Administrative Discretion and Urban and Regional Planners’ Values

Abstract

This article explores the possibilities for using administrative discretion to do planning that reflects urban and regional planners’ own deeply held values. The article first charts the broad character of administrative discretion and the limits of discretion. Potential problems include a lack of accountability, manipulation, unpredictability, intrusiveness, and poor decision making. The second section of the article examines one area of value-based planning—progressive planning. It concludes that administrative discretion may provide enough space for value-based planning, but using discretion for such actions often requires testing a set of ethical and political limits of working within governments.