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The proper spirit of enquiry

Reading through the selection of articles and the Interface that make up this edition of the journal, it is impossible not to be struck by the emphasis on action – possible action or necessary action. Well, planning is au fond a theory of action, so that should not be a surprise. But there seems to be an intensity and an urgency about it in these writings which I welcome. The last edition of the journal, of course, marked the centenary of the Royal Town Planning Institute, and as such was built in part around the need to consider where we – the RTPI in this case being both emblematic and representative of a broader planning community – have come from, and where we should be going. As Kelvin MacDonald wrote in his lead essay for the Interface in that edition, “This Interface should not simply be seen as a record of expressed views but as a call for action.” Heather Campbell reminded us in the final piece that “our purpose is to encourage innovation and action, hence the journal’s strap-line, Challenging theory: Changing practice.” The two are inextricably linked. For the readers of this journal that may seem a truism; but for many of the people-around-planning who are part of the broader public that Leonora Rozee’s impassioned and informed “Comment” of that previous edition sought to engage, it would probably make no sense at all. They are the people who (in a UK and particularly English context) have allowed or encouraged a “focus . . . on process rather than outcomes . . . Planning is increasingly obsessed with control rather than vision and management.” I think I would have substituted “leadership” for “management”. Leadership always inspires a response; management generally seeks to control it. And our failure to provide enough vision and leadership is the reason why we do default to the process. The descent continues when the process becomes a basis for gaming the system. Leadership and vision in this context does not, however, mean having all the answers. What it does require is the asking of questions, preferably better questions but sometimes just the really awkward questions that someone has to ask however unpopular s/he will then be. The planning heuristic, to coin an unlovely phrase, is the sequence of questions that takes us through the creation of evidence – not in the sense of fictitious enquiry but as an endeavour that itself requires imagination – through to the identification of options for action and their evaluation. Evaluation in this context involves understanding the values that underpin certain preferences, and testing them against other values. That heuristic in my view is equally applicable to theory as to practice, and is equally challenging in both fields. As Paul Farmer, the CEO of the American Planning Association and a person of great vision and leadership in his own right, has said more than once: “Planning isn’t rocket science – it’s much more complex than that.” The selection of papers in this edition to a remarkable extent, I think, identify important facets of that complexity, face up to the pressures and point to possible action. Andreas Faludi is certainly a grand master of the chess-board of European policy, and his “EUropeanisation or Europeanisation of spatial planning?” deals with this with great depth and subtlety. His distinction between the two is that “As far as planning is concerned, they stand for planning becoming part of EU routines on the one hand and on the other for mutual learning about planning in Europe occurring prior to conceiving its EUropeanisation and even more so thereafter.” There is much sadness in the story he tells of the constant rebuffing of attempts to bring a spatial