Policy Studies Journal Vol. 23. No. 3,1995 (551-554)

Integrating Planning Theory and PracticeMary Kihl

Sue Hendler, Planning Ethics: A Reader in Planning Theory, Practice, and Education.New Bmnswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995.

Elizabeth Howe, Acting on Ethics in City Planning. New Brunswick, NJ: RutgersUniversity Press, 1994.

Amitai Etzioni, Rights and the Common Good. New York, NY: St. Martin's.

The formal study of Planning Ethics is, as Sue Hendler points out in theintroduction to her volume, a relatively young field, beginning in 1976 with PeterMarcuse's joumal article, "Planning Ethics and Beyond: Professional Values inPlanning." Yet, professional planners and those practicing in the profession ofplanning have long been struggling with the juxtaposition of individual rights,liberties, and the rights of the various publics they serve. Hendler's objective in hercarefully crafted work was to "contribute to the development of planning ethics both asa scholarly endeavor and a professional area of competence."

She successfully meets this ambitious objective by first presenting six articlesthat demonstrate the breadth of contemporary planning and ethical thought, followed byfive articles that assess the application of planning ethics to planning practice. Thefinal section of fotir articles brings the complexities of linking tfieory and practice backto the classroom through an assessment of approaches used in introducing thesecomplex issues to emerging planners. The subsections of the work are ably woventogether by well-written, thought-provoking introductory pieces, written by SueHendler, Elizabeth Howe, and Richard Klosterman. Crossreferencing within the articleshelps to knit the book together.

The carefully developed discussion helps the reader distinguish between theclassical liberal emphasis on individual rights and liberties, and the focus on the publicgood which underlies the Rawlsian perspective, procedural ethical theory, contemporaryenvironmental philosophy, and feminist ethics. It is the context of community and theroles and responsibilities of the planner in that community that defines the argument.Articles on planning practice as involved with land use, the environment, wastemanagement, utilities management, and housing highlight the complexity involved inthe application of personal values and professional ethics to the hard questions facingplanners who are, at the same time, public servants and govemment officers.

The articles assembled to highlight the discussion of planning ethics andplanning practice are an anthology of pieces that individually sparked attention anddebate when they appeared first in other settings. They include works by ThomasHarper and Stanley Stein, Shean McConnell, Hilda Blanco, Harvey Jacobs, MarshaRitzdorf, Randal Marlin, Reg Lang, James Throgmorton, and Marsha Field. Whatemerges, however, is far more than a collection of reading from well-known authors inthe field of planning. It is a unified piece documenting the course of planning theoryand practice in the 1990s. It will, no doubt, find its way onto the required reading listsof courses in planning theory and ethics. The concluding section on ethical theory andplanning education, which includes articles by Jerome Kaufman, Charles Hoch,Johnathan Richmond, and Timothy Beatley, highlights previous efforts to incorporatethe study of planning ethics into planning curricula and also demonstrates the need tofocus the discussion in current planning education. The Hendler volume will providecurrent courses in planning theory and ethics with a text that can at the same time di

551

PoUcy Studies Journal, 23:3

and stimulate discussion. The hope is that the discussion will range well beyoncplanning students and planning educators to engage practicing professionals as well.

While Handler's work examines the theoretical basis underlying perspectiveson ethics as a means of guiding the development of the substantive field of planningethics and then considers the applicability of those perspectives to planning practice,Howe's work focuses primarily upon the planning practitioners themselves and theirdefinitions of planning ethics. Although not subscribing to the tenets of situationalethics, Howe nevertheless explores the impacts of setting on the interpretations ofethics of 96 practicing planners in five different states: Maryland, New York,Tennessee, Texas, and northem Califomia.

Howe notes that planning is a relatively small profession—30,000 membersnationally in 1990, as compared to 655,000 lawyers. The majority of these plannerswork in public bureaucracies and have "input into, but certainly not control over theoutcomes of planning decisions. They are officially charged witii serving the interestsnot of single individual clients but those of a whole community." While planners agreethat responsibility to the public is the central ethical issue, the planners whom Howeinterviewed "differed substantially in ways in which they thought about and acted onthis issue." As she discovered, those differences in perspective were a product of theindividual personal values and perspectives on the professional role of planners—technicians, activists, or closet politicians. Yet those perspectives also were shaped bylocal culture, traditions, the relationship with local politick leaders, and the substantivefocus of the planners' endeavors.

The research upon which Howe's study was based was a series of interviewsand followup surveys completed with a sample of professional planners during 1982,the year after the adoption of the Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct by theAmerican Institute of Professional Planners (AIPP) in 1981. The sample was selectedas a cluster random sample in which five states were selected at random, and 19 plannersfi"om each state were chosen at random from the AIPP membership list. Howe iscareful to point out that the sample cannot be regarded as scientifically representative ofplanning practitioners, since the AIPP list is biased toward senior, more experiencedplanners. Nevertheless, the series of interviews that she reports is, no doubt, the mostambitious undertaking of this kind within the profession. The book has been a longtime in coming, but articles based on this research already have found their way into thegrowing body of literature on planning practice. In fact, Howe referenced her research inwriting the introductory piece on the application of ethics to planning practice in theHendler volume.

The book is, however, far more than a report on research conducted more thanten years ago. It is an effort to present interpretations of deontological ethicalprinciples such as honesty, justice, and loyalty in the context of the real world whereplanners practice. Perspectives gained from specific interviews, often presented in thecontext of specific situations discussed by the planners involved, help to make theissues come alive. The book is organized into three subsections: first, a discussion ofthe issues involved, including the nature of the ethical and procedural issues confi-ontedand the nature of public interest; second, a discussion of the planners and their roles andthe influences of both on perceptions of ethical values; and, third, a framework foraction. This third section presents the interplay between the planners' own perceptionsand the complex environments in which they function.

The complexity of interpreting personal values and ethics, especially whenthey appear to clash, is made more difficult by the need to interpret the public interestand to consider the consequences of responses. Interpretations of ethics are guided, inpart, by the roles of the professional planners who may be insulated from the public by

552

Reviews/Essays: Kihl

performing technical assessments or who may be interacting assertively with the publicas planner activists. Infiuences on behavior can come from the nature and level ofbureaucracy and politics in a specific setting, the level of social support, attitudestoward risk, and stmcttiral constraints. Attitudes toward public responsibility andpublic interest are not always parallel to perceptions of public policy.

Howe goes on to encourage planners as a whole jto develop an environmentthat will encourage ethical action. She agrees that "codes of ethics in planning do notappear to have much influence over the values and behavior of planners" Nevertheless,she has noted increased interest in the ethics of public officials among planneni, otherpublic professionals, and the general public. Many planners are no longer "contentsimply to serve as the tools of elected decision makers." As such, they recognize thepotential for conflict between loyalty to officials and their own ideas of the publicinterest. Sharpening that perception of the public interest is an important role forplanning education.

Rights and the Common Good, by Amitai Etzioni, unlike the volumes byHowe and Hendler, is not an attempt at a synthesis of perspectives on ethics orplanning. It is not even directed at the planning profession and its practicingprofessionals. Instead, it is a lively, sympathetic presentation of the communitarianperspective endorsed by a dedicated group of theorists. A communitarian perspective,according to Etzioni, "recognizes that the preservation of individual liberty depends onthe active maintenance of the institutions of civil society in which citizens leam respectfor others as well as self-respect; where we acquire a lively sense of our personal andcivil responsibilities, along with an appreciation of our own rights ... and leam to serveothers not just self." In a passionate plea to rebuild America's moral foundations,Etzioni urges that Americans bring their regard for individual rights into better focuswith our collective responsibility. To do so, he would start with the institutions ofcivil society— t̂he family and schools—^and would sharpen the perspectives on the rightsand responsibilities of fi*ee speech, social justice, public health, and public safety.

This book is one of̂ two volumes that was built through an open invitation to"communitarians of all stripes" to contribute essays that would portray the intellectualframework of the communitarian approach and its ideas, concepts as well as challengesto the pervading individualistic patterns in American life. This volume and itscompanion piece. Communitarian Thinking: New Essays (University of VirginiaPress, 1994) are part of a growing body of literature that began in 1991 with the start ofa communitarian quarterly. Responsive Community: Rights and Responsibilities, anda "teach-in" on the subject of building a communitarian platform.

The book includes a thoughtful introductory ch^ter by Etzioni in which heprovides the framework for the discussion. The Responsive Communitarian Platformfollows, with its emphasis on reaffirming moral commitments to communities in thisgeneration and the next. The platform also urges the state and its agencies to upholdthe integrity of our social and natural environments. Subsequent articles elaborate onthe communitarian paradigm and its policy application.

What follows is a series of articles that decry the current limited moralinfrastmcture in contexts ranging across the family, education, and the community,while an additional set of essays urge responses ranging from maintenance of publicspace, community police, and community interaction, to upholding local schools andlocal hospitals. The final set of articles offers public involvement and citizenresponsibility as an antidote that will include smaller govemment units, more activelocal units like hospital boards, school boards, ethnic and neighborhood groups, andprivate-public partnerships on the local scale. The essays are written by a wide varietyof authors, including processors of political science, education, public service,

553

PoUcy Studies Journal, 23:3

management, law, and philosophy, as well as joumalists, columnists, legalprofessionals, and a real estate consultant. All are brief, well-written, and capture theattention of a casual reader.

One might ask: What is the role of the planner in responding to the moralimperative presented in Rights and the Common Goodl The essays in this volumeunderscore the importance of reinforcing the basic values that guide the actions ofpracticing planners who are concemed about maintaining the public interest. Thesevalues form the foundation for planning ethics—both in theory and practice incontemporary America.

Mary Kihl is a professor of community and regional planning at Iowa StateUniversity.

554