Commentary: Moving Beyond Crisis, Crossroads, and the Abyss in the Disciplinary Formation of Planning

Abstract

The article explicates the contours of an academic discipline and builds an argument in favor of viewing planning as an evolving discipline. As part of our argument, we discuss the unique historical trajectory of the planning discipline, its emphasis on practice and public scholarship, and how this contrasts to the traditional social sciences. We argue that planning scholars need to reorient toward the discipline’s central organizing concept, Friedmann’s knowledge-action framework, and to engage in an ongoing dialectical process of refinement, revision, and extension. To illustrate this point, we provide an example of how recent scholarly work on collective action and social movement contributes to the terrain of planning thought.