‘Planning ethics’ and rediscovering the idea of planning

Abstract

This paper is inspired by Sue Hendler’s considerable contributions to the field of ethics and planning. There can be few more insightful vantage points from which to view planning than through exploration of the field’s engagement with ethics. A perspective derived from ethics helps to cut through the analytical noise, to expose often troubling but fundamental issues about the very nature of planning. This paper examines how ethical concerns have been, and are being, understood in planning, and the profound questions which are posed about past, present and future intellectual and professional priorities. It concludes that the planning community needs to rediscover its ethical voice and its confidence in the idea of planning.