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AICP Planning Theory
Major Planning Theories
Term | Definition |
---|---|
1. Synoptic Rationalism | In philosophy in general, rationalism is the foundation and embodiment of the scientific method. It serves the same role in planning theory. |
2. Incrementalism | • Was espoused by Charles Lindbloom in "The Science of Muddling Through." • This theory is a practical response to rationalism. Planning is seen as less of a scientific technique and more of a mixture of intuition and experience. • Major policy changes are best made in little increments over long periods of time. • Incrementalism very accurately describes what actually occurs in most planning offices on a daily basis. |
3. Transactive Planning | • Like incrementalism, transactivism does not view planning purely as a scientific technique. • Transactivism espouses planning as a decentralized function based on face-to-face contacts, interpersonal dialogues, and mutual learning. • Transactivism is roughly behavioralist-style planning. |
4. Advocacy Planning | • Advocacism abandons the objective, non-political view of planning contained in rationalism. Planners become like lawyers: they advocate and defend the interests of a particular client or group (which is preferably economically disadvantaged and /or politically unorganized or underrepresented). |
5. Radical Planning | • In a sense, radicalism takes transactivism to its logical extreme. • Radicalism hates hierarchical bureaucracies, centralized planning, and domineering professional planners. • It argues that planning is most effective when it is performed by non-professional neighborhood planning committees that empower common citizens to experiment with solving their own problems. • The ideal outcomes of this process are collective actions that promote self-reliance. |
6. Utopianism | • Utopianism believes that planning is most effective when it proposes sweeping changes that capture the public imagination. • Daniel Burnham’s Plan of Chicago, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City, and Le Corbusier’s La Ville Contemporaine are often cited as utopian works. |
7. Methodism | • Methodism addresses situations in which the planning techniques that should be used are known, but the ends that should be achieved by these techniques are not. Such a situation would be making a population projection just to have it handy when it is needed. Methodism views planning techniques as ends into themselves. |