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Editorial: Suffer the Citizens: Urban Planning Without Theory

Urban planning suffers a long-standing identity problem. This collective ‘crisis of self’ has various manifestations. One embodiment is that planners themselves lack understandings of what planning actually is, beyond descriptions of what they, and others who call themselves planners, ‘do’. When pressed, many planners are unable to provide any deeper justification for the roles they play beyond recitations of trite buzzwords or government policy. In practice settings, it is not uncommon for planners to deride what they learnt in university as irrelevant to their daily working lives. Many academics in planning schools ignore planning itself in favour of urban studies, or alternatively, teach practice as a slavish reproduction of existing processes. Theory is taught as a pastiche of understandings largely derived from other disciplines. The public, seeing through the lens of effects upon their own lives, remain bewildered by the apparent contradictions of urban planning. Despite the problems of urban planning, the profession itself continues to be one in which practitioners hold faith that what they do makes places and people’s lives ‘better’. The author himself shares this faith, and has practised, taught and theorised planning (though not for as long as some), on the basis that good planning usually results in better outcomes. In our profession it is axiomatic that planning is essential to meeting the mounting challenges facing urban and regional areas. This general belief (at least in the profession and academy), coupled with an intuitive will to do ‘good’ has provided an enduring measure of coherence to urban planning over time. However, good faith alone is not enough. The lack of fundamental and compelling ideas to underpin urban planning has allowed it to be implicated (often by inaction and ineffectiveness) in many undesirable outcomes. Planning has come to be ineffectual against various other forces that exert far greater influence upon urban areas. Road lobbies and road provision agencies are commonly the real ‘planning’ force in determining the morphology of wider metropolitan areas. Local residents in well-to-do suburbs successfully resist changes that might achieve wider planning goals. Big developers dictate terms to investment-hungry planning ministers. In appeal processes, planning lawyers, experts, and increasingly citizens, argue over interpretations of planning provisions and legislation, rather than what the ‘rules’ of planning ought to achieve. Patterns of investment and ability to pay have decreased spatial parity in terms of income, jobs, services and public transport. In many urban settlements, car use continues to increase alongside poor provision and patronage of public transport. In some places, the misuse of planning instruments by those with power undermines planning functions. One might see these outcomes as necessary compromises between the various interests that surround and envelop planning in urban areas. However, these compromises are