Abstract
Planners in Politics, edited by Louis Albrechts, presents the personal stories of 10 academic planners turned ‘executive politicians’; politicians with responsibility for leading a portfolio, operating in a diversity of national contexts, at different scales and having arrived in their political positions either by appointment or election (or both). Albrechts states that the book’s aim is to allow the 10 authors to reflect on how their planning experience and background may have influenced decision-making in the political sphere, as well as considering how this influenced their teaching practice when returning to academia.
The book makes important contributions in a number of ways, from a deeper understanding of the ‘black box’ of explicitly political decision-making in multiple socio-political contexts, following from Albrecht’s assertion ‘that political decision-making has its own logic’ (p.4), to heartening stories of the ways in which planning skills and expertise can be useful in navigating the intricacies of the political sphere. This review aims to draw out these strengths, but also areas where the book opens up questions for further exploration.
Before getting into the book’s substance it is important to acknowledge my perspective as a UK-based academic and sometime planning practitioner, which had a discernible impact on how I read the book, not least given the (unsurprising) absence of a chapter written from the UK context. This is a perspective that I return to when considering the key themes, debates and lessons that I want to highlight. The first of these themes is the link between politics and forms of democracy, arguably crucial to positioning the book’s intellectual contribution.
Socio-political and democratic diversity
A key intention of the book is to address questions around the gaps between professional recommendations and political decisions, with Albrechts recognising a dearth of material to date on formal political decision-making in planning.
The diversity of socio-political contexts is a particular strength in addressing this, ranging from what should be extraordinary (apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa, and dictatorship and post-dictatorship Brazil), through to the usefully mundane (democratic, multi-scalar governance in Portugal and the United States, for example).
Yet, it is notable how the form of government operating in these contexts, democratic or otherwise, takes a back seat to the authors’ commitment to service; the reader is left in no doubt of these planners’ attraction to their political role for the purpose of improving peoples’ lives, rather than the glory of politics. This is in refreshing contrast to the prevailing wisdom around longstanding declines in participation in democratic politics (Hay, 2007), low and declining levels of trust in politicians (Hay, 2007; Ipsos MORI, 2020) and problematic relationships between planning reform and political ideology (Marshall, 2021). However, it also emphasises that the cases put forward should be regarded as exceptional rather than typical, when thinking about the role of politicians in decision-making.
This theme of representativeness is given further emphasis by the pre-dominance of appointed, rather than elected, perspectives, more readily associated with technocratic modes of governance. As Albrechts discusses in the final chapter, of the 10 planners turned politicians, three were elected, six were appointed and one was initially appointed and later elected. It is the category of appointees that is useful to dwell on for a moment.
Reading the book does not suggest this to be anything other than routine, albeit for differing reasons; Jaime Lerner’s appointment amidst a military dictatorship in Brazil might be considered less than normative. However, from a UK-based perspective, the practice of appointing subject-experts into positions of political power is more unusual such that finding planners in the political spheres of English government feels incidental rather than intentional 1 ; planners who happen to have sought elected office, rather than being encouraged to run for office by virtue of their planning expertise.
This is not intended as a criticism, but it does prompt some reflections on how Albrechts frames the relationship between planning and politics when setting the overall context for the book. In the concluding chapter, Albrechts identifies: three dimensions of the broader process…characterized by a specific composition of actors: ‘plan-making’…in the sense of the planners’ proposals and recommendations; formal decision-making, the decisions of executive politicians, elected members of parliament or city council; and action/implementation…(p.259)
Despite recognising the complex interactions between these dimensions, Albrechts goes on to point out that planners have only exceptional access to the decision-making sphere whilst politicians have little direct involvement in plan-making efforts. This helpfully reminds of the need for planners to understand how politicians make decisions, reinforced by Albrechts’ inclusion of epigraphs from Forester (1989), on the danger of planners becoming powerless by ignoring those in power (Chapter 1) and Peattie (1978), addressing the need for political force to move any planning efforts (Chapter 13).
Conversely, this separation between the sphere of planning professionals and the sphere of political decision-making again feels slightly uncomfortable in the UK perspective, where the noted lack of trust in politics is particularly marked (Ipsos MORI, 2020). In the absence of any widespread possibility of professional planners being present in the sphere of political decision-making, it raises a niggling question: how much does the book actually tell us about how planners should engage with political power in order to shape decisions?
The book presents the views of executive politicians who, for the most part, appear to place high value on professional recommendations and advice, but this perhaps leaves open the question of how this advice is received by those who are motivated by different drivers. Whilst outside the book’s scope, Hay (2007) presents a useful framework for considering how different issues are regarded as matters on the continuum between technical necessity and political choice, and the associated processes of politicisation and de-politicisation that underpin this framing, providing a lens for critically examining how decisions are made. Overall, this perhaps leaves open a gap for understanding how political decisions concerning planning are made by politicians without planning knowledge or skills, or those who identify more explicitly with the ideology of particular Political parties.
Instead the book tells a story about a group of people happy to engage in political manoeuvring, goal-setting and dialogue, where the Political is only a tangential part of the story; something to be aware of in the process of navigation, rather than as an ideological goal. In turn, this evoked the contrast between land-use and spatial planning and, again, the implications for the role of professional planners.
Facilitating spatial planning?
A more fluid approach to navigating the political sphere in pursuit of particular goals is arguably central to the stories told by each chapter author. Each tells an engaging story of navigating power dynamics and organisational structures, holding important messages for how planners are able to make a difference. Indeed, whilst perhaps not Albrechts’ intention, the book does highlight the usefulness of skills emphasised in planning (for example, communication, collaboration, strategic thinking, problem-solving) in operating effectively within the political sphere.
Conversely, I was constantly reminded of the way that politicians, through their democratic accountability, have licence to navigate these structures fluidly, whilst professional planners do not often have the same freedoms (whether this is structural or self-imposed).
In turn, this evoked the emergence of spatial planning as a response to the limitations of land-use planning. To borrow Healey’s definition, spatial planning ‘demands attention to the interplay of economic, socio-cultural, environmental and political/administrative dynamics as these involve across and within an urban area’ (2007, p.3), what emerged as an implicit theme is the way in which each author was able to transcend the traditional boundaries of land-use planning, to engage in whichever arena they saw fit to achieve their goals; from the reader’s perspective, the result is an interesting account of how the authors engaged in issues as varied as food production, affordable housing provision and recycling/waste management.
Yet this again served to remind more of the greater constraints on the role of the professional planner; if spatial planning is a normative ideal, one (unintended?) message from Albrechts’ book might be that it is only attainable within a political sphere – a particularly uncomfortable message in a context where, as earlier noted, this is not a realistic expectation for most planners. Perhaps the implicit argument here is for revisiting the boundaries and relationships between the professional and political spheres and how these should be navigated by planners.
Indeed this is arguably one of the book’s key contributions overall. The stories told are powerful, inspiring to read and enlightening in better understanding how actions within a diversity of political spheres shape our everyday lives. Across this diversity there are clear and consistent lessons from the stories to be learned about the importance of emphasising dialogue, humility and flexibility as key skills in the pursuit of clear goals. The book also reinforces the need to take a broad view of planning as about how land-use interacts with a variety of activities and themes to shape how people experience place. However, it is ultimately helpful to see the book as one entry into an ongoing project about understanding how individuals in powerful roles, influenced by theory, can shape people’s lives; the book arguably presents a normative understanding of what can be achieved by the well-intentioned and well-prepared but we now need a more comprehensive understanding of what happens when these decisions are made by the less well-intentioned and well-prepared.