To Boldly go Where no Planners Have Ever …

Abstract

The author presents an empirical example of the systematic distortion of information and the consequent impacts in a particular planning context. In so doing, she raises issues of professionalism, ethics, and democracy, Habermas's consideration of communicative action is of value in such analysis. She further reveals, however, that Habermassian thought tends to demonstrate a significant blindness to the role of power in such interaction. Consideration of Foucault's ideas, with regard to the manifold relations of power which characterise and constitute society, thus add an extra dimension to the work. In a strategic linking of the two the author attempts to demonstrate how communicative action can illuminate the analysis of power relationships in a manner useful to planning theory and practice. The paper concludes with a development of the Habermas-Foucault framework into a proposal for discursive democracy in an attempt to enable achievement of negotiated planning policies through a process of planning through debate.