The Concept of Planning Culture: Analysing How Planners Construct Practical Judgements in a Culturised Context

Abstract

Planners make judgements in their daily work – they define a problem, they formulate objectives or implement certain instruments to develop, with and for others, good or desirable places, neighbourhoods, cities or regions. These judgements are affected by both individual and collectively shared cognitive frames, representing the ‘cultural DNA' through which planners perceive the world. To understand and compare how planning practices and judgements are constructed by the interplay of individual and collective frames from various actors and spheres (values of individual planners, norms of planning institutions, general societal values, etc.) in a specific culturised context, a conceptual framework is developed by adopting analytical categories from the fields of organisational sciences or cultural studies. The conceptual framework – consisting of the dimensions: cognitive frames of individual planners and planning institutions; actors and their interactions; the institutional context and the planning system; as well as the underlying societal beliefs, perceptions and values affecting planning and planners' judgements – provides scientists with a new theoretical approach that allows analysing and comparing the situated particularities of planning practices on basis of a consistent system of criteria.