This Is All Included in Critical Planning1

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****this is all included in critical planning1

Arizona talk2

In the city as of today, a city is the advanced capitalism and its global impact, and injustice is pervasive. We see it in the extreme polarization of income and wealth and power in the widespread degradation of the natural environment of the abject poverty of millions in ethnic and racial conflicts in patterns of sexism homophobia and the suppression of freedoms under the mantle of nationalism and most recently the so-called fight against terrorism. The triumph of neoliberal policies reduce the (often minimal) measures for social welfare in the immediate post-World War II period accentuates these problems. We made without much fear of contradiction speak of the city of today as an Unjust City. In such a city the vision of a Just City is a compelling one.

There is something seriously wrong that needs to be set right.

And we as planners or social scientists or students of urban affairs who hope to influence what is going on in our cities, what do we say? we are very modest in our aspirations. Sometimes I think we are with Hamlet, and say:

"The time is out of joint, O cursed spite

that ever I was born to set it right.”

-- and we decide that there is little in or nothing that we can do about it, there is no alternative, that's just the way it is, and we return to our jobs or are studies and business goes on as usual. The problems do seem overwhelming, but I want to suggest that there is an alternative to surrendering to the inevitable. “There is an Alternative,” in the words of the World Social Forum

What Is the Alternative?

Thinking about what might be an alternative to the existing state of the city has been a task of planners and architects, students, philosophers, artists, for many generations, indeed centuries. The line runs from religious visions of the City on the Hill to the early utopian thinkers such as Sir Thomas More to be early socialist utopians such as Fourier and Saint-Simon to more practical utopians such as Robert Owen and in a sense Ebenezer Howard to the utopian architects of the Situationist school and Guy deBord and to Percival and Paul Goodman in their Communitas. Today however that discussion is not very much in evidence, and in the planning profession in particular is largely ignored. It has been reawakened most recently in a set of discussions that were begun in initially by John Friedman at UCLA around the concept of "The Good Society" and more recently and separately, by Susan Fainstein around the term "The Just City" I want to suggest that the line of thinking that has got us to this point is tremendously important, but the Just City should not be in its final resting place I want to suggest that we need to go Beyond Just City

That is not in any way to suggest that the concept of the Just City is wrong; on the contrary, I think it is an extremely useful one but one with limitations.

I want to make my argument in three parts: first the pros and cons of the just city formulation and the necessity of some such vision for action; then an outline of what kind of planning is needed to get us towards the visions that we have, the kind of planning I want to call Critical Planning. Then thirdly I want to give some examples of the application of Critical Planning

To start with a positive:

In the city as of today, the city under advanced global capitalism and its global impact, and injustice is pervasive; I listed some of the problems earlier. I think we may without much fear of contradiction speak of the city of today has an Unjust City. In such a city the vision of a Just City is a compelling one.

The demand for justice is a deeply felt and historic one, with centuries of struggle, of interpretation, of political concern, behind it. It has the advantage that it is concrete; it is not a call for another world, but for changes in this world in a clear direction. The exact definition of justice may indeed be controversial but the philosophical difficulties do not lessen its appeal.. For two reasons: in comparison to the existing city, it does not take a great deal of convincing to make support a call for its improvement, in the general direction of justice. No one will argue that cities should be unjust, and no one will deny that the level of justice in today’s cities can be much improved. That moves the entire discussion forward in an important way; introducing the concept, even without resolving all its implications, is a major step forward, and immediately useful in fields such as planning and social policy.

The Just City formulation has a second advantage. It can be measured, shown, demonstrated, by a variety of indicators. the extent of income polarization, comparative housing conditions, segregation, availability of public space, voter participation, transparency of information, legal requirements for public participation. Whether or not these can be aggregated into a single judgment of the extent of justice, they can certainly be accepted as valid indicators of injustice, and progress along their lines can be measured and comparisons made.

But now to the limitations, and why we must go beyond the Just City.

the slogan of the Just City is a misleading one if it is put forward as presenting the ultimate goal of public policy or political endeavor. In everyday practice, it is often taken to be simply the absence of injustice. But that hardly suffices to define the concept or the goal; it simply rephrases the definitional question as a negative.

There are a whole variety of definitional problems, and I simply want to list some of them here. A detailed discussion would get us deep into some fascinating philosophic issues, but that is maybe meat for another discussion. Let me just list some of the problems:

· First and foremost is of course the definition of justice. The currently most popular definition, that of John Rawls, and has been subject to severe criticism, and has been modified repeatedly I would suggest as my own definition and unjust decision is any decision made through the exercise of power. But that definition would require some defense, and other substantial definitions have been offered

· “Social justice” and “justice” are not the same things, although they are sometimes used sometimes interchangeably. Justice is a generally taken as an individual right, while social justice refers to groups or collectivities. All injustices are not social. When lightning strikes a good person but spares a villain, when one child dies of cancer but another survives when a rich man draws a winning lottery ticket and a poor man a losing one, when a person decides which of two others will be the more loved, we can also ask whether the result is "just". In a deeply disturbing sense, there can be no justice till death is overcome. This is a source of tragedy: King Lear railing against the storm or declaiming at the end over Cordelia’s dead body. In the Just City are we concerned only with social injustices or also of the remedy of what might be considered natural injustices?

· The just city formulation suggests that "cities" can be made just, but is it not a fact that cities are a creature of society, and what is really needed are Just Societies not just Just Cities? Our concern here is not to answer that question, but a narrower one: what should be the outcomes of social action, of societal arrangements, of public policies or private actions susceptible to social control. We are concerned with the just outcomes society can influence, recognizing that some are and will always be beyond society’s control. When we speak of the Just City, we mean in city just in what “the city” does and does not do, and “city” is here a synonym, a metaphor, for society. So let us not be distracted into seeking a definition of justice that will resolve all questions, settle all disputes, satisfy all aspirations for the good and the beautiful and the true.

· It's is it a comparative concept so that one can have more or less just slough shins to a given problem? Can justice to one-party result in injustice to another party? Who determines the standards by which justice is determined (Rawls for instance introduces the notion of priority to the needs of the poor as an accepted standard for justice, but the derivation of that concept must lie outside the definition of justice and come from some more general understanding of ethical or moral behavior)

· it only addresses a limited range of problems limited primarily to the sphere of distribution and not addressing the structural problems that produces the shortcomings of our cities which are only crudely and partially captured by the formulation on just.

· Is justice and absolute, or is it a relative? If all cities are just, will they all be just in the same way and will they all look alike? Or is it justice a matter of the particular community standards of a particular community and will it vary from community to community?

· Does justice require equality and if so equality of wide and without consideration of the differing strengths and needs of different individuals?

· To each according to their work, is the classic definition of justice under socialism.[1]

From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs is justice, according to Marx, under communism.[2] do we like either one?

· Is it justice a procedural matter or a substantive one? In American law and justice is usually taken as meaning done through due process of law. But then they not laws be unjust?

Justice at least in the procedural sense calls for the just the application of laws that must be given from some source. You know the17th century jingle:

The law hangs the man and whips the woman

Who steal the goose from off the common

But lets the greater villain loose

Who steals the common from under the goose.[3]

· Is there really a better definition of justice than the elimination of injustice? And if that is so is not the just city an inescapably negative concept: justice is simply the absence of injustice. A just City is a city in which there is no injustice. My own definition is subject to the same criticism: Justice is the absence of power. But that does not tell us what kind of this city that will be; it only tells us what it is not.

· And therefore there is no affirmative vision of the future in the just city formulation. It does not adequately state-- and is not formulated to state -- the vision of the ultimate goal that is desired. It does not represent the real characteristics that we would wish to see in the ideal city of the future. Its vision is essentially a negative one.

None of these limitations suggests that the concept is not a critically important one in today's conflicts around the problems of cities tour of societal relations. They are simply to say that the concept of the just City is any beginning and not an ending to the process of searching for a better society.

What might the others be? In almost every formulation of what is desired, there is some reference to the fulfillment of human needs, the opportunity for the free exercise of human capabilities. Again, it let me just list the possible formulations that we might want to adopt here; again they are discussion leads us into fascinating directions of which could well be meat for many more discussions, but our time is limited here.

· The caring city

· the multidimensional city

· the diverse city

· the city of solidarity

· the city of refuge

· the beautiful city

· the city of freedom

· the city supporting the full development of the human potential

· the city of heart’s desire (a phrase David Harvey found in early Chicago school discussions)

But we do not know what any of these cities would really look like, if they develop in a society free of domination, free of manipulation and control and the mandates and constraints of the “realm of necessity..”[4] Visions of the future must necessarily be open, and do not allow for a utopia whose purpose is to outline what a future society must look like. The concrete details of a better city can only emerge in practice in the process of moving towards it in formed by flawed and by vision, but open and flexible and learning with experience. A statement of principles is all that can or should be sought at this relatively early stage of the game.. In this sense Martin Luther Kings dream is of an ideal city but it is a dream that establishes the principles for such a city rather than trying to describe it in any concrete detail. It raises the question of whether what is needed is a visual picture of a better city or a more general vision or simply a far-reaching statement of principles.

So let me come to the second half of my discussion: how we get from here to there assuming we have some general idea of where "there" is.

And here I want to argue that the type of vision that we put forward can indeed play a vital role, and that We cannot do without utopian plans and ideals of justice. They are indispensable for motivation and for action. [5] but that we must be clear in what that role is and how it can be developed in the context of everyday problems and the day-to-day conflicts in which we are inevitably engaged.

CRITICAL PLANNING

I called the analysis that I'm about to give you "Critical Planning", because it should begin with a hardnosed critical examination of exactly what the problems are and what they're structural and agency roots are and then go on to propose both immediate and long-range action is to deal with those problems. It needs to be both a critical and visionary. Here are the levels of planning that a critical planning approach sees as possible:

Chart 1 goes here

Conventional planning and narrowly ethical planning our descriptions of planning as it is generally done today; Justice planning which builds on the concept of the Just City, radical of visionary planning, and in which I will describe and utopian and planning are components of what I've would advocate as good critical planning. Let me go over them one at a time