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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Jean Hillier
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Traditional theoretical approaches suggest that local land use planning decisions follow an utilitarian premise, of planning officers making technical, objective recommendations to elected representatives who take neutral, balanced decisions. Such theories are now generally discredited and recent discussions of planning often consider the power-plays which occur in these highly uncertain, politicised decision-making arenas. Most authors, however, tend to focus on the roles of planning officers as they face situations of political uncertainty. In this chapter, I address planning practice as it is actually encountered in the worlds, not only of planning officers, but also of elected representatives. Analysis of instances where officer recommendations are ignored, or where representatives change their minds, suggests that actual decision-making may be exercised in ways which are contingent, complex and organised with little distinct or overt logic. Do planning officers and/or elected representatives act consequentially: pragmatically or teleologically? Is their behaviour rights-based or deontological? My focus here is not on ethics as a formalised system of standards, rules or codes, but as 'better or worse practice' (Forester, 1999). What does it mean to act well or badly where moral practical issues are concerned? I seek to uncover the communicative behaviours which precede and are construed in the ritualised formal process of political decision-making and which form a face of power that may remain invisible to practitioners and theorists. Such instances of communication form the hidden transcripts of decision-making; they constitute an underlying logic of democratic practice. I seek to interrogate such logic; to bring into hearing various dialogical techniques and devices of communication, modes of authority and subjectifications and the telos of strategies and ambitions. I stray a long way from rules and codes towards moral improvisation and ethical judgement in messy, highly politicised planning decision-making practice.
Author(s): Hillier J
Editor(s): Lee, R; Smith, DM
Publication type: Book Chapter
Publication status: Published
Book Title: Geographies and Moralities: International Perspectives on Development, Justice and Place
Year: 2004
Pages: 211-227
Series Title: RGSIBG Book Series
Publisher: Blackwell
Place Published: Oxford
Library holdings: Search Newcastle University Library for this item
ISBN: 9781405116374
