has consequences for planning theory, insofar as advocacy planning, equity planning and critical communicative planning all place emphasis on improving the fairness of plans. In contrast to legal choices, just decisions have to be made in conditions of undecidability. Justice cannot follow simply from the application of rules, such as those mentioned above. The fact that justice cannot be an object of cognition is what prevents the forced identity of law and justice. Collapsing justice and law would force citizens to surrender their critical faculties and identify with the given as laid down in rules. Dissent is therefore a necessary pre-requisite of justice, as it is of responsibility (Sokoloff, 2005:344). This is not to say that unfair local conditions cannot be improved by progressive planning practice, even if the planners reach decisions on the basis of knowledge and rules. Improved fairness does not require perfectly just and fully responsible decisions in the Derridean sense. Particularly when discussing the various strands of communicative planning, another side of Derrida’s

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concept of responsibility (than that related to undecidability and decision) becomes crucial. This is the responsibility of opening up to ‘the Other’ in hospitality (Gunder & Hillier, 2007:80–81, see also Chapter 6 on Levinas). An immediate problem when assuming responsibility for others is whether the geographical distance to the others should be allowed to influence the responsibility relationship. There is ‘the question of whether concerns for people in close proximity can be transformed into active concern for distant strangers’ (Barnett, 2005:6). This question is of the utmost importance to planning. If nearness in time and space is seen as decisive, responsibility to future generations is discounted to insignificance, and much of the sustainability literature would be a waste of time. Exclusion from processes of planning and policy-making upholds distance and might be disastrous for the group denied admission, and face-to-face dialogue would be privileged and count for even more than it does in communicative and collaborative planning practice today. If distance leads to indifference, most long-range and macro-level planning should be looked at with suspicion. Responsibility for opening up to the Other is highly apposite to teaching, in the encounter with students. Moreover, considering the increasing number of foreign students in many countries, effects of the multiple dimensions of distance on the student–teacher relationship become an issue of both pedagogical and moral interest. 7.2. Responsibility of planning theorists as educators Teaching is necessary for research, and this goes for planning theory, as for every other academic field. The teachers are the reproductive organs of the research community. Knowledge in the field will stagnate, dry up and be forgotten, unless passed on to new generations of prospective researchers. Postgraduate education is about creating and forming an offspring (Habermas, 1987:11). For planning theory to be sustainable, theorists’ responsibility for research must extend to the responsibility for teaching. Writing about the responsibility of philosophers, Derrida (2004b:170) insists that ‘we have the right to demand that philosophical research and questioning never be dissociated from teaching’. Generalised to other fields, this means that researchers in academic disciplines should have the right to control their own reproduction. Having established that planning theorists have a responsibility for teaching, there is the question of what

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they should be responsible for conveying to their successors. The ensuing account does not by any means aim to be complete. Just a few central points are elaborated, beginning with the linking of Derridean undecidability and responsibility to Jonas’s (1984) ideas on unintended effects. Jonas is right that ‘the excessively intricate web of events will, in principle, never conform to plan’ (Jonas, 1984:118), making it necessary to preserve the capacity for spontaneity at all times. In the future-oriented field of planning, there is an ultimate unpredictability. Without the ability to improvise, plans would soon be useless and forgotten— or simply harmful when used as guidelines for collective action, even if out of touch with reality. As Dvir and Lechler (2004) suggest: plans are nothing, changing plans is everything. Jonas’s accentuation of the fundamental need for improvisation depicts a situation from where knowledge does not point in any particular direction. This is where Jonas can be linked up with Derrida. The concept of undecidability defines such situations from where existing rules and knowledge—in Jonas’s case the plans—are unhelpful in guiding the next steps. Impromptu action and ad hoc measures could lead anywhere, however, and are likely to bring about effects that are unintended and not dealt with in the plan. Thus, when planners and decision-makers act responsibly and improvise in order to protect what can be saved of the plan, they produce consequences unintended by the planners. This risk is unavoidable, as unrevised plans lead to aporia—nonpassage.17 Jonas (1984:118) stresses ‘that any total responsibility. . .is always responsible also for preserving. . .the possibility of responsible action in the future’ (italics in original). It is thus the responsibility of planning theorists ‘not to plug up the indispensable, though not calculable, wellspring of spontaneity’ (Jonas, 1984:118) from which creative and improvised planning revisions can erupt in future unanticipated conditions. Neither in the goal nor on the road to it must the planning theorist ‘create a condition in which the potential candidates for a repetition of his (sic) own role have become lackeys or robots’ (Jonas, 1984:118).

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An aporia is an impasse that cannot be dissolved in a rational principle or ground. It is the condition causing undecidability. As an example, Thomassen (2006b:447) mentions that ‘defense of democracy, and by extension, inclusion and tolerance, is only possible in ways that simultaneously limit democracy, inclusion, and tolerance’. Thomassen, referring to Habermas, makes reference to the selfdestructive inclusion of the Nazis in Germany in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

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Protecting creativity means that planning theory should not be a doctrine, but should have an open structure paving the way for action in many directions. This comes with the risk that planning theory which can be used responsibly by planners in escaping from impasse, might also inspire tactics that many find repulsive, such as ‘walking through walls’. The same can be said of planning, as Jonas says of political action: it ‘has always been beset by the excess of causal reach over that of prediction and so was never free of an element of gambling’ (Jonas, 1984:118). The mechanisms above are essential in the teaching of planning theory, as they shape the relationship between planners and elected politicians. Planners must be taught to acknowledge the ubiquity of unintended consequences and the absolute necessity that responsible decision-makers ask for revisions that inevitably will sometimes produce effects that conflict with the planners’ intentions in the original plan. Contempt for politicians and democratic politics will easily breed in planning circles if the above mechanisms are misconstrued, and it is not realised that necessarily risky spontaneity and improvisation can save plans, even when challenging them. For Derrida, responsibility begins with questioning the origin of universal rules and confronting established concepts and practices. ‘There is no responsibility without a dissident and inventive rupture with respect to tradition, authority, orthodoxy, rule, or doctrine’ (Derrida, cited from Wang, 2005:49). Derrida calls for the questioning of academic texts—be it a reading, an interpretation, the construction of a theoretical model or the rhetoric of an argument (Ege´a-Kuehne, 1995:308). Teaching responsibility to planners entails the positioning of planning theory as a critical theory, such as critical pragmatism (Forester, 1993), for example. Derrida writes about the responsibility of philosophers, but the analogy with planning theorists is pertinent, as philosophy stands in a theory–practice relationship with empirical sciences that has some similarities to the relationship between planning theory and planning. The questioning of philosophy by philosophers is perceived by Derrida as a most compelling duty. The responsibility of a philosopher arises from the fact that ‘(a) philosopher is always someone for whom philosophy is not a given, someone who, in essence, must question the essence and the purpose of philosophy. And re-invent it’ (Derrida, cited from Ege´a-Kuehne, 2003:276–277). Analogically, planning theorists should question the essence and the purpose of planning and planning theory. The theorist has an obligation which entails the risk of

asking questions that are unsettling because they challenge established traditions, beliefs and certitudes (Derrida, cited from Ege´a-Kuehne, 2003:277). The questioning of planning tools and procedures prepares students for making decisions without trying to draw final answers solely from their professional training; that is, it prepares them for acting responsibly. Planning theorists must teach students that, even if the planning toolkit offers a machinery for decision support, this apparatus provides the kind of fuzzy criteria that allows for the possibility of things being different (Clegg, Kornberger, & Rhodes, 2007:394). Universities are criticised for allowing too much ‘preprofessionalism or ‘‘vocationalism’’, in the narrow sense of adaptation of one’s college education to the putative demands of a future job in the so-called outside world’ (LaCapra, 1998:44). Planning education has this decried characteristic. The purpose of teaching planning theory is to make vocationally trained planners reflect on their vocation and to show how their techniques, procedures, rules and professional practices are grounded in theoretical foundations offered by nonvocational disciplines taught at the university, such as philosophy and social theory. Hence, the task and the responsibility of the teachers of planning theory are to bridge the gap between vocational training and ‘the humanistic goals of increasing self-understanding and furthering critical inquiry into culture and society’ (LaCapra, 1998:44). This is what Derrida (1986:7) calls his ‘double responsibility’: I think I have to make two gestures simultaneously: to train people, to teach them, to give them a content, to be a good pedagogue, to train teachers, to give them a profession; and at the same time to make them as conscious as possible of the problems of professionalisation. Planning theorists’ responsibility as educators is a perilous engagement, a commitment to staying over the abyss and at the same time overcoming it (Derrida, 1983). This involves efforts to bestride the opposition between practice and theory, technology and metaphysics, and vocational guidelines and the principle of reason (Onisˇcˇik, 2006:180). Grappling with these problems prepares the theorist for the wider range of tasks set for university academics. 7.3. Responsibility of planning theorists as university academics Most planning theorists have responsibilities as members of a university collegium. Faculty members

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popularise and impart research results and do outreach work as part of their responsibility to society, but this is not further discussed here. Both for Habermas and Derrida, social responsibility centres on keeping the scientific and philosophical discourse alive and vigorous. They are both quite concrete on this particular point. Habermas (1987:21) emphasises stimulation of the specialised public spheres of the university which retain their vitality through associations, annual conferences, journals, etc.,18 Derrida holds that: The unacceptability of a discourse, the noncertification of a research project, the illegitimacy of a course offering are declared by evaluative actions: studying such evaluations is, it seems to me, one of the tasks most indispensable to the exercise of academic responsibility, most urgent for the maintenance of its dignity. (Derrida, 1983:13) More abstractly, Derrida asks members of the university collegium to ‘respond to the call of the principle of reason’ (Derrida, 1983:8). This means ‘to explain effects through their causes, rationally; it is also to ground, to justify, to account for on the basis of principles or roots’ (Derrida, 1983:8). The imperative for responding is the initial form and minimal requirement of responsibility. The university is also there to tell the truth. ‘It declares and promises an unlimited commitment to the truth’ (Derrida, 2002:202). Even apart from the prominent view that truth is as much constructed as disclosed in the research process, this unqualified priority of truth-telling is problematic. Does it mean only that university scholars should ‘discern and decide between the true and the false’ (Derrida, 2004a:97), or is it a new call for the Galilean Imperative: ‘explore every domain, unravel every mystery, penetrate every unknown, explain every process. Consider not the cost, abide no interference, in the holy pursuit of truth’ (Lakoff, 1980:111–112). Is there, moreover, any real difference between the two interpretations? New situations will always unfold, in which true and false can be distinguished only by exploring new domains and penetrating further into the unknown. Derrida prescribes a rule by which responsible academics cannot abide. For planning theorists who are in doubt 18

One undecidable situation regarding publishing is quite topical and illustrates well the call for responsibility in academia. Scholars are asked by their universities both to publish in established elite journals, in order to obtain status and increase department budgets, and instead to publish in new open access journals, in order to undermine the hegemony of elite journals and bring their prices down.

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whether to continue working on a new theory with anticipated sinister side-effects, the imperative of truth would always give a green light. Suspicions of dark-side effects would never stop a theory project. But then again, Derrida asks who is more faithful to reason’s call than the one who offers questions in return, even about the unfailing superiority of truth and reason (Trifonas, 2000:110). Truth-searching should affect reading. Planning theorists have responsibilities as readers when reading plans, for instance. Mandelbaum (1990:353) conveys the distinct impression that it is the responsibility of theorists to read plans critically and ‘free. . . [themselves] from the control of the text’. This should be the theorists’ chief concern when ‘reading against the grain of the textual style—treating an urban design plan as a policy analytic argument, reading a budget as a theatrical narrative, transforming a policy argument into a design opportunity’ (Mandelbaum, 1990:353), even if it implies a serious danger of misreading a text. The critical reading takes precedence in order to penetrate the Plan’s structure and thus enable the theorist to grasp what is important or central to a plan. The overall intention is to do this reading in public and ‘extend and enrich the domain of public discourse’ (Mandelbaum, 1990:356). One consequence of the imperative of truthsearching is the ideal of the commitment of university scholars to tireless questioning in order to establish truth, and tireless argumentation in order to disseminate truth. The critical strategy of questioning is familiar to communicative planning theorists (Forester, 1989). It comes as no surprise that in its critical capacity, the university is not only a community of thought but the community of the question. It might be an impossible community, though, as it is a community of dissensus and not consensus (LaCapra, 1998:42). ‘The university should. . .be the place in which nothing is beyond question’ (Derrida, 2002:205), not even the idea of critique or the idea of thinking as questioning. Derrida’s conceptualisation of ‘the university without condition’ implies the right to say everything and to publish it (Derrida, 2002:205). It is the responsibility of scholars to resist attempts to restrict free and fair argument. Universities are to be spaces for the ‘lovely competition’ of ideas (Derrida, in Myerson, 1995:127) and sites of unconditional resistance to every other sovereignty but that of the principle of truth. Discreet coordination and collaboration between the university and other functionally autonomous subsystems, such as the economic–military–administrative complex, worries both Habermas (1987:7) and Derrida:

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The problem of the relationship between the research—fundamental or end-oriented research— and the state, the military and industrial structure of the state, is one of our main concerns, I would say. I think that this is the responsibility of the teacher or scholar today. (Derrida, 1986:6) Derrida notes that one cannot separate any more some scientists, some politicians, and some military decision-makers. He maintains that ‘(o)ne of the responsibilities of the university today is not to let those people do everything by themselves’ (Derrida, 1986:10). On the other hand, neither Habermas nor Derrida would advocate a university cut off from society. Hence, scrutiny of the complex and dangerous liaisons just mentioned must comprise critique of the university itself. It is noteworthy in the context of the present paper that the connected university, with its diffuse borders between inside and outside, facilitates development of dual theory that catches the interest of both authorities and civil society organisations. Derrida is alert to the dangers of dual use of theory in the original meaning of serving both civil and military purposes (Trifonas, 2000:117–118). Mentioning a long list of academic fields, both in the social sciences and the humanities, Derrida concedes that theory having these disciplines as its object may be just as useful in ideological warfare as it is in peaceful accumulation of knowledge: Such a theory may always be put to work in communications strategy, the theory of commands, the most refined military pragmatics of jussive utterances. . .One can just as easily seek to use the theoretical formulations of sociology, psychology, even psychoanalysis in order to refine what was called in France during the Indochinese or Algerian wars the powers of ‘psychological action’—alternating with torture. From now on, so long as it has the means, a military budget can invest in anything at all, in view of deferred profits: ‘basic’ scientific theory, the humanities, literary theory and philosophy. (Derrida, 1983:13) The walking-through-walls example seems to corroborate Derrida’s fears that much theory has a high potential for being civil/military-dual. Because no theory seems any longer to be shielded from goaloriented use in various directions, it has to be the task of the university to unmask ‘all the ruses of end-orienting reason, the paths by which apparently disinterested research can find itself indirectly reappropriated, reinvested by programs of all sorts’ (Derrida,

1983:16). Trifonas (2003:291) declares that ‘(e)ven the most underground thinking. . .can be rehabilitated or reappropriated to serve a ‘‘highly traditional politics of knowledge’’. . .if the conditions of exposition. . .are not analysed with a vigilant wariness, a radical suspicion’. Derrida subscribes to this strategy for warding off misuse of dual theory, but does not assert its success. On the contrary, he believes there is an unavoidable risk that socio-political forces in certain situations find it in their own interest to exploit university research, even theories not intended to have end-orientation; ‘it is the risk of the future itself’ (Derrida, 1983:17). In these circumstances, ascribing moral responsibility to planning theorists for the consequences of their research will often be unwarranted. 8. Concluding remarks This paper analyses the responsibilities of planning theorists, and the focus throughout has been on writers of CPT. Four responsibilities have been dealt with; these are: (A) Planning theorists’ responsibility for end-uses of their theories. (B) Communicative planning theorists’ responsibility for inclusive dialogue. (C) The possibilities of making responsible decisions in accordance with theories of planning. (D) Theorists’ responsibilities as teachers and university academics. When working on normative planning theories, theorists have a responsibility to encourage practices for decent and respectful treatment of people who are involved in planning processes or affected by plans. Planners should be led to take others into account in an ethically responsible manner, even if the unspecified other person is distant in space, time, culture or social identity. 8.1. Concerning planning theorists’ responsibility for end-uses of their theories To say that theorists may be morally responsible for the consequences of their work is not necessarily to claim that they should stop working on the theory in question when they become aware of applications that offend their conscience. Other applications of the same theory might serve society well and override the misuse, to the best of the theorists’ judgement. Anyway, the existence of detrimental effects implies that the

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theorists’ choice of whether to develop the theory further is a moral one, and that they have a continuing obligation to consider and question the uses to which their contributions are put (Thompson, 2005:23). Responsibility requires a demonstrable chain of cause and effect. Furthermore, the scholar held responsible for adverse consequences of a planning theory must have knowledge about this chain and ability to affect it. For instance, John Forester is not morally responsible for any use that the military might have made of CPT in the walking-through-walls example. Theorists cannot entirely prevent misuse of their theories. They can, however, significantly reduce the chances that perversion of theory is predicated on misunderstandings. Communication, debate and dissemination of knowledge are the best measures for guiding well-intended use of planning theory. This notwithstanding, a dilemma cannot be completely avoided: the more widespread the information about a theory, the higher the likelihood that someone picks it up for dark-side purposes. The more efficiently published in far-reaching media, the more likely it is that planning theory travels to foreign fields and crossfertilises into hybrids with unpredictable and uncontrollable end-uses. Hence, when communicative planning theorists are conscious of their responsibility to communicate, their theories become more exposed to people and causes their work was not meant to serve. The organisations of planning academics and planning theorists (AESOP, ACSP, APSA, etc.) can try to guard against misuse of planning theory—for example, through initiatives administered by thematic groups on ethics. AESOP has formed a thematic group on Research Ethics and Planning, with the purpose of exploring ways of thinking about planning research which consider the social context of moral perception and behaviour. Concerning the topics to be discussed, the chairs of the group write that: ‘Planning research, like any other kind of social science research, is an intervention in people’s lives. . .(R)esearchers in public policy disciplines like planning must face the possibility that their findings will be used by others in ways of which they disapprove’ (AESOP, 2007). The concept of dual planning theory can sensitise planners and planning theorists to relationships between theoretical research and authorities—including the state—that are not immediately visible. These relationships are shaped by authorities’ need for legitimacy and ideas that underpin policies. The function of the concept of dual planning theory is not to draw attention to the possibility of both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ end-uses. The reason why the concept is helpful in the present

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responsibility context is that it uncovers one of several mechanisms that complicate prediction of end-use. 8.2. Concerning communicative planning theorists’ responsibility for inclusive dialogue Even if face-to-face interaction is important, dialogue does not have the privileged status in Levinas’s ethical theory of responsibility and Derrida’s theory of hospitality as it has in Habermas’s (1990, 1993) discourse ethics. Dialogue is an exchange relation, in that the interlocutor expects something in return for an uttering, an argument, or a question. Levinas and Derrida are instead looking for ethical content in the generous act of gift-giving, which anticipates no response: (E)stablished ways of thinking about the relational encounter between Self and Other—in terms of dialogical, reciprocal, dialectical or symmetrical relations of co-implication—might actually obstruct rather than advance the cultivation of ethical responses to otherness. (Barnett, 2005:13) If the gift relationship is to be seen as the ethical ideal consistent with Derridean hospitality, then the Habermasian communicatively rational dialogue is imperfect, in the sense that it inscribes the ‘gift’ of a presented argument within an anticipated circuit of mutual questions and counterarguments. Generosity departs as expectations are allowed in. The principle of hospitality can be contravened by introducing a degree of anticipation and reciprocity into the practice of care, and this is what the mutuality expected in dialogue does. The demand for reciprocity is defended by arguing that inclusion is the primary goal, and that moral harm is primarily rendered by excluding or disavowing otherness, not by appealing to reciprocity and mutual empathy. There is, however, the delicate question of necessary limitations on inclusion. Is it right to invite into dialogue groups and individuals who do not believe in dialogue? Should planners expect to have a meaningful dialogue with people who would use every means to have their way by destroying dialogue and deciding by force? Fundamentalists regard their own beliefs, lifestyles and values as dictated by an absolute authority and therefore beyond discussion. Is it the responsibility of communicative planning theorists to argue for a dialogue in planning that should be open also for fundamentalist groups? The line between inclusion and exclusion should not be drawn once and for all. The need for inclusion, on the one hand, and the need for protecting

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democratic processes, on the other hand, have to be balanced anew with every effort to plan communicatively. 8.3. Concerning the possibilities of making responsible decisions in accordance with theories of planning Most procedural theories of planning are normative. They may describe and analyse, but they also say how one or more theorists think that processes of public urban planning should be structured and organised. With this aim, there is always guidance for planner action embedded in planning theories. It stands to reason that the planner should seek support in general frameworks for organisation of collective action. However, to act with Derridean responsibility, she must put the general guidelines aside before her mind is made up. The final steps on the way to a decision must go through fairness-seeking introspection, detached reflection on the validity of supporting rules, and inventive intuition. Only then will the decision be made by the planner alone, making her fully responsible according to Derrida. 8.4. Concerning theorists’ responsibilities as teachers and university academics Ideally, the university teacher should not only convey knowledge of a subject to the student, but also help him or her develop towards a responsible person. The student should grow into someone who not only can think and judge, but who also connects or embeds thought and judgement into actual conduct (Hansen, 2001). Making a character-forming impact on students requires close and time-consuming relationships, however. Teachers in research universities would soon be squeezed between student contact and need for reading and writing, challenging the teacher’s own ability to balance different responsibilities. Moreover, universities can make misguided decisions in their dealings with the surrounding society, which backfire on teaching aiming at developing responsible students: Universities are concerned with education, and their response to social issues will affect the education of their students just as surely as the lectures and the readings that go on in their libraries and classrooms. If we would teach our students to care about important social problems and think about them rigorously, then clearly our institutions of learning

must set a high example in the conduct of their own affairs. (Bok, 1982:10) The moral responsibility of university teachers should thus extend to critique of their own institutions. Finally, the protection enjoyed by tenured faculty members in their efforts to teach and write comes with social responsibilities. Advances in knowledge are sometimes unsettling and distasteful to the existing order, so academic freedom needs to be defended. This right of professors to speak their minds freely as teachers and scholars is associated with the general right to freedom of speech. This paper has made extensive use of ideas and concepts put forward by Derrida, Habermas and Levinas. They all apply some ‘ideal type’ concepts that might seem to put their analysis at a distance from reality; for example, unconditional hospitality, ideal speech situation (in which dialogue is possible), and infinite responsibility (for the Other), respectively. These scholars are aware that hospitality, dialogue and responsibility are not found in practice in the pure forms required by their definitions. The ideal type concepts serve as reference points, guiding lights and analytic tools. Derrida concedes, for instance, that his concept of pure hospitality can have no legal or political status: ‘No state can write it into its laws’ (Borradori, 2003:129). At the same time, however, he underscores that without the concept of unconditional hospitality ‘we would have no concept of hospitality in general and would not even be able to determine any rules for conditional hospitality’ (Borradori, 2003:129). Acknowledging the role of ideal type concepts is important for a fruitful interpretation of the analysis in this paper. Responsibility, hospitality and dialogue are desirable attributes of public planning, and should be built into normative planning theories. The present analysis does not take the reader all the way to behavioural rules for planning practice, though. Further steps in this direction should follow from open discussion in the political realm. The purpose would be to modify the ideal type concepts, but nevertheless retain enough of their valuable core content to set up practical criteria for moral behaviour by planning theorists and planners. Practical modification of the ideal type concepts (dialogue, hospitality and responsibility for the Other) must convey the message that citizens of open, liberal societies must learn to live with the instability of alterity, learn to accept and encounter radical plurality. This process of learning how to deal with otherness will be fragile and precarious:

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It makes no sense to even speak of a ‘final solution’ to this problem—the problem of human living. No one can ever fully anticipate the ruptures and new sites of the upsurgence of alterity. This is a lesson that we must learn again and again. (Bernstein, 1992:75; italics in original) Despite difficulties and reservations, the conclusion is that the main responsibility of planning theorists is to keep dialogue open and expand it on matters of joint concern within the community of planning research, in academic teaching relations, in planning processes, and in arenas of policy-making and collective choice throughout society at large. Acknowledgements Thanks are due to Michael Gunder for inspiring comments and for providing excellent working conditions at the School of Architecture and Planning, University of Auckland, while I was working on this paper. References Adams St. Pierre, E. (1996). The responsibilities of readers: Toward an ethics of responses. Qualitative Sociology, 19(4), 533–538. AESOP (2007). Research ethics in planning: Proposal for an AESOP thematic group. Accessed 28 May 2007. Alic, J. A. (1994). The dual use of technology: Concepts and policies. Technology in Society, 16(2), 155–172. Allmendinger, P. (2002). Planning theory. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave. Allmendinger, P., & Gunder, M. (2005). Applying Lacanian insight and a dash of Derridean deconstruction to planning’s ‘dark side’. Planning Theory, 4(1), 87–112. Allmendinger, P., & Tewdwr-Jones, M. (2002). The communicative turn in urban planning: Unravelling paradigmatic, imperialistic and moralistic dimensions. Space and Polity, 6(1), 5–24. Alpern, K. D. (1983). Engineers as moral heroes. In V. Weil (Ed.), Beyond whistleblowing: Defining engineers’ responsibilities (Proceedings of the Second National Conference on Ethics in Engineering) (pp. 40–51). Chicago, IL: Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions, Illinois Institute of Technology. Amnesty International (2002a). Israel and the occupied territories. Shielded from scrutiny: IDF violations in Jenin and Nablus. 4 November 2002. Amnesty International Library, online documentation archive Accessed 27 March 2007. Amnesty International (2002b). Israel and the occupied territories. The heavy price of Israeli incursions. Amnesty International Library, online documentation archive. Accessed 27 March 2007. Arnett, R. C. (2003). The responsive ‘I’: Levinas’s derivative argument. Argument and Advocacy, 40(1), 39–50. Arnstein, S. (1970). But which advocate planner? Social Policy, 1(2), 33–34.

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Tore Sager is professor in the Department of Civil and Transport Engineering at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim. His research is mostly directed at the interfaces between institutional economics, decision processes in transport, and communicative planning theory (CPT). Main publications in English are Communicative planning theory (Ashgate 1994) and Democratic planning and social choice dilemmas (Ashgate 2002). Sager is currently researching the tensions between CPT and neo-liberalism, the moral responsibilities of planning theorists, and the consequences for CPT of experiments in economics and psychology about the effects of communication in public goods provision.