People, planet and place

This book is not written by a depersonalised academic from his ivory tower. Chapter 1 introduces the author first as a practising urban planning policy maker, and subsequently as an academic trying to make sense of the idea and practice of ‘planning’ in a democratic, capitalist, post-industrial society. The book is a record of his personal voyage (drawing on the author’s published work) through the ocean of political philosophy which he has found necessary in order to understand what it means to be a planner, and how problematic that ‘being’ is in today’s society. This chapter argues that planning cannot be separated from the society, economy and ecology in which it is embedded. Processes, institutions, structures and values which constitute society have to be understood, just as much as planners have to understand who they are.