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City Planning and Political Values

Article in Urban Affairs Review · March 1971

DOI: 10.1177/107808747100600305

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 CITY PLANNING AND
POLITICAL VALUES

SUSAN S. FAINSTEIN — Rutgers University

NORMAN I. FAINSTEIN — Columbia University

City planners have increasingly come to interpret their mandate as a broad

demand for social planning. In response to the many criticisms of master
planning and urban renewal design as naive attempts to change society
through manipulation of the physical environment, city planners have
begun to seek wide training in the social sciences and to produce grand
designs for social change. The recent New York Master Plan is an
archetypal example. Moreover, the requirements of much federal urban
legislation mean that cities must produce plans or forfeit aid.
As the breadth of planning increases, as it affects more and more
aspects of the urban environment, and as a growing number of cities enact
plans of various sorts, it becomes important to understand the political
implications of different kinds of planning. While the planner himself may
not be a political figure, an enacted urban plan constitutes the substance
of a political decision. In Lasswell’s terms (1958: 13), it determines who
gets what. Thus, even though many aspects of the planning process are
technical and &dquo;nonpolitical,&dquo; the way in which a plan is formulated and
implemented can be treated in the same terminology as political
decision-making.
For the purposes of this paper, we shall define planning as future-
oriented, public decision-making directed toward attaining specified goals.
Although a plan once enacted constitutes a politically determined public
policy, it differs from other kinds of political decisions in that it is based
on formal rationality and is explicit about ends and means. This is in sharp

contrast to many other public decisions which are left purposefully vague
and ambiguous so as to mitigate controversy. While a decision need not be
labeled a plan in order to fit our definition, political decisions directed at
long-term goals are rarely made except under the auspices of a planning
group.
It is possible to set up a typology of planning methods on the basis of
who determines the plan’s goals and who determines its means. While one
can conceive of a number of different bases for typologies of planning,
that of policy determination is politically the most important. For once
planning is viewed as a political process, and once a typology is established
which is based upon the location of authoritative decision-making, it

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[341]
[342]

becomes possible to equate each planning type with a particular model of

decision-making developed in political theory.
These analogies between kinds of planning and political theories serve
two distinct and important purposes: First, they show the implications of
each type of planning in terms of political benefits; that is, they make
clear which social groups each form favors. Second, they point toward an
explanation of why certain kinds of planning have been favored by
particular societies. An examination of the political thought which
underlies each planning type reveals the political values embodied in
planning procedures. In this way, planning methods can be related to
political culture, and it can be seen why the United States has been willing
to adopt certain planning procedures and not others.

THE PLANNING TYPOLOGY

The categories that follow are derived from the points of view
presented in discussions of planning and are not necessarily either
exhaustive or mutually exclusive. Like the political doctrines to which
they will be related, they contain internal contradictions and elements in
common with one another. Thus, the planning typology which we are

establishing is an empirical rather than a strictly logical one. But, as we

shall attempt to show later, the differences among the types make a great
deal of sense within the history of political thought.

The four kinds of planning which we will discuss are:

(1) traditional;
(2) user-oriented;
(3) advocacy;
(4) incremental. (We shall attempt to demonstrate that incrementalism,
while a logical fourth category, is not truly planning.)

TRADITIONAL PLANNING

In this type of planning, the planner prescribes both the goals of the
plan and the means of attaining them:

Planning began as a reform movement, not a client-centered service, and when

predispositions [of the population being planned for] conflicted with the
requirements of planning ideology, they were rejected [Gans, 1968: 20] .

The principal objective of traditional planners is the orderly development

of the urban environment, and the proximate goals of the plan are derived
from standards which supposedly measure desirable physical arrange-
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 [343]

ments.l Thus, for example, the amount of land to be devoted to parks

would be calculated on the basis of a fixed ratio between green space and
population density. Traditional planning assumes that its goal of orderly
development of the environment is in the general public interest and that
planners are in the best position of any group to determine the plan’s
intermediate goals. The use of general standards permits the designation of
planning objectives without reference to groups within the general
population.
Thomas A. Reiner (1967: 232) summarizes the traditional outlook as

follows:

An appealing and plausible idea attracts planners the world over: we are
scientists, or at least capable of becoming such. As scientists, or technicians,
we work with facts to arrive at truth, using methods and language appropriate
to our tasks, and our ways of handling problems are not subject to outsiders’
criticism. [See also Alonso, 1967: 580].

The conception of scientific planning assumes that the planner’s special

qualifications free him from class or special-interest biases when he is
formulating the contents of the plan. Gans (1968: 21), however, correctly
points out that
generally ... the planner has advocated policies that fit the predispositions of
the upper-middle class, but not those of the rest of the population. For
example, his advocacy of high-density urban housing has so far found favor
only with the cosmopolitan upper-middle class. His proposal for increasing
suburban density to cut down urban sprawl is rejected by people who feel that
row housing lacks privacy and that it is less desirable for other reasons than
the single-family house. The planner’s advocacy of more open space has also
received little support, partially because the kind of open space he favors is
not very important to the people who are supposed to use it.

Like the entire movement for municipal reform, the planning move-
ment was based on the assumption that efficiency and orderly adminis-
tration in government were general public goals which did not serve
particular social interests. Proponents of planning failed to see that the
apolitical planning process which they supported tended to embody values
that were particularly those of the upper-middle class. One element within
the planning movement did concern itself with the plight of the poor. The
advocates of parks, playgrounds, and other urban amenities were attempt-
ing to improve the welfare of slum dwellers and showed more concern
with the lot of the deprived than did less elitist policy makers. But even
the overall goal of an orderly physical environment for both rich and poor
reflected a class bias against the disorderliness of the lower classes and an
assumption that physical neatness went along with rational patterns of
social behavior. The much criticized replacement of Boston’s West End
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[344]

(see Fried, 1967; Gans, 1967) by a group of neatly arranged, high-rise

apartments for upper-income residents marked the apogee of the move-
ment to upgrade the urban environment through the imposition of
physical orderliness. The different kinds of order that observers such as
Gans found in the West End were not apparent to the planners whose
criteria for demarcating slums rated the number of &dquo;standard&dquo; dwelling
units present in an area.

Hence, traditional planning has as its principal goal the original aim of
the planning movement: the creation of an orderly urban environment.
Traditional planners, through the use of accepted standards and profes-
sional methods, translate this overall goal into programs designed to fit
individual communities and their needs.

USER-ORIENTED PLANNING
Herbert Gans employs the term &dquo;user-oriented&dquo; planning to describe
planning which takes as its goals the desires of the clients of the facility
being planned. In discussing planning for the public library, he argues that
&dquo;the planning of its facilities ought to be determined by whatever goal or
goals the community considers important vis-i-vis books and the value of
reading.&dquo; Once the planner discovers the community’s desires, it becomes
his duty to &dquo;implement them in relation to the available resources&dquo; (Gans,
1968: 102-103). The phrases democratic planning, collaborative planning,
and citizen participation in planning are often also used to describe this
type of planning. According to David R. Godschalk (1967: 972), &dquo;What is
needed is a modus operandi which brings governmental planners face-to-
face with citizens in a continuous cooperative venture. Such a venture
could not only educate and involve the community in planning, but could
also educate and involve the planners in their community.&dquo;
As a pure type, the democratic planner relies on the public as the
ultimate authority in the formulation of plans. His outlook is basically
majoritarian: &dquo;The client is clearly the public rather than special interests
or the power structure&dquo; (Godschalk, 1967). The planner does not

recognize the interests or values of one particular segment of society as

more important than any other, and he attempts to attain the general
welfare through satisfying the individual needs of as many people as
possible.
While exponents of user-oriented planning generally agree that the
public should determine the ends of the plan, they disagree on the extent
to which citizens should be involved in the day-to-day planning process. In
general, however, there is an acceptance of at least some citizen
participation in the formulation of specific programs and policies. On the
whole there is confusion over which clienteles should be involved in the
formulation of plans; as Gans (1968: 103) puts it in his discussion of the
public library, &dquo;The question is, which users should be planned for?&dquo;
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 [345]

While the problem is not insurmountable in the planning of a library, it

becomes much more difficult in cases where there are fewer possibilities
for serving a plurality of interests simultaneously. For example, should
urban renewal planning involve primarily present or future occupants of
the site? Should it involve businessmen and other groups which, although
they do not occupy the site, may be profoundly affected by the
consequences of renewal? Should zoning regulations be aimed at perpet-
uating the character of the district as it is, or should they respond to the
desires of outsiders who might wish to move into the district?
The democratic planner must contend with the problem of conflicting
interests and must judge the legitimacy of the representatives of various
clienteles. By accepting the right of other actors to participate in the
planning process, the user-oriented planner finds himself forced to make
political judgments which the insulated, traditional planner never had to
confront. Yet, in making these judgments, he evades admitting that he is
advancing the particular values or interests of some segment of society;
rather, he claims to be acting in the public interest, or, at the least,
following the will of the majority.
ADVOCACY PLANNING
The concept of advocacy planning contains an explicit recognition of a
multitude of conflicting social interests, some of which may be irrecon-
cilable. Rather than attempting to plan for society as a whole, the
advocate planner would:

be responsible to his client and would seek to express his client’s views. This
does not mean that the planner could not seek to persuade his client. In some
situations persuasion might not be necessary, for the planner would have
sought out an employer with whom he shared common views about desired
social conditions and the means toward them [Davidoff, 1967: 602] .
The advocate planner would devote much attention to assisting the client
organization toclarify its ideas and to give expression to them....But the
advocate’s most important function would be to carry out the planning
process for the organization and to argue persuasively in favor of its planning
proposals [Davidoff, 1967: 604].

While the advocate planner can theoretically work for any social group,
the term has generally been interpreted to mean &dquo;advocates for the poor.&dquo;
In fact, private planning and consulting firms have always acted as
advocates for various interests that could afford to buy their services.
Advocacy planning differs from what Lindblom calls partisan mutual
adjustment (see p. 347 below) only when it is defined as planning for the
poor by planners who are accountable solely to their clients. While
Davidoff does not limit advocacy planning to this function in his
formulation of the concept, we shall use this meaning exclusively in our
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[346]

typology. As far as we know, none of the planning literature uses our

restricted definition.22 It is, however, the basis on which a number of
contemporary planners actually work, is embodied in organizations like
Planners for Equal Opportunity, and is reflected in the writings of such
planners as Lisa Peattie and Sherry Arnstein.
Thus, in advocacy planning a particular client group determines the
goals of the plan, and the planner is in principle subservient to that group
rather than to the majority of citizens. As in user-oriented planning, the
extent to which the client participates in the formulation of planning
specifics may vary. Davidoff portrays the planner as an educator,
attempting to persuade his client to his own diagnosis of the client’s best
interest. In real life, however, there may be significant conflict between
the advocate planner and his client. For example, Judith May describes the
conflict between Oakland officials and citizens in the West Oakland Model
Cities planning area as a dispute between advocate planners and their
clients over who should deal with the city administration. Miss May
summarizes the professional viewpoint as follows (1969: 13):

(1) Although community residents in the past had been unable to

’insert their views’ into the policy-making process, they are able to
do so if they are supervised by an established organization ... and
assisted by professional advocates.
(2) Planning itself is a job for professiopals who possess both technical
skill and political sensitivity; plans for the Model Cities program are
to be hammered out in negotiations between the city’s planners
and the community’s advocates.

The community, however, did not trust the planners to be its guides and
mediators; West Oakland residents wanted to control the planning process
themselves. According to Miss May (1969: 4):
Oakland’s experience suggests that both planners and community residents
view the new federal interest in urban problems as an opportunity to reduce
their past ineffectiveness in influencing urban policies; and each has invented
an ideology which justifies this new route to communal upward mobility:

&dquo;advocacy&dquo; in the case of planners, and &dquo;community control&dquo; in the case of

community residents.

Advocacy planning differs fundamentally from traditional planning in

that the plan need not be justified as being in the general public interest.
Moreover, the planner enlists the participation of his clients in determining
the plan’s goals and explicitly accepts planning as a political rather than a
strictly scientific endeavor. Traditional planning was part of the old
movement for municipal reform; advocacy planning is part of the new
movement for urban change which calls for greater representation of the

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 [347]

lower classes in the governmental process and for the decentralization of

governmental policy-making. (For an extensive discussion of the conflict
between planning and participation, see Marris and Rein, 1967).
Advocacy planning is not necessarily incompatible with user-oriented
planning and, in fact, both doctrines result from an increasing concern
among planners with citizen participation in the planning process.
User-oriented planning, however, assumes an equality among citizens and
presents the planner as an impartial arbiter who seeks the plan which will
be most satisfying to the largest number of people. Advocacy planning has
the planner find that policy which is most in the interest of a single social
group. If the democratic planner is working within a restricted locale such
that his clients constitute a homogeneous group, he becomes identical with
the advocate planner. If, however, he is working for a citywide planning
commission and he must take into account the effects of the plan on a
large number of groups, then his approach must differ from that of the
advocate planner.

INCREMENTAL PLANNING
In incremental planning, the policy maker comes to a decision by
weighing the marginal advantages of a limited number of alternatives. He
does not work in terms of long-range objectives but rather moves ahead
through successive approximations:
Decision makers typically consider, among all the alternative policies that they
might be imagined to consider, only those relatively few alternatives that
represent small or incremental changes from existing policies. In this sense ...
decision-making is incremental. In short, policy makers and analysts take as
their starting point not the whole range of hypothetical possibilities, but only
the here and now in which we live, and then move on to consider how
alterations might be made at the margin [Lindblom, 1965: 144 ] .

Planning is not done by a single agency: &dquo;That society requires conscious

control and manipulation is one assertion; that an ’organizing centre’ is
required is quite another&dquo; (Lindblom, 1965: 5).
Like Davidoff, Lindblom recognizes a multitude of interests. But where
the advocate planner sees irremediable conflict, the incrementalist sees
an ultimate harmony:

On an immensely larger scale coordination also is often achieved through

mutual adjustment of persons not ordered by rule, central management, or
dominant common purpose. An American consumer of coffee and a Brazilian
supplier are so coordinated. The market mechanism is, both within many
countries and among them, a large-scale, highly developed process for
coordinating millions of economically interdependent persons without their
being deliberately coordinated by a central coordinator, without rules that
assign to each person his position relative to all others, and without a

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[348]

dominant common purpose. Market coordination is powered by diverse

self-interests. Scholars can hardly fail to note the possibilities of coordination
through mutual adjustment of partisans in the market, for a long tradition of
theory has produced an increasingly refined explanation of the process
[Lindblom, 1965: 4] .
In terms of our definition of planning (see p. 345 above) incrementalism
is not really planning at all. Policy outcomes are not arrived at through
formal rationality, and there is no specifying of ends and means. But
Lindblom claims that the mechanism of &dquo;partisan mutual adjustment&dquo;-
the working out of different claims through compromise, adherence to
procedural rules, and the market process-results in rational decision-
making : &dquo;The of this study has been ... with partisan mutual
concern

adjustment method
as a for calculated, reasonable, rational, intelligent,
wise ... policy making&dquo; (Lindblom, 1965: 294; italics added). Even
though ends and means are not formulated, decision makers work out
ways to reach socially desirable goals:

Behind the incremental and disjointed tactics we have just summarized is a

concept of problem solving as a strategy. In this view public problems are too
complex to be well understood, too complex to be mastered. One develops a
strategy to cope with problems, not to solve them [Lindblom, 1965: 148].
Therefore, while incrementalism embodies the opposite of planning in
its methods, it produces the fruits of planning in its results. Like an
economic system of numerous buyers and sellers, a political system of
atomized decision makers working at cross-purposes can rely on the
invisible hand to produce orderly progress toward social goals-in fact, to
produce the very goals themselves.
Lindblom (1965: 223) attempts to show that seemingly ad hoc
methods of arriving at public policies result in a hidden rationality. The
ultimate decision-making power does not lie with a single group, and it is
not desirable that any one social interest should prevail. Political
interaction causes the clash of interests to be resolved in a Pareto optimum
such that no group can benefit further without some other group losing
out. Lindblom assumes that such an optimum, which implies the
preservation of the existing arrangement of social power,3 is desirable.

FOUR TYPES OF POUTtCAL THEORY

Planners have mainly been satisfied to contain within narrow bounds
their debate over who should make planning decisions. To a large extent,
they have attempted to justify their arguments by evaluating the merits of
the policies each type of planning is likely to produce rather than looking
at the fundamental questions of social power and legitimacy which each
type raises.

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 349

In contrast, political theorists have addressed themselves to a broad

range of fundamental questions. Because the basis of our planning
typology comprises two of these questions, it initially struck us that
planners who theorized were really political theorists, though de facto and
often unaware. Furthermore, given its political basis, the planning
typology might well be a reflection of a fragment of a typology of political
theories. This we argue is, indeed, the case.
What is so striking about the typology of political theories, once
constructed, is the extent to which it corresponds to the typology of
planning. It is, in fact, this correspondence which makes the exercise
worthwhile, by baring the value skeletons upon which planning theories
have been built, and by permitting us to apply generalizations about the
political culture in America to the nature of American planning.
One may distill from the tangle of political thought in the modern
world-i.e., in the period since Locke-four major types of political theory.
These are technocratic, democratic, socialist, and liberal. Each type of
theory is historically significant; its ideas have been advanced by men of
power and have affected the actual development of political and social
institutions. Virtually all modern political controversy may be fitted into
these categories, and may be understood in terms of clashes among these
theories.’

TECHNOCRATIC THEORY AND TRADITIONAL PLANNING

Technocratic thinking is a product of the industrial era. It represents an

effort to come to grips with the central social problems created by the
Industrial Revolution-the miserable condition of the lower classes and the
breakdown in the old structure of authority which seemed previously to
have maintained order. Like the conservatives, the technocrats desire to
restore the order of the preindustrial world, but unlike the conservatives
they accept industrialization, welcoming technology as the cure for the ills
of mankind. Their motto is &dquo;order and progress.&dquo; Their most significant
thinkers are Comte, Saint-Simon, and, to a lesser extent, Owen and
Fourier.’
The technocrats stand in opposition to the social anarchy they see
created by capitalism. In their eyes, capitalism dissolved the bonds of the
ancien regime, replacing community with the marketplace, and the
paternalism of the old elite with the laissez faire of the new. But rather
than intending a return to the days before industrialization-an impossi-
bility-they wish to harness the power of technology to create a new
society, and thereby to ameliorate the condition of the lower classes, as
well as the threat to social order posed by proletarian restlessness. The
technocrats desire to unleash the power of reason and science, to transpose

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350

the old, theological religion into a modern, positivist one. The power of
the state, through rational planning, will be employed to regulate the
economy and to advance the lower classes, as well as to ensure the position
of the productive ones. All of this will be possible only when the scientific
and industrial classes control the state and do away with politics in the
name of science and reason.
In the words of Comte (n.d.: 781 ):

Since the abolition of personal servitude, the lowest class has never been really
incorporated with the social system; the power of capital ... has become
exorbitant in daily transactions, however just is its influence through its
generality and superior responsibility.... This philosophy will show that
industrial relations, instead of being left to a dangerous empiricism and an
oppressive antagonism [among the classes}, must be systematized according to
moral laws. The duty [of the upper classes} to the lower classes will not
consist in alms-giving.... The obligation will be to procure for all, suitable
education and employment-the only condition that the lower classes can
justly demand.

The Saint-Simonians echo Comte’s faith in science, and his concern for
the condition of the lower classes, and stress equally the positive quality of
power as a tool in remolding society.

The most direct method of improving the moral and physical welfare of the
majority of the population is to give priority in State expenditures to ensuring
work for all fit men, to secure their physical existence....
We must add to this the measures necessary to ensure that the national wealth
is administered by men most fitted for it, and most concerned in its
administration, that is to say, the most important industrialists [Saint-Simon,
1964: 77}.

The technocrats visualize a hierarchical society in which the lower

orders are secure and happy, but strictly subordinate to the managerial-
scientific elite. In this respect, as in others, technocratic theory, while
more detailed and explicit than discussions of traditional planning,

presents a picture of society which is quite compatible with traditional

planning ideas and useful in baring their hidden foundation.
Underlying traditional planning is the technocratic faith in progress
through science and rationality tied to the constructive use of power in the
form of le plan. The technocrats make explicit the planner’s belief that
there is indeed some unitary public interest which men of science and
good will can identify and maximize. Like the traditional planner, they
seek to replace politics with scientific administration.
Social change for the technocrats must be engineered from the top, by
social strata that command the economy, and in the public interest,
indeed in the interest of the lower classes; for they see a harmony of
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 351

interests between themselves and the masses. Here again, technocratic

theory makes clear an assumption of traditional planning: that social
change for the benefit of all society must be initiated paternalistically by
the upper classes. Because all classes benefit from increasing productivity
and public order, the interests of the upper classes become identical with
the public interest. If the natural rulers fail to play their roles, sometimes
even resist change, it is only because they remain as yet insufficiently

enlightened.
The traditional planners, much more limited in their expectations than
the technocrats, did manage to see some of their programs carried out.
Parks were built, building codes passed and sometimes enforced, transit
lines planned and constructed, slums razed; land use zoning became a
commonplace. Social change was initiated from the top, in the name of
the public good, sometimes in the interest of the lower classes, and with
the ultimate necessity of legislative sanction. But it was always limited in
its scope by the willingness of the upper strata to support reform. In fact,
traditional planners have long been perplexed by the all-too-common
refusal of the bearers of political and economic power to recognize the
importance of rational planning as a means for the improvement of life.’
Yet traditional planning, like the technocratic movement, continues to
press for change from the top, not understanding why change should be so
difficult, should often be resisted so obstinately in the face of its apparent
rationality.

DEMOCRATIC THEORY AND USER-ORIENTED PLANNING

User-oriented planning stands squarely within the mainstream of

democratic thought. The premises which underlie its arguments are
essentially those of democratic political theory. Our task, then, must be to
analyze the theoretical substructure of such planning. Doing so, however,
immediately presents us with a difficulty: it is impossible to find anywhere
a pure theory of democracy. Democratic theory has typically been created
as a foil by its opponents; to use their formulations would then be to start

off with a flimsy straw man. On the other hand, we can distill from the
disparate works of several men the basic elements of the democratic
&dquo;type,&dquo; although in doing so we must realize that we commit a disservice
to the complexity of, and differences among, their ideas. The argument
which follows represents elements from the thinking of Locke, Rousseau,
de Tocqueville, and J. S. Mill. It is, we feel, democratic, even though it has
been derived from thinkers who are to very different degrees democrats.
Democratic theory begins with the sanctity of the individual and the
primacy of his interests. Not only does all sovereignty emanate from the
people, they are also the only source of public values. &dquo;Everyone is the
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352

best and solejudge of his own private interests&dquo; (de Tocqueville, 1957:
67). Everyone is equal and has an equal right to advance his cause. There is
no interest in society which cannot be related to that of its members.
Thus, the democrat starts with equal individuals and their desires-rather
than by exploring the social origin or intrinsic merit of these desires-and
goes on to equate the public interest with the interests of the public, or at
least, with those of the majority ?7
Having accepted individual sovereignty as his basic axiom, the democrat
then goes on to deal with the problem of government, of how public
power is to be distributed. Some form of differentiation between the
government and the citizenry becomes immediately necessary-unless, of
course, the size of the polity is severely limited.8 Recognizing this, the
democrat attempts to keep as much political power in the hands of the
citizenry as is feasible. He does so through the rule of the majority which,
if it cannot actually be the government, must control the government. For
&dquo;the very essence of democratic government consists in the absolute
sovereignty of the majority&dquo; (de Tocqueville, 1957: 264). The governors
must be forced to remain the delegates of the governed. Unless they
do-and they only will if power remains within the hands of the
citizenry-government cannot be expected to advance the interests of the
majority. Government by men freed from the control of the majority,
government by an independent aristocracy of wealth or even merit, is
likely to act in its own interests, which are necessarily at odds with those
of the sovereign people.

Democratic laws generally tend to promote the welfare of the greatest possible
number; for they emanate from the majority of the citizens, who are subject
to error, but [who] cannot have an interest opposed to their own advantage.
The laws of an aristocracy tend, on the contrary, to concentrate wealth and
power in the hands of the minority; because an aristocracy, by its very nature,
constitutes a minority [de Tocqueville, 1957: 247].
Under aristocratic governments public men are swayed by the interest of their
order, which, if it is sometimes confused with the interests of the majority, is
very frequently distinct from them [de Tocqueville, 1957: 249].

User-oriented planning accepts the democratic conception of the public

man-or, in this case, the planner acting as delegate of the citizenry. It
implicitly accepts the democratic veneration of the individual and his
interests. But this is not to say that the user-oriented or democratic
planner must be a passive figure blindly following his instructions. Rather,
the democratic planner, like the democratic governor, both responds to his
constituents and attempts to educate them, to show them alternatives and
the relation between particular policies and their interests. Indeed, the
reason that citizens must participate in government and retain power in

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 [353]

their hands is not only to prevent governmental outcomes contrary to

their interests, but also so that they themselves may grow, may learn from
participation, becoming ever more knowledgeable and better able to
govern themselves.
There are three major criticisms of democratic theory, which apply
equally to user-oriented planning. First, democratic policy makers are
immediately confronted with the short-term relative ignorance of the
citizenry, and the fact that &dquo;education through participation&dquo; is a slow
process which public policy cannot await. Participating citizens are thus
unlikely to accept very readily the planner’s conception of how means are
related to goals, or of how particular policies may be derived from their
interests. In addition, most men are unwilling to make long-run decisions,
i.e., to plan, when doing so necessitates the deferment of immediate
gratification, the result being that democracies are less likely to plan than
aristocracies.
Second, it is difficult for democratic theory to explain why men should
bother to participate in public policy-making or planning at all, for a
rational calculus of the costs and benefits of participation often makes
apathy quite compatible with the private interests of individuals. The costs
in time and effort to the individual, given his minimal impact, outweigh
any real benefits which could accrue to him personally. So most citizens
are apathetic most of the time, and the democratic planner has only a
small minority with whom to plan. Democratic planning under these
circumstances either becomes impossible, or the planner must take upon
himself the task of divining the will of the majority, in which case the
planning process can hardly be called democratic.
The final criticism of democratic theory suggests that the rule of the
majority leads to social mediocrity, for there are any number of values and
institutions which civilized men should want to preserve, toward which the
majority is indifferent or even hostile. It is the duty of the aristocracy, of
which the planner is a member, to defend these values of civilization,
though doing so may be directly antagonistic to the interests of the
majority. Where there is no elite planning, civilization may decline to the
common denominator of the mass and its taste. In de Tocqueville’s classic

(1957: 262) statement:

Do you wish to give a certain elevation to the human mind and teach it to
regard the things of this world with genuine feelings, to inspire men with a
scorn of mere temporal advantages? Is it your object to refine the habits,
...

embellish the manners, and cultivate the arts, to promote the love of poetry,
beauty and glory? ...If you believe such to be the principal object of society,
avoid the government of the democracy, for it would not lead you with
certainty to the goal.

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354

SOCIALIST THEORY AND ADVOCACY PLANNING

Socialist theory cannot readily be molded into a single type. While all
socialists-from Marx and Lenin to Bernstein, Laski, and the Webbs-accept
premises which clearly distinguish their thought from each of our other
three types, they also differ sharply among themselves on some very basic
issues. Socialism has forked many times since the days of Marx and Engels.
So we should recognize that by picking out only those elements of
socialist thought which parallel our conception of advocacy-planning, we
fail to do justice to the complexity of the movement.9 The aspects of the
theory of socialism that we will develop here are concerned entirely with
winning power for the poor in a capitalist society rather than with the
operation of socialist government. Thus, we have been forced to look at
the question of who decides ends and who decides means at a different
level than we have in the other sections of this paper. Here we assume that
ultimate authority continues to remain in the hands of present decision
makers and concern ourselves with who is responsible for setting strategies
and objectives for lower-class groups.
Socialism begins with a conflict analysis of society. It emphasizes the
divergence of interests among different social strata, and the extent to
which the upper strata maintain control of a disproportionate share of
social resources through their use of power. Socialism sees the interests of
individuals as determined by the objective circumstances of their lives.
Precisely because the circumstances of life are dissimilar at different
positions in the social hierarchy, the interests of the various social strata
conflict. The conflict of interests is real and unavoidable so long as social
inequality endures.
Socialist theory identifies the general good of society with the
advancement of deprived classes. Its fundamental value is equality; its goal
is an egalitarianism which can be achieved only through the elevation of
the lowest social strata. Thus, the socialist, like the advocate planner we
have described, throws his lot in with those at the bottom of the social
order. He claims that furthering the interests of the lower classes-in our
epoch the lumpenproletariat, comprised mostly of blacks and the poorest
whites-will further the social good. But he also recognizes that doing so
conflicts with the particular interests of the upper strata. Until the day we
have a just society, deprived groups will gain only to the extent that
privileged groups lose. Any other analysis is the product of wishful
thinking.
From the argument that interests are class- or stratum-based, it follows
that what is generally called &dquo;the public interest&dquo; must not be such at all.
Rather, it is merely a reflection of the values and programs of the
politically and economically dominant groups. Only these groups are in a
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 355

position to define that which is particularly beneficial to them as generally

beneficial to the whole society. &dquo;The ideas of the ruling class are in every
epoch the ruling ideas: i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of
society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force&dquo; (Marx and Engels,
1947 : 39).
Each new class which puts itself in the place of one ruling before it, is
compelled, merely to carry its aims, to represent its interest as the
through
common interest of all the members of society, put in an ideal form; it will

give its ideas the form of universality, and represent them as the only rational,
universally valid ones [Marx and Engels, 1947: 41].

Thus, in American society today the &dquo;public interest&dquo; which we find

described in the press and lauded by politicians is actually the particular
class interest of the upper bourgeoisie, the class which controls the
government, and in whose interest it acts. On the other hand, the real
welfare of our society is tied to the class interests of the poor.
Those who wish to improve America, argue the socialist and advocate
planner alike, must work for social change to benefit the poor. But real
social change never takes place from the top. It does not result from the
persuasive power of reasonable argument directed toward those who
control our government and economy, for the upper classes are willing to
redistribute their power or wealth only when under duress from those
beneath them. Social change, in fact, can be initiated only by a social
force. Such a force results from the collective action of a deprived group
whose interests are in conflict with the conditions of the status quo.
The obligation of the socialist intelligentsia, to which our advocate
planners belong, is then to work for social change in two related ways.
First, it acts as the spokesman for the poor, articulating their interests and
demands to those in positions of power, prodding the political institutions
of society in order to benefit the poor wherever possible. Second, and
more important, the intelligentsia becomes the vanguard of the poor,

seeking to educate them, to develop their consciousness so as to make

them into a coherent political group capable of the collective action
required to pressure the governing elite into making concessions.
Socialist theory has much merit as a guide to action for the would-be
social reformer. Yet it also demands a good deal of faith on his part. There
is no certainty that the egalitarian society desired by socialists will not be a
relatively unproductive one where men have lost some of their motivation,
and perhaps also some of their liberty. Is socialism justified in equating the
interests of one group with the social good? Marx deduced the norms of
equality and proletarian advancement from his theory of historical
development, claiming that facts imply values, equating what will be with
what should be. If we reject this analysis, the argument about the

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[356]

universality of proletarian interests rests on a shaky foundation. Socialism

then becomes open to the same attacks as democratic theory when the
latter elevates above all else the rule of the majority. Equality may imply
mediocrity and a sacrifice of the elitist aspects of society which maintain
high culture.
But in spite of the flaws in socialism as an integrated political theory, it
seems to us quite tenable to hold a socialist perspective, and to work to
advance the interests of the poor in America today. After all, success is not
so assured that the advocate planner need be overly concerned with the

problems of a truly egalitarian society.

LIBERAL THEORY AND INCREMENTALISM

Incremental decision-making is the form of planning logically implied

by liberal political theory. Lindblom’s model is nothing more than the
particular application of the general premises of liberal thought, as
formulated by Locke and developed by Bentham, Spencer, and a number
of other thinkers in the last century. Liberalism begins with an atomistic
conception of human society, seeing men as rational actors who are the
best judges of their own private interests. &dquo;Society has no right to control
a man’s actions unless they are prejudicial to the common weal or unless
the common weal demands his help&dquo; (de Tocqueville, 1957: 67). The
public interest is accepted as real, ’but is regarded as resulting from the
interplay of a multiplicity of private interests within the confines of the
political marketplace.
The obligation of liberal government is first and foremost to guarantee
the rule of law, to defend agreed-upon procedures; as Locke puts it, to
act as an impartial judge or umpire. Liberalism in its Spencerian
form-which we identify as the pure type-gives government no other
function that this role of umpire. There is, however, another strand of
liberal thought-often called &dquo;positive liberalism&dquo; and associated with
Green and Hobhouse-which does give to government the additional
function of trying to advance its own conception of the public interest,
which usually implies governmental aid for certain private interests who
are ill-treated in the marketplace. Thus, positive liberalism weds the
technocratic conception of constructive governmental action to the
mainstream of liberal thought.
Liberalism in all its forms emphasizes the prime importance of a
diffusion of power within society. Neither the democrat’s majority, nor the
socialist’s deprived class, nor the technocrat’s elite should have absolute
power. No group or institution should have so much power that it can
corner the political market. The most &dquo;positive&dquo; liberal conception of

government still sees it only as being primus inter pares. The largest role
played by the governmental decision maker is to add another input to the
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 357

market of alternative policies-a government may create plans and attempt

to implement them, but it can never be assured of their being carried out.
Thus, the general direction in which society is to move, or the way in
which political benefits are to be distributed, is not decided explicitly at
all. Rather, it is the result of a large number of decisions, some of which
may be made by government. Overall social policy is not made deliberately
but results from a mechanism which acts like an invisible hand, producing
outcomes that are ultimately rational.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE TYPOLOGY

Our discussion of the relationship between planning types and political
theories shows the concepts of planning to be not just analogous to certain
strains in modern political thought but actually fragments of these
political formulations. The fuller articulation of the planning types in
terms of value assumptions and justifications of social power permits us to
understand why America has largely rejected the programs of city
planners-with certain exceptions, to be sure, in the area of parks, zoning,
and urban renewal.
The United States for a variety of historical and cultural reasons&dquo; ° has
been dominated by the liberal tradition. This tradition values individ-
ualism, accepts the primacy of private interests, and prefers minimal
government. Thus, the very notion of planning, which assumes an
overriding and ascertainable public interest that can be maximized through
the positive actions of government is antithetical to general American
political values. As Lindblom correctly argues, most decision-making in
this country follows his description of partisan mutual adjustment. Policy
is determined incrementally; it is arrived at through the clash and
compromise of opposing views within the political marketplace. But this
incrementalism itself marks the absence of planning. Incrementalism and
partisan mutual adjustment maximize liberal values: they restrict the role
of government to that of umpire in the political marketplace, guaranteeing
the enforcement of procedural rules, but oblivious to outcomes, to which
groups win and which lose in the process of politics. At a maximum,
government becomes another actor in the political process, offering its
own solutions to social problems, with the proviso that its solutions must

compete with those offered by private decision makers.

Because incrementalism is based on a procedural value of laissez faire, it
benefits primarily those social strata-the entrepreneurial and corporate
classes-already most privileged under present conditions. These are the
strata which command the greatest share of power resources (see Dahl,
1961: esp. 94 for use of the term), enabling them to take a dispropor-
tionate amount of social rewards. The most acceptable form of govern-
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358

mental activity for these groups is that which ensures their present
position-hence, the acceptability of zoning ordinances and the like.
Because they have favored government as an arbiter rather than as a
positive actor, they have rallied behind the values of efficiency and
economy in municipal government rather than those of welfare and
innovation.
America’s political tradition is, of course, democratic as well as liberal.
Why then has there been an absence of democratic planning in the United
States? For, to the extent that we have had planning, it has not involved
the vast working-class/middle-class majority of voters. To see this, one may
look at housing policy in America.
Perhaps no sector of public policy has been so subject to the
unimpeded workings of the market as the area of middle-class housing.
Government has provided the stimulus of FHA subsidies for single-family
dwellings, resulting in a gigantic, unplanned expansion of the housing
supply-beneficial to the majority in terms of its bounty, but costly in
waste and ugliness. Although it can be argued that builders planned in
accordance with the demands of the public as registered through its
willingness to pay, there was no democratic participation in planning, no
continuous, conscious involvement of the public in the formulation of
specified means and goals (Gans, 1967b: 335).
Indeed, democratic planning involving conscious participation of a mass
public in specifying means and ends may be infeasible, not because it is
antithetical to American values but because it is institutionally impossible
to attain. Institutional theories of large-scale democracy-that is, those
theories which actually spell out the mechanisms such as voting,
representation, and parliamentary deliberation through which the public
can register its will-all provide opportunities for public expression only

through the election of representatives or the vetoing or accepting of

already specified policies. Continuous participation only makes sense
within a relatively small political unit-hence, democratic planning
becomes a meaningful goal only when it is combined with decentralization
of policy-making. Since in the United States &dquo;positive&dquo; government has
been associated with the centralization of power, it is not surprising that in
those areas where government has planned, it has done so without the
active involvement of the general public.
Moreover, democracy requires an equal weighting of each person’s vote;
it assumes a radical equality among citizens which does not exist in the
United States. Permitting each person to have an equal voice in
policy-making would mean legitimizing his right to demand an equal share
of social output. It was not for want of vision that the propertied classes
of the nineteenth century feared the broadening of the franchise. But as
institutionalized democracy has actually worked itself out in America,

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 359

policy has come to be made &dquo;incrementally&dquo;; the mass public has no

opportunity to formulate policy alternatives that differ greatly from those
under governmental consideration. Thus, while the public possesses an
ultimate veto, it has no power to create plans which alter fundamentally
the distribution of social benefits.
Unlike democratic planning, traditional planning has been inhibited
neither by a lack of institutional mechanisms nor by the absence of
supportive social conditions. As in Europe, there is in the United States a
powerful scientific-industrial class. But technocratic thought has largely
been rejected by this group in America in favor of liberalism. Thus,
planning has been much more successful in Europe, where the industrial
elite has consciously visualized itself as an aristocracy of talent, attempting
to supplant the old aristocracy of birth. The technocratic idea has been
embodied in the European planned city, the mixed public-private
corporation, the whole dirigiste tendency of the modern Western
European economies.
American industrialists have tended to see themselves as individual
entrepreneurs rather than as members of an aristocratic class. They have
supported laissez faire instead of dirigisme. It is extremely significant that
the great successes of traditional planning in the United States have been
in those cases where businessmen have acted in a coalition with
government to improve the central city. The most notable instances have
been the Logue-engineered coalitions in New Haven and Boston. The
elements of technocracy and their results are quite apparent in these two
locales. Planning was carried on in the name of the general good, but its
principal beneficiaries were downtown business interests and upper-
middle-class residents. Although there were also closely allied attempts at
benefiting the poor, the major resources of the effort were directed at
physical improvements. It was assumed that the creation of new jobs and a
more beautiful and dynamic city would be to everyone’s benefit, even

though the people who received specific advantages in terms of govern-

mental subsidies were primarily those already well-off.
The relative absence of advocacy planning for the poor, like the limited
extent of traditional planning, can be attributed largely to American
political values. There are two prerequisites for socialist planning: the
first is a crystallized consciousness among at least part of the poor, of
the social basis of their deprivation and of the need for collective action
for their advancement; the second is the existence of a political spectrum
broad enough to permit the presentation of a radical ideology by spokes-
men for the poor. Except perhaps for a brief period during the 1930s,

these conditions did not exist in the United States at all until today. The
poor accepted the individualist bias of the general political culture. The
middle-class sympathizers who constituted the intellectual leadership of
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[360]

European socialist movements were unable to escape from the dominant

American liberal ideology. Thus, they stumbled into technocratic reform-
ism rather than socialist radicalism. It is only the rise of black militance,
based on the premise that the interests of lower-class blacks are funda-
mentally opposed to those of middle-class white America, that has led to
a new consciousness on the part of a segment of the lower class. This

change in the consciousness of the lower class in combination with the

movement toward the left among young American intellectuals has laid a
foundation for the development of advocacy planning and other &dquo;social-
istic&dquo; strategies for achieving social change.
Until the present time, social change in America has largely been
unplanned. While the poor may have benefited from increasing material
prosperity, they have not been the particular beneficiaries of change, and
the improvement of their lot-to the extent that it has taken place-has
been largely accidental. The planner who intends to ameliorate the
conditions of the deprived must recognize that redistribution of social
goods will not take place without social conflict. As an advocate for the
poor, he must admit, at least to himself, that he is acting in support of the
particular interests of a particular social group. Realistic planners must give
up the delusion that they can serve the whole public equally well, that
there is an indissoluble social good which they are particularly well
circumstanced to ascertain. They must, in short, reject many of the
technocratic biases underlying the professional rhetoric of planning, and
construct a new rationale for themselves.

NOTES

1. Modern planners often distinguish between goal-oriented and

method-oriented planning. In goal-oriented planning, according to this distinction,
the planner attempts to determine social goals and then, often using such techniques
as systems analysis, to derive specific means or sets of alternatives means for attaining
them. The method-oriented planner derives program specifics from published
standards. Both goal-oriented and method-oriented planning can be used within the
first three categories of our planning typology, although the latter has typically been
used by planners who fit into the first category. Both method- and goal-oriented
planning imply long-range decision-making.
While in the real world these two types of planning may be distinguished, we
would argue that method-oriented planning derives from an original formulation of
goals. From these have come the demographic projections, ratios, and the like that
have now taken on a life of their own. Thus, there has been a reification of methods,
which are now used to derive planning goals in particular situations. These methods
are, nonetheless, subsidiary to certain original general goals of the planning
movement.

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 [361]

2. Peattie (1968: 87-88) defines advocacy planning in a way similar to ours, but
she uses a more pluralistic concept of interest than we do when we restrict the
advocate to representing the poor.
3. Any redistribution of social power would require some other group to suffer
a loss equal to the benefit received by the gaining group.
4. It is important to italicize the word modern. There are states even in the
industrial West where premodern thought appears to play a significant role. Indeed,
our use of the word may seem a bit of hand-waving designed to cover up a rather

glaring omission, for there is no mention in our typology of truly conservative

thought—that, for example, associated with Edmund Burke in England, with Ronald
and de Maistre in France.
We have purposely ignored conservative thought for two reasons. The first is that
conservative thinking stands antithetical to the whole idea of rational policy-making.
If we took the time to discuss it, it would only be to dismiss it. Second, there is in
America a total absence of conservative thinking, of the conservative desire to
maintain a feudal past. What genuine conservatism exists is combined with praise of
industrialism and thus fits under our classification of technocratic thought. What is
sometimes called conservatism in the United States is nothing more than liberalism at
its extreme-the liberalism of Spencer and the Social Darwinists; as such, we treat it
in our section on liberalism.
5. The reader may note that the last three names are usually associated with the
category "utopian socialism." The use of this term is, we feel, misleading and almost
entirely a result of Marx having the label stick. Louis Hartz calls them "feudal
socialists," which is a better choice of words, since it makes any simplistic association
of their names with socialism more difficult. By choosing to emphasize Comte and
the elements in the thought of the others most closely related to his theories, we have
even further loosened the connection between technocratic and socialist thought.
6. The planner’s perspective, like that of the technocrats, explained well the
often-recurring resistance of the lower classes to their leadership, for it was precisely
the irrationality of the common man which made the job of the rational planner both
so necessary and so difficult, especially in a quasi-democratic society.
7. Our formulation is that of the liberal democratic tradition and ignores the
sociological insights of Rousseau, as well as his attempt to equate morality with
liberty by means of the monolithic rule of the "General Will."
8. Rousseau imposes precisely such a limitation when he describes his own
democracy.
9. Socialist ideas may often be advanced by those who do not recognize their
origin. Moreover, socialist thought is frequently not labeled as such because of the
pejorative ring of the term to American ears. When Americans talk about ideas as
being socialist, there is always the likelihood of raising a red herring; i.e., of creating
guilt by association.
We hope that our association of advocacy planning with socialist ideas will not be
misinterpreted. Throughout the analysis, we refer to our own conception of advocacy
planning, which we consider to be basically socialist in orientation.
10. For extensive arguments in support of this interpretation, see Hartz (1955),
Boorstein (1953), and Lipset (1963).

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Megalopolis. Volume II. New York: Anchor.
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BOORSTIN, D. J. (1953) The Genius of American Politics. Chicago: Univ. of

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COMTE, A. (n.d.) The Positive Philosophy of August Comte. (H. Martineau, trans.)
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DAHL, R. (1961) Who Governs? New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press.
DAVIDOFF, P. (1967) "Advocacy and pluralism in planning," pp. 569-615 in H. W.
Eldridge (ed.) Taming Megalopolis. Volume II. New York: Anchor.
FRIED, M. (1967) "Grieving for a lost home," pp. 359-379 in J. Q. Wilson (ed.)
Urban Renewal. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
GANS, H. (1968) People and Plans. New York: Basic Books.
---

(1967a) "The failure of urban renewal," pp. 540-542 in J. Q. Wilson (ed,)

Urban Renewal. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
(1967b) The Levittowners. New York: Pantheon.
———

GODSCHALK,D. R. (1967) "The circle of urban participation," pp. 971-978 in H.

W. Eldridge (ed.) Taming Megalopolis. Volume II. New York: Anchor.
HARTZ, L. (1955) The Liberal Tradition in America. New York: Harcourt, Brace
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MAY, J. V. (1969) "Two model cities: development on the local level." Presented at
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PEATTIE, L. R. (1968) "Reflections on advocacy planning." J. of the Amer.
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