"Applied Science, Faculty of"@en . "Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of"@en . "DSpace"@en . "UBCV"@en . "Milroy, Beth Moore"@en . "2010-03-30T23:06:51Z"@en . "1981"@en . "Doctor of Philosophy - PhD"@en . "University of British Columbia"@en . "When planners evaluate their plans they tend to ask \"Does this plan lead to this stated objective?\". The thesis argues that one finds only a very partial view of planners* purposes when a planning report is read as if the stated purpose is actually all that the report is about. A stated purpose is only one of the ways by which people demonstrate how they are adapting to a set of circumstances.\r\nFirst of all this sort of a reading assumes that a planning report is a technical, quasi-empirical document concerned to explain why a certain arrangement of goods and services, is appropriate. By contrast, justification rather than explanation is argued to be the task of planners when they put forth their recommendations. Secondly, this abbreviated view of what a planning report is about assumes that one is concerned mainly with physical objects and hardly at all with the subsisting relations between the individual and society, and between these and the larger ecosystem. To understand these relations, and how to couple the major systems, is argued to be the essential task of planning \u00E2\u0080\u0094 a task which must consider not only the biological, physiological and physical relations but just as importantly the symbolic relations that imaginative man creates. Thirdly, a parsimonious reading of planners' objectives obscures the assumptions that are brought to the planning task. Much of what we do and think is habitual and our habits lie below the threshold of awareness in the course of everyday living. Some bundle of assumptions and habits of thought forms the premises for the plan. The bundle contains, for example, assumptions about the relationship between the planner and client; assumptions about the relationship between persons and nature; habits of thought about what constitutes a planning report; or various metaphors which have slipped into common usage.\r\n\r\nThe study tries to show that planning is an activity in and of itself which requires its own mode of evaluation beginning within the planning enterprise itself. Evaluation techniques based in empirical fields that are applied to plans reduce planning to something which it is not. In this reductionism planning is mistaken for a poor cousin of empirical fields which can never quite succeed at explanation. In addition, the responsibility of the planner for the plan is clouded because the emphasis in empirical methods is on observation and not on recommendation.\r\nA critical method is presented which demonstrates the sort of approach believed to be necessary to evaluate planning from within planning. It is a method that slows down the reading in order to allow one to do two things in particular. First, it allows one to see how the recommendations of the report are made to appear plausible, since one can cluster together into \"codes\" what can be and cannot be written in a report. This process tends to support the argument that plans are subject to justification rather than explanation. Secondly, it allows one to identify some of the assumptions brought to the planning exercise, which can be clustered in patterns.\r\nThe value of the study, I believe, lies in showing how much is being missed in conventional evaluations, and why that information is central to developing planning as an identifiable activity peopled with responsible planners. In addition, the method contributes to our experience of how to bring assumptions to the surface so that the sensitized planner is in a position to choose, with awareness, whether to retain or to exchange them for others."@en . "https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/23155?expand=metadata"@en . "CRITICISM AND THE PLAUSIBLE PLAN: THEORY AND METHOD by BETH MOORE MILROY B.A., McGill University, 1974 M.Urbanisme, Universite de Montreal, 1976 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (School of Community & Regional Planning) We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA April 1981 @Beth Moore-Milroy, 1981 In p r e s e n t i n g t h i s t h e s i s i n p a r t i a l f u l f i l m e n t o f the r e q u i r e m e n t s f o r an advanced degree at the U n i v e r s i t y o f B r i t i s h C olumbia, I agree t h a t the L i b r a r y s h a l l make i t f r e e l y a v a i l a b l e f o r r e f e r e n c e and stud y . I f u r t h e r agree t h a t p e r m i s s i o n f o r e x t e n s i v e c o p y i n g o f t h i s t h e s i s f o r s c h o l a r l y purposes may be g r a n t e d by the Head o f my Department o r by h i s r e p r e s e n t a t i v e s . I t i s u n d e r s t o o d t h a t c o p y i n g o r p u b l i c a t i o n o f t h i s t h e s i s f o r f i n a n c i a l g a i n s h a l l not be a l l o w e d w i t h o u t my w r i t t e n p e r m i s s i o n . Depa rtment The U n i v e r s i t y o f B r i t i s h Columbia 2075 Wesbrook Place Vancouver, Canada V6T 1W5 ABSTRACT When planners evaluate their plans they tend to ask \"Does this plan lead to this stated objective?\". The thesis argues that one finds only a very partial view of planners* purposes when a planning report i s read as i f the stated purpose i s actually a l l that the report is about. A stated purpose is only one of the ways by which,people demonstrate how they are adapting to a set of circumstances. First of a l l this sort of a reading assumes that a planning report i s a technical, quasi-empirical document concerned to explain why a certain arrangement of goods and services, i s appropriate. By contrast, justification rather than explanation i s argued to be the task of planners when they put forth their recommendations. Secondly, this abbreviated view of what a planning report is about assumes that one is concerned mainly with physical objects and hardly at a l l with the subsisting relations between the individual and society, and between these and the larger ecosystem. To understand these relations, and how to couple the major systems, i s argued to be the essential task of planning \u00E2\u0080\u0094 a task which must consider not only the biological, physiological and physical relations but just as importantly the symbolic relations that imaginative man creates. Thirdly, a parsimonious reading of planners' objectives obscures the assumptions that are brought to the planning task. Much of what we do and think i s habitual and our habits l i e below the threshold of awareness in the course of everyday l i v i n g . Some bundle of assumptions and habits of thought forms the premises for the plan. The bundle contains, for example, assumptions about the relationship between the planner and client; assumptions about the relationship between persons and nature; habits of thought about what constitutes a planning report; or various metaphors which have slipped into common usage. The study tries to show that planning i s an activity in and of i t s e l f which requires i t s own mode of evaluation beginning within the planning enterprise i t s e l f . Evaluation techniques based in empirical fields that are applied to plans reduce planning to something which i t i s not. In this reductionism planning i s mistaken for a poor cousin of empirical fields which can never quite succeed at explanation. In addition, the responsibility of the planner for the plan i s clouded because the emphasis in empirical methods i s on observation and not on recommendation. A c r i t i c a l method i s presented which demonstrates the sort of approach believed to be necessary to evaluate planning from within planning. It i s a method that slows down the reading in order to allow one to do two things in particular. First, i t allows one to see how the recommendations of the report are made to appear plausible, since one can cluster together into \"codes\" what can be and cannot be written in a report. This process tends to support the argument that plans are subject to justification rather than explanation. Secondly, i t allows one to identify some of the assumptions brought to the planning exercise, which can be clustered in patterns. The value of the study, I believe, l i e s in showing how much i s being missed in conventional evaluations, and why that information i s central to developing planning as an identifiable activity peopled with responsible planners. In addition, the method contributes to our experience of how to bring assumptions to the surface so that the sensitized planner i s in a position to choose, with awareness, whether to retain or to exchange them for others. iv CRITICISM AND THE PLAUSIBLE PLAN: THEORY AND METHOD TABLE OF CONTENTS Page 1 INTRODUCTION 1 PART ONE: OPENING UP THE PLAN 9 2 JUSTIFICATION IN PLANNING 10 2.1 Introduction 10 2.2 Why Justification Rather than Explanation 11 2.3 Justification in the Image of Explanation 16 2.4 Justification qua Justification 26 3 CONSCIOUS PURPOSE ' 28 3.1 The Capsule Version 28 3.2 Causal Explanation 30 3.3 Pervasiveness of Causal Explanation 34 3.4 The Problem of Language 36 3.5 Rationality and Rational Objects 39 3.6 The Mind/Body Split 44 3-7 Another Epistemology? 47 4 THE DISCIPLINARY MATRIX 49 4.1 Both Descriptive and Prescriptive 49 4.2 Both Metaphor and Metaphoric 51 4.3 A Metaphor is a Relation 53 4.4 Content and Context 55 4.5 Codes as Operators 58 4.6 Disciplinary Matrix as Context for Codes 60 4.7 Disciplinary Matrix as Code: The Paradox 61 4.8 Habits of Thought are Here to Stay 62 PART TWO: THE PLAN AS SUBJECT 66 5 PATTERNS 67 5.1 Introduction to Part Two 67 5.2 Mistaking Hypotheses for Data 68 5.3 Against Determinism 71 5.4 Inverting the Question 73 5.5 Structure 74 5.6 Open Systems 74 5.7 Non-Mechanistic Cybernetics 76 5.8 Information-Processing Systems 77 6 ANALOGUES 80 6.1 Analogues and Coupling 80 6.2 Using and Being Used by Analogues 82 6.3 The Organic Analogue 89 V Page 6.4 The Machine Analogue 91 6.5 The P u r p o s i v e Act as Analogue 93 6.6 The L i n g u i s t i c Analogue 95 6.7 Another Analogue? 100 7 EXPANSIVENESS 103 7.1 \" L e a v i n g Unobscured t h e V a s t Darkness\" 103 7.2 The Referendum Syndrome 105 7.3 The \"Modest P l u r a l \" 107 7.4 M u l t i p l i c a t i v e I n f o r m a t i o n 108 7.5 A C o r r e c t Reading? 109 PART THREE: THE PLAUSIBLE PLAN 111 8 METHOD 112 8.1 J u s t i f i c a t i o n f o r the Method 112 8.2 D i v i d i n g Up t h e Text 114 8.3 M e d i a t i n g the Message: Codes and N a t u r a l i z a t i o n 115 8.4 The Codes 118 8.4.1 The Real 119 8.4.2 O p p o s i t i o n s 120 8.4.3 C u l t u r a l Conventions 121 8.4.4 The Symbolic 121 8.4.5 I n d i c e s 122 8.4.6 Genre Conv e n t i o n s 123 8.4.7 W r i t e r , Reader, W r i t e r , . . . 123 8.5 D i g r e s s i o n s 124 8.6 C h o i c e o f Text 125 9 CRITIQUE 127 9.1 Codes and A b b r e v i a t i o n s 127 9.2 The C r i t i q u e 127 A. The Report Cover 127 B. The L e t t e r o f T r a n s m i t t a l 130 C. Acknowledgements 137 D. Table o f Contents & L i s t o f I l l u s t r a t i o n s 138 E. Chapter I 141 F. G e n e r a l Land Use P r o p o s a l s (Map), F i g . 1 159 9.3 The O r i g i n a l Text 161 9.4 L i s t o f D i g r e s s i o n s 172 9.5 Index o f S e l e c t e d P a t t e r n s 172 10 DISCUSSION 173 10.1 A S e n s i t i z i n g Device 173 10.2 E v o l v i n g Theory and P r a c t i c e 177 SOURCES CONSULTED 181 v i I wish to acknowledge with thanks the support I received from the members of my thesis committee: Professor Henry C. Hightower who, as chairman, assumed the heaviest task; Professor Harry Lash, Visiting Professor at the University of Ottawa; Professor Lorraine Weir of the English Department, University of British Columbia; Professor Brahm Wiesman, Director of the School of Community & Regional Planning, University of British Columbia; Professor James Wilson of the Geography Department, Simon Fraser University. They a l l contributed to helping me to carry my ideas forward and to greatly improving their presentation. In addition, I wish to recognize the considerable financial assistance I received from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. Special acknowledgements also go to my parents and a number of very close friends who in various ways helped to make my Ph.D. years happier and more f r u i t f u l than they could have been without their care and stimulating companionship. 1 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION When planners evaluate t h e i r plans they tend to ask \"Does t h i s plan lead to t h i s stated objective?\". The thesis argues that one finds only a very p a r t i a l view of planners' purposes when a planning report i s read as i f the stated purpose i s a c t u a l l y a l l that the report i s about. The early chapters show what i s meant by a \" p a r t i a l view\" from a t h e o r e t i c a l stance, and describe the implications f o r the evolution of planning thought of mistaking the part f o r the whole. This leads to the method, presented i n Part 3, which demonstrates how one may i d e n t i f y the i m p l i c i t assumptions that lend p l a u s i b i l i t y to those e x p l i c i t purposes. During the l a s t century there has been a gradual s h i f t i n perspective concerning the sort of knowledge that i s pertinent to understanding the a f f a i r s of humankind and the natural ecosystem. The s h i f t i s away from a perspective i n which knowledge i s \"concrete\" and \"objective\" and toward one i n which knowledge i s \"constructed\" and \"symbolic\"\"'\". This essay i s i n the s p i r i t of the l a t t e r view i n which people a c t i v e l y construct t h e i r r e a l i t y as d i s t i n c t from passively responding according to physical and bioenergetic laws. 1 F o r a sense of t h i s s h i f t i n s o c i a l thought, see, for example, H. Stuart Hughes, Consciousness and-Society (New York: Vintage Books, 1958); i n philosophy, Suzanne K. Langer, Philosophy i n -a New Key, 3rd e d i t i o n (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976); and i n science, Michael Polanyi, corrected e d i t i o n , Personal Knowledge (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962). 2 Among those whose work is in the constructivist tradition i s Thomas Kuhn. Using historical analysis, he has demonstrated the sociological aspect of a community of scientists in which knowledge is constructed at least in part to conform to shared paradigms. In his 1970 postscript to The Structure of-Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn limits what he means by the word \"paradigm\", which is a central concept in his original text, to the idea of shared examples. The components i n i t i a l l y assigned to \"paradigm\" are now placed under the rubric \"disciplinary matrix\", which also includes \"paradigms\" in the sense of exemplars. The disciplinary matrix i s a constellation of elements which are shared by a community of specialists and which account for intra-group communication and the relative unanimity of professional judgment. Kuhn has chosen 'disciplinary' because i t refers to the common possession of the practitioners of a particular discipline; 'matrix' because i t is composed of ordered elements of various sorts, each p requiring further specification\" . Among the components particular to the disciplinary matrix besides exemplars are shared commitments on behalf of a practising group to beliefs in certain symbolic generalizations, models that \"supply the group with preferred or permissible analogies and metaphors,\" and therefore with values. Kuhn's argument i s that science, like other act i v i t i e s , i s also interpretative and that during \"tradition-bound periods\" phenomena are interpreted in line with the consensual beliefs of the disciplinary matrix. The single most important feature of Kuhn's disciplinary matrix i s that i t serves, for those who work in the f i e l d , as a point of reference for what is already accepted in the discipline. I draw from Kuhn the idea of a set of consensual beliefs that have effects for the ongoing act i v i t i e s of a 2Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd edition, enlarged (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), p. 182. 3 i b i d . , p. 184. 3 special group and use i t in examining the practice of planning. The \"periodization\" which Kuhn describes whereby \"a succession of tradition-bound periods are punctuated by non-cumulative breaks\"1*, and in which the disciplinary matrix has a role, i s already a traditional approach in studies of the arts and social sciences. This approach i s extended here to the f i e l d of human action. The critique presented in chapter 9 i s a single study in that framework. It tries to offer a glimpse of a disciplinary matrix. No effort i s made to describe the glimpsed disciplinary matrix in the context of an evolving disciplinary matrix. The notion of a disciplinary matrix which provides both constraints and possibilities for group activity i s used here to explore land use planning and more particularly urban renewal circa 1963. The argument i s that the works that planners write presuppose a disciplinary matrix and that they could not be written without some conception of what constitutes a planner's \"text\". Alternatively they would not be recognized as planners' texts unless they contained certain common values, metaphors and conventions of the genre. Indeed, they would appear \"ungrammatical\" i f they failed to exhibit a degree of conformity with previous works in the genre. This raises the question of what i t i s that the disciplinary matrix consists of for planners, and what particular purposes i t i s serving. At issue i s not whether these consensual models are 'real', 'right', 'rational', and so on, but what role they play in the making of plans. In the normal course of planning activity, the disciplinary matrix provides ranges within which justification for phenomena appear plausible and natural. It is possible to explore written works from the point of view of plausibility as distinct from the point of view of v e r i f i a b i l i t y according to implicit or explicit models. Justification for this 4Ibid., p. 208. 4 alternative critique of plans that focusses on plausibility begins in chapter 2 with the argument that planners have tended to try to explain the correctness of their plans by relying heavily on 'scientific* reasoning and evidence to show why changes should be made, and why these changes should be made in a certain way. This has turned the spotlight on 'technique' and 'science' in a manner that suggests these are the reasons for plans recommending what they do, instead of being clear that plans are only the results of purposeful persons. However, neither the angle nor the wattage of the spotlight has resulted in plans being explained, which is a mode belonging to empirical science. Rather, confusion between justification and explanation has resulted. One source of this confusion is the ill-defined theme that planning i s part 'art' and part 'science'. Another related source of the confusion i s explored in chapter 3: that rational thinking means conscious thinking. The discussion centres on why conscious purpose i s assumed to be the only type of adaptive behaviour that planners are engaged in when they plan. The ramifications of this assumption are also considered. Conscious purposefulness is only a very small representation of the actual range of the adaptive behaviour of persons. Among other things, this concept of rationality excludes the symbolic generalizations and values that, following Kuhn, are part of the disciplinary matrix. In chapter 4 the disciplinary matrix i s described as complementary to conscious purpose in the activity of planning. Part Two outlines three points of departure for a c r i t i c a l method. They are: patterns (chapter 5 ) , analogues (chapter 6 ) , and an expansive approach to reading (chapter 7 ) . Together these begin to describe an attitude toward reading that permits close scrutiny of the way in which meaning is created in a text. The selection of these three for special attention i s intended to place the focus of the c r i t i c a l method on bringing 5 conscious purpose and the habits of thought of the disciplinary matrix jointly to bear on a reading. The method for critiquing a text that incorporates these points of departure i s described in chapter 8. The method inverts the traditional one by beginning within the text i t s e l f , instead of, as planning evaluations generally do, beginning with asking i f the plan achieves a stated goal. Using the inverted method, one seeks to discover how the written text produces meaning that i s plausible and natural. The method i s concerned with the meaning of the goal as well as the plan which purports to achieve i t . The method i s applied to a few pages from a 1963 planning report concerning urban renewal and appears in chapter 9. The choice of a planning report rather than, for example, a journal a r t i c l e about urban renewal was made because I believe, as Hughes does, that \"the most reliable indicator\" of dominant ideas \" is not what people say but what they do\" . It is i n planning reports that theory and practice are brought together. A report dealing with urban renewal was chosen, f i r s t l y , because i t was a particularly contentious form of intervention, and one used within an identifiable period \u00E2\u0080\u0094 between 1947 and 1969 in Canada.^ Secondly, i t was chosen because much has been written about i t s failure as a planned intervention and because reasons for that failure have been identified. One reason given i s \"failure to communicate\"^. When Rose describes the \"failure to communicate\" thesis he cannot mean i t l i t e r a l l y : It i s impossible not to communicate, for one i s always communicating ^Hughes, Consciousness, p. 11. ^The single term 'urban renewal' i s used to cover 'slum clearance', 'urban redevelopment', and 'urban renewal', but does not include 'Neighbourhood Improvement Programs'. ^Albert Rose, Citizen Participation in Urban Renewal (Toronto: Centre for Urban and Community Studies, Feb. 1974), p. 67. 6 something, even when apparently saying nothing. Silence, obfuscation and nonsense syllables are also communication. What Rose appears to mean i s that different people involved in the renewal projects he investigated had different ideas about the nature and value of urban renewal. Those involved were communicating incessantly; but the messages were not leading toward consensus. His concern seems to have been that neither 'side' was able to convince the other of the 'rightness' of i t s views. The distinction between \"failure to communicate\" and \"failure to convince\" i s not semantic nit-picking. Consider the following from Rose: It was reasoned that as a f i r s t phase the research programme could explore in some depth the assertion of several reputable social scientists (Robert Weaver, Robert Wood, Hans Spiegel; and, in Canada, the writer of this report) that the threatened breakdown in urban renewal was basically a failure in communication. It had been argued in many communities that the members of the boards and staffs of planning and redevelopment agencies were unable to communicate to the residents of designated urban renewal areas the positive gains which a renewal programme held out not only for the wider community but for the residents themselves. Moreover, elected councillors in municipal government, as well as senior appointed o f f i c i a l s who headed such departments of local government as Assessment, Works, Streets, Traffic, and the like, were equally unable to express their roles in non-technical language. This failure in communication was alleged to rest in the inability of professionally-trained and highly-skilled public servants and elected o f f i c i a l s to explain their plans, programmes and the stages of implementation of redevelopment in language that could be understood by the typically modestly-educated and low-income residents of affected neighbourhoods.8 Rose shows the differing interpretations by planners, elected o f f i c i a l s , citizen group leaders, and others, and concludes: The f i r s t phase of the research project was strongly conclusive in demonstrating the validity of the \"failure-to-communicate\" hypothesis\".\" His hypothesis, investigated and shown to be valid according to his statement, leads to the proposition that planners need some s k i l l s 8Ibid., pp. 6 7 - 6 8 . 9 l b i d . , p. 2 2 3 . 7 improvement in bringing diverse views together. Indeed, the belief that there was a failure of communication with respect to urban renewal has greatly contributed to the rise of a new goal for planners: to communicate better. This has been institutionalized as a sub-branch of planning in the form of 'citizen participation' which i s now the subject of conferences and academic papers.\"^ The validation of the hypothesis does not i t s e l f imply changing from renewal to another form of intervention, but implies doing a better job of making people see that renewal means \"positive gains\". For planners, this meant that they need not question the disciplinary matrix which contributed to making urban renewal a plausible recommendation in planning reports. When we look at the situation as a \"failure to convince\", on the other hand, we can see that planners were communicating (and communicating very well) a picture of themselves and their role (\"to communicate to the residents of designated urban renewal areas the positive gains which a renewal programme held out\"). Their inability to convince, however, suggests a very different proposition: the proposition that what is being said needs reflection, not how i t i s being said. This is a higher order of learning. It involves questioning the habits of thought that make urban renewal a plausible recommedation. It is to this level of reflection that this thesis is directed. Chapter 10 anticipates a number of criticisms that might be made against the c r i t i c a l method. These are presented in conjunction with a defence of various aspects of the method. In addition, chapter 10 serves to draw the thesis to a close by discussing the place of the perception in the evolving study and practice of planning. l^See, for example, Environment Council of Alberta, Involvement and - Environment. Edited by Barry Sadler (Edmonton: The Environment Council of Alberta, 1977. 8 Finally, I wish to emphasize two points in particular before moving to the body of the thesis. One i s that I am not concerned with urban renewal per se, or attempting to comment on i t favourably or unfavourably in this essay. This has been done by many others. Rather, the emphasis is on the production of meaning in planning texts, between readers and writers. The particular case used to demonstrate this i s not central to the task. The second and equally important point is that planners are embedded in a larger social matrix which encourages certain types of thought and action and discourages others. I have no knowledge or feeling that the individual or collective world views of planners are either more or less appropriate than those of other persons working in the public sphere. What I would like to feel, however, i s that planners have a wide range of ways available to them for reflecting on their a c t i v i t i e s \u00E2\u0080\u0094 ways which do not bury under a dazzling array of techniques and theories their reason, vision, ethics, compassion, or responsibility. 9 PART ONE: OPENING UP THE PLAN 10 CHAPTER 2 JUSTIFICATION -IN - PLANNING 2.1 Introduction To justify something i s to show that i t i s justifiable or reasonable. Justification in planning refers to the way in which plans are shown to be right, adequate or warranted with reference to some measure of 'goodness' or 'satisfactoriness'. \"To speak about satisfactoriness\", says Gunnar Olsson, \" i s therefore not to speak about the actual performance of a particular action, but to give our reasons for performing it.\"\" 1\" Since action is concerned not only with physical objects, but refers also to ideas about how things should be different, that i s , \"mental objects which subsist in minds and relations\": there i s common agreement that the fundamental rule of human action cannot be that of truth-preservation. Indeed i t is the very point of purposive action to change what now i s true so that i t becomes untrue. Beginning as an invective, i t turns into a vision and ends as a thing. . .In the formal work, most attention has. . .been directed towards the principles of satisfactoriness-preservation. Its main purpose i s to \"ensure that we never pass from a f i a t , which i s satisfactory for a particular purpose, to a fi a t which i s unsatisfactory for that purpose. The rules are satisfactoriness-preserving, just as the rules for assertoric logic are truth-preserving\".2 -\u00E2\u0080\u00A2-\"Social Science and Human Action or on Hitting Your Head Against the Ceiling of Language,\" in Philosophy in-Geography, eds. S. Gale and G. Olsson (Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel Publishing, 1979), p. 291. 2 I b i d . 11 The measure of the plan i s qualitative and contextual; i t can be discussed and fe l t but neither counted nor referred to the five senses to be validated. Planners seek to justify their prescriptions to their peers, the public, p o l i t i c a l representatives, and clients. Justification differs significantly from explanation. In the physical and social sciences one seeks to explain phenomena in the sense of accounting for their existence, their shape, numbers, change, and so on. The phenomena are ultimately palpable. The language of the scientist aims to observe, describe and explain what i s now true: i t is geared to truth-preservation. Scientists seek corroboration for their explanations among their peers. Prescriptions which may stem from the explanations f a l l beyond the sci e n t i f i c enterprise, as commonly understood by scientists. The arguments presented in this chapter are f i r s t , that planners' prescriptions rest ultimately on justification (which belongs to the realm of satsifactoriness-preservation), rather than explanation (which belongs to the realm of truth-preservation); second, that planners have tried to mold justification in the image of explanation and in so doing they have obscured the distinction between the two; and third, that one needs to understand the methods of justification qua justification no less than the methods of explanation. The remaining chapters explore some reasons why planners shy away from acknowledging that they are in the business of justification; explore the implications of confusing justification for explanation; and suggest how the methods of justification used by planners may be better understood. 2.2 Why Justification Rather than Explanation The problem of confusing justification and explanation has roots in the recurrent but ill-defined theme in the planning literature that planning is both 'art' and 'science'. These terms, or approximations, have long 12 appeared in the definitions of planning, for example, by professional planning associations. In 1929 the Town Planning Institute of Canada's definition was: \"Town planning may be defined as the scie n t i f i c and orderly disposition of land and buildings in use and development with a view to obviating congestion and securing economic and social efficiency, health and well-being in urban and rural communities.\"J This Institute, now known as the Canadian Institute of Planners, today defines planning as the planning of the sci e n t i f i c , aesthetic and orderly disposition of land, with a view to securing physical, economic and social efficiency, health and well-being in n urban and rural communities.\" Similarly, in the United States, the American Institute of Planners defines i t s purpose as advancing \"the science and art of planning\". Individual planners have also expressed the view that planning i s both art and science. Thomas Adams said in 1935 that \"City and town planning i s a science, an art, and a movement of policy. . .\"; Barclay Hudson said in 1979 that \"most planners would admit that their craft is one of art as well as science\".^ Perhaps i t i s safe to say that lurking behind the innumerable definitions of planning that invoke future, intention, knowledge, action, guidance, policy, and so on, there l i e s a sense of the activity as somehow belonging to both 'art* and 'science'. 3A.G. Dalzell, \"The Attitude of the Engineer Towards Town Planning,\" Journal of the - Town Planning -Institute of Canada 3 (June 1929): 44. ^Canadian Institute of Planners, By-Law 1.6, in Charter; By-Laws and - Code -of Professional - Conduct Handbook, 1979 edition. ^See, for example, Journal of the American-Institute -of Planners 23 (January 1957): 1; Journal of - the American Planning - Association 46 (October 1980): back cover. ^Thomas Adams, Outline of Town -and - City Planning (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1935), p. 21; Barclay Hudson, \"Comparison of Current Planning Theories,\" Journal-of the -American Planning Association 45 (October 1979): 394. 13 The conjunctions used to link 'science' to 'art' are significant. 'And*, which i s perhaps the most frequently used conjunction in this instance, suggests that 'science' and 'art' are viewed as discrete pools of knowledge and understanding, and that planners dip into both in the practice of their profession. Neither 'art' nor 'science' is clearly defined in the context of these definitions of planning, but one might gather from the literature that, loosely speaking, 'art' refers to the aesthetics of planned, environments, and to whatever else i s construed as the subjective aspects of plans, particularly values and ethics. 'Art' seems to refer to those aspects of a plan that are unverifiably 'necessary', 'right', 'good', 'valuable', and so on. 'Science', by contrast, appears to refer to the asepcts of plans that can be shown by one or more means to be verifiably 'correct', 'efficient', 'necessary', and so on. The categories are rather slippery but the literature suggests there i s at least some understanding of what f a l l s where. Harris makes a clear distinction between 'science' and 'humanism'. His latter category would 7 include generally that which f a l l s into 'art'. A clear separation also underlies Klosterman's normative planning in which values are to be given better tools to compete against the strong claims that science can make for taking a given action.^ Thus, an element in the plan or the process of planning i s classed either in 'science* or in 'art'. For example, means have been traditionally associated with science \u00E2\u0080\u0094 that i s , one can select the best means to achieve a desired outcome using sci e n t i f i c reasoning; and ends have been associated with non-science \u00E2\u0080\u0094 that i s , a reflection of a value. The grounds for 7\"The Limits of Science and Humanism in Planning,\" Journal of the American -Institute -of Planners 33 (September 1967): 324-335. ^\"Foundation for Normative Planning,\" Journal of the American Institute of - Planners 44 (January 1978): 37-46. 14 Including an element as part of a plan w i l l be sanctioned by reference either to 'facts' (which are viewed as pertaining to 'science') or to values (which are viewed as pertaining to 'art'). While 'art' and 'science' are seen as separate, the literature suggests that i t would be more proper to state that they are seen as separate-but-related. For example, Davidoff and Reiner use arguments that they attribute to logical positivists to show the philosophical distinction between 'fact' and 'value', but they then go on to show how the two are q nonetheless intimately related. Another example of the separate-but-related view i s Davidoff in which the same assumptions as appear in his 1962 art i c l e with Reiner are brought to bear on the theory of advocacy planning. 1^ Niebanck too suggests that the dominant view of values is that they are separate from rather than integral to the context of a plan: \"The term 'values' i s being tossed around these days, as though values were simply another set of variables to be incorporated into a complex planning equation. . . By contrast, i f planners were in the habit of using 'both'/'and' \u00E2\u0080\u0094 that i s , planning i s both art and science \u00E2\u0080\u0094 i t would be more d i f f i c u l t to foster the separateness of planning's sources of knowledge. The assumption implicit in the separate-but-related view is that 'fact' and 'value' emerge from separate sources of knowledge or understanding 9\"A Choice Theory of Planning,\" Journal of the American-Institute of Planners 28 (May 1962): 103-115. -^\"Advocacy and Pluralism in Planning\", Journal of the -American Institute-of Planners 31 (November 1965): 331-338. Incidentally, in 1979 this was the most frequently cited a r t i c l e on master's planning programs' reading l i s t s for theory of planning courses, while the 1962 article with Reiner also ranks very high. -'\u00E2\u0080\u00A2-'\u00E2\u0080\u00A2Paul L. Niebanck, \"The Captivity of the Planning Profession,\" in The-Structural - Crisis of the 1970ls and Beyond, eds. H.A. Goldstein and S.A. Rosenberry (Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, 1978), pp. 205-206. 15 and are later merged in the plan. Can this indeed be so? The remainder of the thesis argues that meaning i s dependent on context and that values are integral to seizing the fact in the f i r s t instance, to seizing the context, and to making the interpretation. For example, the fact that today a city has 200,000 inhabitants when last year i t had 180,000 takes on meanings for the various urban actors depending on the contexts in which they view the fact. It may be taken to mean a larger market for those producing local goods; a different 'feel' to the city for long-time residents; an expanding tax base for council's use; greater d i f f i c u l t y finding housing for those with the least financial f l e x i b i l i t y ; and so on. Also, different meanings can be understood by a single person who is simultaneously, for example, the local baker, alderman, and long-time resident. The 'fact' of population increase i s interpreted in accordance with some value(s) that the person holds. For example, an expanding market may be interpreted as 'good'; the city as becoming 'too big'; and so on. The fact i s not merely a fact. It i s a fact in a context. Together both the fact and the context of values allow interpretation. The quintessential planning problem i s choosing the interpreta-tion(s) to put on a fact. Planners may well understand at some level that fact and value emerge together, integrally offering interpretation. However, in the midst of the great uncertainty that this quintessential problem engenders, i t i s not at a l l surprising that the hope, i f not belief, i s sustained that a 'right' interpretation exists. The idea of a 'right' interpretation pits fact against value, and the two are shaped as antagonists. Thus, for example, Davidoff and Reiner approvingly quote 1? Kaplan who speaks of \"confronting values with facts\". At least two separate things are needed for a confrontation. 'Rightness' in some sense w i l l result from the confrontation, one assumes. 1 2\"Choice Theory\", p. 108 16 Planners do not say they are looking for the 'right' interpretation for facts. On the contrary. Referring to Davidoff again, he says clearly in the abstract preceding his article that \"The right course of action i s always a matter of choice, never of fa c t \" . 1 ^ Even i f they do not say they are looking for the 'right' interpretation, Webber suggests that this i s what planners are attempting to do because they have not made a distinction between science and planning for themselves, nor have they made i t clear to public o f f i c i a l s and laymen \"who have been led to believe that, through 14 science, planners could t e l l them what i s right and hence what to want\". The search for a 'right' interpretation seems to be a basis for seeking to explain rather than justify plans. 'Rightness' can be attributed to what has been derived using 'science'. Correspondingly, explanation carries the sanctity of legitimacy because in science i t can be shown to be right or wrong. On the other hand, justification appears to be merely the result of dealing with our divined values. Instead of the precision and certainty of 'right', justification in planning appears as an imprecise, professionally influenced notion of 'good*. Given a choice between emphasizing the a r t i s t i c aspect of their profession (values, justification) or the scientific aspect (facts, explanation), i t i s not to be wondered at i f a great many planners show a penchant for the cleaner lines of the latter. 2.3 Justification in the Image of Explanation When we evaluate plans \u00E2\u0080\u0094 our own plans or someone else's, and whether before or after implementation \u00E2\u0080\u0094 we traditionally weigh the plan's goal against several c r i t e r i a which are roughly of three types: (i) ^\"Advocacy and Pluralism\", p. 331. -l-^Melvin M. Webber, \"A Difference Paradigm for Planning,\" in Planning - Theory -in -the -1980 * s, eds. R.W. Burchell and G. Sternlieb (New Brunswick, N.J.: Center for Urban Policy Research, Rutgers, 1978), p. 153. 17 knowledge which i s deemed to be 'scientific'; ( i i ) c r i t e r i a for knowing such as rationality, objectivity, comprehensiveness; and ( i i i ) norms and values believed to be held by the client who pays for the plan and/or the client for whom the plan i s intended. The evaluation attempts to answer the question \"Does this plan lead to achieving this stated goal?\" Whether or not the plan i s found to be appropriate i s believed to hinge on the answer to that question. Two assumptions are implicit in the evaluation process which give justification the appearance of explanation. The f i r s t assumption i s that c r i t e r i a external to the process of making the plan are sufficient to explain i t s content and that none of the c r i t e r i a emerge from the work i t s e l f . The c r i t e r i a exist a p r i o r i . Evaluation thus becomes a uniformly deductive enterprise in which the task i s to measure the plan against existing notions of 'right', taken as models. The second assumption i s that these external c r i t e r i a represent 'objective' knowledge that retains i t s coherence when transferred to a f i e l d of human action. This assumption leaves no room in the evaluation to attribute effect to the planner's vision or sense of the way things ought to be, and hence to his choice of c r i t e r i a . Yet planners have long since surrendered any notion of being value-neutral, at least in their \"espoused 15 theory\", to use Argyris and Schon's term. They recognize that their values are evident in plans. But evaluations are conducted as i f these did not exist or else were indistinguishable from those of the client. Where do the planner's values go once the planner has admitted that they have effects? Traditional evaluations ignore them, seeming to assume that the planner and the planning process, as process, are without effect. Such l^chris Argyris and Donald A. Schon, Organizational-Learning (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1978), p. 11. 18 assumptions would cast the planner in the role of manipulator of 'objective' knowledge, data and processes, and the process i t s e l f as neutral. To mold justification in the image of explanation has had effects for the development of planning. Five effects are discussed in this section: (a) naturalism as explanation; (b) reductionism; (c) planning as synthesis; (d) planning as benign; and (e) searching for the 'right ratio', (a) One effect has been to allow the argument to carry that a plan i s necessary in order to maintain or to achieve one or more of the external c r i t e r i a . This attributes naturalness or inevitability to a plan and forms the basis for i t s explanation. This i s , however, a specious argument. Necessity does not reside in things such as scie n t i f i c knowledge, cr i t e r i a for knowledge, or human values. Necessity i s created by people in the relations that they establish among things. . Let us say that we have decided that 'safe' and 'decent' housing constitutes meeting or exceeding prescribed measurements of structural soundness, square metres per occupant, and so on. We then measure a dwelling and write down the measurements. At this stage they are simply measurements without attribution. The measurements themselves do not represent 'safety' or 'decency'. We then put these measurements into a context. The context i s the set of measurements a dwelling must meet or exceed. They are standards that people have developed for various purposes and have agreed define what i s 'safe' and 'decent'. We compare the measurements against the standards. Now we have a way of saying that the dwelling we measured does not (let us say) represent 'safe' and 'decent' housing. Now we have a difference \u00E2\u0080\u0094 the difference between what a dwelling should, minimally, be like and what the dwelling we actually measured i s like. It i s only now that we have necessity. The necessity i s to make one accord with the other. Necessity i s neither in the measurements nor in the standards but i s a function of the relation between them. 19 When the measurements achieved using the rigour of 'science' are mistaken for the standards achieved using the power of imagination and experience, then the former can be invoked as reasons for needing a given plan and we confuse two orders of things. The plan appears to arise because the measurements demonstrate a shortfall rather than because of the difference between the measurements and the standards that represents values. We mistakenly base our claim for the 'rightness' of the plan on measures which in themselves have no meaning instead of on standards which we determine by exercising value judgments. (b) Another effect of wanting to turn justification for a plan (because i t i s believed to accord with ideals) into explanation for a plan (because i t i s the inevitable route to ideals) i s to court reductionism. Justification i s a different class of activity than explanation. While a plan may use descriptive elements from empirical fields such as demography, geography or sociology, any attempt to account for the plan based solely on these descriptive elements w i l l be partial. There w i l l always be a residuum: the residuum i s precisely the planners' sense of the way things ought to be which they have, wittingly or not, incorporated in the plan. The 'ought to be' that i s incorporated in the plan i s not necessarily Utopian or visionary. It may be quite pragmatic: for example i t may include the planners' interpretation of the p o l i t i c a l , social, organizational and economic climate into which they introduce their plan. The d i f f i c u l t y of the residuum i s one of i n f i n i t e regress: 'the way things ought to be' i s a qualitative judgment arising from the planners' notions of 'goodness* or 'satisfactoriness'. But 'goodness' and 'satis-factoriness' themselves require justification. Where does the buck stop? As long as one depends upon externally defined c r i t e r i a as the sole yardsticks for evaluating plans, one remains deeply entangled in the argument about who is to choose which c r i t e r i a to pursue (some are incompatible with the pursuits of others); who is to define the c r i t e r i a ; 20 and who i s to choose how to move toward them \u00E2\u0080\u0094 what path to take, what method to use. The planning literature of the past quarter century i s witness to the conflict these questions have raised for planners. Two main solutions have been put forward to escape the tangle and deal with the residuum. One has been to adjust the c r i t e r i a . For example, among the c r i t e r i a for knowledge, comprehensiveness was modified to permit incrementalism to be a valid criterion for a plan. Also, absolute rationality was relaxed to \"bounded rationality\". With respect to values as c r i t e r i a for judging the validity of plans, the concept of a unitary public interest underwent significant modification in \"advocacy\" and \"radical\" planning, for example, where the special interests of groups were not to be buried in some general view of the public interest. 1^ Adjusting the criterion which I have called \"knowledge which i s deemed to be 'scientific'\" 17 has involved refining the techniques of data analysis. Krueckeberg 1 and 18 Pack indicate the types and uses of analytical techniques in planning education and practice. The other solution has been to adjust the means for determining what constitutes a valid plan. Substantial effort has been spent designing and refining plan evaluation techniques that seek to reduce as much as possible the need for the planner (and the client) to judge the meaning of data. The data i s ordered in ways that make i t appear to speak for i t s e l f . Examples are cost-benefit analysis, the goals achievement matrix, and the planning balance sheet. 1 DSee Barclay M. Hudson, \"Comparison of Current Planning Theories,\" Journal -of the - American Planning - Association 45 (October 1979): 392, where differing stances towards the public interest in five planning approaches are briefly described. ^ \" P r a c t i c a l Demand for Analytic Methods,\" in Planning Theory - in the lgSO's, eds. R.W. Burchell and G. Sternlieb (New Brunswick, N.J.: Center for Urban Policy Research, Rutgers University, 1978), pp. 309-340. 1 0\"The Use of Urban Models,\" Journal-of the American Institute of Planners 41 (May 1975): 191-200. 21 A l l this has weakened the sense that there i s a planner behind a l l the technique. The technique's image overwhelms the planner's image, but this cannot have occurred without at least the tacit consent of the planner. My argument i s not to reduce the use of technique but to heighten our awareness that there i s a very active and very purposeful planner in there too. Once we have affirmed that plans are ultimately the creation of planners and not of external c r i t e r i a , then we can affirm, with respect to plans, that the buck stops at the planner. Unless the planner's responsibility i s evident, planning i s reduced to technique and synthesis, (c) The third way of masking justification as explanation i s to regard planning merely as synthesis. The synthesis view of planning has had a long history. Kriesis, writing in the Journal -of the Town- Planning Institute in 1963, said he thought that the view had long since been discredited and yet examples s t i l l persist. * The reviewer of Elizabeth Wood's Social Planning writes in the Journal-of the - American-Institute-of - Planners in 1966 that one of the problems of the book i s that Wood \"has absorbed uncritically Of) the major plank of traditional social planning \u00E2\u0080\u0094 coordination.\" The same year, in Plan, N.H. Richardson's editorial contains a strong statement against the widely held view \"that planning i s merely a matter of coordinating and synthesizing the technical s k i l l s contributed by a variety 21 of specialists.\" As late as 1971 an entire a r t i c l e by Alonso i s devoted 22 to getting \"Beyond the Inter-disciplinary Approach to Planning\". 19\u00C2\u00BBCatch T.P.\", Journal- of the Town Planning Institute 49 (December 1963): 176. 2^S.M. Miller, review of Social Planning: -A Primer-for-Urbanists, by Elizabeth Wood, in Journal-of the-American-Institute-of-Planners 32 (July 1966): 248. 2 1 \" E d i t o r i a l \" , Plan Canada 7 (July 1966): 4 2 2Journal-of -the -American Institute -of Planners 37 (May 1971): 169-173. 22 Planning-as-synthesis posits planning as the point at which knowledge borrowed from various fields i s brought together into a coherent bundle that can serve as a basis for action. It assumes that such borrowed knowledge is constructed within and constructive of a unitary mode of knowing. It does not differentiate among epistemologies. What is accepted as knowledge in an empirical f i e l d i s grounded in i t s a b i l i t y to explain phenomena according to the rules in that f i e l d which establish what is to count as knowledge. Even i f we have trouble specifying the epistemology of planning, we can say that i t w i l l not be co-extensive with that in empirical fields because human action i s oriented toward what can be envisioned rather than toward what exists in our immediate experience. Thus what serves as explanation in the particular spawning f i e l d cannot serve the same purpose in the normative f i e l d of planning because the conditions for knowing have changed. What is 'fact' in a nomothetic f i e l d i s only one interpretation of that fact in planning. A plan may be made to appear valid by, for example, employing a particular theory of the market, but the transfer of the theory to the normative context \u00E2\u0080\u0094 planning \u00E2\u0080\u0094 dilutes i t s epistemological claims. A l l the planner can do i s try to justify his choice of one theory of the market over another. The claim to 'rightness' cannot arise from the market theory as an external criterion. Indeed the particular choice of theory does not 'explain' the plan but, on the contrary, goes some distance towards 'explaining' the planner. The view of planning-as-synthesis posits knowledge as neutral, sanitized and innocent with respect to context. This, however, contradicts one very simple observation that can be made with respect to the sources from which planners borrow knowledge. Considerable knowledge i s borrowed from traditional economics, traditional sociology, geography and mathematics. These are apparently relevant and authoritative fields from 23 which to borrow. Philosophy, psychology and Marxist economics are introduced, i f at a l l , through the back door. Kinesthetics, hermeneutics and astrology have no place i n planning to date. The knowledge chosen i s not neutral because the choice i s purposeful. (d) The view of planning-as-synthesis leads to another way i n which j u s t i f i c a t i o n i s molded i n the form of explanation. Planning-as-synthesis enhances the idea that planning i s benign. I f planning i s synthesis, the planner i s a synthesizer or coordinator of some strands of knowledge. In t h i s view, planners do not recognize themselves as generators or preservers of knowledge or s p a t i a l r e l a t i o n s or ideologies, but rather see themselves as simply middlemen bringing news from the empirical sciences to complex, r e a l world s i t u a t i o n s . When plans f a i l , planners can place r e s p o n s i b i l i t y at some distance from themselves by a t t r i b u t i n g the f a i l u r e to having used the wrong strand of knowledge or technique, or to f a i l i n g to accept or understand the knowledge i n s u f f i c i e n t depth, or to not being provided with the r i g h t sort or quantity of knowledge from pertinent d i s c i p l i n e s . Indeed, f a i l u r e confirms the benignity rather than c a l l i n g i t in t o question: the planner i s merely coordinating what he understands i s a v a i l a b l e to be coordinated, and what he thinks he i s competent to coordinate. J u s t i f i c a t i o n i s converted to explanation by the simple expedient of disavowing the planner's own r o l e and r e s p o n s i b i l i t y . Piven, who i s notable for her directness, decries that disavowal more f o r c e f u l l y perhaps than any planner i n the mainstream l i t e r a t u r e . \". . .our past f a i l u r e s are not, as the recent d o c t r i n a l reform would suggest, merely f a i l u r e s of oversight, of lack of dialogue or too narrow a technical scope. They have to do rather with the subservience of the planning profession to dominant economic and p o l i t i c a l i n t e r e s t s . \" 2 3 23\u00C2\u00BBpianning and Class I n t e r e s t s , \" Journal -of the American I n s t i t u t e - o f - Planners Ml (November 1975): 309. 24 (e) Fifthly, the view that planning is made up of art and of science which exist as separate pools legitimates the search for the 'right' ratio of the one to the other. If there i s a 'right' ratio, then the 'wrong' ratio can be a reason for the failure of plans. In the separate pools view, what pertains to art cannot also pertain to science. There is therefore a perpetual tension between the two, since to have more of the one means surrendering some of the other. In principle, some perfect combination of the two exists \u00E2\u0080\u0094 a combination which we should strive to achieve. This view depends for i t s persistence on the assumption that 'being s c i e n t i f i c , and 'being creative' are potentially absolute qualities or, in other words, that there i s a 100$ sci e n t i f i c approach to a phenomenon or a 100% creative approach. Finding the right ratio for planning implies breaking into the absoluteness of each and creating a new totality constituted of so many parts 'science' and so many parts 'art'. What ratio w i l l be chosen? On what grounds? To what aspects of planning w i l l a particular ratio apply? A major portion of the planning literature has been dedicated to sorting out the ratio problem. Since the mid-1950*s i t has dealt with the problem of whether one can plan absolutely rationally and absolutely comprehensively, and i f not, what the options are. Once the notion of \"bounded rationality\" was accepted, the next step was to ask how 'non-rationality' was to be treated in planning models. This led to various versions of incrementalism which are discussed in the literature as reasonable compensation for the loss of f u l l credibility in the rational Oil comprehensive model. ^Lindblom originally described a method of \"successive limited comparisons\" which he said described the way public administrators made adjustments \"at the margin\", but has curiously been l e f t out of \"the literatures of decision-making, policy formulation, planning and public administration\". See \"The Science of Muddling Through,\" Public 25 Justification i s molded as closely as possible after explanation in this body of literature by arguing logically why i t is not rational to pursue absolutes but i s rational to pursue modifications of them, which entails making rational arguments for non-rationality. We thus retain the idea of rationality as an absolute, but an unobtainable absolute which requires us to lower our sights. Its opposite i s non-rationality. Models of planning seek to be reasonable within these limits that f a l l on a 25 continuum. Discussions of a less than fu l l y rational approach led to new recognition of the intuitive and creative aspects of decision making and plan making. These features had then also to be incorporated into the planning model. It was perhaps Friedmann who made the f i r s t major attempt in a model to indicate the relation of \"tradition, intuition, and wisdom\", which he called \"extra-rational thought\", to forms of rational thought and the remaining elements of planning models. Jantsch, although more concerned with policy sciences at the time, described \"rational creative action\", in which forecasting, planning, decisionmaking, and action are Administration Review 19 (Spring 1959): 80. Later, he formulated this more full y as \"incrementalism\" often called \"disjointed incrementalism,\" in The Intelligence of Democracy, New York: The Free Press, 1965. In 1959, March and Simon described \"satisficing\" as choosing a 'good' approach rather than holding out for the 'best' as a mode of decision making in Organizations, New York: John Wiley. John Friedmann used the notion of \"adaptive rationality\" in \"The Institutional Context,\" in Action Under Planning, ed. B.M. Gross, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966. Amitai Etzioni gave us \"Mixed Scanning\" in 1967, Public - Administration -Review 27 (December 1967): 385-392; and Bertram Gross proffered \"jointed incrementalism\" in Management Strategy for Economic and Social-Development, Public Administration Division, United Nations, 1970. 25 S ee Friedmann and Hudson for the location of some of the adjustments on the continuum. \"Knowledge and Action,\" Journal-of-the American Institute of Planners 40 (January 1974): 7-10. For an alternative view of absolutes as paradoxical, see chapter 4 below. 26\u00C2\u00BBA Conceptual Model for the Analysis of Planning Behavior,\" Administrative-Sciences-Quarterly 12 (September 1967): pp. 225-252. 26 embedded. Rational creative action i s described as \"unfolding in the interaction among [these] four a c t i v i t i e s . . .\" The ratio problem remains for the rational comprehensive (or synoptic) and the incrementalist planning traditions. Some theorists have stepped away from that debate to propose other theories of the planning process. Provided, however, that the 'art'/'science' dichotomy i s not resolved in these new theories,the problem of the 'right' ratio w i l l also be encountered there. \"And\" i s not innocent. 2.4 Justification qua Justification In the mainstream planning journals l i t t l e has been said about justification qua justification as the mode appropriate for evaluating planning. However, the view that evaluation has tended to focus too much on 'objective' c r i t e r i a (including efficiency, an assumed public interest or rationality, for example) and too l i t t l e on the subjective condition of man is explicit in much recent writing of the so-called \"new humanists\" and in a radical tradition. The extent of this same concern in planning practice i s more d i f f i c u l t to judge since planning reports circulate less widely than journals. One may, however, refer to the Greater Vancouver Regional District \"Livable Region\" proposals as one case in which the verbalized subjective statements of citizens formed the basis for the Region's plan. 27up r o r a Forecasting and Planning to Policy Sciences,\" Policy Sciences 1 (1970): p. 32. . . 2 % e e Friedmann and Hudson, \"Knowledge and Action,\" 1974, p. 7 for a brief description of the \"new humanists\"; and for an example of a radical approach, see Stephen Grabow and Allan Heskin, \"Foundations for a Radical Concept of Planning,\" Journal of the American Institute of Planners 39 (March 1973): 106-114. 27 In this case, planning began explicitly from the interpretation of statements.^ In summary, the use of a deductive approach has, on the basis of the foregoing, fostered the idea that plans can be explained by reference to some external, logically defensible notion of 'right' rather than justified by reference to the planner's notion of what i s 'right'. The foregoing has also tried to show that a solely deductive approach to evaluating planning always leaves an unexplained residuum represented by the planners' beliefs about how things ought to be at some future time, as well as their beliefs about what exists at present. A predominantly inductive approach which begins with interpreting what i s actually said about how things are and ought to be has barely had any press. The remaining chapters present a justification for a method that allows one to open up a plan to closer scrutiny than traditional evaluation methods permit. The point of this i s to allow planners to ask what assumptions l i e behind the statements in a plan; to allow planners to question the appropriateness of the assumptions; and to allow planners to be aware of how they justify their plans. Without giving some rein to the inductive, planners as purposeful actors remain only faintly visible in plans, and in that near-anonymity can elect to minimize their responsibility. The next chapter examines the planner's preoccupation with stated goals which traditionally are the points of departure for plan evaluations. The following chapter tries to show the sorts of things that are missed entirely by traditional evaluations. 29For a description of the planning process involved, see H. Lash, Planning - i n -a -Human-Way (Toronto: Macmillan Co., 1976) and K. Gerecke, \"Towards a New Model of Urban Planning,\" (Ph.D. d i s s e r t a t i o n , University of B r i t i s h Columbia, 1974). 28 CHAPTER 3 CONSCIOUS - PURPOSE 3.1 The Capsule Version Traditionally, an o f f i c i a l , often terse, statement near the beginning of a planning work declares the goal or objective. The report constitutes a statement of means for achieving the declared goal. Evaluation prior to implementation of the plan involves deciding i f the means can be expected to achieve the stated goal. Evaluation post-implementation involves deciding i f the means have indeed been instrumental in achieving the goal. The purpose of the whole process appears to be to achieve the stated goal. Purpose thereby comes to be defined as the stated 'goal' or 'end' or 'objective', that i s , some fi n a l end state. This is conscious purpose, the result of logical reasoning. When plans appear unable to be achieved in accordance with the stated goal, adjustments have been made to the conscious purposes based on logical reasoning. Some types of adjustments were mentioned in the previous chapter. When cr i t e r i a such as rationality or comprehensiveness were found to be unachievable in practice, their conditions were relaxed using logical reasoning to substantiate the new forms of the c r i t e r i a . Another adjustment for improving the success rate of plans was to make techniques for evaluating plans more rigorous. 29 This chapter examines why conscious purpose i s assumed to be the only type of purposiveness that planners are engaged in when they are 'doing' planning, and some ramifications of acting on that assumption. Conscious purpose stated as a goal, or what might be called the \"capsule version\" of conscious purpose, represents only a single aspect of teleonomic expression. It i s what gets through to consciousness and becomes encapsulated in a particular text. It seems to be the sole purpose only because this i s what we have said i t i s , and because we have decided by convention that, in planning, goals are what are announced as such. These capsule versions, when taken seriously, mask the innumerable purposes at work in the systems that make up the social milieu for planning. It must be stressed that what i s masked i s not necessarily more of the same sort of purposes. The capsule version i s not the tip of the iceberg since one cannot safely extrapolate from the very small portion that l i e s at the surface as conscious to what l i e s hidden. While the stated goal may f a i r l y reek of motherhood values, unconscious purposes may turn out to be far less sanguine. For example, and anticipating the critique in chapter 9, the objective of the \"Don Planning District Appraisal\" i s \"a long range programme for the improvement of the Don District\".''\" Is i t quite certain, however, that other purposes did not exist, such as making use of funds recently offered for urban renewal under the National Housing Act? To assume that conscious purpose i s the only purpose there is implies axiomatically that people can be unidimensional with respect to purpose; or that i f they do have other sorts of purposes they are irrelevant to a plan; or both. This is adaptation to purpose using logical reasoning. It i s qualitatively different from other sorts of adaptiveness such as stem -\u00E2\u0080\u00A2\u00E2\u0080\u00A2Toronto, City of Toronto Planning Board, Don Planning District Appraisal (Toronto: September 1963), covering letter. 30 from intuition, habit or image-making. If a question of human affairs i s approached using (or thinking one i s using) only logic to describe or explain i t , one cannot help but impoverish the question in the process. It is like setting out to explain why one i s healthy using only logical propositions. 3.2 Causal Explanation The desire on the part of planners to be 'scientific' was described in the previous chapter. This desire i s manifested in the use of versions of sci e n t i f i c method in making plans. The classic model of sci e n t i f i c investigation practiced in the physical sciences up to about the end of the 19th century seeks causal explanation in an energy or force that i s said to make 'A' move toward 'B', for example. This i s the model of explanation widely used in planning 2 analysis, and in social science fields from which planning draws i t s heuristics such as geography (e.g. gravity model) and economics (e.g. market equilibrium). There are a number of ways in which such a model i s deficient for social investigation. One of these has to do with observer effects.3 The model requires a positive force and an object upon which the force acts. The force i s separate from the object, and neither the force nor the object is altered by the researcher's observation, nor i s the researcher altered through observing. The fact that there are levels of observation appropriate to specific phenomena (the a b i l i t y to decentre from what i s 2 Se e, for example, Anthony J. Catanese, Scientific Methods of Urban Analysis (Urbana, 111.: University of I l l i n o i s Press, 1972) 3For a clear description of research on observer effects, see W. Lambert Gardiner, The Psychology-of Teaching (Monterey, Calif.: Brooks/Cole, 1980), chapter 12. 31 being observed) i s recognized in more recent work in the physical sciences because of relat i v i t y theory. Planners do not claim to be objective, but not because a new level of theory has been developed to mediate observer effects and the purposefulness of the planner. Rather, a statement to the effect that the values of the planner and client must be taken into account i s almost invariably made. The reduced objectivity i s treated as slippage occasioned by certain differences between the objects of pure science and the objects of planning. Then the work i s proceeded with as i f the values ii are themselves objectively identifiable and solid. In this way empirical method i s not disturbed. Unidimensionality with respect to the observer and the observed i s thereby retained in social science investigations under this version of sci e n t i f i c method. A second deficiency of the method as i t is used i s i t s non-recursiveness. In the classic model there is a direct linear relation between cause and effect . Billard ball A, by virtue of an observed functional relation, acts on b i l l i a r d ball B, because of the b i l l i a r d player's energy. And that i s the end point of causal explanation. B i l l i a r d ball B, dislocated by having been hit, does not recursively act on A by hitting b i l l i a r d ball A back in purposeful retaliation, for example, or by hiding. Inanimate physical objects do not behave in purposefully adaptive ways. Clearly things are different in the animate world. First of a l l , i f Mr. A hits Mr. B, Mr. A is using his own energy-as-purpose, no matter how concrete or abstract that may be (a f i s t , a hit-man, a hex, a tongue lashing). Second, Mr. B w i l l purposefully adapt to the situation, such as by hitting back, running away, praying, etcetera. A linear causal method applied to the animate world i s seriously wanting because i t does not take recursiveness into account exp l i c i t l y . 4Gunnar Myrdal, Objectivity in Social Research (New York: Pantheon Books, 1969), p. 15. 32 Urban renewal o f the form p r a c t i c e d i n the 1950's and 1960's i s a broad example o f a n o n - r e c u r s i v e model a p p l i e d i n a s o c i a l s i t u a t i o n . C e r t a i n neighbourhoods were a n a l y z e d and found t o be so d e f i c i e n t a c c o r d i n g t o s t a n d a r d s e s t a b l i s h e d by p o l i t i c i a n s , b u r e a u c r a t s , h e a l t h o f f i c i a l s and p l a n n e r s t h a t p a r t s o r a l l o f them were demolished and r e p l a c e d w i t h s t r u c t u r e s t h a t met these s t a n d a r d s . The c h a i n comprised o f G o a l ; good neighbourhoods Survey: o f c o n d i t i o n s A n a l y s i s : these a r e slum c o n d i t i o n s P l a n : r e b u i l d a c c o r d i n g t o s t a n d a r d s assumes t h a t good neighbourhoods a r e \"caused\" by b u i l d i n g s t h a t meet s t a n d a r d s . The c a u s a l c h a i n cannot accommodate the p o s s i b i l i t y t h a t r e s i d e n t s may not share the b e l i e f t h a t b u i l d i n g s t h a t meet s t a n d a r d s cause good neighbourhoods, and might t h e r e f o r e a c t r e c u r s i v e l y i n response t o t h e p l a n t o p r e v e n t the changes. The l i n e a r p l a n breaks down under r e c u r s i v e n e s s . Well-known Canadian examples i n which the purposes o f r e s i d e n t s were a t odds w i t h those o f p l a n n e r s were the T r e f a n n Court (Toronto) and the S t r a t h c o n a (Vancouver) renewal p l a n s . T h i r d , c a u s a l e x p l a n a t i o n has l i t t l e t o say about time. Recent i n v e s t i g a t i o n s , p a r t i c u l a r l y r e l a t i n g t o the second law o f thermodynamics, a f f i r m t h a t i r r e v e r s i b l e , time-dependent p r o c e s s e s r e q u i r e a l t e r n a t i v e methods t o those a p p l i c a b l e t o c a u s a l i t y f o r time-independent phenomena. P r i g o g i n e has suggested t h a t the r e a s o n time p l a y e d such an i n s i g n i f i c a n t r o l e i n p h y s i c a l e x p l a n a t i o n u n t i l r e c e n t l y i s t h a t o n l y one dimension \u00E2\u0080\u0094 change i n p o s i t i o n \u00E2\u0080\u0094 c o u l d be e a s i l y mathematised, so t h a t e v e n t u a l l y time became i d e n t i f i e d w i t h t h e time o c c u r r i n g i n motion. As a r e s u l t , he c l a i m s , t h i s i m p o v e r i s h e d i d e a o f time was i n c o r p o r a t e d i n t h e o r e t i c a l p h y s i c s : \"Change i s n o t h i n g but the d e n i a l o f becoming; a time i s o n l y a 33 parameter, unaffected by the transformation which i t describes\". Further on in this speech he adds that in this vision, the rest, including man himself, became only a kind of i l l u s i o n , devoid of fundamental significance, . . . . In a sense, the idea was to go away from the changes, from the turmoil of human existence, and to go to an ideal world in which time could not exist. . . . [W]e can no more be satisfied with the view which was much advocated by Einstein, for example, that the basic laws don't know time; that time comes only in at a later stage, through some kind of approximation.6 Prigogine goes on to say that thermodynamics is the f i r s t formulation of time in physics and that thermodynamics i s based on the distinction between processes that are independent of and those that are dependent on the direction of time. It i s those processes that depend on the direction of time (heat conduction, for example) for which the term 'entropy' was created to summarize the existence of processes in which a quantity could increase because of irreversible processes. It i s only since the 1930's that physicists' interest in these irreversible processes has begun to complement the traditional focus on equilibrium. Previously, \"irreversible processes, because of their strangeness, of the fact that time had an arrow, were considered to be a l i t t l e outside, a nuisance, a way of avoiding to obtain the maximum yield in thermal engines, a subject not 7 worthwhile to be studied\". Investigations with time-dependent phenomena in open systems have occasioned a shift in thinking. Previously order, manifested in equilibrium, was taken to be the natural condition of physical phenomena. Now, a form of disordering (or, order through fluctuation) in out-of-^Ilya Prigogine, \"Order Out of Chaos\" (University of Texas, Public lecture, 1977), p. 3 of verbatim transcript. 6Ibid., pp. 3-4. ?Ibid., p. 4. 34 Q equilibrium states i s recognized as one type of natural condition. Among the hypotheses founded on the static order of rational mechanics in the social sciences i s the hypothesis of equilibrium in neo-classical economic Q theory. 3 One could also say that the linear planning model of goal-survey-analysis-plan i s a time-independent model that assumes a disequilibrium state at the outset which i s treated to convert i t to static equilibrium in the classical sense. 3.3 Pervasiveness of Causal Explanation Logical positivism, the scie n t i f i c philosophy associated with sci e n t i f i c method, takes as a leading tenet the unity of science.\"^ By this assertion, sci e n t i f i c method as developed in the physical sciences i s also appropriately used in other fields because underlying the method i s a theory of how we know which i s asserted to apply universally. Indeed, according to the philosopher of science, Herbert Feigl, there are two reductionist theses concerning the unity of science principle in the positivist school. The f i r s t i s based on objective observation and description in objective, rigorous propositions. \"In this view, a l l classifications of the sciences, or divisions of their subject matter, were seen as a r t i f i c i a l , valuable at best only administratively, but without \u00C2\u00B0Prigogine, \"Order Through Fluctuation,\" in Evolution and Consciousness, eds. E. Jantsch and C. Waddington (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1976), pp. 93-133. ^For a discussion of time in neo-classical economics, see Joan Robinson, Economic -Heresies (New York: Basic Books, 1971), chapter 4. For a discussion of Keynes' view of equilibrium as a fict i o n , see Piero Mini, Philosophy and Economics (Gainesville, Fla.: University of Florida Press, 1974, pp. 255-273. \u00E2\u0080\u00A2^Logical positivism evolved f i r s t into logical empiricism, incorporating the leading Pragmatists, and then further to what i s now called Analytic and Linguistic philosophy. Here, \"logical positivism\" i s used throughout since i t appears to be the commonly used name for the epistemology in i t s general form. 35 p h i l o s o p h i c a l j u s t i f i c a t i o n \" . The second t a k e s a w h o l l y d i f f e r e n t l i n e . I t f o c u s s e s on the r e d u c t i o n s w i t h i n p h y s i c s i t s e l f which \"encourage t h e i d e a o f a u n i t a r y s e t o f p h y s i c a l premises from which the r e g u l a r i t i e s o f a l l o f r e a l i t y c o u l d be d e r i v e d . . . . The most c o n t r o v e r s i a l p a r t o f t h i s r e d u c t i o n i s t i d e o l o g y , however, c o n c e r n s t h e r e a l m o f o r g a n i c l i f e and e s p e c i a l l y t h a t o f mind; i t c o n c e r n s , i n o t h e r words, the r e d u c i b i l i t y o f b i o l o g y t o p h y s i c s and c h e m i s t r y and o f p s y c h o l o g y t o n e u r o p h y s i o l o g y \u00E2\u0080\u0094 and (though t h i s i s c l e a r l y U t o p i a n a t p r e s e n t ) o f both u l t i m a t e l y t o b a s i c 12 p h y s i c s \" . A method f o r a u n i f i e d s c i e n c e r e l i e s on a u n i f i e d e p i s t e m o l o g y . Based on Kolakowski, S p u r l i n g g i v e s t h r e e b a s i c p o s t u l a t e s o f p o s i t i v i s m t h a t c a p t u r e t h e e p i s t e m o l o g i c a l c l a i m s : (1) the rule-of-phenomenalism, the b e l i e f t h a t t h e r e i s no r e a l d i f f e r e n c e between 'essence' and 'phenomena', so t h a t p o s i t i v i s t s b e l i e v e 'we a r e e n t i t l e d t o r e c o r d o n l y t h a t which i s a c t u a l l y m a n i f e s t e d i n e x p e r i e n c e ; o p i n i o n s c o n c e r n i n g o c c u l t e n t i t i e s o f which e x p e r i e n c e d t h i n g s a r e s u p p o s e d l y the m a n i f e s t a t i o n s a r e u n t r u s t w o r t h y ' . . . . (2) The r u l e o f nominalism, which m a i n t a i n s t h a t 'we may not assume t h a t any i n s i g h t f o r m u l a t e d i n g e n e r a l terms can have any r e a l r e f e r e n t s o t h e r than i n d i v i d u a l c o n c r e t e o b j e c t s ' . . . . From t h i s i t f o l l o w s t h a t 'the world we know i s a c o l l e c t i o n o f i n d i v i d u a l o b s e r v a b l e f a c t s . S c i e n c e aims a t o r d e r i n g t h ese f a c t s . . . .' (3) F i n a l l y , as a consequence o f phenomenalism and nominalism, t h e r e i s the r u l e t h a t m a i n t a i n s an e s s e n t i a l d i f f e r e n c e between d e s c r i p t i v e and e v a l u a t i v e o r n ormative statements, and r e f u s e s t o c a l l normative statements knowledge. 13 A c c o r d i n g l y , t h e p r o c e s s by which t e s t a b i l i t y i s governed, t h e h y p o t h e t i c o - d e d u c t i v e method, determines what i s knowledge i n any f i e l d . That which cannot be c o n f i r m e d through t h e method i s non-sense o r , as i t was l i E n c y c l o p e d i a B r i t a n n i c a , 15th ed., s.v. \" P o s i t i v i s m and L o g i c a l E m p i r i c i s m , \" by H e r b e r t E. F e i g l , p. 880. 1 2 I b i d . 13L,aurie S p u r l i n g , Phenomenology - and the S o c i a l World (London: Routledge and Kegan P a u l , 1977), pp. 76-77, c i t i n g Leszek Kolakowski, P o s i t i v i s t - P h i l o s o p h y (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972), from pp. 11-15. S p u r l i n g ' s emphases. 36 more delicately said later, the remainder has an expressive but not representational function and i s more properly the realm of metaphysics. Barrett says Positivist man i s a curious creature who dwells in the tiny island of light composed of what he finds s c i e n t i f i c a l l y 'meaningful'; while the whole surrounding area in which ordinary men live from day to day and have their dealings with other men is consigned to the outer darkness of the 'meaningless' The crux of the matter for planning l i e s in the rigid separation between description and evaluation. As Spurling says, the implication of this i s that \"[pjositivism i s not concerned with how a theory is generated, but only with how i t i s empirically validated, and worthy to be considered 15 as valid knowledge\". A method in which a l l meaning must be referred to the concrete i s stymied in the face of choice and evaluation which not only are the effects of the meaning interpretative of social reality but in the process create meaning in irreversible time. 3.4 The Problem of Language Any method for describing or explaining human affairs must inevitably concern i t s e l f with language. The epistemological foundations of positivism rest on the empirical testability of hypotheses. For a hypothesis to be testable i t must be stated in language that i s precise and unambiguous. Positivists have dealt with this problem by assuming that (a) \"language i s the only means of articulating thought\" and that (b) \"everything which is not speakable thought, is feeling.\"\"*\"^ ^William Barrett, Irrational Man (New York: Doubleday, 1958; Anchor Books, 1962), p. 21 ^Phenomenology f p . 79. \u00E2\u0080\u00A2^Suzanne Langer, Philosophy in a New Key, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976), p. 87. 37 To uphold the testability criterion i t must be possible to show that what i s said or written in words, and what i s referred to, are identical and without bias. If this were possible we would a l l know precisely what is meant when one of us referred to a certain thing. It would be possible to have a description and meaning for the thing sufficiently complete and absolute that there would be no remainder that elici t e d doubt. This works quite well in some circumstances. If I say 'monkey' while we are standing in front of the monkey cage at the zoo, i t is f a i r l y clear what I am referring to. In this case the 17 word i s used as an indicator of an actual thing which exists in our immediate experience. I am denoting the animal, and the word that I use to do so is sufficiently precise in everyday parlance to signify what I 18 am referring to. We can, without much d i f f i c u l t y , distinguish among signs used as indicators: i f I had said 'rabbit' while referring to the monkey I would be absolutely wrong in terms of our conventional use of words. Monkey is the sign of the long-tailed creature in the cage. Nonetheless a monkey i s not i n t r i n s i c a l l y a monkey: this i s only the word used by convention by English speakers. To the French speaker i t i s \"un singe\"; to the Portuguese speaker i t i s \"um macaco\"; and so on. These are sense messages, often having to do with elementary survival. They have to do with what i s in our immediate, or almost immediate, experience. The sign and what they signify are very nearly identical in our experience. l^A word is used here as an example, but the description applies to a l l sorts of signs such as marks, sounds, figures, gestures. l^Words such as house, street, playground, land use map and t r a f f i c signal were not used as examples because these belong to the planning vocabulary and have acquired varying definitions and images. A zoologist, on the other hand, might find 'street' a simple example while 'monkey' would be more d i f f i c u l t because of his having extensive knowledge about monkeys. 38 A word may also be a referent for something that i s not present and not able to be seen, smelled, tasted, heard or touched. In this case, the word, used as a referent may be called a symbol. The word 'change', for instance i s not a sense message but a symbolic message connoting difference over time. 'Difference' and 'time' are also symbols-as-referents. Most of our expression employs symbols-as-referents rather than signs-as-indicators. Symbols serve \"to let us develop a characteristic attitude toward objects in absentia, which i s called 'thinking o f or 'referring to* IQ what i s not here.\" No matter how thingish a thing in the material world is we cannot get i t into language without incurring some interpretation. One of Kuhn's principal points is that we perceive without interpretation; i t i s an unconscious activity. But interpretation, which is often unconscious too, is not unconscious in the same way as perception. Yet i t has been 20 traditional since Descartes to confound the two. Interpretation begins immediately following perception and i s an image-forming stage. Some of the images w i l l reach consciousness, some w i l l not. Bateson points out that what comes to consciousness is selected according to one's purposes. It is 21 not a random sampling of what has been perceived. For example: The sight of a pothole in front of me when I am cycling i s a sign of potential danger. The pothole i s not in t r i n s i c a l l y dangerous. My perception of the hole gets translated into an image of what w i l l happen 19l_,anger, New Key, p. 31. 2 0Kuhn, Structure, p. 195. ^Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind (New York: Ballantine Books, 1972), p. 432. Note that we can also have images of things or relations for which there i s no conventional expression and which w i l l be expressed metaphorically. This is discussed in section 4.3 and more fully in 5.2.1 below. 39 i f the bicycle wheel goes into i t . Thus: I perceive the pothole; the image of i t s potential danger succeeds the perception. If I am an inexperienced cyclist I w i l l consciously swerve. The image came to consciousness. If I am experienced, I can carry on thinking about something else and s t i l l miss the hole. The image did not come to consciousness. The positivist view of language is that i f words are sufficiently unambiguous with respect to what they represent, they can be combined into testable propositions. Kuhn argues, however, that even an expression which i s supposedly unambiguous such a s J = ma, Newton's Second Law of Motion, functions in part as a law and in part as a way of defining some of the 22 symbols i t deploys. The expression i s only unambiguous i f one disregards the context in which i t i s used. Given the d i f f i c u l t i e s of translating the things of this world into \"speakable thought\", i t should come as no surprise that the positivist c r i t e r i a leave the planner with a very tiny category of \"objective\" language and an enormous category of \"feeling\" into which a l l other forms of expression f a l l s \u00E2\u0080\u0094 indeed a l l comment on the condition of mankind which i s the stuff of urban planning. Positivism has a notion of adequate speech as impersonal, de-authored speech, free from individual bias and commitment, speech which copies nature rather than serving to reflect the speaker.23 3.5 Rationality and Rational Objects Conscious purpose i s purpose held at the level of consciousness. It is rational in the sense that rational means to be endowed with reason, or to exercise reason. The substantive noun for reasoned thought i s 22Kuhn, Structure, p. 183. 23spurling, Phenomenology, p. 77. 40 rationality. It i s distinguished from intuition, faith, or habit, for instance, which do not stem from conscious reasoning. Presumably planners would argue for a way of proceeding in practice and research that i s in some measure rational, that i s to say, uses reasoned thought. Rationality as reasoned thought i s a common sense view of rationality. Theoretical considerations of rationality have drawn planners into knotty problems that have obscured not only the common sense view but also the view that rationality i s only one among several ways of knowing. In addition, \"rational\" has come to refer not only to a way of knowing but also to the objects of knowing. Examples are man (\"rational man\"), goals, 24 actions, decisions. Two points are raised here. The f i r s t concerns a major argument of this thesis, which i s that conscious purpose, or reasoned thinking, i s not the only process with effects that i s occurring when one plans. Rather, rational processes are just one type in a context of processes. It i s discussed further in the following section and in succeeding chapters. The second point i s the subject of this section: that \"rational\", when applied to objects such as goals, i s a normative attribution which i s treated as an absolute. An example of slipping from the contextual use of rationality to the absolute may be helpful. Simon reaffirmed the contextual nature of rationality with his \"bounded rationality\". According to this principle, The capacity of the human mind for formulating and solving complex problems i s very small compared with the size of the problems whose solution i s required for objectively rational behavior in the real world \u00E2\u0080\u0094 or even for a reasonable approximation to such objective rationality.25 2^The distinction between \"reason\" and \"rational\" i s broached briefly by Bolan in \"Mapping the Planning Theory Terrain\", in Planning in America, ed. D.R. Godschalk (Washington, D.C.: American Institute of Planners, 1977), p. 26. ^Herbert A. Simon, Models-of Man (London: John Wiley, 1957), p. 198. 41 Friedmann starts off with the principle of bounded rationality (attributed variously to March and Simon on p. 226, and to Simon on p. 234) which he describes as meaning \"that a decision can be no more rational than the conditions under which i t i s made; the most that planners can hope for is the most rational decision under the-circumstances\". To this point, rationality in Friedmann's description i s contextual. What i s rational i s restricted by and dependent on the circumstances. He then identifies what he says are two basic forms of bounded rationality: functionally rational thought which is \"rational with respect to the means only\", and substantially rational thought which i s \"rational with respect to both the ends and means of action\" (p. 236). His two categories describe ways to classify rational thought with respect to the objects of that thought, that i s , means and ends, rather than in a context. Accordingly, he can determine i f the means, or means/end combination, are rational, which in this case means 'right' or 'proper'. He has subtly slipped from using \"rational\" as a contextual term that might describe an action within a set of circumstances to using \"rational\" as an absolute term that one can assign, or withhold from assigning, to the means or ends of planning. (It must be mentioned that determining the use and thus the sense of \"rational\" has not been the work of planners particularly. It has been the preoccupation of many fields since Descartes. Discussions of rationality in economics and organization theory have been particularly influential for planners.) There is a world of difference between the contextual and absolute uses of \"rational\". Treatment of a relative term as i f i t were an absolute term always ends in paradox. We are faced with the question of whether ^\u00C2\u00B0John Friedmann, \"Conceptual Model,\" p. 235. Emphasis in original. 42 something i s either rational or irrational. (These statements apply also to \"objectivity\", \"better\", and so on.) What may be rational in one circumstance or from one perspective can always be found to be irrational from another. For sports fans i t may be rational to tear down houses to put up a stadium. For the residents of those houses i t may be quite irrational. It can never be resolved absolutely by any facts that may be proferred that soccer i s rational and houses are not, or vice versa. It can only be shown to be rational within a particular context; change the context and what i s rational changes. Rationality i s only what we define i t to be. The economist, for example, depends heavily on a definition of rationality and w i l l say that individuals act rationally when they maximize their self-interests. From the point of view of the economist, a person maximizes his own interests when he buys the thing he prefers more, rather than something he prefers less. (How the individual came to have particular preferences rather than others i s said by economists to l i e outside their domain.) So far this i s quite logical. The d i f f i c u l t y enters when we see this person as more than economically motivated. He may choose not to buy the thing he prefers because i t i s the last one in town and his mother needs i t more than he does. Or he may choose not to buy the one he prefers because i t comes in an aerosol can and he i s concerned about the ozone layer which i s reputed to be damaged by the use of aerosol cans. Or, he may choose not to buy the beverage he prefers because he has changed to a religion that frowns on drinking that beverage. Has he stopped preferring i t and therefore the rationality criterion holds? Or has he superimposed a value that he ranks higher than his economic rationality, thereby changing the context? What i s rational and what i s irrational depends on how we bound the context. Its definition i s always instrumental and suited to our purposes. It w i l l depend on how we believe the context should be bounded, and within 43 that, how individuals should behave. When a researcher begins with a model of what is rational, imposing this on the data to see how well the data can predict that model of rationality, i t i s not at a l l d i f f i c u l t to come up with the sort of answers that correspond to one's purposes. Particularly vivid and pertinent examples of the instrumentality of such an approach abound in theories which use the claim of innateness to make phenomena such as human violence, white male intelligence relative to the intelligence of others, female docility, or the socio-economic status of blacks appear rational. \" A l l these claims\", says Gould, \"have a common underpinning in postulating a direct genetic basis for our most fundamental t r a i t s . However, no evidence exists to support the argument that traits are \"coded into our consciousness by genes; they may be inculcated equally well by learning.\" In the meantime, the p o l i t i c a l popularity of such theories, convincingly clothed in the language of science, almost guarantees their use in fields devoted to governing change. Newman's Defensible Space (1972) i s a case in point. He takes the theory of man's innate t e r r i t o r i a l aggressiveness (he calls i t \"latent t e r r i t o r i a l i t y \" on page 3), popularized \u00E2\u0080\u00A2an by Lorenz, Ardrey and Morris J as the justification for designing environments \"hardened\" against crime. We are to understand that i t is rational to design spaces to counteract these barely disguised animal instincts. H i l l i e r delivers a devastating critique of Newman's work arguing ^Stephen Jay Gould, Ever Since Darwin (New York: W.W. Norton, 1979), p. 238. 2 8 I b i d . , p. 257. 29()scar Newman, Defensible Space (New York: Macmillan Co., 1972). 3nKonrad Lorenz, On Aggression (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1966); Robert Ardrey, The Te r r i t o r i a l i t y -Imperative (New York, Atheneum, 1966); Desmond Morris, The Naked Ape (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967). 44 f i r s t that the t e r r i t o r i a l i t y theory has long been discredited as yet another behavioural universal that f a i l s to explain the historical and ethnographic evidence, and second that \"by associating the sci e n t i f i c approach with s t a t i s t i c a l manipulation and reference to borrowed theories\" Newman obscures the \"social reasoning behind the very built forms he i s c r i t i c i s i n g \" which \"originated in precisely the same kind of debate about the use of design to achieve social order and control.\"3 1 There are many examples of the guises under which so-called innate human characteristics are turned into the bases for prescriptions for social action. The models may seem to be rational (endowed with reason) from the perspective of those whose purposes are served. However, they are p o l i t i c a l l y rational (\"right\", \"proper\"), not s c i e n t i f i c a l l y rational (endowed with reason). 3.6 The Mind/Body Split We are in the habit of assuming that the mind i s a means to achieve the goals of the body. A set of arguments follows from this assumption. First, mind and body are related only for u t i l i t a r i a n reasons. They are autonomous working parts. Uti l i t a r i a n purposes for forms of expression such as art, music, metaphor, love, tears, joy, play, r i t u a l , religion, dreaming, fantasy, poetry, and so on, cannot be verified using positivist tenets. We assume, therefore, that i f they are apparently without purpose they are not rational. If they are not rational they should not be given consideration 3!Bill H i l l i e r , \"In Defence of Space,\" Royal Institute of British Architects - Journal 80 (November 1973), p. 543. For other examples of the t e r r i t o r i a l i t y theory in the planning literature see two articles by Barrie B. Greenbie: \"What can we Learn from Other Animals?: Behavioral Biology and the Ecology of Cities,\" Journal - of the American Institute of - Planners 37 (June 1971), pp. 162-168; and \"Social Territory, Community Health and Urban Planning,\" Journal of the American Institute of - Planners 40 (March 1974), pp. 74-82. 45 when formulating goals since one's objective is to set rational goals. Therefore these forms of expression are irrelevant to discussions and descriptions of goals. Langer argues that the habit of using the mind/body s p l i t assumption is fostered by wide acceptance of the bio-genetic theory of mind that \"traces a l l wants and aims of mankind to some i n i t i a l protoplasmic response.\"-' This genetic fallacy i s extended to language and other symbol-using forms of expression which are seen as simply more sophisticated means for adapting to basic biological needs such as food, shelter, procreation and security. The trouble with this theory, Langer points out, i s that symbol-using has such a wide margin for error that i t i s a very poorly adapted means for achieving biological needs. One illustration of the poor f i t between symbolic expression and mere survival i s that communication in which signals are not intrinsic to their referents permits lying. This i s Rappaport's point. Lying seems possible i f and only i f a signal i s not intrinsic to i t s referent. Lies are thus transmitted by symbolic communication and symbolic communication only. Although there seems to be some limited use of symbols by infrahuman animals, man's reliance upon symbolic communication exceeds that of other animals to such an extent that i t i s probably for man alone that the transmission of false information becomes a serious problem.33 The cat i s better equipped to achieve i t s biological needs with i t s simple meows, purring and leg-rubbing than man i s with a l l his complicated symbolic language that has so l i t t l e to do with basic survival. Indeed i t may get in the way of basic survival. If symbolic communication has not evolved as a means to survival, i s i t reasonable to assume that symbolization i s i t s e l f a need? Langer favours 32Langer, New Key, p. 28. 33Roy A. Rappaport, \"Sanctity and Adaptation,\" Convolution Quarterly (Summer 1974): 59. 46 this hypothesis and supports i t s plausibility with accounts of four activ-i t i e s that in a rationally adapted species would not be so widespread: the love of magic, the love of r i t u a l , our serious attitude toward art, and dreaming during sleep. Dreaming, as she says, \"presents us with things we do not want to think about, the things which stand in the way of practical l i v i n g . \" 3 4 If Langer's argument i s correct, i t i s necessary to expand the category of needs to include symbolization as a need i t s e l f , rather than a means to some ulterior need. In this case, the assumption with which we began \u00E2\u0080\u0094 that the mind i s a means to achieve the goals of the body \u00E2\u0080\u0094 i s false and the remainder of the argument crumbles. It becomes necessary to consider the place of so-called non-rational forms of expression in human affair s . To some degree, planners have always retained an interest in introducing intuition and apparently non-rational behaviour in their models and practice. The o f f i c i a l definitions of planning have accommodated 'art' as an element of planning as described in chapter 2. However, the integration has never been theoretically successful because of the simultaneous acceptance, however loosely, of positivist tenets which demand a s p l i t between mind (emotive forms of expression) and body (empirically verifiable forms of expression). What does not seem to be recognized in the literature i s that the s p l i t i s inherent in the positivist epistemology. No amount of ad hoc tinkering on the part of planners w i l l permit their reunion within the positivist model. The mind/body s p l i t has been the subject of an enormous literature. It i s the grand-daddy dichotomy that ju s t i f i e s as logical a chain of others, for example the art/science s p l i t (see chapter 2) and the means/end s p l i t . 34Langer, New Key, p. 38 47 This latter dichotomy has, of course, been discussed at length by planners^. However, planners' arguments do not seem to recognize that separating ends and means, just as separating art and science, i s a hard-programmed habit of thought grounded in the dominant epistemology. An argument against working in this mode was made many years ago by Margaret Mead who i s paraphrased here by Bateson: Before we apply social science to our own national affairs, we must re-examine and change our habits of thought on the subject of means and ends. We have learnt, in our cultural setting, to classify behavior into 'means* and 'ends' and i f we go on defining ends as separate from means and apply the social sciences as crudely instrumental means, using the recipes of science to manipulate people, we shall arrive at a totalitarian rather than a democratic system of life.36 3.7 Another Epistemology? One of the d i f f i c u l t i e s of moving to another epistemology i s the relation that has developed subtly and pervasively between logical positivism and the notion of what i t i s to be 'scientific' whereby the latter i s co-extensive with the former. In this relation, i f one rejects the positivist's empiricism one automatically rejects a s c i e n t i f i c approach. But this i s not an either/or situation: to eschew the positivist's view of science for the normative activity of planning i s not to discount i t s applicability in other f i e l d s . Indeed, the problem does not l i e with science as an activity but with the limited view of science planners work with. To approach planning from a stance that does not reify conscious purpose at the expense of unconscious purposes i s one of the principal arguments underlying the aspects of a c r i t i c a l method presented in chapters 35see, for example, Edward Banfield, \"Ends and Means in Planning\", International Social-Science - Journal 11 (March 1959): 361-368. 36sateson, Steps, p. 160. 48 5, 6, and 7. Before moving to that discussion, a description of the disciplinary matrix as the seat of much of unconscious purpose i s presented in the next chapter. 49 CHAPTER 4 THE DISCIPLINARY-MATRIX 4.1 Both Descriptive and Prescriptive In the previous chapter we explored the source of the assumption in planning that human affairs proceed according to conscious purposes and that this i s the way they should proceed. It i s d i f f i c u l t to untangle whether the sci e n t i f i c and philosophical justification preceded the normative imperative, or vice versa. This problem of untangling description and prescription i s also at the heart of questions about the existence and effects of a disciplinary matrix. Once a group shares a belief, i t i s regularly used as the starting point for describing phenomena. For example, a common belief among planners was that a \"city i s not a single, monolithic unit, but i s composed of individual, identifiable parts.\"\"'- The parts were identified functionally, and one functional part was the residential neighbourhood unit. For those planners who held the functional view, this belief about the city generally served as a datum rather than an hypothesis in their descriptions of c i t i e s . Standardized description i s one, but not the only effect of the belief. This descriptive activity i s overlaid by a \"sanctifying\" activity whereby the very certification of the belief by the group accords to i t a -'\u00E2\u0080\u00A2Gilbert Herbert, \"The Organic Analogy in Town Planning,\" Journal of the-American-Institute of Planners 29(August 1963):206. 50 normative imperative. The belief in functional units becomes entrenched as \"the neighbourhood unit principle\". One i s expected to adhere to the principle i f one i s a member of the group and in this way some order i s achieved so that the group and i t s work can be distinguished from that of others. It i s therefore more than simply a belief with consequences for the ensuing description. It also belongs to the class of beliefs exercising normative claims against the development of knowledge among members of the group. It i s not possible to distinguish the descriptive role of the belief from the prescription to share the belief. The neighbourhood unit principle 2 becomes an exemplar in the sense Kuhn gives i t in the Postscript. The student learns the exemplar and when to apply i t at the same time as learning to be a planner and learning to be a member of the group of planners. Prescription and description are simultaneously active: attempting to claim that one i s operative to the exclusion of the other i s paradoxical in the way that applying rational and irrational to an object of our knowing i s paradoxical. It i s not a question that a belief i s either prescriptive or descriptive, but that i t i s in some degree both. This chapter i s devoted to describing the dual role of the d i s c i p l i -nary matrix as both the class of consensual beliefs that allows day-to-day planning to proceed (its descriptive role); and as a member of the class of things that go into the practice of planning. It i s the member which unreflectively adapts to information in ways that preserve the homeostasis of the belief system (its prescriptive role). There are two ways in which the connotation of \"disciplinary matrix\" i s modified somewhat in this study from Kuhn's very brief description. The word \"disciplinary\" should not be restricted to connoting an academic 2Kuhn, Structure, p. 187. 51 discipline but rather made richer by joining to i t the more general meaning 3 associated with \"discipline\" \u00E2\u0080\u0094 \"a system of rules of conduct.\" The second modification concerns \"matrix\". The emphasis should be placed on i t s meaning \"an embedding or enclosing mass.\" The reason for these modifications is to suppress the notion that the disciplinary matrix i s composed of discrete elements and to express i t as a constellation of relations in which patterns can be identified. 4.2 Both Metaphor and Metaphoric The disciplinary matrix is a locus for the beliefs held by planners about individual organisms, human society, and the larger ecosystem. The beliefs are \"sanctified\" by their very acceptance as group-shared beliefs. . . . sanctity is the quality of unquestionable truthfulness imputed by the faithful to unverifiable propositions. As such i t is not ultimately a property of objects, or putative objects, but of discourse about them.5 With reference to our previous example, i t is not the validity of the neighbourhood unit principle that is sanctified but the assertion that i t i s valid. The assertion is a statement (verbalized or not) about the principle. Sanctity is not claimed to belong to the principle i t s e l f but to what is said or believed about i t . The propositions that Rappaport speaks about are \"unverifiable\" in the sense that in the constructivist view of knowledge, i t is possible to make choices about or to interpret validity, objectivity, usefulness, consistency, and so on, but ultimately these remain as choices or interpretations and cannot be verified absolutely. 3The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd ed. revised (1970) s.v. \"Discipline.\" '\u00E2\u0080\u00A2ibid., s.v. \"Matrix.\" ^Rappaport, \"Sanctity,\" p. 60, emphasis in original. 52 Sanctification of messages as beliefs i s adaptive but does not mean that the messages are true. Adaptation i s not dependent on \"truth\". However, Rappaport argues that since a minimum degree of social order i s necessary, therefore the \"acceptance of messages as true, whether or not they are, contributes to this orderliness\" and \" i t may even be claimed that belief, insofar as i t results in non-random actions which lead to predictable responses, creates orderliness by creating truth.\"^ The beliefs that we claim as part of the disciplinary matrix appear to f a l l into that class -of messages \"the validity of which is a function of the belief in them.\"7 The beliefs are communicated via shared models, analogies, metaphors, values and other interpretative relations that are used without explicit reference to their assumptions. They have become habits or conventions. A belief of course i s not directly observable. We can only attempt to say what beliefs are held by a group by reference to the behaviour of planners or by reference to the statements planners make about what they are doing or w i l l do. In this sense, the disciplinary matrix i s metaphoric: i t is a mode for translating beliefs into shared relations that have effects. It i s a metaphor for the sharing of certain beliefs so that work can proceed and as such is a statement about the class of things actually shared. It i s a metaphor for what i s sanctified. In other words, the disciplinary matrix is both metaphoric and a class of relations, some members of which are metaphors. 6 I b i d . ?Ibid. Rappaport citing Gregory Bateson, \"Conventions of Communication: Where Validity Depends Upon Belief,\" in Communication, eds. Jurgen Ruesch and Gregory Bateson (New York, W.W. Norton, 1951). 53 4.3 A Metaphor i s a Relation The position taken here is that metaphor only occurs as a relation. It i s not a fixed entity. Metaphor i s a function of shared conventions and Q of levels of reference. There are no metaphors per se. For example: If I speak of a teacher in whom I have lost confidence as a \"melted guru\", i t w i l l make no sense to someone who does not know the word \"guru\" and therefore assumes that a guru \u00E2\u0080\u0094 whatever i t is \u00E2\u0080\u0094 i s like ice and really can melt. Similarly, saying that fanatical joggers suffer from narcissism of the tendons requires shared conventions to be comprehensible. Everything can be interpreted metaphorically by moving to another level of reference. When I say I am going to take a walk, this appears entirely matter-of-fact and indeed is so in the standard course of events. However, given a special frame of reference \u00E2\u0080\u0094 for example, a planning board meeting \u00E2\u0080\u0094 taking a walk may represent catharsis because I am feeling anxious, angry or fed up. From the point of view of someone else at the meeting, my walking out may represent intolerance for the democratic process. At any rate, taking a walk in this context has l i t t l e in common with the prosaic sort of walk beyond q the fact that in both cases I propel myself with my legs. \"Colin Turbayne, The Myth of Metaphor, revised edition (Columbia, S.C: University of South Carolina Press, 1971), p. 18. ^Metaphor seems particularly resistant to definition, i f the growing literature on the subject i s indicative. Marshall McLuhan says on page 13 in The Gutenberg Galaxy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962; Mentor Books, 1969): Language i s metaphor in the sense that i t not only stores but translates experience from one mode into another. Money is metaphor in the sense that i t stores s k i l l and labour and also translates one s k i l l into another. But the principle of exchange and translation, or metaphor, i s in our rational power to translate a l l of our sense into one another. In Our -Own -Metaphor, (New York: Knopf, 1972) M.C. Bateson says on page 285: \"Each person i s his own central metaphor.\" One of the several senses in which she means this i s : \"Any kind of representation within a person of 54 It may appear from the above that metaphor i s everything and therefore meaningless. But this would be incorrect. Metaphoric meaning i s constrained by the level of reference or, more precisely, the bounding of the system within which one is exchanging information. A bear that I am looking at as an organism bounded at i t s fur i s not metaphoric; Winnie-the-Pooh in his exploits with the \"hunny pot\" i s metaphoric. The sp l i t - l e v e l bungalow on the 60 by 100 foot lot i s not metaphoric; the residential development comprised of sp l i t - l e v e l bungalows and named \"Bungalow Heaven\", or for that matter, \"Cedar Acres\", i s metaphoric. Content (bear; bungalow) and context (with \"hunny pot\"; with evocative name) are discussed more ful l y in the next section. Since metaphor is a case of presenting one sort of thing in terms of another, metaphoric meaning i s also constrained by the need to share social conventions by which one can distinguish the sort-crossing. Ice melts; gurus do not. Individuals can be narcissistic because they can be self-conscious; tendons cannot be self-conscious. Metaphoric meaning i s also constrained by conventional use. \"Interest\" acquired from lending money, for example, has lost i t s metaphoric impact since i t i s now an entirely commonplace or conventional term in this context. Conventions are one form of code used in human communication. They are discussed in section 4.5. something outside depends on there being sufficient diversity within him to reflect the relationships in what he perceives . . . \" This view i s discussed further in section 6.7 below. Metaphor and Thought, edited by Andrew Ortony (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979) contains twenty-one papers dealing with the questions \"What are metaphors?\" and \"What are metaphors for?\", including papers by Max Black, Thomas Kuhn and Donald Schon. My judgment is that the most useful way to see metaphor is as a relation that i s made meaningful contextually. More i s said about metaphors, models, analogies and other interpretative relations in chapter 6. 55 The types of constraints which are to be discussed are not discrete even though they are described sequentially i n what follows. They should be described simulataneously but the requirements of linea r presentation do not permit t h i s . 4.4 Content and Context Work i n l i n g u i s t i c s , information theory, systems and non-mechanistic cybernetics shares at least t h i s : that the meaning of a given b i t of information i s always found i n the information-plus-context r e l a t i o n and not \" i n \" the b i t of information i t s e l f . ^ , ^ For example, the l e t t e r 's' as a speech sound or phoneme i n the English language requires that i t be combined with other phonemes to at least the l e v e l of a morpheme, such as ' i s t ' , i n order to be meaningful. Simply as 's', i n the context of the English language, i t i s an indicator. For the morpheme to have meaning, i t must be combined to the l e v e l of at least a word, for instance, 1nSee, for example, Ferdinard de Saussure, Course i n General L i n g u i s t i c s (London: Peter Owen, 1964), p. 102; John R. Searle,, Speech Acts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), p. 16; Anthony Wilden, System and Structure (London: Tavistock, 1972), p. 184. C.S. Holling, \"Resilience and S t a b i l i t y of Ecosystems,\" i n Evolution and Consciousness, eds. E. Jantsch and C. Waddington (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1976), p. 81; Gregory Bateson, Steps, p. 402. 11 Anthony Wilden and Tim Wilson give the following d e f i n i t i o n of information i n \"The Double Bind,\" i n Double Bind, eds. CE. Sluzki and D.C. Ransom (New York: Grune & Stratton, 1976), p. 268. Information may most simply and adequately be defined as \"variety\" imprinted on a matter-energy base. In i t s e l f i t has no meaning or s i g n i f i c a t i o n and i s not i n t r i n s i c a l l y d i s t i n c t from \"noise\". For a given goal-seeking subsystem, however, information w i l l represent structured or coded variety, and noise, unstructured variety. As a general rule, the more complex the system, the wider the range and the types of variety i t w i l l employ as information. The d i s t i n c t i o n between energy and information i s thus neither objective nor subjective as such; i t i s systemic. Another, perhaps more easily grasped, description of information i s given i n section 5.8: Gregory Bateson's information as \"a difference that makes a difference.\" 56 'ventriloquist'; a word to a sentence \u00E2\u0080\u0094 \"Charlie McCarthy's friend was a ventriloquist\"; a sentence to a discourse \u00E2\u0080\u0094 a series of sentences. Each more encompassing level provides a context within which meaning is possible for the more restrictive level's content, or \"text\". At the same time, the more encompassing level provides a structure which i s less rigid and with more room to choose among alternatives than the more restrictive level provided for i t s text. The sentence is context to the word; the word i s context to the morpheme. The ways that the word can be combined with others to form sentences offers more choices than the 12 combinations of morphemes to words or letters to morphemes. Meaning i s impossible without context. It is the context that determines the constraints and possibilities of meaning. Wilden i s careful to note the difference between meaning and signification. The meaning is not simply the use, as Wittgenstein put i t , but the use in terms of an end and in relation to a real context. Signification may or may not be involved in a real context, for i t can create i t s own context. . . . Meaning thus may or may not involve signification. Meaning i s mainly concerned with both/and differences, signification with distinctions, some of which are either/or oppositions.13 Thus we can describe a 'bit' of information in exquisite detail but we cannot say what i t means until i t has a context. This i s an essential difference between description and explanation or justification. Context is the effect of system bounding at at least one degree more encompassing a level \u00E2\u0080\u0094 a level which can give meaning to the phenomenon being described. A specified context, or a context which i s jointly understood by com-municators, i s necessary so that we know whether we are talking about a 1 2There are, after a l l , a f i n i t e number of letters used in the English language (and most others), and a roughly definite number of words at a given period, while the number of possible sentences i s , for our intents and purposes, i n f i n i t e . 1 3 w i l d e n , System and Structure, p. 184. 57 bear-as-organism or a bear-as-metaphor. In the former case, the bear i s simply signified and may be described, but as such has no context. In the latter, the bear is set in context with a hunny pot and has meaning for anyone who has learned that bears like honey. Similar statements could be made about bungalow-as-dwelling-unit and bungalow-as-safe-haven. Levels of reference for system bounding may be hierarchically ordered as shown in the language example. Meaning i s then a function of the hierarchy. However, there are many situations where hierarchy i s not at work, that i s , in which there i s no single highest level or monitor. The term \"heterarchy\" can be used where the lower level system i s co-extensive with an individual or a group of individuals. In such cases, the lower order system has purposes of i t s own so that Whereas most men are willing to accept such axioms as \"the shortest distance between two points i s a straight line\" as the basis for certain of their behavior, they are likely to be more dubious about accepting calls to fight in distant wars, or production quotas the rationale for which they do not understand and do not believe to be in their own interest (i.e., in accord with their own purposes).I2* Sanctification of rules at a higher level i s an important ordering relation so that the purposes of the lower levels are not enhanced by contravening the rules. Sanctity, as Rappaport sums i t up, \"helps to keep IS subsystems in their places.\" In terms of the disciplinary matrix, the sharing of certain beliefs sanctifies them and in most instances gives them pecking-order power over the purposes of individual planners, acting as planners who are members of a class. 1 4Rappaport, \"Sanctity,\" p. 61. On heterarchies, see also Douglas R. Hofstadter, Godel,- -Escher, - Bach (New York: Basic Books, 1979; Vintage Books, 1980), p. 134. -^Rappaport, \"Sanctity,\" p. 61. 58 4.5 Codes as Operators Communication theorists t e l l us we do not communicate \"directly\" but \"mediately\". Between the sender and the receiver of a message are codes (sets of rules or constraints) that i f shared by the sender and receiver w i l l provide contextual meaning for the message (the actual words). A code may be as simple as conventional usage. For instance, an apple i s called \"apple\" by convention, not because of any intrinsic relation between the word and i t s referent. Or a code may be relatively complex such as the code of etiquette for addressing dignitaries. If the code is not shared (as for example between an English speaker and a French speaker, neither of whom speaks the other language), no message gets through. In this example, the English and French languages are codes. If these two people are face-to-face, other codes such as gestures and tone of voice may convey some part of the message. Earlier, metaphors were described as depending for their meaning on a shared understanding of the terms of the metaphor by the sender and the receiver. Consider this sentence: \"Slum clearance \u00E2\u0080\u0094 a new attack on this cancer of urban l i f e \u00E2\u0080\u0094 i s long overdue.\"\"^ Senator Croll i s of course speaking metaphorically. The metaphor i s \"a slum is a cancer\". For the metaphor to have effect as a metaphor, one condition i s that the code of conventional use of these words (slum, cancer) be shared by both Croll and his readers. His message i s understood in the context of the shared code of conventional usage of the words \"slum\" and \"cancer\" and on the understanding created by the metaphor \u00E2\u0080\u0094 the juxtaposition of words not traditionally found together until approximately the middle of this century. The metaphor now provides a code for sharing meaning about the nature of slums. The ^Senator David A. Croll, \"The Objectives of Redevelopment in Canadian Cities,\" Community - Planning - Association -of- Canada -Review 6(December 1956), p. 146. 59 metaphor (\"a slum i s a cancer\") acts as an operator on the content (slum), which is an operand, so to speak. Operators are obviously a different type of thing than operands. First of a l l they are functions rather than entities, by definition. Secondly, they appear to be created at a less conscious level and to be used 17 without explicit consciousness. Take a simple example of the code as operator. If I say to someone, \"You turkey!\" and I do not smile while saying i t , the person I am addressing may get very angry. However, i f I smile at the same time as saying i t , the phrase becomes a phrase of endearment. Smile or no smile sets the context for the statement and i s crucial to the meaning of the statement. I do not consciously make the appropriate faci a l gesture to establish the meaning. It occurs from some other level which is not \u00E2\u0080\u00A2I Q involuntary yet i s not conscious. The code i s an operator on the \"bracketed\" phrase: (3) (You turkey!) OR (You turkey!) It may be i l l u s t r a t i v e l y helpful to cite the example of sacrament from Gregory Bateson. The Catholic view of the sacrament, which asserts an identity between the wine and the Blood, i s the way that level of your mind [the less 'conscious' level at which primary-process thinking takes place] functions. If you become a Protestant and protest that the wine has no corpuscles in i t , you are talking, from a Catholic point of view, complete nonsense. On the other hand, you are making a wide general statement about the nature of man and about yourself \u00E2\u0080\u0094 namely, you are asserting, as a Protestant, 'I \u00E2\u0080\u00A2^Gregory Bateson has remarked that \"although you don't have to be asleep to produce metaphors, when you are asleep you can produce practically nothing else . . . \" Cited in M.C. Bateson, Our Own-Metaphor, p. 297. -^The smile is only one code in the context: the tone of voice, prior discussion, the relationship of sender to receiver, and so on are some other aspects that contribute to deciphering the message. The example here is of course not fully specified. It certainly assumes a non-pathological relationship between the sender and receiver. 60 am going to handle my religion totally at a conscious l e v e l . 1 This excludes from your religion about three-quarters of yourself, because you aren't a l l at the conscious level, and you create, in fact, a secular religion.^9 For the Catholic, \"the wine is the Blood\" is a metaphor. The code i s religion, which as operator brackets \"the wine is the Blood\". For the Protestant, this is a simile. Enormous problems are created i f the sender and the receiver interpret the context of a message differently. Similarly, we get into d i f f i c u l t i e s by fa i l i n g to distinguish the operator (the code) from the operand (the message) in a given situation. The Catholic who refers to what i s in his wine glass at a dinner party as blood has a context problem. The context for the wine has changed from sacred celebration to secular celebration. Metaphorically the wine is no longer blood but merriment. Metaphors, analogies, models and other interpretative relations in this ,essay are codes functioning as operators. 4.6 Disciplinary Matrix as Context for Codes Seen from one level, the disciplinary matrix is a class of things. It is the class of beliefs planners communicate via metaphors, models and other habits of thought about the three major systems \u00E2\u0080\u0094 individual organism, human society and the larger ecosystem. The things in the class which is called the disciplinary matrix are codes functioning as operators on messages as described above. Thus, when the neighbourhood unit principle flourished, a model neighbourhood was clustered around an elementary school and had a hierarchically ordered street pattern. Actual neighbourhoods that planners dealt with were viewed through the screen of this model neighbourhood. This is one role of the disciplinary matrix: allowing day-to-day work to proceed in neighbourhood planning based on consensual beliefs. The 9 c i t e d in M.C. Bateson, Our Own Metaphor, p. 297. 61 disciplinary matrix which ultimately represents beliefs i s the context for the specific codes which are the models, analogies, metaphors, and so on. It constrains the sorts of interpretative relations that i t can accommodate. Not just any w i l l do. New interpretative relations are admitted to the disciplinary matrix by the group, in the usual course of events, i f they are in some way adaptive to i t s goals. For example, the 20 model of the planner-as-expert appears to be accepted , whereas the model of the planner-as-responsible appears not to be, as argued in chapter 2. 4.7 Disciplinary Matrix as Code: The Paradox Seen from another level, and in a second role, the disciplinary matrix i s no longer ultimately a class of things. Rather i t i s i t s e l f a member of a class of those things that go into the activity of planning. Other members of the class are, for example, conscious purpose, as discussed in the previous chapter, and non-language-based experience such as intuition, one's sense of beauty, simplicity, rhythm, and so on. The disciplinary matrix shifts from a context role to a content role. It i s the code championing replication, order and the status quo in a context of several codes. In i t s consensual role and seen from within, the disciplinary matrix is coherent and complete. But when i t i s seen as a device for maintaining the status quo, and when i t i s seen from a level of reference that encompasses several other components of planning: i t s coherence and 2 0While this point i s much argued, and is rejected in the radical concept of planning by Grabow & Heskin, \"Foundations,\" and reversed in the advocacy planning of Davidoff, \"Advocacy and Pluralism,\" the claim i s implicit in Friedmann, \"Planning as a Vocation,\" Plan Canada 6(April 1966):99-124 and Plan Canada 7(July 1966):8-25; and Retracking America (New York: Anchor Press, 1973); and in any number of articles and books concerned with planning technique and the professional comportment and education of planners. 62 completeness are jeopardized. The reason is that whatever information i s brought to i t i s translated in terms of existing patterns of thought. For example, the disciplinary matrix may include accepted metaphors of pathology such as \"cancerous\", \"malignant\", or \"tumescent\". However, whether these metaphors should be part of the disciplinary matrix i s a question about the meaning of such metaphors for planning. Normative questions must be posed at a higher, more inclusive level where other possibilities can be identified. When they are posed at the more inclusive level, the seemingly valid metaphors of pathology may seem invalid. A paradox i s created for the planner, who cannot ignore the dictates of the disciplinary matrix as a context for codes i f he wants to get any work done, and yet must ignore i t s dictates i f he wants to question i t s beliefs and hence the sorts of problems and solutions i t permits as consistent. Heavy reliance on the disciplinary matrix as a guide to practice leads to a reduction of information (\"difference\") in the professional group. On the other hand i t cannot be dispensed with entirely, as we see in the next section. Like conscious purpose, alone i t i s not sufficient either to practice or to understand the practice of planning. 4.8 Habits of Thought are Here to Stay The way to relax the paradox of a disciplinary matrix, which i s necessary on the one hand to establish some order, and yet, on the other, by i t s opacity moves the planning system toward over-coherence, i s to ensure that the disciplinary matrix, as a subsystem, does not control the larger system \u00E2\u0080\u0094 the whole planning act. We need a critique that derives from the union of sanctity, experience and logics. That i s , to borrow Wilden's term, we need to conduct our criticism eco-logically. As long as the attitudes hidden in the disciplinary matrix remain outside a critique, we work at a very high level of generalization, as exemplified in the declared purpose of 63 a given planning report, and are unable to untangle the implications of a plan. Making them a part of a critique, we give ourselves more room in which to choose the beliefs that we w i l l continue to endorse and those we wil l no longer endorse. The disciplinary matrix i s not a construct that i s forever fixed. It can and does shift according to our goals and understanding. But as long as we are unaware that the disciplinary matrix i s instrumental in guiding our descriptions and prescriptions we are being used by i t rather than using 21 i t . We are caught in the trap of tacitly assuming that habits of thought are engraved in stone and of mistaking the content for the context, or the map for the territory. There i s no question of ridding ourselves of a l l habits of thought. That i s not possible: l i f e would be chaotic i f every thought and act had to be made consciously or analyzed c r i t i c a l l y in each circumstance as i f patterns did not exist. Nor i s getting rid of habits of thought even desirable. Nonetheless, this desire i s frequently implied. It i s based on the notion that the proper condition of information i s orderly and that habits of thought \u00E2\u0080\u0094 the metaphors, the ideologies, the world views and so on \u00E2\u0080\u0094 that are laid onto otherwise ordered information by many minds are sources of disorder and confusion. They are assumed to bar us from precise, objective thinking. We need to clear them away so that we can uncover the natural order. By contrast, habits of thought are argued here to be forms of order \u00E2\u0080\u0094 patterns we use to sort disordered information into order \u00E2\u0080\u0094 and to be necessary in some form and to some extent. Reddy describes theories of order and disorder in communication. He argues that what he calls the \"conduit\" metaphor, which i s a metaphor for the use of language i t s e l f , represents the dominant way of viewing Turbayne, Myth of Metaphor, p. 22. 64 communication. It posits perfect communication as the \"natural\" condition. According to the conduit metaphor of communication, information i s transferred as i f bodily from one person to another, or from book to person, and so on. Conceptualizing communication in this way, he says, i s \"largely determined by semantic structures of the language i t s e l f . \" 2 2 We talk about 'getting thoughts across', 'putting concepts into words', 'giving someone an idea of what one means'. By this view, we claim that we have a communication problem and that i t could be solved i f we could find ways to improve the transferring process. Thus miscommunication is an aberration that needs correction; sufficient improvement would produce harmonious communication. Reddy challenges this view, using what he calls the \"toolmakers paradigm\" in which miscommunication i s not an aberration but rather a tendency inherent in the system which can only be counteracted by continuous effort. The fact that we can communicate at a l l i s the wonder of the toolmakers paradigm. In terms of the conduit metaphor, what requires explanation i s failure to communicate. Success appears to be automatic. [In the toolmakers paradigm] things w i l l naturally be scattered, unless we expend the energy to gather them. They are not, as the conduit metaphor would have i t , naturally gathered, with a frightening population of wrong-headed fools working to scatter them.23 The conduit metaphor implies that there i s a perfect state of mutual understanding from which we have fallen and to which we are ever doomed to aspire. We are called upon by moral imperative to sharpen our good intentions and become \"better\" communicators. But what i s \"better\"? Who is to say what \"better\" is? \"Better\" for whom? For example, in situations \"Michael J. Reddy, \"The Conduit Metaphor,\" in Metaphor and Thought, ed. Andrew Ortony (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 285. 23ibid., pp. 296-297. 65 m a i n t a i n e d by a u t h o r i t a r i a n c o n t r o l the l e a s t communication downward i s the b e s t communication from the p o i n t o f view o f those w i t h power. The assumption o f betterment i m p l i e s t h a t we c o u l d e l i m i n a t e con-f l i c t i n g views, and a c h i e v e harmony, i f o n l y we c o u l d r i s e above our i d e o l -o g i e s and c o n v e n t i o n s . Rather, I would agree w i t h C u l l e r and D e r r i d a t h a t : F r e e i n g o u r s e l v e s from our most p e r v a s i v e i d e o l o g y , our c o n v e n t i o n s o f meaning, 'makes no s e n s e ' because we a r e born i n t o a w o r l d o f meaning and cannot even shun i t s demands w i t h o u t t h e r e b y r e c o g n i z i n g them. And even i f we c o u l d we s h o u l d f i n d o u r s e l v e s amidst a meaningless babble, d e p r i v e d o f ' l a l u m i e r e du sens' which makes d i s c u s s i o n p o s s i b l e . What we must do i s t o imagine f r e e i n g o u r s e l v e s from the o p e r a t i v e c o n v e n t i o n s so as t o see more c l e a r l y t h e c o n v e n t i o n s t h e m s e l v e s . ^ The f o l l o w i n g t h r e e c h a p t e r s a r e p r o p a e d e u t i c t o a c r i t i c a l method f o r a n a l y z i n g p l a n n i n g t e x t s . The purpose o f such a method i s to open the p o s s i b i l i t y o f s e e i n g the c o n t e n t and c o n t e x t o f the d i s c i p l i n a r y m a t r i x . I t does not s e t out t o change the d i s c i p l i n a r y m a t r i x . I d e a l l y i t would p r o v i d e ways t o ask about the d i s c i p l i n a r y m a t r i x . ^ 4 J o n a t h o n C u l l e r , S t r u c t u r a l i s t P o e t i c s (London: Routledge and Kegan P a u l , 1975), p. 252. 66 PART TWO THE-PLAN-AS-SUBJECT 67 CHAPTER - 5 PATTERNS 5.1 I n t r o d u c t i o n t o P a r t Two T r a d i t i o n a l l y , p l a n n i n g e v a l u a t i o n s t r y t o answer t h i s q u e s t i o n : \"Does t h i s p l a n l e a d t o t h i s s t a t e d o b j e c t i v e ? \" In c h a p t e r 2, the p r i n c i p l e s a g a i n s t which p l a n s a r e measured were o u t l i n e d . These were a l l e x t e r n a l t o the p l a n i t s e l f . I n c h a p t e r 3 I argued t h a t e v a l u a t i o n s a r e c a r r i e d out a t a h i g h l e v e l o f a b s t r a c t i o n whereby the s t a t e d o b j e c t i v e i s assumed t o be the o n l y o b j e c t i v e t h e r e i s i n a r e p o r t and thus the o n l y one t h e r e i s to e v a l u a t e . Next, h a b i t s o f thought a s s o c i a t e d w i t h t h e p l a n n e r ' s d i s c i p l i n a r y m a t r i x were d i s c u s s e d t o show t h a t these h a b i t s o f thought a r e a c t i v e : t h a t i s , they p l a y a r o l e i n the c h o i c e s p l a n n e r s make about what they w i l l p r e s c r i b e i n t h e i r p l a n n i n g r e p o r t s . In t h i s p a r t , t h r e e p o i n t s o f d e p a r t u r e a r e o u t l i n e d t h a t would permit c o n s c i o u s purpose and h a b i t s o f thought t o be c o n s i d e r e d j o i n t l y i n a c r i t i q u e . Each o f t h e t h r e e a s p e c t s c a l l s a t t e n t i o n t o t h e tendency t o reduce p l a n n i n g t o some o t h e r d i s c i p l i n e , t o a method, mechanism, ana l o g y or c a use. The f i r s t c h a p t e r b e g i n s w i t h a d e s c r i p t i o n o f t h e p r o c e s s o f r e d u c t i o n i s m and goes on t o c o n s i d e r ways one might view the phenomena w i t h which p l a n n i n g i s concerned i n terms o f p a t t e r n s o f i n f o r m a t i o n r a t h e r than o b j e c t s ; the second c h a p t e r a d d r e s s e s the use o f a n a l o g u e s ; and the t h i r d , the p r o d u c t i o n o f p l a u s i b i l i t y . These t h r e e do not complete a framework. 68 They should be read as propaedeutic to a c r i t i c a l method, a method that would begin within planning and would tre a t the act of planning as an i r r e d u c i b l e core. 5.2 Mistaking Hypotheses for Data Sutherland describes reductionism as \"the assumption that the truth about an e n t i t y can be derived from knowledge acquired about i t s parts.\"''\" He goes on to describe extensions of reductionism. Assumptivism r e s u l t s from an author f a i l i n g to note h i s assumptions and to mention that they are \" a c t u a l l y hypotheses which he simply chooses to accept rather than 2 t e s t . \" The extension of assumptivism i s analogic invention which i s a \"conceptual device designed to c a l l attention to isomorphisms, and to engine the attempt to induce c a u s a l i t y . \" F i n a l l y , expediency i s a kind of \"a p o s t e r i o r i reductionism\" which he says i s usually defended on the grounds of needing a sol u t i o n , but, e i t h e r the appropriate techniques are not a v a i l a b l e , or the use of the appropriate techniques would be i n e f f i c i e n t or economically infeasible.** A pervasive reductionism revolves around the use i n planning of knowledge borrowed from other f i e l d s . As described i n sections 3.2 to 3.6, the use of p o s i t i v i s t epistemology and methods of i n v e s t i g a t i o n assumes that causal explanation i s possible and appropriate for the organic and s o c i a l world. This remains, however, an hypothesis, whether or not i t i s stated as such. Epistemological assumptivism i s assumptivism par excellence. Systems analysis as i t i s used most widely i n planning i s a l s o reductive at l e a s t to the extent that i t i s based on the mechanistic cybernetic model which r e l i e s e x c l u s i v e l y on a negative feedback c i r c u i t to Ijohn W. Sutherland, A General Systems Philosophy for the S o c i a l and-Behavioral Sciences (New York: B r a z i l l e r , 1973), p. 92. 2 I b i d . , p. 117. 3 i b i d . , p. 123. '\u00E2\u0080\u00A2ibid., p. 127. 69 explain system performance. The purposefulness of the modeller and those modelled is absent. The failure of systems modelling thus far in planning suggests some severe cases of analogic invention. To Lee's seven sins of large-scale models \u00E2\u0080\u0094 hungriness, hypercomprehensiveness, grossness, and so 5 on, \u00E2\u0080\u0094 we might add analogic overinventiveness. Expediency is at the core of reductionism in planning, although the term is probably too pejorative. Few techniques or theories have been developed specifically for the fields of social action (as opposed to empirical fields such as sociology, geography and economics), and fewer s t i l l for planning qua planning. Under pressure to produce solutions to complex and ill-defined problems, planners have quite rightly scoured many fields for clues as to how to proceed. Unfortunately, however, the clues are often converted to hypotheses and the hypotheses to data. Under the umbrella of reductionism, but keeping in mind Sutherland's extensions, let us look at an example of the process of converting hypotheses to data within a causal epistemology. Take 1: In the classic s c i e n t i f i c model associated with mechanics, (1) a force is sought. It is ( 2 ) external to the phenomenon being studied and, ineluctably, the phenomenon is ( 3 ) caused by the force to alter i t s place (or rate of motion, composition, size). The phenomenon is thus ( 4 ) determined by an external force. This change in the phenomenon occurs in ( 5 ) a closed system. The end result of the string of changes, of which this change in the phenomenon is but one, is ( 6 ) equilibrium. Take 2 : Now consider a case of this model applied to economics which is concerned with social rather than physical occurrences. Our case w i l l be to predict how many dwelling units w i l l be constructed next year in Canada. The economist begins with an implicit assumption that ( 1 ) a force -'Douglass B. Lee, \"Requiem for Large-Scale Models,\" Journal of the American Institute of Planners 39(May 1 9 7 3 ) : 1 6 3 - 1 7 8 . 70 exists. The force i s self-interest. It i s (2) external to the phenomenon being studied, the housing market, and (3) causes supply and demand to fluctuate. Self-interest i s assumed to reside in people as part of their nature.^ Since self-interest i s part of one's nature, one i s (4) determined in one's action to that extent. The boundaries of the system w i l l vary according to the extent of the analysis, but the system w i l l certainly be (5) closed at some point at which reliable prediction seems possible, given the complex interaction of f i s c a l and monetary conditions, existing stock, demographic trends, expectations of the population, government policies, and so on. These variables are traditionally analyzed in terms of a market which, i f l e f t to i t s own devices, would eventually be driven toward (6) equilibrium. Since equilibrium i s not a state economists actually expect to be achieved, i t i s regarded rather as a mind's eye model 7 against which to measure market performance. \u00C2\u00B0For example, this assumption i s found in Jack Hirschleifer's textbook, Price - Theory and - Applications (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1976), p. 10: \"It i s true that, observing facts as they really are, the economist normally finds i t useful to operate on the premise that individuals seek their own advantage. . . .That this i s a main truth about human activity i t would be absurd to deny.\" 7 See, for example, Paul A. Samuelson and Anthony Scott, Economics, 3rd Canadian edition (Toronto: McGraw-Hill, 1971), pp. 56-61; and the Dictionary of Economics, eds. G. Bannock, R.E. Baxter, and R. Rees (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972), s.v. \"Equilibrium\": \"The concept of equilibrium i s a very general one, which can be applied to any situation which is characterized by a set of interacting forces.\" Equilibrium, i t should be noted, was originally introduced to economics by Leon Walras in 1877, in Elements of Pure Economics (Homewood, 111.: Richard D. Irwin, 1954), p.\"PI \"To this end, we shall suppose that the market i s perfectly competitive, just as in pure mechanics we suppose, to start with, that machines are perfectly frictionless.\" Walras identified actions in the market, whereby changes in demand by consumers were offset by changes in supply by producers, and the early physicists' descriptions of mechanical forces. Joan Robinson (Heresies, p. 4) notes that there has been one case observed in real l i f e which corresponds to the Walrasian conception of equilibrium \u00E2\u0080\u0094 in a prisoner of war camp. In Economic Philosophy (Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1964), p. 77, she speaks of equilibrium having an appeal because i t suggests the hum of a perfectly running machine. Her observation hints at the subject matter of the next chapter. 71 Take 3: The economists' prediction about dwelling completions i s used by planners to prescribe action with respect to such things as housing conversions, demolitions, government programs, construction approvals. When one works back through the process of borrowing knowledge, the action w i l l be found to be based essentially on a set of hypotheses from nineteenth century mechanics. The hypotheses have been turned into data, forming the starting point for further analysis, explanation, justification, prediction. Nowhere in the planning literature do authors say that equilibrium in economics, which they are borrowing, is simply an hypothesis which they choose to accept rather than test. What began as an analogy between physical nature and socio-economic phenomena via equilibrium in mechanics and positivist epistemology has subtly, and with enormous consequences, been transformed into data for mainstream economics and planning. In the conversion process, physical and social phenomena have been treated alike. One datum i s that equilibrium i s the natural state of economies. Another i s that self-interest i s a natural force.\u00C2\u00AE 5.3 Against Determinism Determinism is a crucial notion to pick from the housing example for further comment. Social actors functioning in the economic sphere are implicitly defined as determined by the force of self-interest, a natural force which can be accommodated but not escaped. It i s assumed to be innate; i t s analogue is the natural force in classical mechanics. When the \u00C2\u00B0It i s i r r e s i s t i b l e to recount here Carl Sagan's story about astronomers and the planet Venus because i t shows the droll side of analogic inventiveness. As he t e l l s i t , astronomers realized that Venus was wrapped in a blanket of vapour. The assumption was thus made that Venus was a damp planet. If i t was damp, there could well be swamps. And i f swamps, there could well be dinosaurs. PBS Television, \"Cosmos Series,\" 19 October 1980. 72 economic principles discussed above are transferred to and applied analogically in planning, the assumption of determinism is likewise transferred. The epistemology of planning is to that extent the epistemology of conventional economics and classical mechanics. The planner too may assume that self interest i s innate. If social occurrences are theorized to be determined by natural, ineluctable causes in the manner of physical phenomena, and i f explanation is sought in these forces, where is the responsibility of individuals for their well-being on the planet? They cannot be responsible for a system whose dictates are beyond their control. Through epistemological error, people come to believe they are indeed determined and unable to exercise a q significant degree of free w i l l . A fundamental reason for seeking other modes of inquiry for the world of social action i s the lack of responsibility posited for clearly purposeful actors, a supposition which causal explanation enhances through i t s requirement for objective phenomena and external forces. Common sense t e l l s us we are not atoms or b i l l i a r d balls. Planning i s , arguably, much more than a metaphoric application of borrowed hypotheses. It i s a highly purposeful activity: not only does a single plan burst with signs of adaptive behaviour, but planning as an institutionalized activity i s i t s e l f a social adaptation to the environment we perceive. This thoroughgoing purposefulness and concomitant responsibility i s always obscured by evaluations that rely on the v e r i f i a b i l i t y of objective phenomena within a causal epistemology. 9w. Lambert Gardiner presents a description of socio-economic relations among individuals who perceive themselves as determined and those who acknowledge both determinism and free w i l l in \"On Turning Development Inside-Out or (better) On Not Turning Development Outside-In in the First Place\" (Bariloche, Argentina: December 1980), mimeographed. Similar ideas are presented in his article, \"The Consumer and the Conserver\" (Montreal: GAMMA, July 1976). 73 5.4 Inverting the Question The problem becomes how to begin to develop a critique for planning that uses principles from the animate world. Certain ideas being developed in and among a number of fields facing similar concerns appear useful. It w i l l of course be v i t a l to treat these as only clues for proceeding and to guard against their application to planning analogically and without awareness. In the f i r s t place, i t seems probable that questions about the livi n g world have been asked the wrong way round. For example, we are in the habit of asking questions such as \"Does this plan lead to this stated objective?\". The formulation focusses on causality and on external c r i t e r i a against which the plan is measured. The c r i t e r i a have been established beforehand and have been claimed to be 'right' or 'good', or perhaps inevitable, as in the case of innate human characteristics. There i s no room to explore the c r i t e r i a within the evaluation. This approach implies a hierarchy of explanation downwards from c r i t e r i a external to the system, cr i t e r i a that some of us choose and define to suit ourselves. If, however, we ask \"How i s i t that these prescriptions are plausible?\", the focus shifts to how the plan is justified and why i t seems to be reasonable, natural and plausible within a context of relations. The relations themselves are made explicit. The plan i s not measured against pre-determined c r i t e r i a . The way plausibility i s produced i s what jus t i f i e s the plan. The hierarchy i s inverted so that one works upwards from the structures and relations to justify the plan. 1 0 l uThe idea of the inverted hierarchy i s drawn mainly from Gregory Bateson, Steps, pp. 426-439 and pp. 448-465. 74 5.5 Structure By inverting the question, oppositions such as free w i l l and determinism can be accommodated. An identified structure is the embodiment of both constraints ('determinants') and possibilities ('free-will'isms') in relation to an adaptive, selecting organism. The selection which is made by the organism is neither random, nor is i t determined. Thus, in the critique the researcher refuses to make man either the sole cause or solely the effect. Consider the English language as an example of a structure. The English speaker who randomly selects a series of letters (or non-letters), to form a combination which does not exist as a word in the language w i l l only be understood i f the message accompanying that word is sufficiently complex that redundancy permits the hearer to decipher that one word in the light of i t s context. On the other hand, the same English speaker selects from a range of possible words to make himself understood. For example, in the sentence, \"He rarely goes out\", \"rarely\" could be replaced by several similar words such as \"infrequently\" or \"seldom\" while retaining the sense of the sentence. Or the syntax could be altered: \"He goes out rarely\", \"Rarely does he go out\". The structure within which these possibilities and constraints are elaborated is form; i t is not substance. Similarly a plan can be seen as what has been selected by purposeful actors from among a structure of constraints and possi b i l i t i e s \u00E2\u0080\u0094 what w i l l and w i l l not be understood, possible, plausible. 5.6 Open Systems An open system interacts with i t s environment. Each system \u00E2\u0080\u0094 for example, an English speaking person \u00E2\u0080\u0094 that is in a non-determined yet non-random relation with a s t r u c t u r e \u00E2\u0080\u0094 for example, the English language \u00E2\u0080\u0094 is in 75 a two-way interaction. The systems are simultaneously structured and structuring. That i s , they feed back to the structure which may i t s e l f be altered as a consequence. An example i s language, which i s not static but gradually altered by i t s speakers. A l l l i v i n g and adaptive systems are open systems.1\"'\" A system, depending on i t s complexity, interacts with many structures and with many other systems. For example, the English speaker using the structure of the language represents one relation. If I am the speaker I am simultaneously interacting with my biological structure ( i f I have laryngitis I w i l l perhaps use more gestures than speech), with structures of perception (I wi l l note that my plan has been rolled up in the corner rather than l e f t taped to the wall), with the structures of cultural convention (I wi l l smile when I greet my client rather than frown, since smiling in such circumstances i s conventional). And when I meet my client, I am simultaneously interacting with the conventions of greeting and with another highly complex system, another person. From the point of view of communication of ideas such as in plans, systems are not concrete and absolute but the results of bounding the pathways of information. The following quotation from Bateson makes clear why the study of the communication of ideas requires a quite different approach. Ecology has currently two faces to i t : the face which i s called bioenergetics \u00E2\u0080\u0094 the economics of energy and materials within a coral reef, a redwood forest, or a city \u00E2\u0080\u0094 and, second, an economics of information, of entropy, negentropy, etc. These two do not f i t together very well precisely because the units are differently bounded in the two sorts of ecology. In bioenergetics i t i s natural and appropriate to think of units bounded at the c e l l membrane, or at the skin; or of units composed of sets of Wilden, System and Structure, p. 36. 76 conspecific individuals. These boundaries are then the fron t i e r s at which measurements can be made to determine the additive-subtractive budget or energy for the given unit. In contrast, informational or entropic ecology deals with the budgeting of pathways and of probability. The resulting budgets are fractionating (not subtractive). The boundaries must enclose, not cut, the relevant pathways. Moreover, the very meaning of \" s u r v i v a l \" becomes different when we stop talking about the survival of something bounded by the skin and start to think of the survival of the system of ideas i n c i r c u i t . The contents of the skin are randomized at death and the pathways within the skin are randomized. But the ideas, under further transformation, may go on out i n the world i n books or works of art. Socrates as a bioenergetic individual i s dead. But much of him s t i l l l i v e s as a component i n the contemporary ecology of ideas.12 5.7 Non-Mechanistic Cybernetics Early cybernetics described systems with governing devices which monitored the environment of the system and, through negative feedback, adjusted the system to conform to an i n i t i a l \"setting\". This i s the state to which the system w i l l always revert using the same c i r c u i t r y of effects. The c l a s s i c example i s the thermostat. Such a system w i l l never perform beyond a narrow range set for i t and performance i s controlled by a regulator. I t i s an open system i n the sense that the control c i r c u i t i s energized by changes in the environment; but the c i r c u i t r y i s closed i n the sense that a disturbance i s corrected through the regulator so that \"events at any position i n the c i r c u i t may be expected to have effect at a l l 13 positions on the c i r c u i t at l a t e r times.\" I t s goal i s maintenance; i t cannot ask about the appropriateness of t h i s goal. By contrast, the non-mechanistic open system i s not fixed i n a c i r c u i t r y determined from an i n i t i a l setting. In addition to negative feedback which operates i n the direction of equilibrium and system 2Bateson, Steps, pp. 460-461. 3 I b i d . , p. 404. 77 maintenance, there i s positive feedback which \"can increase differentiation, develop structure and generate complexity.\"\"'\"^ In terms of the communication of ideas, the system's interaction with i t s environment i s not mediated by a regulator circuit that provides only one route to the fin a l state. It can achieve a state through many different routes. The adaptation i s purposeful and ultimately oriented to survival. It sets goals and i t can ask about the appropriateness of those goals. It applies to persons and to human groups. 5.8 Information-Processing Systems It i s helpful to regard open, adaptive systems as information-processing systems. First of a l l , what i s meant by information? Bateson defines information as \"difference which makes a difference\". He describes i t by starting with Korzybski's well-known statement that \"the map i s not the territory\". Bateson asks: What is i t in the territory that gets onto the map? We know the territory does not get onto the map. . . . Now, i f the territory were uniform, nothing would get onto the map except i t s boundaries, which are the points at which i t ceases to be uniform against some larger matrix. What gets onto the map, in fact, i s difference, be i t a difference in altitude, a difference in vegetation, a difference in population structure, difference in surface, or whatever. Differences are the things that get onto a map. . . . A difference i s a very peculiar and obscure concept. It i s certainly not a thing or an event. This piece of paper i s different from the wood of this lectern. There are many differences between them \u00E2\u0080\u0094 of colour, texture, shape, etc. But i f we start to ask about the localization of those differences, we get into trouble. Obviously the difference between the paper and the wood i s not in the paper; i t i s obviously not in the wood; i t is obviously not in the space between them, and i t i s obviously not in the time between them. (Difference which occurs across time i s what we c a l l \"change\".) A difference, then, i s an abstract matter. 14Magoroh Maruyama, \"Toward Cultural Symbiosis,\" in Evolution and Consciousness, eds. E. Jantsch and C. Waddington, p. 200. 78 . . . when you enter the world of communication, organization, etc., you leave behind that whole world i n which effects are brought about by forces and impacts and energy exchange. You enter a world i n which \"effects\" \u00E2\u0080\u0094 and I am not sure one should s t i l l use the same word \u00E2\u0080\u0094 are brought about by differences. That i s , they are brought about by the sort of \"thing\" that gets onto the map from the t e r r i t o r y . This i s d i f f e r e n c e . 1 5 He goes on to make the point that when we seek causes i n the world of energy and matter, we expect them to exist and to be \" r e a l \" . By contrast, i n the world of information and communication \"nothing \u00E2\u0080\u0094 that which i s not can be a cause. . . . The l e t t e r which you do not write can get an angry reply.\" There i s always a context within which the system i s adapting through exchange of information. The context provides structure for the system's content. There i s a hierarchy of \"differences\" between system and structure such as \"that between a c e l l and a tissue, between tissue and 17 organ, organ and organism, organism and society.\" The system i s some set of p o s s i b i l i t i e s drawn from the structure of the context which, together with the system's existing characteristics, make the p r o b a b i l i t i e s of selecting and/or adapting to information not random. The information exchanged varies with the system, and varies the system: for example, information about comfort or discomfort may be exchanged v i a gestures or speech or rashes; or information about cycles may be exchanged v i a hibernating or flowering or puberty. Explanation i s always negative i n the open system. The \"negativeness\" i s based on the constraints of the organism plus i t s environment. In this sense, the explanation i s not determined (positive), but the result of selections made by adaptive organisms from among non-random p o s s i b i l i t i e s (negative). At a high l e v e l of organization, such as 5Bateson, Steps, p. 451-452. 6 I b i d . , p. 452. 1 ? i b i d . , p. 458 79 is characteristic of the person or groups of people, the system has a great diversity of possible responses to information. In other words, the structures constraining the responses can be assumed to have less preponderance over the person than would be the case for a snail, for 1 o example. Within the complex structure of the conduct of human affairs, purposive human beings cannot attribute responsibility (cause) to the forces of 'human nature'. Effect i s immanent in the systems and their relations, and i s not lodged beyond in some \"other\". Both the patterns of thought identified with the disciplinary matrix and conscious purpose are needed to understand how plausible planning texts are produced. These features stemming from cybernetics and information theory w i l l be important for shifting from a causal mode of inquiry which focusses on concrete objects to one based on information in which the focus is the adaptiveness of the information for the system which produces i t . Wilden, System-and Structure, p. 239. 80 CHAPTER 6 ANALOGUES 6.1 Analogues and C o u p l i n g Analogues a r e c r u c i a l t o the f o r m a t i o n o f p l a n n e r s ' p r e s c r i p t i o n s f o r how t h e major systems \u00E2\u0080\u0094 the i n d i v i d u a l human b e i n g , human s o c i e t y , and the l a r g e r ecosystem \u00E2\u0080\u0094 s h o u l d be c o u p l e d . C o u p l i n g r e f e r s t o l i n k i n g one system w i t h a n o t h e r . Analogues a r e c a s e s o f c o u p l i n g , so t h a t the manner i n which p l a n n e r s undertake t o c o u p l e t h e s e systems r e f l e c t s t h e i r under-s t a n d i n g both o f the use o f analogues and o f the r e l a t i o n s among the major systems. At the r o o t o f p l a n n i n g i s the e f f o r t t o understand t h e s e systems so t h a t the c o u p l i n g e f f e c t e d by p l a n n e r s w i l l p r o v i d e a d a p t i v e advantages. One premise used i n t h i s study i s t h a t a d a p t i v e n e s s i s u l t i m a t e l y d i r e c t e d toward the g o a l o f s u r v i v a l o f the human s p e c i e s , but r e f e r s t o a l l the p r o c e s s e s by which organisms o r groups o f organisms m a i n t a i n homeostasis i n and among themselves i n the f a c e o f both s h o r t term e n v i r o n m e n t a l f l u c t u a t i o n s and l o n g term changes i n the c o m p o s i t i o n and s t r u c t u r e o f t h e i r environments.1 A second premise i s t h a t the u n i t o f s u r v i v a l i s the o r g a n i s m - p l u s -2 environment. Thus the c o u p l i n g r e f l e c t s an u n d e r s t a n d i n g o f the r e l a t i o n s among these systems w i t h r e s p e c t t o s u r v i v a l . Rappaport, \" S a n c t i t y , \" p. 54. Bateson, S t e p s , p. 451. 81 For example: A janitor at a Canadian university was convicted of arson. His reason for setting fires was to keep students from walking \u00E2\u0080\u00A23 on the floors he had just cleaned. The janitor adapted to the coupling of him-plus-task with acts of arson. The manner in which person-plus-social task were coupled may have been built on the implicit assumption that the person is a machine, that he can do the same task repeatedly without pathologically altering his perception of his environment. Or, consider the goal-survey-analysis-plan sequence in the previous chapter. The residents of Trefann Court, for example, adapted to the coupling of them-plus-neighbourhood by rejecting the planners' plans. The manner in which residents-plus-neighbourhood were coupled may have assumed that the residents were incidental in determining the future 4 character of the neighbourhood. Since coupling i s a relation, i t i s neither in the janitor nor in the floor-cleaning task but rather i t i s the form of the relation between floor-cleaner and floor-cleaning. In the case of the urban renewal area, the coupling is not in the neighbourhood or in the residents, but is the form of the relation between them. A trace of the nature of the coupling as proposed by the planners and as understood by the residents could be found in the plan and in other communications among the residents and planners. Coupling i s a meta-term; i t sets the rules for the units being coupled. It refers to the relation between the components. As a set of rules i t i s more than just information. It i s communication between at least two systems. In any communication there are recursive effects for both the systems involved. 3CBC Radio, \"News,\" 7 July 1980. '\u00E2\u0080\u00A2These examples illustrate coupling of systems but do not claim to prove the assumptions behind the coupling. 82 Let us next look at analogues in a general sense as ways of beginning to understand the unfamiliar. The succeeding sections describe some particular analogues and some d i f f i c u l t i e s in using them because of the nature of the coupling they imply. Ideally we would want to find an analogue for planning that allows us to investigate conscious and unconscious purposes and the recursive effects of coupling \u00E2\u0080\u0094 a l l in terms of \"difference\" rather than substance. 6.2 Using and Being Used by Analogues A man desiring to understand the world looks about for a clue to i t s comprehension. He pitches upon some area of commonsense fact and tries i f he cannot understand other areas in terms of this one. This original area becomes then his basic analogy or root metaphor.5 To understand the unfamiliar, we choose something familiar upon which we build hypotheses about how that unfamiliar something works. We use what we know about the familiar thing as an analogue to try to expand our understanding of the unfamiliar thing. Based on a comparison of the two, we look for isomorphisms. We may say that a guru i s like ice with respect to their common capacity to change from solid to \"unsolid\" forms. The greater subjectivity associated with whether or not a guru has indeed ceased to be a guru versus whether ice has indeed changed to water of course weakens the analogy. The crudeness and precision of analogues are the subject of these sections. Analogues may occur in the form of metaphor or analogue model, which i s a sustained, spelled-out metaphor.^ Analogues are extraordinarily useful because of structural similarities found among a wide variety of ^Stephen Pepper, World Hypotheses (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1942), p. 91. M^ax Black, Models and Metaphors (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1962). 83 things in the world. In fact this may be the way we acquire a l l new cognitive knowledge. Langer says \"Really new concepts, having no names in current language, always make their earliest appearance in metaphorical 7 statements.\" Commonsense i s the beginning of understanding; refinement comes later. The way in which the metaphor i s used in the process of refinement of knowledge i s of the utmost importance. It must be used with awareness that i t i s indeed an analogue and not the thing i t s e l f . It can supply plausible hypotheses but not proofs. Separate corroboration i s needed. There seem to be at least three potential p i t f a l l s , a l l interrelated, awaiting users of a relatively successful analogue. They are a l l pertinent to a critique of planning. (a) First i s the belief that the successful analogue i s the only one that appropriately applies in a given circumstance. Pepper has prepared an extensive argument showing why such a belief i s dogmatic. He has shown that several root metaphors exist, each of which supports a world hypothesis approximately equivalent to the others in terms of power to explain phenomena.^ One example of a root metaphor i s \"machine\". It i s a root metaphor in the sense that a review of the analogues underlying successful hypotheses about how things in the world work points to the repeated occurrence of metaphors which share the common quality of \"machine-ness\". Root metaphors support a repertoire of local, more specific metaphors for use in particular investigations \u00E2\u0080\u0094 for instance, the hydraulic analogue used to describe the 'Langer, New Key, p. x i . ^\"Root metaphor\" i s of course i t s e l f a metaphor, as a friend pointed out to me. A root metaphor is a metaphor for a root metaphor which is a metaphor for . . . . 84 pumping o r p r i m i n g o f t h e economy^, o r t h e computer used a s an analogue t o d e s c r i b e the b r a i n . Thus the r o o t metaphor i s \"machine\" and two members o f the r e p e r t o i r e a r e the h y d r a u l i c pump and t h e computer. Pepper's world hypotheses a r e l i k e any hypotheses except w i t h r e s p e c t t o t h e i r scope: they cannot r e j e c t as i r r e l e v a n t any f a c t s t h a t a r e brought t o them. T h e i r c l a i m s t o e x p l a n a t i o n a r e u n r e s t r i c t e d i n terms o f s u b j e c t m a t t e r . Pepper c a l l s the wo r l d h y p o t h e s i s a s s o c i a t e d w i t h t h e machine \"mechanism\". I t can be e i t h e r o f the l e v e r / p u s h - p u l l s o r t f o r which a c t i o n i s immediate, o r the e l e c t r o m a g n e t i c f i e l d s o r t , f o r which a c t i o n i s a t some d i s t a n c e . 1 ^ A r e s t r i c t e d h y p o t h e s i s b e l o n g i n g t o the u n r e s t r i c t e d w orld h y p o t h e s i s o f mechanism i s t h a t the economy f u n c t i o n s l i k e a pump so t h a t p r i m i n g i t w i t h p u b l i c s e c t o r spending, f o r example, w i l l produce a smoother f l o w i n g economy. A r e s t r i c t e d h y p o t h e s i s o f the e l e c t r o m a g n e t i c f i e l d s o r t would be t h e g r a v i t y model which h y p o t h e s i z e s an a t t r a c t i o n o f shoppers t o shopping c e n t r e s , where \" a t t r a c t i o n \" i s s i m i l a r t o g r a v i t a t i o n a l f o r c e . A wo r l d h y p o t h e s i s e v o l v e s from the c o r r o b o r a t i o n a c q u i r e d i n t e s t i n g the m a c h i n e - l i k e metaphors. When we assume t h a t o n l y one wor l d h y p o t h e s i s i s c a p a b l e o f g e n e r a t i n g v a l i d t e s t s we a r e easy p r e y t o dogmatism. \"One o f the commonest d e v i c e s o f dogmatism i s t h e a p p e a l t o c e r t a i n t y . Dogmatism may be d e f i n e d as a demand f o r b e l i e f i n excess o f the e v i d e n c e f o r i t . \" 1 1 Having i d e n t i f i e d f o u r a p p r o x i m a t e l y e q u i v a l e n t l y adequate world hypotheses i n a 12 work i n 1942, and a f i f t h i n 1966, Pepper urges t h a t no one assume t h a t ^ B l a c k , Models-and Metaphors, p. 214. l\u00C2\u00B0Pepper, World Hypotheses, p. 187. -^Stephen Pepper, Concept a n d - Q u a l i t y ( L a S a l l e , 111.: Open Court P u b l i s h i n g Co., 1966), p. 3. 1 2 P e p p e r t h i n k s the f i f t h might p o s s i b l y be a re-w o r k i n g o f one o f the f i r s t q u a r t e t , \" c o n t e x t u a l i s m \" . Concept and Q u a l i t y , p. 2. 85 because a phenomenon can be described in terms of one world hypothesis, that i t cannot also be described relatively adequately in terms of four others. His admonition i s a l l the more true for restricted hypotheses. For instance, in the case of the gravity model and the attraction of shopping centres there i s no reason to suppose that this i s the only or even the best description. It certainly does not appear likely ever to produce explanation since this would require an identity between a shopping centre and a mass in the gravitational sense. Evidence generated using any single hypothesis as to why shoppers go to one place rather than to another i s by no means conclusive; searches in other avenues may s t i l l be f r u i t f u l . This eclectic approach i s not intended to advocate a cynical attitude that claims we can never know anything, nor an attitude which claims that to look at a phenomenon from one angle i s as good as from another. What Pepper i s arguing, and an argument running through this thesis, i s that meaning l i e s not in the single piece of evidence but in the context which we decide upon for i t . The way much evidence concerning something comes together i s the source of i t s meaning. Pepper says i t well: For many men the resort to dogmatism results from an apprehension that knowledge might have no firm basis, and that i f everything is somewhat doubtful (or, more precisely, dubitable) no knowledge i s secure. But even i f this were the conclusion from the evidence, we should find that we did not have anything very serious to fear. For the conclusion that everything i s dubitable i s not the conclusion of utter skepticism. It does not signify that we know nothing. This, as we showed, i s simply inverted dogmatism. The trend of the evidence was toward something very different, namely, toward the conclusion that, though any single item of evidence i s dubitable, the presence of great masses of evidence i s highly confirmed. What doubt, or any other cognitive activity, always. . . brings us back to i s the realization that some sort of probably pretty rich and complicated thing is being cognized.13 The variety and richness of the potential sources of knowledge permit us to follow various pathways toward corroboration. Dogmatism merely 13pepper, World Hypotheses, p. 319. 86 closes off pathways, impoverishing the div e r s i t y of what i s . Our search for corroboration, wherever i t may l i e i s suffocated. World hypotheses have a high degree of autonomy, i n the sense that the paradigms Kuhn describes have autonomy. \"No one of them can be the 14 judge of the others.\" They are members of the same class, that i s , the superclass of modes of corroboration. The categories of one do not overlap with those of another. Consequently they can only be judged against some measure beyond themselves. But since world hypotheses exclude nothing from th e i r purview, Pepper can only c a l l for \"reasonable eclecticism i n 15 practice\" by which one might understand him to be advocating a judicious, .undogmatic use of a l l the evidence available from the various, c o n f l i c t i n g sources. Root metaphors and \"pure\" world hypotheses are perhaps theoret i c a l l y important. However, we are only i n d i r e c t l y concerned with them i n planning. In practice we encounter the repertoire of more l o c a l analogues and restriced hypotheses \u00E2\u0080\u0094 that i s , those hypotheses associated with a parti c u l a r root metaphor that form a world hypothesis when put together. The important points are to recognize, f i r s t , that when the presuppositions of r e s t r i c t e d hypotheses are investigated seriously they lead toward one of possibly f i v e t h e o r e t i c a l l y \"pure\" world hypotheses, and, second, that an analogue from one world hypothesis cannot l e g i s l a t e over another one from a different world hypothesis. (b) A second potential p i t f a l l associated with using analogues i s habit. I t i s the well-worn metaphor, or model, that has slipped into habitual use that i s problematic for expanding knowledge once the f i r s t flash of f r u i t f u l n e s s of the metaphor has been realized. Metaphors i n use are even d i f f i c u l t to detect because users become accustomed to the % b i d . , p. 330. 1 5 I b i d > 87 vocabulary and processes of thinking associated with them. The processes have sunk below the threshold of awareness i n the daily course of events, and we cease to recognize the presence of metaphor or to seek other ways to see the material. 16 Turbayne claims that a metaphor has three stages. I n i t i a l l y the juxtaposition seems inappropriate, such as c a l l i n g streets \"arteries\". Objections are made i n this phase that only organisms have ar t e r i e s ; c i t i e s do not. In the next phase, this insistence on the l i t e r a l meaning of each of the terms permits them to come together as metaphor. Turbayne c a l l s this the \"moment of triumph\" when we pretend with awareness, that indeed streets are arteries. At this stage almost no one i s taken i n by the new metaphor. In the t h i r d phase the metaphor i s \"hidden or ceases to be one\". We are p a r t i c u l a r l y concerned here with hidden metaphors, f i r s t , because they can lead to confusion between the t e r r i t o r y ( l i t e r a l ) and the map (metaphor or analogue); and second, because i n a successful metaphor the focal word of the metaphor (\"streets\") i s redefined to some degree. (Regarding the second point, Kuhn has argued that r e d e f i n i t i o n has taken place for^=ma. See 3-^ above.) Our conventional knowledge of arteries, which may well be that they are simply conduits, i s transposed to streets, which then become more f u l l y i d e n t i f i e d with moving substances from one place to another. This p a r t i a l r e d e f i n i t i o n conforms with Black's 17 \"interaction metaphor.\" The two subjects, streets and art e r i e s , are \"active together\". To speak of a major street does not convey the same meaning precisely as to speak of a major artery. When we speak of \"streets\", we may vaguely picture them as tree-lined. When we say 1^The following i s drawn d i r e c t l y from Turbayne, Myth of Metaphor, pp. 24-26. 1 7Max Black, \"Metaphor,\" Proceedings of the A r i s t o t e l i a n Society (1954-55): 285. 88 \" a r t e r i e s \" the focus f a l l s on movement. Certainly we have no picture of trees along a r t e r i e s . Habitual use of \" a r t e r i e s \" a l t e r s our view of an important aspect of the c i t y without our conscious awareness. The machine metaphor has been common since Descartes and Newton. The machine model (\"the world i s a machine\") has inestimably influenced the on-going description of the things of t h i s world. As the story goes, Descartes quite l i t e r a l l y dreamed i n 1619 that his machine model, or geomet-18 r i c a l model, could be extended to every subject except the mind or soul. Turbayne and others have argued that the use of the model of the machine to explain the things of the world (including \"mind\" on many occasions), has become conflated with the a c t i v i t y called science. The machine as a central analogue for science has been elevated to the position of myth, Turbayne claims. Myth conveys \"truth\", not hypotheses. I t has become one of the great cases of being used by metaphor. The habit of using i t i s so profoundly interwined with our commonsense way of thinking, speaking and acting that we do not recognize that we are using mechanistic metaphors when for example, we talk of \"implementing\" a plan, of soci a l or environmental \"impacts\", of an action as \"counter\"-productive, or of \"fine-tuning\". (c) A t h i r d potential p i t f a l l i s to become enamoured of a metaphor because of i t s current appeal. Analogic models i n part i c u l a r appear to maintain a degree of currency with what i s being invented and with what i s of current concern. For example, when the telephone exchange was invented, the brain was compared to i t . Like a telephone exchange, the brain seemed to be the focus for messages from various parts of the body and the control 1 bTurbayne, Myth of Metaphor, pp. 66-68; Georges Poulet, \"The Dream of Descartes,\" Studies i n Human Time, trans, by E l l i o t t Coleman (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1956), pp. 50-73. 89 centre for messages back to the parts. This analogy was made obsolete by the invention of electronic computers. An example from planning activity, and in the organismic rather than mechanistic sphere, are the metaphors of pathology applied to neighbourhoods and other parts of c i t i e s . Before the cause and treatment of tuberculosis were well understood the attributes of this disease were commandeered to describe urban conditions. By the 1950's the disease to be dreaded had shifted from tuberculosis to cancer, and a new spate of metaphors relating to cancer were applied to the city: \"To look at the section of any plan of a big city i s to look at the section of a fibrous tumor\", said Frank Lloyd Wright in 1958.19 6.3 The Organic Analogue The unifying thread running through the various interpretations of \"organic\" in planning i s i t s derivation in the \"world of liv i n g things, from the animal or vegetable kingdoms: i t has profound undertones of l i f e \u00E2\u0080\u0094 birth, growth, change, ultimately death \u00E2\u0080\u0094 in contradistinction to 20 inanimate, or inorganic, matter.\" Herbert describes several forms of the analogue that appear in planning literature. He shows how each version is partial, and even contradictory due to that partialness, with respect to a f u l l philosophy of organism such as that developed by Whitehead. To his analysis of partialness one could add two further limitations of the organic analogue as used in planning. The f i r s t i s that the image of organism brought to planning seems devoid of consciousness, unconsciousness, purpose or mind. The image is a benign one. Our reading of the analogy thus focusses on aspects such as iSsee Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1977), especially pp. 74-80. 'Herbert, \"Organic Analogy\", p. 198. 90 physical structure; the body's major systems \u00E2\u0080\u0094 respiratory, cardiovascular, reproductive, and so on; the processes associated with l i f e and death, growth and decay, health and disease; and the physiological rather than symbolic symbiosis between man and environment. When \"planning\" and \"organism\" are brought together as the two terms of a metaphor, i t appears that purposiveness and symbolizing are not images associated with'the terms, nor are they created by the juxtaposition. The rendering of the analogue depicts planning's task to be arranging material conditions to enhance the physical survival and comfort of organisms. The planned arrangements are presumed to be safe from counter-purposes by simply not granting purpose-fulness to organisms. In this view, coupling planning (planner-plus-plan) with those planned-for can be achieved while ignoring the recursive effects of information on individuals. The other limitation is associated with the notion of cosmic 21 integration which underlies a l l organic metaphors. It begins from the premise that a l l knowledge is essentially integrated. As we consider the fragments of knowledge that come to our attention, i t is our task to find their places in the integrated whole which exists whether or not human beings can identify that wholeness at any particular time. We are therefore embarked on a path leading inexorably toward the ideal: total integration. The longing and striving for this ideal end point are inherent in an hypothesis such as \"order\" which supports and is derived from the analogue. 22 The ideal of order pervades planning literature. The orderly Utopian 2 1Pepper, World Hypotheses, pp. 280-314. 22Two authors who have closely examined the ideal of order in planning are Richard Sennett, The Uses of Disorder (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970), and Constance Perin, Everything in i t s Place (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979). Among others, Jane Jacobs in The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Modern Library, 1961) and D.L. Foley in \"British Town Planning: One Ideology or Three?\", British Journal of Sociology 11 (September 1960): 211-231, have considered this ideal indirectly. 91 state assumes that what we strive for i s actually what we strive for. It i s the idea that we can realize harmony as a single maximized value in some absolute and perfect state where order and abundance, rather than disorder and scarcity, reign. When the apocalypse arrives the striving w i l l end because integration w i l l be complete. The confusion in this view l i e s in believing that some quantity (abundance of. . .) eliminates some quality (striving for. . . ) . If this was the case, then i t would also be the case that something could exist independent of the processes that generated i t , or maintained i t , or valued i t . It would be something absolute, eternal, fu l l y formed and immutable. Perfection i s terrible, i t cannot have children. Cold as snow breath, i t tamps the womb. . . .23 Absence of integration i s information in the form of \"difference\": i t i s the difference between total integration in the ideal, symbolized state and the degree of integration presumed to have been achieved. This particular \"difference\" i s c r i t i c a l in human affai r s . Our ab i l i t y to imagine other, more \"perfect\" states permits us to propose and to seek to create those states. However, since the organisms in the analogue-in-use do not have a symbolizing capacity, information relating to the striving for integration i s lost i f we forget that \"organism\" i s merely an analogue and does not account for people in their real lives. 6.4 The Machine Analogue The machine as an analogue was touched upon earlier with reference to causality (section 3.2 and 5.2), and with reference to habit in using analogues (section 6.2). 23sylvia Plath, \"The Munich Mannequins,\" in Ariel (London: Faber & Faber, 1976), p. 74. 92 Wariness when using machines as analogues in the investigation of phenomena of the livi n g world is called for particularly with regard to the energy that i s said to cause a phenomenon to function. It i s generally acknowledged that the energy that causes inanimate phenomena to move, alter form, and so on, i s not the same sort of energy involved in the warring of one group of people against another group, for instance, or the feeling of fa l l i n g in love. Nonetheless, the machine metaphor has been held intact when applied to phenomena in the livi n g world by hypothesizing a psychic energy that parallels physical energy. It has been repeatedly claimed overtly and covertly that some sort of energy exists to cause people to war and to love. This energy has had a variety of names such as psychic force or \"elan v i t a l \" . Power, as used in physics and engineering, has been bootlegged into psychological thinking to refer to \"strength\" of emotions or \"vigor\", or the opposite to \"fatigue\" or \"apathy\". We speak of the energy of loving or hating, and of the transformation of energy from \"genitals\" to \"love\", blithely unaware that we are jumping from one realm to a radically different one.24 The application of mechanistic metaphors to explain human and social phenomena leaves an unexplained residuum \u00E2\u0080\u0094 the \"causal\" factor whose analogue in the machine i s energy. When the brain was compared to a telephone exchange, for instance, the role of the person working the 25 telephone, the telephone operator, was unaccounted for in the analogy. Public funds or other incentives are sometimes used to \"prime\" the economy via the construction sector. The energy that makes the economy \"move\", in this metaphor, appears to be the dollars and incentives. However, the \u00E2\u0080\u00A2^Rollo May, \"Gregory Bateson and Humanistic Psychology\" in About Bateson, ed. John Brockman (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1977), p. 89. 25Gordon Rattray Taylor, The Natural History of the Mind (London: Seeker & Warburg, 1979), p. 50. 26Economic Council of Canada, Toward-More Stable Growth in Construction (Ottawa: Information Canada, 1973). 93 persons with their hands on the pump handle are unaccounted for in the analogy. This i s not to say that the involvement of government people i s not recognized but that the recursive effects on the system of economy-plus-government which experienced the priming i s unacknowledged \u00E2\u0080\u0094 such as the expectation by the actors that i f the economy could be primed once in this way i t could be primed again. A pattern of priming has developed. The machine analogue does not take into account the purposefulness of the actors in such systems. 6.5 The Purposive Act as Analogue Twenty-five years after Pepper proposed his four relatively adequate world hypotheses as those predominant in intellectual endeavours, he proposed a f i f t h : selectivism.^? The root metaphor is the goal seeking purposive act. This root metaphor has the great advantage of incorporating pQ unconscious, habitual, reflex, and \" f e l t quality\" acts with acts of conscious purpose. On the other hand, despite Pepper's repeated use of \"organism\" as well as \"man\", the purposive act appears to describe the selectivism of people only. He calls the goal seeking purposive act \"the act associated with intelligence\", \"one that may go on in the f u l l illumination of consciousness\", and one that has been \"submitted to a detailed conceptual analysis in behavioristic terms\". \"Here, then, i s an ideal opportunity to see how a set of effective and well elaborated concepts come to apply to a qualitative structure lived through in a man's immediate 29 experience\". Man, the intelligent organism, i s set apart from the larger ecosystem in this world hypothesis. The hypothesis does not, i t pper, Concept and Quality. 2 8 I b i d . , p. 17. 2 q I b i d . , pp. 17-18 94 appears, extend to the ecology of the forest or to the life-cycle of salmon or to the migration pattern of cariboo herds. On i t s own, therefore, i t w i l l be a deficient analogue for investigating or proposing the coupling of man and society to the natural environment. The residuum is the adaptiveness of a l l the nonhuman, living world, as well as the bridge between that and man's purposive acts. Nonetheless, i f there i s one root metaphor on the ascendency in the planning and policy fields i t is this one. The purposive act shares the neo-pragmatic philosophy that l i e s behind what Prost describes as the \"sciences of action\". 3 0 The so-called sciences of action aim to avoid arbitrariness in p o l i t i c a l decisions by devising a \"science\" for choosing and achieving goals in the p o l i t i c a l sphere and in business and industry. They appear in various manifestations as cost-benefit analysis, PPBS, operations research, linear programming, and input-output analysis, for example. At the base of these approaches is the idea that objects of social l i f e present problems that require solving. They can be solved using scie n t i f i c techniques that reveal \"facts\". The \"facts\" can then be aligned in such a way that they w i l l point to the \"best\" solution based on general c r i t e r i a concerning the interests of the society, in the case of public sector decisions, or in the interests of the firm, in the industrial case. However, the sciences of action make use of a limited range of Pepper's types of selective \"acts\" which are themselves limited. From among those \"acts\", conscious purposiveness, and, in particular, the conscious purposiveness of experts, i s paramount. 3nRobert Prost, Emergence des sciences de 1'action,\" (Montreal: Faculte de 1'Amenagement, Universite de Montreal, June 1979). Mimeographed. 95 6.6 The Linguistic Analogue Modern linguistics began early this century with Saussure's synchronic study of language. Previously, linguistics had focussed, diachronically, on the changes in language over time. Saussure's work marked the beginning of searches for patterns in language in use. Language was recognized as a structure that offered a range of po s s i b i l i t i e s to the user rather than simply a set of rules to be applied. The fascination with the structure of language is largely accounted for by the way one is able to use i t : one selects from a whole range of possible combinations of words. One does not learn a set of phrases, as i f by rote. Rather, one \"knows\" the language and selects certain combinations according to one's purposes to express what one wishes. This is what I am doing while writing this page. I do not need to know a l l the words of English nor a l l the possible combinations of words. I do not even need to know, consciously, the rules for constructing sentences. Nonetheless, I am s t i l l knowing when I had written an ungrammatical sentence, (sic) This particular structure was revelatory in i t s early days. It differed from that of machine and from the structure of organisms as they were understood at the time. For a number of reasons, language is an analogue with apparent promise for studying social phenomena: one uses language, among other sign systems, to indicate purpose; i t is learned; one uses i t intuitively and consciously; i t is symbolic; i t works in patterns rather than d i g i t a l l y (on/off). The study of language structure has already inspired a great variety of work in anthropology, sociology, the culture of \"everyday\" such as fashion and food, literature, poetry, psychoanalysis. The analogue J'See, for example, the work of Claude L\u00C2\u00B0jyi-Strauss in anthro-pology, Garfinkel and Goffman in sociology, Roland Barthes, the New Cr i t i c s in literary criticism, Roman Jakobson, Jacques Lacan, to name but a few. 96 is evident in the recent planning and policy work of Donald A. Schon in articles such as \"Framing and Re-Framing the Problems of Cities,\"32 i n which he calls for a \"policy-analytic literary criticism\", and \"Generative Metaphor: A Perspective on Problem-Setting in Social P o l i c y . 3 3 It i s a fashionable analogue, and like any such analogue i t i s easy to s l i p into using i t to explain other cultural areas without awareness that one i s 'mistaking the mask for the face'. Culler demonstrates instances of this in his analysis of studies by Barthes, Levi-Strauss and several \u00E2\u0080\u00A23k literary c r i t i c s . He shows that linguistics applied metaphorically in these works i s descriptively interesting but poor in explanatory power. He claims this i s because the \"competence\" of actors in their cultural setting to produce meaning in their myths and their reading i s unaccounted for. Readers and writers of literature recognize a discourse as belonging to a certain genre, for instance, or as being of greater or lesser value, and so on, given experience with other written works. The reading of a work is not a linguistic exercise but an act of communication between reader and writer in which both come to the work either to read i t or to write i t with \"an amazing repertoire of conscious and unconscious knowledge\".3-' This repertoire vastly exceeds simply a knowledge of language. It i s \"competence\" in the use of this repertoire when one approaches a literary work or a myth that i s unaccounted for when the linguistic analogue i s applied directly, according to Culler. He calls the c r i t i c a l method he proposes \"poetics\" to distinguish i t from other c r i t i c a l methods. Poetics intends to fuse the recognition that 32 P a per presented to the York University Conference on Urban Innovation, June 1978. Mimeographed. 3 3 l n Metaphor and Thought, ed. Andrew Ortony, pp. 254-283. 3 4Poetics, pp. 32-109. 3 5 I b i d . , p. 113. 97 language i s the base of l i t e r a t u r e with recognition that the reading and writing of l i t e r a t u r e e n t a i l broad c u l t u r a l and experiential relations and in this way to avoid reductionism. L i n g u i s t i c s i s used where possible but not as a metaphor. \"Competence\" i s not universally accepted as capturing the whole residuum i n metaphoric applications of the l i n g u i s t i c analogue. Fish, who also proposes an approach to l i t e r a t u r e based on the language analogue, agrees i n p r i n c i p l e with Culler concerning \"competence\". However, since \"competence\" i s usually taken to mean that postulated i n Chomsky's transformational grammar (which i s true, for example, i n Culler's case), Fish argues that \"competence\" i s i n s u f f i c i e n t to account for a l l the responses which he finds i n a c r i t i q u e . I t should be noted however that my category of response, and especially of meaningful response, includes more than the transformational grammarians, who believe that comprehension i s a function of deep structure perception, would allow. There i s a tendency, at least i n the writings of some l i n g u i s t s , to downgrade surface structure \u00E2\u0080\u0094 the form of actual sentences \u00E2\u0080\u0094 to the status of a husk, or covering, or v e i l ; a layer of excrescences that i s to be peeled away or penetrated or discarded i n favor of the kernel underlying i t . This i s an understandable consequence of Chomsky's characterization of surface structure as \"misleading\" and \"uninformative\" and his insistence (somewhat modified recently) that deep structure alone determines meaning.36 Let us consider the analogue as used by Schpn. The importance of problem-setting, as opposed to problem-solving, i n s o c i a l policy f i e l d s i s not widely recognized, says Schb'n. Problem-setting, he says, i s a form of s t o r y - t e l l i n g . However, \"story\" does not necessarily connote a narrative of the \"Once upon a time...\" variety. Yet i t i s a narrative account of some phenomenon, an account i n which temporal sequence i s central. Explanatory stories are those i n which the author, seeking to 3 6Stanley E. Fish, Self-Consuming A r t i f a c t s (Berkeley: University of C a l i f o r n i a Press, 1972), pp. 404-405. Arguments against the use of \"competence\" alone to explain texts come from many quarters, including from the s t r u c t u r a l i s t s associated with the review Tel Quel. Culler (pp. 241-254) summarizes his understanding of their argument against Chomsky's \"competence\" and then attempts to dismantle i t . 98 account for some puzzling phenomenon, narrates a sequence of temporal events wherein, starting from some set of i n i t i a l conditions, events unfold in such a way as to lead up to and produce the phenomenon in question. A diagnostic/prescriptive story gives an explanatory, narrative account of some phenomenon in such a way as to show what is wrong with i t and what needs fixing.37 The analogy to fiction, such as the short story or novel, i s evident. But Schon wants us to realize that these stories are not fi c t i o n a l accounts to the t e l l e r . They are reports of story-tellers' perspectives on problems. The story-telling involves the use of \"generative metaphors\". Generative metaphors are special sorts of metaphors on two counts. First, Schon distinguishes them based on two approaches taken to metaphor: one is the analysis of metaphors as figures of speech, and the other their analysis as things \"central to the task of accounting for our perspectives on the world\".38 The latter sort i s a generative metaphor, that i s , a case in which a perspective on one thing is carried over to another domain.J? Elsewhere he distinguishes \"decorative\" from \"operational\" metaphors such that the latter term seems also to describe \"generative 40 metaphor\". And in another situation, he uses \"deep\" metaphor apparently 41 synonymously with generative metaphor. How to draw the line separating 37schon, \"Generative Metaphor\", p. 281, footnote 11. 3 8lbid., p. 254. 39m \"Generative Metaphor,\" Schon categorizes Max Black's article on \"Metaphor\" as having to do with \"metaphor as a species of figurative language which needs explaining, or explaining away\", and thus in a separate tradition from his. This is surprising since Black's \"interaction view of metaphor\" seems very close to his description of generative metaphor as \"a certain kind of product \u00E2\u0080\u0094 a perspective or frame, a way of looking at things \u00E2\u0080\u0094 and as a certain kind of process \u00E2\u0080\u0094 a process by which new perspectives on the world come into existence\". ^ nMartin Rein and Donald A. Schon, \"Problem - Setting in Public Policy Research,\" in Using Social -Research -in - Public Policy-Making, ed. CH. Weiss (Lexington, Mass: D.C. Heath, 1977), p. 241. \"Generative Metaphor\", p. 267. 99 figurative from generative metaphors, and surface from deep metaphors, depends in part on his second point. Generative metaphors have a normative component. He gives an example of a housing o f f i c i a l who might describe housing stock as \"decaying\" and who would then try to find ways to \"arrest decay\" which might include the insulation of healthy neighbourhoods from the decaying one. Schon goes on to say that the fact that we are dealing with a generative metaphor becomes clear i f we observe that the metaphor sets the direction of remedial action in the very process by which i t selects out events and explains them. Once we have been able to see houses as diseased or healthy, a whole set of prescriptions present themselves for action.^2 If generative metaphors have been f a i r l y described, i t w i l l require the greatest care not to sl i p into attributing to them energy that causes persons to act because of the \"normative component\". Schon's generative metaphors are created by persons to bring into juxtaposition opposing conditions such as decaying and healthy, and to highlight the difference between them. The difference i s information and people may act on the difference for their own goal seeking, adaptive purposes. However, the metaphors cannot in themselves cause people to act. What seems to be missing in Schon's work i s an explicit link between language and the intentions or purposefulness of people, with respect to the use of language to communicate. Thus, for example, the speaker who knows the meaning of the sentence \"The flower i s red\" knows that i t s utterance constitutes the making of a statement. But making a statement to the effect that the flower i s red consists in performing an action with the intention of producing in the hearer the belief that the speaker i s committed to the existence of a certain state of affairs, as determined by the semantic rules attaching to the sentence.^3 ^ 2Rein and Schon, \"Problem - Setting,\", p. 241. ^3john Searle, \"Chomsky's Revolution in Linguistics,\" in On Noam Chomsky, ed. G. Harman (New York: Anchor Books, 1974), p. 29. 100 Moreover, since Schon's work i s li b e r a l l y sprinkled with Chomskyan terminology \u00E2\u0080\u0094 \"deep\", \"surface\", \"generative\", \"competence\"44 \u00E2\u0080\u0094 i t seems likely that an implicit theory relating metaphors to persons' intentions i s absent rather than simply hidden. 6.7 Another Analogue? A method for critiquing planning texts should help the researcher to identify the analogues in use so that one i s not taken in by them \u00E2\u0080\u0094 either by assuming that the analogue i s the thing i t s e l f (which would be like assuming that the map is the territory), or by assuming that only a single analogue i s valid. The method should also help to trace the hypotheses entailed in analogues so that one does not mistake them for data. As the discussion of metaphors showed, there i s always a very important residuum from the territory that i s unaccounted for in the map. The residuum i s something like what i t i s to be human and to be embedded in and creating complex symbolic relations. As tentative as i t w i l l be for now, i t may be helpful to explore the whole person as a potential analogue, lie or metaphor, for understanding the coupling of the major systems. The \"whole person\" does not of course refer to the stripped down physiological organism, but the human being that bridges the gap between \" a l l reality out 46 there, and a l l perception in here\". This i s the human being that both feels and knows, both consciously and unconsciously. HH\"Competence\" does not appear in the printed works I have seen by Schon but was used in lectures given by him at the University of British Columbia, November, 1979. Also, I have found no explicit reference to Chomsky in Schon's work. 45 The idea that \"we are our own central metaphor\" i s due to M.C. Bateson, 6ur-Own-Metaphor, chapter 15.) H DGregory Bateson, \"Afterword,\" in About-Bateson, ed. John Brockman (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1977), p. 240. 101 The value of the total human being as analogue i s suggested by Bateson. He notes that this imposition has, at least in the past, conferred adaptive advantages with respect to social and ecological factors by permitting men to use their total organisms, and not simply their consciousness, as analogues in their attempts to understand nature. The narrowly defined and often destructive purposes which are to be found in consciousness are thereby, i f not overcome, at least \"put in their places\" by being included in a larger structure which includes materials drawn from non-rational as well as conscious processes. While the unconscious does not contain information concerning ecological systems, the structure of the total mind, of which the unconscious and affective are parts, resembles that of ecological systems, whereas the structure of consciousness alone does not. Thus analogues of ecological systems constructed from the materials of the non-rational as well as the rational have a \"structural wisdom\" that analogues built from consciousness alone would not be likely to possess.** 7 We always attend to the world from our own perspective, from the stance of human beings, and not from that of machines, animals, languages, acts, and so on. It i s from the perspective of ourselves as persons that we study any system, and from our perspective that we prescribe the coupling of the major systems. When one uses the analogues of machine, animals, acts or languages to understand human affairs such as planning, one focusses on a very few features that are thought to be analogous to that activity. One seems to be looking at the world from the perspective of a machine or an animal or language or act, as i f the remainder of the self did not exist. One then applies the metaphor to a coupling situation. In the process one objectifies both terms of the metaphor (e.g., slum, cancer) and the metaphor i t s e l f , as i f the metaphor was not the creation of human beings to begin with, a metaphor created from our perspective. The isomorphism one is able to recognize beyond oneself when creating a metaphor depends on there being sufficient diversity in oneself to receive the representation. Without sufficient diversity one could ^Rappaport, \"Sanctity,\" p. 64. ^M.C. Bateson, Our Own Metaphor, p. 295 102 not recognize the pattern. That i s , what i s greater cannot be represented, in what i s lesser. The metaphor is simply bringing that pattern to our awareness. Hence, using ourselves instead of objects as metaphor i s quite possible, and would allow exploration of unfamiliar phenomena to remain grounded in the human context. A second potential advantage of coupling through the analogue of ourselves might be that one i s challenged to confront the notion that human beings stand somehow outside of, and in a relation of dominance to, nature, matter and whatever else i s not classified as human consciousness. The separation of mind and body, person and ecosystem, insists on a Cartesian ego as a \"central clearing-house\", as McLuhan put i t . Consciousness is made the reference point for a l l knowing. If, however, the \"I\" that knows i s also the \" I \" that creates the world rather than simply records i t and responds to i t , and i f the \"I\" i s not only bioenergetic but also an \"I\" participating in the \"ecology of ideas\": then the \" I \" that effects coupling appears to do so in the light of ideas which have been chosen because they are adaptive and conserving of something rather than because they are the uniquely possible results of conscious thought. The chooser is then an ecologically embedded, not separate, ensemble, yet with purposes of his or her own. 103 CHAPTER 7 EXPANSIVENESS 7.1 \"Leaving Unobscured the Vast Darkness\" When planners write about what they want to do, are doing, w i l l do or think should be done, they write with a purpose. In general terms, the purpose i s to persuade others that the goal they describe and the pursuit of that goal are plausible according to the arguments they w i l l provide. For example, in a planning report the declared purpose may be to propose a new land use arrangement. Justification begins with arguments as to why the current arrangement is inappropriate, shows how a new arrangement could be achieved, and concludes with why the proposed arrangement w i l l be better. Various indices are identified against which the argument and the conclusions can be measured, such as the square metres of green space provided, the number of dwelling units brought up to standards, the change in welfare benefits paid out before and after, and so on. It appears to be a straight-forward message which can be read and assessed relatively objectively. At this level of analysis, the c r i t i c a l reader assesses the data, the indices, their appropriateness in terms of a range of alternatives, and their proper application according to certain rules. This i s a \" s c i e n t i f i c a l l y \" inspired reading \u00E2\u0080\u0094 one that argues for the proposed arrangement on the basis of hypotheses derived in the nomothetic disciplines. This \" s c i e n t i f i c \" reading (which i s partly 104 encouraged by the writing style, the presentation of the arguments, the genre, the aura of the professional-as-technical-expert, and so on) i s usually necessary but always insufficient to account for the meaning produced between writer and reader. To leave the critique at that point would be to reduce planning to the sum of the indices used. Such reductionism would leave planners with barely a claim to a profession since the planner's role would appear to be to collect data and subject i t to technical analysis using techniques drawn mostly from other fields. Second, a reading of this sort, by i t s e l f , encourages the belief that a planning prescription can be s c i e n t i f i c a l l y determined (a contradiction in terms) rather than what i t i s : a purpose with a well worked out justification. If indeed the rearrangement of land uses amounted to the reshuffling of objects in space, the critique would properly focus on observation s k i l l s rather than prescriptive s k i l l s . The task would be to know about the world of matter in which order i s determined by fundamentals such as the laws of conservation of mass and energy. But such laws do not determine the arrangement of social phenomena (although they determine whether buildings and bridges stand up), and we know of no comparable fundamentals that do determine their arrangement. While such a critique can account for the measurements made against indices, i t cannot account for the choice of those indices, or for the planners' assumptions about man, society, their environment and their interrelations that are implied by those choices. Such an accounting requires other levels of analysis. The proposed critique would have the reader search not only the traditional sites of evaluation such as indices, but also others that w i l l be described in the following chapter. A short critique of the report i s , however, impossible. One arrives instead at a work larger by several-fold than the original. This i s inevitable because the original message w i l l be found to have been written 105 in shorthand. The shorthand i s possible because writers can make assumptions about what they share with their readers. The critique entail among other things deciphering the shorthand so that one can inquire into just what i t i s that i s assumed to be shared and therefore self-evident. A principal reason for making expansiveness a feature of the c r i t i c a l method i s to provide an alternative to naming and classifying as way of understanding. This i s one way to understand. There are, however, other ways, and recognizing patterns in complex relations i s one of them. Traditional evaluations are parsimonious; the focus is on a minor range of declared objects. Yet from this impoverished view many seem to think they understand the processes of planning human affai r s . There i s an anecdote about Bertrand Russell and Alfred Whitehead related to what Bateson calls our tragic desire to think we understand things. Russell had been Whitehead's student and collaborator on the Principia and, when Whitehead had gone to Harvard, Russell came to give a lecture in one of the big auditoria, on a hot August night, and a l l the professors and the professors' wives turned out to hear the great man. The great man lectured on the quantum theory, which has never been a very easy subject. . . . Russell laboured to make the matter clear. . . and f i n a l l y sat down sweating. Then l i t t l e Whitehead rose to his feet, with his falsetto voice, \"to thank Professor Russell\", he squeaked, \"for his b r i l l i a n t exposition and especially. . . for leaving unobscured. . . the vast darkness of the subject\". 1 7.2 The Referendum Syndrome Writing that has as i t s purpose unabashedly to persuade i s substantially more restricted in i t s possible meanings than, for example, classic work of literature. Barthes says that \"the more plural the text, the less i t i s written before I read i t \" . By contrast, the more XG. Bateson quoted in M.C. Bateson, Qur Own Metaphor, p. 302. 2Roland Barthes, S/Z, trans. Richard Miller (New York: H i l l and Wang, 1974), p. 10. 106 r e s t r i c t i v e the p o s s i b i l i t i e s f o r meaning, such as i n the h i g h l y p u r p o s e f u l p l a n n i n g t e x t , t h e more the r e a d e r takes on the r o l e o f consumer t o the a u t h o r ' s r o l e o f pr o d u c e r . A commonly h e l d p r i n c i p l e o f i n f o r m a t i o n t h e o r y i s t h a t \"the more p r o b a b l e t h e message, t h e l e s s i n f o r m a t i o n i t g i v e s \" . 3 C l i c h e s , as Wiener s a y s , a r e l e s s i l l u m i n a t i n g than g r e a t poems. There a r e fewer p l a c e s f o r r e a d e r s t o i n s e r t themselves i n t h e work t o produce t h e i r own meaning, and t o break open the compactness which s e a l s the assumptions from ready a c c e s s . The work i s so t i g h t l y woven b e f o r e the r e a d e r comes t o i t , and the meaning t h a t the r e a d e r i s i n t e n d e d t o take so p r e d i c t a b l e , t h a t \"he i s l e f t w i t h no more than the poor freedom e i t h e r t o a c c e p t o r r e j e c t t h e t e x t : r e a d i n g i s n o t h i n g more than a r e f e r e n d u m . 4 In such s i t u a t i o n s , the t e x t becomes a c o n t r a c t u a l o b j e c t o f exchange between r e a d e r and w r i t e r . \"What s h o u l d t h e n a r r a t i v e be exchanged f o r ? What i s the n a r r a t i v e 'worth'?\", B a r t h e s a s k s . (A p l a n n i n g r e p o r t may be exchanged f o r 'x' months o f s a l a r y ; a s u c c e s s f u l d o c t o r a l d i s s e r t a t i o n may be exchanged f o r one d o c t o r a l degree.) The g o a l i s t o break open the t e x t through an e x p a n s i v e r e a d i n g i n s e a r c h o f what B a r t h e s c a l l s t h e \"modest p l u r a l \" which the c r i t i c a l r e a d e r can e v a l u a t e (an e v a l u a t i o n t h a t i s a c o n t i n u o u s and c o n t e x t u a l p r o c e s s which i m p l i e s l e a r n i n g ) , r a t h e r than s i m p l y o f f e r i n g t h e r e a d e r t h e p r o p o s i t i o n o f a c c e p t i n g o r r e j e c t i n g i t (a p r o p o s i t i o n t h a t i s a d i s c o n t i n u o u s and o b j e c t - s p e c i f i c event which i m p l i e s minimal l e a r n i n g ) . 3 N o r b e r t Weiner, The Human Use o f Human B e i n g s , 2nd ed., r e v i s e d (New York: Doubleday, 1950; Anchor Books, 1954), p. 21. 4 B a r t h e s , S/Z, p. 4. 5 I b i d . , p. 89. 107 7.3 The \"Modest Plural\" The ostensible purpose of a report does not exhaust the purpose-fulness of the report. The presumption that a complex message such as a planning report can be \"about\" only one thing, such as a land use arrange-ment, derives from one of two beliefs: either that i t is possible to write completely objectively or, i f this i s not possible, that whatever else i s contained in the message is irrelevant. Since complete objectivity i s not achievable, according to the arguments presented in earlier chapters, we are concerned with the second belief: that purposes that are not declared as such in the report are irrelevant. Fish discusses an example from literature of a sentence which apparently does not say anything when subjected to the usual questions such as \"what does this sentence mean?\", \"what i s i t about?\", or \"what is i t saying?\". Of i t he says Of course, this d i f f i c u l t y i s i t s e l f a fact \u00E2\u0080\u0094 of response; and i t suggests, to me at least, that what makes problematical sense as a statement makes perfect sense as a strategy, as an action made upon a reader rather than as a container from which a reader extracts a message. The strategy or action here i s one of progressive decertainizing.6 Statements of this form have effects that are relevant for understanding reader/writer relations. Texts abound with these instances of meaning produced in apparently oblique ways. Can any of the content be defined as irrelevant? Yes, because the critiquer also has purposes. But there i s a price. For example, one could define as irrelevant the author's choice of \"rarely\" rather than \"seldom\" in any cases that occur in the report, or more broadly, a l l the content that belongs to linguistics as the science of language. One could define one's purpose to be to understand why an urban renewal plan was a plausible and Fish, Self-Consuming Artifacts, p. 384. 108 acceptable recommendation on the part of planners. One could also say that one's purpose i s to understand how planners view man, society and the larger ecosystem, and their coupling, because one believes that this i s necessary to understand the plausibility of urban renewal. One cannot cut off meaning that relates to these purposes. To say that part of what is written i s irrelevant requires that one ask immediately, \"Irrelevant to whom?\". 7.4 Multiplicative Information A further reason for making expansiveness central to the critique i s that information i s multiplicative and fractionating rather than additive. A planning report follows more or less this pattern: problem statement; historical background to the problem; data; data analysis; proposed solution(s). The traditional view i s that the problem i s the barrier to be surmounted. The three middle sections of the report \"add up\" to the proposed solution. Thus the fi n a l section, which overcomes the problem barrier, i s an outcome of summing up the previous sections. The analytical process adds up to, creates, or produces a solution. The writers have produced a solution; the reader reads the solution. What is missing from this view i s f a c i l i t a t i o n \u00E2\u0080\u0094 the fact that people selected some information for the report while not selecting other information; and that the information was ordered by people in one way and not in any number of other possible ways. An analogue i s being used that excludes the purposefulness of the writers. \"Information i s multiplicative\", says Wilden, \"because each 'bit* affirms some 'thing' at the same time as i t does not affirm some \u00E2\u0080\u0094 undefined \u00E2\u0080\u0094 other 'thing'.\"^ The bit of information that gets through to become the solution i s the remainder from the inf i n i t e number of possibilities that did not get ^System and-Structure, p. 38 109 through. The solution, which i s negative information, i s the difference that has been selected (by whatever means and for whatever purposes) from among a l l the possible differences. Thus, by the time one gets to the proposed solution one has, in effect, cast away many, many bits of information that were not chosen. Open systems are self-corrective; they o are \"always conservative of something.\" If information i s selected on the basis of system survival, what systems' survival have governed the choices? A l l the information that would potentially help one to answer this question l i e s anterior to the proposed solution. There i s a world of meaning in what has not been chosen. Why were many of these alternatives not followed? These are the sites where the meaning of the solution i s being produced by writers. It appears that this i s where the critique must work \u00E2\u0080\u0094 among the probabilities. Meaning, explanation, critiquing are not therefore amenable to summary, despite the common metaphor about summing up a message. The meaning w i l l be found by the c r i t i c a l reader to be stretched across the text and not at the beginning, the middle or the end. 7.5 A Correct Reading? The fin a l justification to be given here for expansiveness concerns the \"I\" which approaches the text as already a plurality of meaning.9 As the writer's writing i s guided by his purposes, his particular synthesis of experience, understanding, and so on, so too the reader's reading. The reader does not come as an empty vessel to the text. Consequently, different readers say that they find different meanings in a single text. The argument then ensues as to which of the meanings is the \"correct\" one. \u00C2\u00B0Bateson, Steps, p. 429 ^Barthes, S/Z, p. 10 110 This is frequently argued at the scale of the text as a whole because of the referendum syndrome described above. The debaters proceed on the assumption that there can be only one correct reading. Can there be a single correct reading? If the answer i s yes, then one assumes, f i r s t , that the meaning i s in the words written on the page and not in the relations among reader, writer, text, their context, and the experience of reading. Second, one assumes that meaning i s \"simply folded into a work (implicated) so that i t can then be unfolded (explicated) by a technician of language processes\", as Scholes says. 1 0. But of course meaning i s not in the words but in the complex set of relations and cannot be wholly seized by a reading. That i s why Barthes speaks of the \"modest plural\". The best we can do is to try to expose the modest plural and to try to find the direction of (rather than the truth about) the specified and non-specified purposefulness of the author-plus-text-plus-reader. The question i s : Among the patterns of defamiliarized assumptions and conventions can one recognize what this system i s conservative of? l uRobert Scholes, Structuralism in Literature (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), p. 147. 111 PART III THE PLAUSIBLE PLAN 112 CHAPTER - 8 METHOD 8.1 Justification for the Method The making of a normative and ideological goal, and i t s pursuit, seem natural i s the major thing happening in a planning report. Perhaps because this i s the case, the focus of evaluation i s , as discussed above, always the declared goal while the vehicle for declaring i t , the writing, i s assumed to be silent background. Borrowing the sense of Reddy's \"conduit metaphor\" for the use of language, one could say that language appears simply to transfer the thoughts of planners to readers of their reports. Language, then i s a tool in the service of thought and not, through the manner of i t s use, creative of meaning. As such, i t i s \"ordinary\" because i t appears simply to bring thoughts to us that make sense. However, as Fish says, this i\u00C2\u00A3 i t s meaning because \"by making easy sense i t t e l l s us that sense can be easily made and that we are capable of easily making i t . He says Such language can be called \"ordinary\" only because i t confirms and reflects our ordinary understanding of the world and our position in i t ; but for precisely that reason i t i s extraordinary (unless we accept a naive epistemology which grants us unmediated access to reality) and to leave i t unanalyzed i s to risk missing much of what happens \u00E2\u0080\u0094 to us and through us \u00E2\u0080\u0094 when we read and (or so we think) understand.1 ^-Seif^Consuming- Artifacts, p. 390. 113 The critique w i l l focus on information truly as \"difference\", the difference between what i s apparently ordinary and plausible and what, at closehand, is extraordinary. It i s in this gap, this \"difference between\", that the reader experiences the meaning of the text. Why does the critique focus on the reader and reading? We are looking for manifestations of the planner's view of the world \u00E2\u0080\u0094 of man, society, the larger ecosystem, and how they should be coupled. A planning text i s one such manifestation. It i s the planner's \"theory-in-use\", to use Argyris and Schon's term, and allows one to look simultaneously at the planner's views toward both systems and coupling. However, we do not wish to \"look at\" these in some abstract manner but rather with reference to \"real\" persons, readers who affect and are affected by those theories-in-use. A reader reads, and in the reading experiences a modest version of that world view. It i s the thinking and feeling reader whom we wish to put in relation with the thinking and feeling planner. This i s quite different from traditional evaluations in which planners and plans are \"judged\" against abstract models of how the world should be. A reader does not \"capture\" the planners' view in i t s totality either from reading one or many reports. To assume this i s possible implies a static reader and static writer. Nor does the reader capture the traces of the world view of a single bioenergetic author, or authors. As Bateson points out, the bioenergetic person does not locate the boundaries of ideas or of information. The view i s mediated by the planners' disciplinary matrix. To repeat Barthes' point in 7.5, the \"I\" which comes to write the report and to read the report i s to some extent already formed, already a plurality of meaning. 114 8.2 Dividing Up the Text 2 Since the method aims to \"break open\" the text, so to speak, so that the reader has elbow room in which to work with the connotations, the f i r s t requirement i s a way to divide up the text that slows down the reading. The way the text i s divided up for study in this method i s by separating the text into fragments that may vary from a single word to several sentences. The usual grammatical units such as phrases or sentences are not respected. Fragments may also be graphics, photographs, tables, maps, and so on that appear in the original. The fragments are taken for commentary in precisely the sequence in which they appear in the original text, and nothing i s l e f t out. \"Text\", the inclusive term used for the document as a whole, refers to a l l that i s printed, written or drawn. The delimitation of a fragment w i l l depend on the connotation and experience suggested to the reader. A stretch of text should propose at most a few meanings for discussion in the commentary that follows. Thus, fragments form the level of \"primary contact with the text, at which items are separated and sorted out so as to be given various functions at higher levels of organization.\" 1* The problem confronted in the critique i s how to deal with fractionating, or multiplicative, information. Once one begins a critique, one is aware of many different levels of meaning in counterpoint: meaning plays on meaning; one fragment \" f l i e s \" toward another or toward others, or to the text as a whole; there are cumulations; there is always process, the linking and re-linking of connotations. The possibilities for, and This section closely follows Barthes, S/Z, pp. 11-15 A^ \"fragment\" corresponds to Barthes' \"lexia\", except that the unit i t describes i s not restricted to words as such. ^Culler, Poetics, p. 202. 115 constraints on meaning production are scattered across the whole text. From the point of view of this close critique, i t i s evident that meaning could not be summed up neatly at the end of the reading. 8.3 Mediating the Message: Codes and Naturalization The message between sender and receiver, that i s , the words that are actually written down on the page, i s always mediated by codes. (See sections 4.5 to 4.7 for the earlier discussion of codes.) A code i s qualitatively different from the message. As described previously, i t is a set of rules that are negative in that \"they do not amount to a positive control of what an organism, a person, or a population i s required to do. Rather they define the limits prescribing what \u00E2\u0080\u0094 in any given system \u00E2\u0080\u0094 one may not do\". The \"naturalness\" of meaning arises from accepting these constraints and from functioning, usually without awareness, within them. The idea of identifying certain codes and using them to aid a critique of planning texts was originally inspired by Culler's and Barthes' works.^ Codes appear to be useful devices for identifying, discussing and keeping track of \"shorthand\" references found when reading a text. The focus for the code selection for this critique was always on the sorts of ideas, knowledge, objects or relations to which planners refer to make their reports seem plausible. Codes having to do with plot or action or characters, which may be common in literary criticism, seemed to be inapplicable for a planning document. The selection of the seven codes used here arose from the conjunction of several things. Of f i r s t importance was a reading of Barthes' S/Z in which he applies codes in critiquing a short story by 5Wilden and Wilson, \"The Double Bind,\" p. 268. ^Culler, Poetics; and Barthes, S/Z. 116 Balzac. His method is followed closely here, although his codes are not. S t i l l , one of his codes, the referential code, was conceptually intriguing. However, Culler argues, successfully I think, that Barthes' referential code is rather unsatisfactory as i t stands because he used i t mainly to bring out references to proverbial wisdom and culturally sterotyped knowledge, whereas referentiality is richer and more important than that. For one thing, i t is the seat of ideological references. Since the purpose of a planning report g. is to be a plausible social document i t is, in Derrida's phrase, \"not much 7 orphaned\". That is to say, because of i t s social parentage i t corresponds closely to an already known and legible \"reality\". Planning works refer incessantly to the ideological and epistemological foundations of their parents. Therefore, i t seemed that an expansion of this sort of a code was necessary. Thus, a second influence was Culler's five levels of \"vraisemblance\", or naturalization, which greatly expands Barthes' ide.a of the referential code. Three of the codes found here were modelled on these levels of \"vraisemblance\": \"The Real\", \"Cultural Conventions'\" and \"Genre Conventions\". In passing, Culler notes that Barthes' work lacks \"any code relating to narration (the reader's abi l i t y to collect items which help to characterize a narrator and to place the text in a kind of communicative g c i r c u i t ) . \" In part, i t was this comment which suggested yet another code: \"Writer, Reader, Writer,. . .\". q Thirdly, Wilden's discussion of the term \"opposition\" suggested the value of identifying this mode of thinking, particularly in the light of Sch n's emphasis on the place of mirror-opposites in problem-solving. 7Jacques Derrida, Marges de la philosophie (Paris: Minuit, 1 9 7 2 ) , p. 3 7 6 , cited in Culler, Poetics, p. 1 3 2 . 8Poetics, p. 2 0 3 . 9System and Structure, passim. 117 Fourthly, the choice of each code was greatly influenced by my par t i c u l a r understanding of the planning d i s c i p l i n a r y matrix and expecially as i t i s manifested i n the planning report genre. This led d i r e c t l y to the creation of a code which would show how d i s c i p l i n e - r e l a t e d references were used i n building p l a u s i b i l i t y . F i f t h l y , by basing my d e f i n i t i o n of \"code\" i n communication theory, I came to id e n t i f y the chosen codes d i f f e r e n t l y , I believe, than Barthes and Culler. Their codes are repositories, or as Barthes says, anonymous voices informing the text. My understanding i s that they are therefore, akin to positive controls of the 'thou shalt' form. By contrast, my codes are devices of cummunication. They mediate the message i n a 'thou shalt not' form as described by Wilden at the beginning of this section. F i n a l l y , a procedural matter: I was conscious of keeping to a small number of codes so that they were easily remembered and evidently different from one another. As i t happens, the codes which came out of these r e f l e c t i o n s and an i n i t i a l perusal of the report to be critiqued, are the ones appearing here. That i s , while the i r definitions were modified and made firmer during the c r i t i c a l process, there did not seem to be a need to replace any or add others. The choice of these particular seven codes w i l l of course constrain the i d e n t i f i c a t i o n of connotations. As i n any choice of a \"difference that makes a difference\", the very selection leaves many that were not selected. The codes chosen are ones that I understand to be active i n t h i s planning report. They handle appeals to s o c i a l mores, to measures of factualness, to everyday r e a l i t y , to theoretical exegeses, to either/or and analogic thinking; and they point to ways i n which the medium i s the message for readers and writers. Nonetheless, the codes selected create a focus for the reading and discourage focus elsewhere. An e f f o r t to compensate somewhat for the 118 emphasis on pre-selected codes i s made by \"digressions\", which are f l o a t i n g commentaries not t i e d to a p a r t i c u l a r fragment and which are interspersed i n the commentary. Digressions are discussed more f u l l y following an outline of each of the codes. 8.4 The Codes Each fragment w i l l be asscociated with one or more codes which are ' seen to constrain and to make possible the meaning of the fragment for the reader. An example can be given: A unit of text that describes the subsequent ordering of the report i s associated with the code which i s here c a l l e d \"Genre Conventions\" (see number 53 i n the c r i t i q u e ) . This code l i m i t s the p o s s i b l i t i e s concerning form and content of a planning report. The report i s \"natural\" to the extent that i t proceeds according to some form which i s expected, based on the writer's and reader's experience with the genre. The existence of Genre Conventions as a code postulates a generalized concept of what constitutes a \"grammatical\" planning report, that i s , one whose form and content are already i n some sense known to the reader. The model of the grammatical report constrains what i s possible and not possible while remaining within the bounds of a planning report. In the report-plus-reader system, a degree of s e l f - r e g u l a t i o n occurs to the extent that the conventions of planning reports are what the reader expects to f i n d as he reads t h i s p a r t i c u l a r report, and that expectation enhances the p o s s i b i l i t i e s of finding i n i t what he expects to f i n d . S i m i l a r l y , i n the report-plus-writer system, the writer begins h i s task with a form of report already given, to some extent. Even i f the boundaries are not known pr e c i s e l y , there i s a c l e a r enough sense of them so that a work which i s not s u f f i c i e n t l y compliant w i l l be unrecognizable as a planning report. 119 Another example: The authors refer to the need for both \"public and private redevelopment\". (See number 46 in the critique.) In this case, \"public\" and \"private\" are set in opposition to one another; redevelopment appears to be construed as either public or private, where sources of money to carry out actions form the axis between the poles of public and private. \"Oppositions\" i s used in the critique for such references. The task of the c r i t i c a l reader i s to defamiliarize the various coding conventions by pointing to them in their roles of making meaning possible. The codes are not mutually exclusive; they apply to different contextual levels at which meaning i s possible. For example, fragment 16 reads: \"It i s desirable that\". In the commentary two codes are used. One i s \"Genre Conventions\" since this phrase connotes the impersonal mood, a common form used in reports to convey objectivity. The other code i s \"Writer, Reader, Writer,...\" which refers to relations between authors and readers. In the context, this phrase also connotes a sense more akin to threat than desire. The association of a fragment with one or more codes w i l l bear on the sort of naturalization understood to be functional in that situation. 8.4.1 The Real The Real is the code of information that seems entirely natural, based on the evident structure of the \"real world\". For example, in fragment 26 the authors write that there are 41,615 residents in the area. To arrive at a precise count of individuals seems such a basic and simple operation that one does not question the i n t e l l i g i b i l i t y of the act. Information i s given at a high level of detail which, as detail, i s assumed to be non-controversial. Nonetheless the information in this code i s s t i l l presented as \"difference\" \u00E2\u0080\u0094 what gets onto the map from the territory. As such, the 120 Real a p p l i e s a t some l e v e l o f a n a l y s i s t o a l l the fragments. The Real i s what we b e l i e v e ; and what we b e l i e v e i s r e a l i n i t s consequences. I t i s no l e s s so because i t i s d e s c r i b e d f o r these purposes under codes such as \"Genre C o n v e n t i o n s \" o r \" O p p o s i t i o n s \" . 8.4.2 O p p o s i t i o n s T h i s i s t h e code o f the e i t h e r / o r , t h e common, o f t e n h a b i t u a l , use o f b i n a r y l o g i c and t y p i f i e d i n the form, *A'/Not A'. I t i s encountered i n p l a n n i n g t e x t s i n ways t h a t deny \"goodness\" o r \" r i g h t n e s s \" o r \" v a l u e \" t o one s t a t e w h i l e i n v e s t i n g the d e n i e d q u a l i t y i n the r e v e r s e s t a t e . A w e l l documented example i s \" n e i g h b o u r i n g \" i n slum c l e a r a n c e , urban redevelopment and renewal a r e a s . In t h e i r p r e - c l e a r a n c e s t a t e , a r e a s were d e n i e d any v a l u e worth p r e s e r v i n g w i t h r e s p e c t t o n e i g h b o u r i n g . They were d e n i e d any v a l u e by not n o t i c i n g any n e i g h b o u r i n g . A l l the v a l u e was expected t o emerge i n the f u t u r e imagined s t a t e o f t h e a r e a . Somewhat l a t e r i t became e v i d e n t t h a t t h e p r e - c l e a r a n c e s t a t e was not n e c e s s a r i l y d e v o i d o f v a l u e and t h a t the p o s t - r e n e w a l s t a t e was not n e c e s s a r i l y i n v e s t e d s o l e l y w i t h v a l u e . Schon has d e s c r i b e d cases i n which p l a n n e r s and p o l i c y makers have o p e r a t e d on t h e b a s i s o f oppositions.\"'\" 0 F o r example, a statement t h a t t h e ho u s i n g i n an a r e a i s inadequate a c c o r d i n g t o some s e t o f i n d i c e s may suggest the g o a l o f making t h e h o u s i n g adequate a c c o r d i n g t o those same measures. Indeed i t would appear i n c o n s i s t e n t i n the p l a n n i n g r e p o r t genre not t o propose a s o l u t i o n f o r each inadequacy n o t e d . By t h e same token, what i s not noted as a problem does not become a f o c u s i n the s o l u t i o n . I n t h e O p p o s i t i o n s Code t h e r e i s a penchant f o r m i r r o r r e v e r s a l . The p r o c e s s i s r e a c t i v e : the response i s f o r m u l a t e d on t h e same l e v e l as t h a t t o which i t responds. The motion e s t a b l i s h e d i s l i k e t h a t o f a pendulum. \"Framing\", pp. 11-33; \" G e n e r a t i v e Metaphor\", pp. 260-268. 121 8.4.3 Cultural Conventions The emphasis of this code i s to make the normative appear natural. The code includes references to proverbs, prejudices, general ideological beliefs. It refers to \"'a body of maxims and prejudices which constitute both a vision of the world and a system of values'\". Their use in a planning text i s metonymic: \"an action i s justified by i t s relation to a general maxim, and 'this relationship of implication functions also as a principle of explication: the general determines and thus explains the particular ...\"'. 1 1 Metonymy describes relations of contiguity or association. Scholes 1? identifies three kinds of association: (i) things habitually found together in familiar contexts (streets, cars); ( i i ) things thought to be logically related by cause and effect (cars, t r a f f i c jams); and ( i i i ) things thought to be logically related by whole and part ('What's good for General Motors i s good for the nation*). Thus when the authors write that \"the study ... envisages the gradual improvement of most of the area by the residents themselves\" (number 15), they refer to a Cultural Convention \u00E2\u0080\u0094 in this case the libe r a l ideological belief that a person would 'put his house in order' i f the institutional environment encouraged this behaviour. The general maxim explains a cause/effect process. 8.4.4 The Symbolic The emphasis of this code is to state or confirm normative judgments, using relations of similarity or analogy. As in the case of \"The Real\", at some level the whole report i s metaphoric and belongs in this HCuller, Poetics, p. 144, including citations from Gerard Genette, Figures II (Paris: Seuil, 1969), pp. 73-75. -^Scholes, Structuralism in Literature, p. 20. 122 code. However, further distinctions can be made for the purposes of the critique. For example, the authors use an analogy between redevelopment and economic theory to explain how the private participation portion of the redevelopment w i l l work. (See number 48.) This i s part of The Symbolic, but the reference i s understood to be more specifically a reference to a theory and hence is placed in the Code of Indices. In several cases of this sort both the more specific \"Indices\" and also \"The Symbolic\" w i l l be used. 8.4.5 Indices The emphasis of this code is to make normative judgments appear law-abiding. Here, justifications may refer to more technical sources of corroboration than those included in Cultural Conventions or The Symbolic. The ideology inherent in the goal and the goal pursuit i s less readily recognizable because the references are stated in technical or quasi-technical language. The term \"indices\" i s used here to include those models, theories and other hypothesizing and corroborating devices that form guidelines against which something in the planner's domain i s measured. It i s common in planning reports to use indices from a variety of fie l d s . Those used, and the way they are used, give a sense of the planner's 'reading' of the knowledge f i e l d in general, and of the spawning discipline from which the index is drawn in particular. The index may be drawn, for example, from economics, sociology, psychology, architecture, law; or from planning's own stock of theoretical and practical knowledge; or from some branch of the physical sciences; or derive from the epistemology of science. An example of a (mis)application of sci e n t i f i c method concerns the availability of so-called \"incubation\" space for new industries (see number 28) in which an observed phenomenon i s posited as a cause. An example of transportation planning as an i n d i c i a l source is number 25 in 123 which the d i s t r i c t i s described as being \"in the path of high volume peak t r a f f i c movements on traversing arteries\". 8.4.6 Genre Conventions A genre i s a specific sort of channel. The message sent or received could not be produced in the same manner within another genre. It actually prescribes certain possibilities of meaning. The mediation i t prescribes i s also a code. A range of expectations about what i s reasonably expected to be found in the work comes into play at the time one approaches the work, whether to write i t or to read i t . We approach a representative of a genre mindful of a l l other examples of the genre we have encountered or heard about. The 'mindful' model permits the writer or reader to recognize the natural and the deviant while proceeding through the text (e.g., Expected in the planning report genre: problem-solution sequences; Unexpected: jokes). The reader begins with a posture toward the genre. From the moment of i n i t i a l contact with the work, there i s an instrumental framework constraining what can be read. For example, the reading of metaphors in the planning report genre w i l l differ from that in poetry. In the planning report we resist giving \"incubation\" the connotation of \"womb\" whereas in reading a poem we may not be so restrained. As well as written forms, the planning report frequently contains iconic forms \u00E2\u0080\u0094 such as maps and photographs; numerical forms \u00E2\u0080\u0094 such as tables and equations; and graphic forms \u00E2\u0080\u0094 such as drawings and graphs. The non-written forms that are used are also aspects of the genre. 8.4.7 Writer, Reader, Writer,. . . This code collects items that refer either to the writer or to the reader or that signify the nature of the relationship between them. The 124 people who are d i r e c t l y affected by the proposals of the report are included here as readers \u00E2\u0080\u0094 that i s , residents of the Don Planning D i s t r i c t , bureaucrats and elected o f f i c i a l s of various governmental l e v e l s . A continuous name was given to t h i s code to r e f l e c t the mix up between who i s author and who i s reader. In the context of representative government, the authors, who are representatives of government, are t h e o r e t i c a l l y residents of the d i s t r i c t and thus also readers; and the residents, who have t h e o r e t i c a l l y told the authors what to write are, i n I theory, writers. In practice, a report may be written to make c l e a r the d i s t i n c t i o n between authors and various categories of readers. The focus i s on the ways i n which writers and readers define themselves and are offered i n d e f i n i t i o n by others, v i a the communication of the planning report which i s both written and read. 13 8.5 Digressions As the analysis proceeds there w i l l be occasional digressions from the meanings proposed by s p e c i f i c fragments to discuss the production of meaning from other stances. For example, the statement of the date of the report, \"September 1963\" (number 3), i s assigned to The Real. In addition, however, the reader's knowledge of the date a f f e c t s the whole reading. The r e l a t i v e opacity or transparency of the i d e o l o g i c a l references w i l l depend not only on the p a r t i c u l a r reader but also on the time since the report was written. The d i f f e r e n c e i n time between writing and reading i s both braided into the text and f l o a t s over the text presenting ideas that are not necessarily i n the report but are only implied by the reading of a 1963 report i n 1980. Digressions thus give the c r i t i c a l reader room to comment on the production of meaning unconstrained by the selected codes. l 3The term 'divagations' from Mallarm^, i s used by Richard Howard in the preface to Barthes' S/Z, p. x, to name^what are here c a l l e d 'digressions'. 125 8.6 Choice of Text The report entitled \"Don Planning District Appraisal\" was selected for a number of reasons. A text was sought that: 1. was not current, because i t i s easier to recognize and acknowledge habits of thought that are at some distance from oneself. 2. dealt with a subject sufficiently widely commented upon that comparisons could be made between this critique and the studies of others. Urban renewal was selected as the general subject. 3. was the work of practicing (as opposed to theoretical or academic) planners because i t i s here that theory and practice meet, and because these works are addressed to those beyond the profession to legislators, bureaucrats and, in some cases, to the public. 4. was not edited by non-practicing, planners as a refereed journal article describing a plan might be. 5. apparently represented \"enlightened\" professional thinking in i t s era to avoid claims that one had chosen a text in bad faith to show a minor variant of planning practice. Toronto was clearly the preferred city from which to select a report for the Canadian context since a large portion of a l l slum clearance, urban redevelopment and renewal projects in Canada from 1947 onwards were carried out there, including a special joint project on urban renewal by Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation, the Ontario Department of Planning and Development, and the City of Toronto Planning Board. 1 4 The Don Planning District was chosen since a number of different types of projects were undertaken in the area and since there is i qToronto, Advisory Committee on the Urban Renewal Study, Urban Renewal:--A Study of the-City of-Toronto (Toronto: 1956). 126 considerable academic and journalistic commentary on these projects. 1-' The 1963 report i s thoroughly embedded at about midpoint in a series of reports that began with the f i r s t slum clearance project in 1947 in Regent Park North and continues up to the Neighbourhood Improvement Project era. It i s important to stress that urban renewal per se i s not the subject of the critique. It does not attempt to judge the merits or demerits of urban renewal. That has been discussed at length elsewhere. The focus i s on the meanings expressed in the planning reports that made urban renewal a plausible planning action. A critique of the f i r s t few pages of The Don Planning District Appraisal of 1963 follows. -L^ See for example, Albert Rose, Regent Park (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1958); Rose, Citizen Participation in - Urban Renewal; Alison, Hopwood and Albert Rose, \"Regent Park: Milestone or Millstone?\", Canadian - Forum 29 (May 1949): 34-36; Graham Fraser, Fighting Back (Toronto: Hakkert, 1972). 127 CHAPTER 9 CRITIQUE 9.1 Codes and A b b r e v i a t i o n s The f o l l o w i n g a b b r e v i a t i o n s a r e used f o r the codes. CODE ABBREVIATION The Real REAL O p p o s i t i o n s OPP C u l t u r a l C o n v e n t i o n s CULT The Symbolic SYM I n d i c e s INDEX Genre C o n v e n t i o n s GENRE W r i t e r , Reader, W r i t e r , . . . WRW 9.2 The C r i t i q u e A. The Report Cover (1) \"DON P l a n n i n g D i s t r i c t A p p r a i s a l \" * SYM. What i s an \" a p p r a i s a l \" ? I t seems t o connote assessment, d e t e r m i n i n g exchange v a l u e , as i n a r e a l e s t a t e a p p r a i s a l , or an a p p r a i s a l o f works o f a r t o r j e w e l s . Value i s a s s e s s e d a g a i n s t some ind e x o r group o f i n d i c e s . The i n d i c e s a g a i n s t which the v a l u e o f the d i s t r i c t i s measured a r e r e v e a l e d l a t e r . See 24,26,27,28,29,30. Analogy t o marketable commodities. 128 \"City of Toronto Planning Board\" WRW. The appraisal is authored by an institution whose existence is expli c i t l y sanctioned by government, and whose performance is implicitly endorsed. Connotes monolithically held beliefs, in contrast to those put forward by a single individual as author. Power, by appointment, to recommend. \"September 1963\" REAL. A point in time. The planning report is a slice of \"what i s \" at a moment of time in a shifting socio-political context. It rapidly becomes a historical document. The point of transfer from 'active' to 'historical' is understood in a general way by practiced readers by comparing the socio-political contexts for the area at the report date and current date. GENRE. A report without a date would be d i f f i c u l t to read. The context for the report is what might be \"known\" or what might be expected up to the date. Without a date, the reader must construct the context from the writing. TIME AND DIFFERENCE What can a 1980 reader read in a 1963 planning report? The differences are striking. The report appeals to the social mores, to the legal embodiment of intentions, to ideology, and to the disciplinary matrix of planners of the period in which i t is written. Planning periods, in this respect, are brief. We speak of the literary Renaissance or Romantic period for which the years of duration are given in triple digits. Planning periods are more ephemeral at the level of the text. True, they reflect the taste of the age at a high level of abstraction. The text floats in a thin 129 gruel of moral purposes such as 'order' and 'improvement' which continue to inform planning over generations. But this i s not sufficient sustenance for proclaiming plans. The gruel must be boiled down to something stronger, something more nearly tangible which w i l l support the means by which the general purposes can be realized. With a meagre 17 years between writing and reading, the differences between what could then be written and can now be written seem acute. Phrasings surprise us, seeming bald or over-garnished, too formal or too graphically metaphoric for the genre today. They are pale sophistication beside our newly hardened categories. Besides bringing time to the text from the outside, we also encounter time references inside which bounce us back out to our own time. For example, we are often told in the text that the comprehensive planning period spans twenty years. Out to 1983 \u00E2\u0080\u0094 which, as i t happens, i s nearly here (and which as i t happens or was made to happen, narrowly misses Orwell's Year of the Parody of Statist Order). Can we envision that plan accommodating us in today's world? Can we give credibility to that vision of 1963 knowing what we know today and having experienced what we have since i t s writing? In short, how seriously can we read an old report? The base map as report cover graphic REAL. The base map w i l l serve to situate the Don Planning District for those conversant with some of the major thorough-fares and open spaces of Toronto when the boundaries of the area are given. The map i s directly verifiable by simple observation. GENRE. A map, the typical tool of the planner, enhances the expectation of what i s to follow. It implies that traditional planning practice and the genre are not going to be transgressed. 130 The base map is colourless and textureless, presenting from an elevated perspective details of man's activity on the land but without any sign of those people. It i s an uninterpreted legacy of past activity. The - Letter of- Transmittal The Letterhead. WRW. The report comes packaged with a letter of sanction and endorsement from a l i s t of prominent individuals of the community who comprise the Board. Connotes influence signified through a practice not unique to planning: those who serve the community are accorded status by placing their names on letterheads. Agreement or disagreement with the report's content on the part of readers i s acceptance of or challenge to the judgment of those whom community leaders hold in esteem. Status of endorsers with respect to readers. CULT. Designation within the Board. Those listed on the l e f t of the black perpendicular line are the status members, some of whom have t i t l e s . To the right of the line i s one name, that of the Commissioner of Planning and Secretary-Treasurer. The name i s written in larger and bolder type; the t i t l e i s spelled out in f u l l . In the context of bureaucratic practice, he is the 'worker' and overseer and i s deferential to the governing board listed at the l e f t yet in a position of substantial authority within broad guidelines. CULT. Those whose sex i s not designated are, by convention, men; the one woman on the board is identified as a woman. \"We are pleased to present this study of the Don Planning Distric t . \" WRW. \"We\", the Board and Commissioner, speak with one voice. (Mo. 19) 131 OPP. There i s a \"we\" and a \"not-we\" in the author and reader respectively. Since the letter of transmittal i s not addressed to anyone in particular, the \"not-we\" i s undefined and may be presumed to be everyone whose name does not appear on the covering letter. Does \"we\" include the staff of the Planning Board who, i f they did not perhaps write the report, contributed information? Readers with any knowledge of any bureaucratic structure may legitimately wonder precisely who \"we\" are. See numbers 19 and 20. \"It i s the f i f t h to be published in the series of appraisals which w i l l eventually cover the City's 25 planning d i s t r i c t s . The appraisals for the Annex, Rosedale, Deer Park and Downtown Districts have been published. Studies of the Yorkville, West Harbour and Eglinton Districts are in preparation.\" INDEX. Thoroughness of the undertaking. Seriousness. Comprehensiveness stretched over space. SYM. Why are the forerunners to this report mentioned in the letter? Have the completed appraisals led to outcomes desired by the Planning Board? Is this an appeal to precedent? \"Before the Planning Board makes i t s fi n a l recommendation\" WRW. Power of the Board to recommend the destiny of the d i s t r i c t for the next 20 years. See numbers 17, 26, 29. \"a short and less technical summary of the main issues and proposals\" OPP. Technical/Lay. There i s a technical text and a non-technical summary, both of which can say essentially the same thing. The technical knowledge of the planner brought into play to do the appraisal i s in some sense either inaccessible to, or of l i t t l e interest to (or both), the residents of the Don. 132 (10) \"will be distributed to residents of the Don District and others who have an interest in the area.\" * INDEX. That those who live in the area should be told about what i s going to happen before i t happens refers to a diffuse 'text 1, or tenet, in the planning sphere. (11) \"There w i l l be opportunities for consideration of the proposals by individuals and local groups and discussions of the implications of the report at forthcoming public meetings.\" * INDEX. Theory of participatory democracy. ** WRW. The words \"consideration\" and \"discussion\" indicate what the Planning Board wants from those who read the short and less technical summary and/or those who come to public meetings. Syntactically, a number of words could have been chosen ranging over a continuum from, let us say, debate/argument to comment/approval. If one envisions the continuum as a vertical stack of potentially appropriate words, the choice of \"consideration\" and \"discussion\" appear semantically acute. They neither invite disagreement, nor do they demand approval. They appeal to the rational individual for approval as opposed either to demanding approval or to proceeding without informing. The tenor sought for the public meetings is suggested: i t should be rationally discursive and by implication not belligerent. II WRITTEN AND ORAL The written is a conservative form of communication. It holds s t i l l in the sense that the words are s t i l l there when one refers back. One writes conscious of referral over time. Compare writing and face-to-face oral communication. Writing l i e s on the page and can be produced privately and at leisure. The reader is active with 133 reference to words and a page. By contrast, face-to-face oral communication i s more thoroughly social and immediate. We must respond to the rapidly fading voice. It i s multi-textured. Persons are active with respect not only to the words, but to tone of voice, accent, posture, attire, size, shape, complexion, silence, gestures of body and face, including the ones psychologists say are so quickly effected that, for their interview interpretations, they must be filmed by highspeed cameras and played back slowly. So subtle. So layered. So embedded. The oral i s radical in the fundamental sense of the word of going to the root. We convey meaning from a point where intellect and emotion are not yet severed. The layers propose the redundancy of meaning, the masks and openings, the consistencies and inconsistencies which, in writing, are proposed by sources that are long on conception and re-construction but short on perception and immediacy. The public meeting invokes the oral but, according to the authors, i t i s to be an oral discussion of what has already been written. This is a rule for rational discourse in public meetings. One brings the oral to the written. Persons wishing to present the view that the report says more or says less than what i t appears on the surface to say, must frame this commentary either at the same level of abstraction as the text (and come across as a counter-ideologue), or at a minute level of detail stripped of i t s context (and come across as a nit-picker). A public meeting calls for critique of the written by the oral. It pits a relatively impermeable and authoritative form against a porous and fragmentary form. The conservative against the radical. Tension. The public meeting conducted as an extension of the written, plants the referendum syndrome of accept/reject in new inimical s o i l . The chairperson is masterful who does not seal the 134 meeting against dissent thereby making a mockery of discourse, and yet feels at the end of i t a l l that the fragmentary oral has actually pierced the massive block of the written. (12) \"The Planning Board i s anxious that i t s proposals for the Don District have wide public review and understanding before fi n a l recommendations are made.\" * WRW. Keenness to be heard: authors to readers. ** CULT. That rational people basically think alike i s suggested. Once the proposals are read and understood, readers w i l l see that their own rationality accords with the rationality of the proposals. Agreement is expected on the grounds of rationality. The reader i s not invited to provide information that w i l l materially alter the plan. The reader is expected to understand. (13) \"In considering this study of a rather complex d i s t r i c t , \" * OPP. Complex/simple. Measuring this d i s t r i c t against some imagined model of a simple district? ** WRW. Confirming the Planning Board's ab i l i t y to deal with complexity. Warning the reader to restrain himself from facile criticism of the study. (14) \"two points c a l l for some emphasis. First, that the Appraisal presents a long range programme for the improvement of the Don District. The requirements of public discussion, deliberations by City Council, of further detailed work and financing, suggest that the proposals can only be implemented over a considerable period of time.\" * INDEX. \"Long range\" \u00E2\u0080\u0094 associated terminologically with military, business and industry where various ranges of forecasts and plans serve efficiency goals. Long range connotes comprehensive management and far-sightedness. 135 OPP. There w i l l be measures for recognizing improvement, to distinguish future (good) conditions from existing (not good) conditions. Gradual improvement is envisoned but with an end-state (improved) which i s in opposition to current state (unimproved). CULT. Proverbial wisdom that improvement doesn't happen quickly. 'Good things take time'. 'Rome wasn't built in a day'. (See 15,39,48,52.) WRW. If i t were not for the constraints of public discussion, City Council deliberations, etc., the Planning Board would act expeditiously. (15) \"Second, that the study, while sounding a cautionary note about conditions in the District, envisages the gradual improvement of most of the area by the residents themselves. Many proposals for public action are designed to improve the area and create a better environment, and thus give encouragement to residents to renovate their properties.\" * CULT. Liberal conventional wisdom that people would 'put their houses in order' i f the physical environment encouraged this behaviour. It w i l l be basically a 'bootstrap operation'. Public intervention i s necessary but only as stimulus to individuals to carry on the task of improvement. Belief in the efficacy of limited p o l i t i c a l incentive to start the ball r o l l i n g . Question: Are residents and landowners synonymous? ** INDEX. Decision theory's 'Prisoner's Dilemma1. *** INDEX. Theory of environmental determinism i s evident in the juxtaposition of improving (changing) the area with the (constant) residents. This fragment i s in relation with numbers 31 and 38. Guttenberg has noted that in 1953 \"slum\" was defined in Words and Phrases as \". . . an overpopulated part of the city inhabited by the poorest people, destitute or criminal classes\", but by the 1966-67 136 edition had been redefined as \". . .an area which does not provide an environment. . . in accord with accepted standards of neighbourhood l i f e \" . \"The stigma of the slum\", says Guttenberg, \"is shifting from the people to the environment\".-'-INDEX. The climate for private investment in local real estate w i l l be a measure of improvement. (16) \"It i s desirable that\" * GENRE. A person \"desires\" or finds something \"desirable\". There are no persons speaking in or referred to directly in this report \u00E2\u0080\u0094 only committees, a s t a t i s t i c a l population, a private sector, and government. Since the report i s impersonal, an ' i t * desires. Form used to suggest objectivity. ** WRW. A phrase was apparently needed to say that writers think directly concerned readers should read this report carefully. Alternatives might have been: should, ought to, have to, must. The form chosen i s overtly non-authoritarian but in context (see also no. 17), demands that readers read or else they risk surrendering certain rights. (17) \"those most directly concerned study the contents of this report very carefully. It w i l l be the basis for the Planning Board's fin a l recommendations to City Council, whose decisions w i l l establish the plan for the Don Planning Di s t r i c t . \" * WRW. Warning I This is the f i r s t and last c a l l for comment. Beyond this the fate of the Don is effectively sealed in a long range improvement programme sanctioned explicitly or by default by those concerned with the District. Signifies part of the chain of J-Albert Z. Guttenberg, \"The Social Uses of City Planning,\" Plan Canada 9 (March 1968): 9. 137 r e l a t i o n s h i p s through the d e c i s i o n p r o c e s s : P l a n n i n g Board \u00E2\u0080\u0094s> Others P l a n n i n g Board \u00E2\u0080\u0094 s > C o u n c i l (Nos. 33, 52) OPP. Refinement o f the \"not-we\". Or so i t seems. There i s a t e c h n i c a l r e p o r t and a n o n - t e c h n i c a l summary. T h i s i s t h e t e c h n i c a l r e p o r t . The a u t h o r s ask those most concerned t o stu d y t h i s r e p o r t and one wonders i f \"those most c o n c e r n e d \" a r e o t h e r t e c h n i c a l l y adept r e a d e r s such as o t h e r p r o f e s s i o n a l s who have o v e r l a p p i n g mandates. (18) S i g n a t u r e . * GENRE. Sig n e d by t h e h i g h e s t r a n k i n g r e s p o n s i b l e (as opposed t o nominal) member o r employee o f the s p o n s o r i n g i n s t i t u t i o n , i n t h i s case t h e Chairman. ** WRW. The nominal a u t h o r o f t h e l e t t e r and the r e p o r t . Readers have a c h o i c e : t o b e l i e v e the Chairman a c t u a l l y wrote the r e p o r t (a f i c t i o n s u s t a i n e d i n c o n j u n c t i o n w i t h v e s t i n g r e s p o n s i b i l i t y i n r o l e s r a t h e r than p e r s o n s ) ; o r t o imagine the \"we\" c o n t i n g e n t o f ghost w r i t e r s b e h i n d t h e Chairman (who a r e l e f t nameless because they a r e not o v e r t l y r e s p o n s i b l e f o r r e p o r t c o n t e n t . ) C. Acknowledgements (19) \"In t h e c o u r s e o f making t h i s a p p r a i s a l , t h e s t a f f o f t h e C i t y o f Toronto P l a n n i n g Board c o n s u l t e d \" * OPP. Expansion o f t h e \"we\" t o i n c l u d e s t a f f as i n t e r v i e w e r s . They a r e p o t e n t i a l l y i d e n t i f i a b l e as per s o n s , by s i m p l y a s k i n g any s t a f f member to say who worked on t h i s p r o j e c t . OPP: we/not-we, and semi-anonymous/fully anonymous. See no. 20. (20) \"many i n d i v i d u a l s , a s s o c i a t i o n s , o r g a n i z a t i o n s , e l e c t e d r e p r e s e n t a t i v e s and o f f i c i a l s . \" 138 * OPP. Further refinement of 'not-we' but who these persons are and what they said i n interviews remains f u l l y masked. F i l e d information? Private or publicly available information? ** WRW. The authors have a wide network of contacts. (21) \"The information and the views they expressed on planning issues i n the d i s t r i c t , and their reactions to the preliminary analysis of problems, were most valuable i n helping formulate the proposals contained i n th i s appraisal. The Planning Board acknowledges with gratitude the co-operation, assistance and thoughtful consideration they so w i l l i n g l y gave.\" * INDEX. Consultative process used i n producing the plan. Appraisal should provoke l i t t l e surprise for those who have been consulted i s connoted. D. Table of Contents and L i s t of I l l u s t r a t i o n s (22) Page CHAPTER I - Conditions, Problems, Solutions. (A Summary) 1 CHAPTER I I - History, Character & Functions of the D i s t r i c t 4 CHAPTER I I I - The Residential Areas 22 CHAPTER IV - Schools 57 CHAPTER V - Parks, Recreation & Community Services 64 CHAPTER VI - Reta i l Shopping 72 CHAPTER VII - Offices, I n s t i t u t i o n s & Industry 79 CHAPTER VIII - Transportation 96 CHAPTER IX - The General Plan 106 APPENDICES: I Analysis of Residential Condition 123 II Public Elementary School Enrolment - 1963 127 139 LIST-0F-ILLUSTRATIONS Figure Following Page 1 GENERAL LAND USE PROPOSALS 3 2 EXISTING LAND USE 5 3 POPULATION AND HOUSEHOLDS, CITY AND DISTRICT COMPARISONS- 9 4 HOUSEHOLD AND FAMILY CHARACTERISTICS BY CENSUS AREA 10 5 CENSUS TRACTS AND BLOCKS 11 6 EXTERIOR CONDITION OF DWELLINGS 22 7 AGE OF DWELLINGS 22 8 HOUSING INSPECTIONS 22 9 OVERCROWDING 22 10 ROOMING HOUSES 22 11 FIRES 22 12 SOCIAL FACTOR RATING 22 13 RESIDENTIAL CONDITION 22 14 AREAS OF CHANGE 23 15 COMPATIBLE NON-CONFORMING USES IN IMPROVEMENT AREAS 28 16 STREET TREES IN IMPROVEMENT AREAS 30 17 BACK LANE AND YARD IMPROVEMENT - PROPOSAL 1A 34 18 BACK LANE AND YARD IMPROVEMENT - PROPOSAL IB 35 19 RESIDENTIAL PARKING DEFICIENCIES - in improvement areas\u00E2\u0080\u0094 35 20 PARKING PROPOSAL 2A and 2B 36 21 IMPROVEMENT AREAS AND OWNER OCCUPANCY 41 22 PLACE OF EMPLOYMENT OF REGENT PARK NORTH AND REGENT PARK SOUTH TENANTS AND APPLICANTS 45 23 GUIDE PLAN - BLOOR, SHERBOURNE, WELLESLEY AND PARLIAMENT- 54 24 MAJOR CHANGES IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL POPULATION 57 140 Figure Following - Page 25 PARKS AND RECREATION 64 26 PARKING PROPOSALS FOR RIVERDALE ZOO 70 27 REDUCTION OF C.l ZONES 73 28 RETAIL FLOOR SPACE - PRESENT, FUTURE 74 29 GUIDE PLAN - PARLIAMENT AND GERRARD 77 30 OFFICES 79 31 INSTITUTIONS 85 32 TRAFFIC VOLUMES P.M. PEAK HOUR 1959 96 33 TRAFFIC VOLUMES - MAIN AND LOCAL STREETS P.M. PEAK HOUR 1959 99 34 PROPOSED PARKING BAYS - SELBY, LINDEN & EARL 102 35 GENERAL PLAN 106 36 EXISTING ZONING 118 37 PROPOSED ZONING 118 * INDEX. The chapters named in the table of contents follow a process of explanation that begins with what the problem i s , moves to a historical and general role definition of the d i s t r i c t , then to data collection and analysis by function, fi n a l l y arriving at the proposed general plan. Accords with the known linear planning model. E. Chapter-I (23) \"Conditions, Problems, Solutions (A Summary)\" * GENRE. Mode of organization. ** SYM. Analogue to the \"executive summary\" of business and professional consulting reports of the era. 141 (24) \"The Don Planning District has a very central position in Toronto: the intersection of Parliament and Carlton i s about one mile from Yonge and Queen,\" * SYM. Assessment of value. Measure: centrality. * REAL. Local knowledge of an intersection conventionally considered important and strategic. (25) \"and i t i s in the path of high volume peak t r a f f i c movements on traversing arteries.\" * INDEX. Technical terms used to confirm centrality known through simple observation in previous fragment. ** OPP. Is the d i s t r i c t \"in the path\" of the t r a f f i c or i s the t r a f f i c \"in the path\" of the district? Similarly, do the arteries \"traverse\" the community or does the community \"traverse\" the arteries? Perspective selected suggests opposition: dis t r i c t s that are valued for themselves (e.g. central business d i s t r i c t ; suburban residential districts) and dis t r i c t s that, from a comprehensive view, are subordinated to the broader dictate of providing for through t r a f f i c or for expansion of the central business area. Residentiality as residuum: see nos. 27 to 32. *** INDEX. Urban ecology. 'Zone of transition' between core and 'inner ring' of 'stable residential d i s t r i c t s * . (26) \"It i s at present mainly a residential area, accommodating 41,615 people. The Appraisal Study indicates that the District w i l l continue to be predominantly residential for the assumed planning period of twenty years, and that the population w i l l expand to about 49,000.\" * REAL. The precise count of 41,615 people i s in semantic exchange with \"about 49,000\" such that the precision of the former lends credibility to the latter. 142 INDEX. \"Residential\" \u00E2\u0080\u0094 a t t r i b u t i o n to the d i s t r i c t . How determined? Zoning? By a t t r i b u t i o n based on appearance, f e e l , land use ratios? Once categorized as \"mainly r e s i d e n t i a l \" certain models of what a r e s i d e n t i a l d i s t r i c t should be l i k e become operative. INDEX. \"Twenty years\" i s the voice of comprehensive planning stretched over time. OPP. Current use/Future use. Resi d e n t i a l i t y as residual: see nos. 25, 27 to 32. I l l STAYING WITH THE GENRE The genre of the planning report compels a c r i t i q u e beginning within the genre rather than one that i s found to work for some other medium. Cr i t i c i s m , perhaps because i t i s so closely associated with the creative arts such as l i t e r a t u r e and f i l m , r i s k s being applied in ways that equate a plan with other v i s u a l or written forms. P a r a l l e l s may be sought i n the s t o r y - t e l l i n g form, for example. But stories imply a hermeneutic element, a personal interpretation, that in part defines the genre. The report genre r e s i s t s a l l such interpretation, submerging as far as possible the hermeneutic and personal since the interpretative, p a r t i c u l a r i z e d elements oppose the purpose of o b j e c t i v i t y . Whether the genre should do so i s another question. Characters: may be developed for the purpose of making a story but how often one hears from s t o r y - t e l l e r s that the characters begin to make the story. Internal combustion. A l i g h t hand on the reins of authorship. Planning reports do not have characters, though they may have people abstracted (nos. 11, 16, 29, for example) and expressed i n quantities (nos. 26, 35, for example) and i n roles (no. *** **** 143 31), including the author role (no. 18). Presdestiny. Tight hand on the reins. Action: Reading a story i s being in a process of action from beginning to end. Reports do not have action in process but only description of past action or future action. The reader contacting the text i s located in the l u l l between past and future as i f process in the subject area had ceased. To critique planning reports through the mesh of another genre subverts the purposes of authors and bypasses the genre i t s e l f as a generator of meaning. (27) \"The other uses, which are not s t r i c t l y local, have limited expectations of expansion \u00E2\u0080\u0094 industry within established zones, east of River Street and between Shuter and Queen, east of Parliament; offices and institutions w i l l continue to gravitate toward Jarvis Street, and to some extent, Sherbourne. The Wellesley and Princess Margaret Hospitals and research f a c i l i t i e s form a distinct complex that w i l l be more intensively developed and w i l l extend into the surrounding area\". * SYM. Benign change expected for 20 years. Planning goal w i l l be to manage the natural processes (such as \"gravitating\", staying \"within established zones\", realizing \"limited expectations\", extending) associated with industry, offices and institutions. ** INDEX. The standard zoning hierarchy has been inverted by implying no particular protection for the residential area from, albeit modest \"expectations of expansion\" on the part of industry, business and institutional uses. (28) \"The key fact about industry in the Don i s that of a comparatively static industrial shell; that i s , established factories, within which new companies come and go. This incubator character of industry does not create significant demands for industrial land.\" * INDEX. The c r i t i c a l phrase i s \"does not create significant demands for industrial land\". What does not create demand? The incubator character of industry. What i s incubation? New industry birthing 144 in old factory shells. This i s a tautology, which can serve as a definition of 'incubation' but not as a statement open to testing since i t i s already true by definition. The well known example of a tautology i s Moliere's doctoral student who stated that the reason why opium put people to sleep was because of i t s dormitive principle. Here, the reason why industrial activity w i l l not expand is because of the incubation principle. Incubation, an observed phenomenon, has been raised in one swoop to become a cause. Bateson suggests that the premature elevation of data, hypotheses and heuristic devices to laws among social scientists i s linked to the high value set on induction to the exclusion of deduction, and on prediction. But, as he says, \"prediction i s a rather poor test of an hypothesis, and this i s especially true of 'dormitive p hypotheses'\". ** SYM. Industrial development analogized to organismic system which is analogized to a mechanical system via \"scientific method\". *** SYM. Assessment of value. Measure: Usefulness of the d i s t r i c t for industry. **** INDEX. \"Incubator\" as a metaphor for new industries trying to become established in cheap, out-of-the-way, out-of-date quarters was already part of planning terminology, having appeared in major American planning studies and in Jane Jacobs* The -Death and - Life of Great American - Cities.^ (29) \"The key fact about offices in the Don i s that no major thrust of downtown offices \u00E2\u0080\u0094 e.g. finance, legal and accounting \u00E2\u0080\u0094 can be ^Bateson, Steps, p. xx. 3(New York: Modern Library, 1961), pp. 195-199. 145 expected to extend to Jarvis Street in the next twenty years. New office development in the Don District w i l l be confined mainly to small-scale business and professional services, government and institutional offices.\" * SYM. Assessment of value. Measure: Usefulness of the d i s t r i c t for offices. ** OPP. Reputable/Disreputable. The \"downtown\" prestigious a c t i v i t i e s of finance, law and accounting are named in juxtaposition with \"Jarvis Street\" (not with The Don or \"the district\") which i s locally known as the street which is antithetical in a l l respects to finance, law and accounting: the street of the poor, of criminals, and of the homeless and unaccounted for. The prediction that the downtown activities w i l l not move into the Don in twenty years is naturalized by symbolic contrast. *** INDEX. The offices w i l l not \"thrust\" themselves upon the d i s t r i c t which by contrast is connoted in earlier fragments \u00E2\u0080\u0094 and w i l l be also in later \u00E2\u0080\u0094 as submissive and as a residuum vis-a-vis these predominantly male and prestigious professions. The option to reject the d i s t r i c t appears to rest with the prestigious a c t i v i t i e s . Land use i s Victorian patriarchal mores? See no. 32. **** CULT. Small-scale: what is implied? Most law and accounting offices are small-scale and are professional services. (30) \"The growth in these w i l l represent a 67% increase over existing office floor space.\" * INDEX. Precision of projection methods over twenty-year range. ( 3 D \"The key fact about institutions in the Don is that those that occupy most of the land \u00E2\u0080\u0094 e.g. the welfare, religious and recreation-group \u00E2\u0080\u0094 Salvation Army services, counselling and family aids, old and young persons' clubs and churches; and the government group, e.g. the Juvenile Court and the National Employment Service, provide a city-wide service, but are (or w i l l be) strongly anchored in their service to the d i s t r i c t population. The hospital group, 146 which has a regional base, i s the conspicuous exception to this rule.\" (emphasis in original text) * SYM. 'Politesse' i s signified in the oblique reference to the character of the inhabitants who make more use of services such as welfare, the juvenile court and the employment service than do those in other parts of the city. By analogy, semi-technical terms such as 'local' and 'regional base' are linked with the socially needy (pejorative) and the medically needy (non-pejorative). ** INDEX. The linear relation. Since the services for the socially needy are used more by people who live in the d i s t r i c t than by those who live outside, proportionally, therefore the services are not taking up more space than they 'should'. Services for the medically needy over the region do not take up too much space either because they take up less space (less by how much we are not told) than the local a c t i v i t i e s . Suggests planners know the appropriate ratios for such activities given socio-economic analysis of the area. (32) \"The other users of land \u00E2\u0080\u0094 recreation, schools and shopping \u00E2\u0080\u0094 are closely tied to, and greatly influenced by, the needs of the residential population of the d i s t r i c t . \" * INDEX. The residential character of the d i s t r i c t explains the existence and nature of these land users. The residential neighbourhood appears to throw up dependent activities as i f automatically by some inner energy or efficient causality. What about the purposefulness of the school board, the parks department people, and the proprietors of the pubs, the pawnshops, and the 5-and-dime's? Neighbourhood unit theory. ** OPP. (Second-order)Dependence/Independence. Traditional home-related (women's and children's) ac t i v i t i e s are dependent on the d i s t r i c t which in turn i s dependent on other higher and better users not pre-empting i t . 147 (33) \"The continued dominance of housing in the Don\" * INDEX. Logic. Process of elimination of pos s i b i l i t i e s . Assessment of value against other uses indicates that the determining (independent) uses (i.e. industry and business) are not going to take over the area in the next two decades and that the dependent uses, by definition, cannot. Therefore, the assessment that the Don wi l l remain residential appears to have been reached by default of encroaching uses. Non-decision; or i s it? Unsaid i s that for a di s t r i c t in 1963 to receive federal funds for urban redevelopment the land should be put to the highest and best use. The highest and best use has been established by the summary analysis to be primarily residential. The legislated conditions have been met. The plan is plausible. (34) \"leaves as the central question of the Appraisal:\" * GENRE. Grammatical for planning report to have an objective or \"central question\". ** OPP. Central/Peripheral. Apparently the central question i s \"how to improve the d i s t r i c t \" (no. 35) and the peripheral question was \"how to qualify for federal money to improve the d i s t r i c t \" , which was brought to a close in number 33. (35) \"how can residential conditions in the di s t r i c t be improved for the 40,000 to 49,000 people who w i l l live in the area in the next 20-year period?\" * OPP. Improved/Unimproved. There w i l l be indices against which to measure improvement. ** OPP. We/They. Impersonal phrasing of 'we desire improvement for them'. 148 IV TRANSPARENCY AND ENIGMA When a problem-solver by profession solves a problem, the presentation of the solution must be such that the problem neither looks too simple to have warranted professional attention (squandering) nor so d i f f i c u l t that i t has not actually been solved. The line i s a thin one. The tension set up by the possibility of the author f a l l i n g off one end or the other is strung out in various fragments of the text where complexity i s noted (no. 13) or inferred (no. 9 ) , with hints that a solution was found (nos. 15, 35, 1 7 ) , and i s only f u l l y diffused when the solution i s given (beginning with no. 4 1 ) . (36) \"and as a corollary of this \u00E2\u0080\u0094 what City policies are implied by the future needs of the residential areas?\" * INDEX. The process is linear: one decides the improvements needed and then decides policies so that the improvements can be made to come about. (37) \"In addition, there i s a question that i s relevant to the planning of any d i s t r i c t in the City: what pattern of development w i l l best meet the requirements of growth and change, as well as stability?\" * OPP. A \"pattern of development\" i s to be decided upon that counters the current pattern of development (de-development? deterioration?) This apparently automatic current pattern functions without the effort of planners, but does not meet the requirements of growth, change and s t a b i l i t y . Going downhill/Going uphill. Automata/Purposeful. ** INDEX. Laws of nature. Growth, change and st a b i l i t y have requirements which must be met. They make demands. Where do they get the energy to make demands? The energy is inherent. The social/material analogy. 149 *** INDEX. \"Will best meet\" connotes an efficiency goal. (38) \"It i s an unfortunate fact that much of the housing in the Don i s deteriorating, or in danger of decline. One area in particular \u00E2\u0080\u0094 bounded by Gerrard, Shuter, Jarvis and Ontario Streets \u00E2\u0080\u0094 contains, in addition to a high proportion of houses in poor physical condition, a marked concentration of social problems.\" * REAL. Two sets of information are represented as 'difference': deteriorating housing and social problems. ** CULT. A relationship of cause and effect i s implied by noting the association of things commonly found together: deteriorating housing and social problems. The culturally conventional causal relation maintains just these differences and confines the context to the di s t r i c t i t s e l f via the two differences noted. The reduction allows the explanation for the poor conditions to be successfully contained within the d i s t r i c t , and for this zeroing in to appear natural. *** OPP. The metonymy that leads to believing the problem i s contained within the d i s t r i c t enforces the f i c t i t i o u s boundary separating \" d i s t r i c t \" from \"non-district\". Implies a closed system in which positive feedback (poor housing causes social problems causes poorer housing . . .) i s driving the system ever closer to \"death\". The proposals to reverse the process (nos. 41 to 49) are mirror opposites of the factors seen to be at the root of deterioration in the system in the f i r s t place. Only minor adjustments are proposed for the district's (the system's) environment. (39) \"The Appraisal presents a comprehensive, long-range strategy designed to halt decline and to set the area on the path of steady improvement.\" * GENRE. What is the alternative to the word \"comprehensive\" in such a sentence? (\"Long-range\" i s already implied in comprehensive and 150 comprehensive i s implied in long-range.) At the time, the arguments about the impossibility of being comprehensive in planning had thrown up i t s antithesis \u00E2\u0080\u0094 incrementalism. But does 'incrementalism\" s e l l , so to speak? The connotations are jerky, piecemeal, uncoordinated, partial. Comprehensive, on the other hand, implies control, efficiency, coordination, resoluteness. The planner who was unprepared to use either term would have to justify an alternative. Comprehensive i s expected. There are virtually no semantic alternatives, even giving \"strategy\" no modifier at a l l . ** OPP. Looked at on another level, the alternative to a comprehensive, long-range strategy might be no action, which i s of course s t i l l a \"difference\". Action/No Action. However, once a public body such as the Planning Board has acknowledged problems exist, no action i s no option. *** INDEX. Metonymic association of \"strategy\" with (i) \"halt decline\" and with ( i i ) \"set the area on the path of steady improvement\" links strategy with causality. The technical expertise of the professional to make strategies that cause improvement i s connoted. (40) \"The elements of this strategy are:\" * INDEX. A strategy i s a composite of elements. Reference: model of planning. Elements are concrete and measurable. (41) \"home improvements and rehabilitation;\" * OPP. Run down/Run up. ** WRW. Should I know the distincton between improvement and rehabilitation or should I know that the use of the terms together is merely emphatic? 151 (42) \"enforcement o f by-laws on h o u s i n g s t a n d a r d s ; \" * OPP. To recommend as an element o f a s t r a t e g y \" e n f o r c i n g \" what i s a l r e a d y i n f o r c e s u g g e s t s t h a t t h e by-laws a r e not now b e i n g e n f o r c e d . T h i s a p p a r e n t absence o f enforcement i m p l i e s a judgment about t h e s e by-laws: t h a t they a r e i n a d e q u a t e , i r r a t i o n a l , o r a t l e a s t i n some way i n a p p r o p r i a t e . ( I n Chapter 3,11 ( i ) A - \"The Enforcement o f S t a n d a r d s by Sound By-laws\", the a u t h o r s mention t h a t \" i n some r e s p e c t s the C i t y ' s Housing Standards By-law, passed i n 1936 i s i n c o m p l e t e and i n a d e q u a t e . \" ) There i s a c r u c i a l absence here i n the summary: a statement t h a t the e x i s t i n g by-laws a r e i n a p p r o p r i a t e and t h a t i t i s a new s e t o f by-laws t h a t a r e t o be e n f o r c e d . The i m p l i c a t i o n i s t h a t the new by-laws w i l l be l o g i c a l l y c o n s i s t e n t w i t h the g o a l s f o r the d i s t r i c t . I n c o n s i s t e n t b y - l a w s / C o n s i s t e n t by-laws. The new by-laws w i l l then a l l o w enforcement t o proceed r a t i o n a l l y : e n f o r c e t h a t which i s i n f o r c e / d o not not e n f o r c e t h a t which i s i n f o r c e . ** INDEX. R a t i o n a l b e h a v i o u r i s l o g i c a l l y c o n s i s t e n t . (43) \" e l i m i n a t i o n o f non-conforming u s e s ; \" * OPP. See no. 42; the p r i n c i p l e i s the same. In f a c t F i g . 15 shows \"Compatible Non-Conforming Uses i n Improvement Areas\", and t h e note r e a d s : i n r e l a t i o n t o proposed z o n i n g . (44) \" r e h a b i l i t a t i o n o f houses, w i t h p u b l i c a s s i s t a n c e ; \" * OPP. \"With p u b l i c a s s i s t a n c e \" s e t s t h i s element a p a r t from no. 41. The s o u r c e o f t h e money i s the a x i s o f a n t i t h e s i s . ** CULT. Money i s euphemized to \" a s s i s t a n c e \" i n the c u l t u r e t o take the edge o f f th e s u g g e s t i o n t h a t p u b l i c a s s i s t a n c e e n t a i l s g i v i n g 152 out money. Giving out money i s welfare-ism. Forestalling accusations. (45) \"essential public improvements such as street trees, off-street parking;\" * OPP. What are unessential improvements? These wi l l not be named in the report. ** GENRE. In the genre i t i s natural to be concerned only with the essential. Unessential changes are unexpected. *** INDEX. The essentialness of trees and parking are references to ideals of planning: to beautify (trees), to bring order (cars put away). V A TIP OF THE HAT Trees and parking can only appear insignificant tucked between publicly-assisted housing rehabilitation and public and private redevelopment. Why are they here? Why are they prefaced by \"essential\" while the other elements stand on their own, unqualified? In chapter 2 the roots and mandate of planning were described as f a l l i n g in art and science, and the argument was made that interpretation of this among planners seemed to favour the view that these were separate and separable. It was also suggested that the bias lay toward attempting explanation rather than justification because explanation carries a mantle of legitimacy through i t s association with sci e n t i f i c v e r i f i a b i l i t y . An example supporting this suggestion has (by chance?) come to hand. The reader of my reading of the report w i l l have noticed the fragments referring repeatedly to verifiable measurements, efficiency goals, incentives, means of control, and a myriad of other indices used in the s p i r i t 153 of explaining why the Don w i l l remain a primarily residential area. Indeed, the bias was toward showing the Don as remaining residential residually; the authors were not, from my reading, setting out explicitly to justify why i t should (or should not) remain residential. It would be residential by default and in the light of empirical evidence. (That the authors were actually engaged in justification i s another point; what I think they thought they were doing was explaining.) Fragment 45 appears to be the f i r s t reference to aesthetics. (There w i l l be two more, 49 and 51, which appear in l i s t s of changes to be made, and number 54, the General Land Use Proposals map, which stands on i t s own as an example of the aesthetic without qualification.) If a l l the preceding had to be explained, would not trees and parking also have to be explained, and the more so since by comparison to the massive changes projected they seem so puny? How better than to claim them as essential, which leaves them at least open to be proved so, rather than leaving them unqualified and in the realm of aesthetics which by cultural convention risks the attribution of unessential. (46) \"public and private redevelopment.\" * OPP. Public/Private: the source of money i s the axis (no. 44). ** INDEX. Terminology of planned social change. Development, as used in no. 37 in the phrase \"pattern of development\", implied any sort of alteration to the area. Redevelopment, as used in the relevant legislation and planning literature of the period, means building on a site that has previously been developed. Prior to redevelopment there must be demolition. The absence (which makes a difference) of the expression that describes the step of destruction connotes identity between development and redevelopment, whereas development 154 is the class and clearance-plus-redevelopment i s a member of the class. (47) \"In areas of publicly-initiated redevelopment great emphasis is placed on (a) the need for a comprehensive programme based on the coordination of the goals and activities of the planning, housing, health, welfare and development agencies, and (b) the need for new housing and f a c i l i t i e s to meet the requirements of the population in the area.\" * OPP. Publicly initiated redevelopment/Comprehensive private rebuilding. See no. 48. ** INDEX. Public redevelopment i s to occur through a direct appeal to the reasonableness and good intentions of the many agencies involved. (Compare this to the indirect appeal to reason via incentives for private redevelopment, no. 48.) Implies that the goals of public agencies can be coordinated because they already have a common end which i s , approximately, the improvement of the conditions of l i f e for citizens. Selective bounding of systems: big system selected to support the assumption that public agency goals could be harmonious; small system (relatively) selected for deciding actions based on that assumption. *** WRW. The people of the d i s t r i c t are a population, a s t a t i s t i c a l term. A population i s an aggregate of discrete entities for which the operative consideration i s alikeness. (48) \"During the next twenty-year period, two areas in particular w i l l prove attractive to comprehensive private rebuilding \u00E2\u0080\u0094 the area between Wellesley, Bloor, Sherbourne and Parliament; and Homewood Avenue and adjoining culs-de-sac. The complete rebuilding of these areas, under the proposed standards, would produce a total of 4,500 new dwelling units. This represents about 15% of the total private apartment development expected in the entire City by 1980. The Appraisal proposes measures designed to promote a high standard of development.\" 155 REAL. Specifying sub-districts. INDEX. Post-Keynesian economics (see no. 47). The redevelopment i s to be guided by publicly arranged incentives \u00E2\u0080\u0094 \"standards\". Comprehensive private rebuilding has occurred when a l l private landowners in the specified areas have responded alike to the incentives. Private comprehensiveness results from 'rational economic man' operating in response to the Keynesian supplement to the Smithian 'hidden hand'. INDEX. Precision of projection methods \u00E2\u0080\u0094 about 15% of total apartment development to 1980. (No. 30) CULT. Subtle relation between \"15%\" and \"entire\" connoting extensive private apartment building i s a value to be sought after. If \"entire\" i s omitted, the sentence becomes merely a factual statement. (49) \"Other specific proposals in the Appraisal include a playfield and community centre north of Wellesley; the extension of parking f a c i l i t i e s for Riverdale Zoo; the expansion of the Duke of York, Lord Dufferin and St. Martin's school sites and the reorganization of senior school f a c i l i t i e s within the d i s t r i c t into two schools \u00E2\u0080\u0094 Winchester, north of Carlton, and Lord Dufferin or Park, south of Carlton; for the Parliament Street shopping d i s t r i c t \u00E2\u0080\u0094 off-street parking f a c i l i t i e s for 170 cars, a street rehabilitation programme and a specific proposal for rebuilding to create an attractive focal point at Parliament and Gerrard. Transportation proposals include the widening of Sackville and Sumach, between Wellesley and Gerrard, Wellesley from Parliament to Sumach, and of Huntley, Selby, Linden and Earl. They also provide for the establishment of parking bays on Selby, Linden and Earl; a new local street pattern north of Wellesley between Sherbourne and Parliament to be introduced as rebuilding occurs and the extension of bus services, east along Wellesley to serve hospitals, an increasing residential population and the Riverdale Zoo. * REAL. The massiveness and density of detail i s d i f f i c u l t to grasp. It i s metonymy run wild \"in which the parts totally obscure the whole.\"4 Barthes calls this stringing of element upon element Wilden, System and Structure, p. 49 156 \" i n d i r e c t language\". I t succeeds by a c h i e v i n g a l e v e l o f d e t a i l t h a t b l o c k s a c c e s s t o c o n c e p t s . The b e s t way f o r a language t o be i n d i r e c t i s t o r e f e r as c o n s t a n t l y as p o s s i b l e t o t h i n g s themselves r a t h e r than t o t h e i r c o n c e p t s , f o r the meaning o f an o b j e c t always f l i c k e r s , but not t h a t o f t h e concept.5 C u l l e r goes on t o note t h a t \" t h i s r e f e r e n t i a l f u n c t i o n . . .produces d e s c r i p t i o n s which seem determined o n l y by a d e s i r e f o r o b j e c t i v i t y and thus l e a d s the r e a d e r t o c o n s t r u c t a w o r l d which he t akes as r e a l but whose meaning he f i n d s d i f f i c u l t t o g r a s p . \" ^ The c o n t e x t has faded away. ** WRW. Reader i n v i t e d by w r i t e r t o take t h i s myriad o f p a r t s as e v i d e n c e o f comprehensiveness. VI STRIPPED-DOWN WRITING A n o t i o n o f t h e a p p r o p r i a t e w r i t i n g s t y l e has developed a l o n g w i t h the genre, and i s a mark o f the genre. I t i s w r i t i n g f o r the j o b , t o i n f o r m . I t s h o u l d be l o g i c a l l y o r d e r e d , pragmatic, no f r i l l s o r f i f t y d o l l a r words. The assumption i s t h a t t h i s c a r r i e s the message t o the r e a d e r w i t h o u t room f o r ( m i s ) i n t e r p r e t a t i o n . The c o n d u i t metaphor. T h i s t h e s i s has been a c h a l l e n g e t o t h a t assumption. I t asks the r e a d e r t o c o n s i d e r the p o s s i b i l i t y t h a t as much s u b t l e t y can be b u i l t i n t o a t e c h n i c a l - s o u n d i n g r e p o r t as any o t h e r p i e c e o f w r i t i n g . The d i f f e r e n c e i s t h a t , as I b e l i e v e Marcuse says somewhere, i t i s so much more i n s i d i o u s l y s u b t l e because i t appears so r a t i o n a l and f o r t h r i g h t . Both the w r i t i n g and r e a d i n g o f such m a t e r i a l a r e s e t up i n d i s t i n c t i o n t o what one w r i t e s and r e a ds o f f ^Roland B a r t h e s , E s s a i s c r i t i q u e s , ( P a r i s : S e u i l , 1964), p. 232, c i t e d i n C u l l e r , P o e t i c s , p. 194. 6 I b i d . 157 the job, where these may bring pleasure. There i s no joy intended in a planning report, and no joy derived. It i s the dark side of an otherwise enjoyable activity. It entails abandoning our lives in order to profess our profession. 7 (50) \"The judgments made by the Appraisal on the future role of the d i s t r i c t and on development trends\" * INDEX. The authority of s c i e n t i f i c data analysis. Either by intent or by syntactical error, the judgments are made to appear to arise out of the Appraisal i t s e l f as i f automatically ('the ghost in the machine') and not to be the judgments of human beings \u00E2\u0080\u0094 specifically the authors. ** WRW. Science, not the Chairman of the Planning Board, i s speaking to the reader. The author merely provides the hand that writes i t down. *** CULT. By the association effected by the construction of the sentence, judgments on the future role of the d i s t r i c t and judgments on development trends are made to appear as the same order of things. That offers two possibilities for meaning: that they both arise from the data, or both arise from judgments. Given the paradigmatic loading on 'science' as opposed to awareness of making judgments to this point, the reader may understand that the former i s implied. (51) \"are expressed in the General Land Use Proposals. The main features of the Plan are indicated in the accompanying map (Fig. 1 ) . The structure of uses i s clear \u00E2\u0080\u0094 a residential d i s t r i c t \u00E2\u0080\u0094 bounded by various types of commercial uses on the west, north-west, and south; 7 Richard Brown inspired the sense of this sentence with his hope for a poetic for sociology that \"would not demand of us that we abandon our profession in order to profess our liv e s . . . \" in A Poetic for Sociology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), p. 234. 158 by industry in the south-east, and parkland or private open spaces on the north and east \u00E2\u0080\u0094 and focussed internally on a commercial shopping d i s t r i c t on Parliament Street, centred at Gerrard. Residential densities are highest on the west side of the d i s t r i c t , near Jarvis and Bloor, and Jarvis and Dundas. The high quality, low density office area \u00E2\u0080\u0094 suitable for institutional and government offices \u00E2\u0080\u0094 extends along the length of Jarvis and along Sherbourne from Earl to Gerrard, and merges with the hospital-research complex, which extends along Wellesley between Jarvis and Sherbourne. A local shopping area to serve high density development in the north-west is provided on Wellesley between Bleeker and Ontario; Allan Gardens and Moss Park wi l l serve both office and higher density residential areas. One major parkland addition \u00E2\u0080\u0094 a playfield and community centre site \u00E2\u0080\u0094 i s shown immediately north of Wellesley, conveniently located for the residential community north of Carlton. The zoning proposals arising out of the General Land Use Plan are outlined in the final chapter of this report.\" REAL. See no. 49. The description i s somewhat lightened by the map. It is two-handed reading: one hand to follow the tour on the map, the other to mark the place in the text. OPP. Disorder/Order. \"The structure of uses is clear...\" Where there i s now disorder, there w i l l be order in the future. GENRE. Level of abstraction. The signs of human beings are there but breathing human beings shriek their absence, as in no. 49. The most personal concept stated is \"residential community\", but even that remains a crosshatched area on a planimetric projection. INDEX. The neighbourhood unit principle, fully explicated with articulated boundaries, open spaces, institutional sites, local shops, and an internal street system. (52) \"Appraisal proposals involving public expenditures w i l l require more detailed follow-up studies, and should be programmed in relation to city-wide capital improvement needs.\" * INDEX. Legislative authority. The context for this sentence is conspicuous by i t s absence: federal government approval under the National Housing Act. ** SYM. Delay and priorizing symbolize resistance to the possibility that what is planned for the d i s t r i c t converges exactly with what is 159 allowable according to the NHA. Convergence would swallow the Planning Board's claim to separateness from government. The absence of context mentioned above also resists convergence. (53) \"The main proposals emerging from the Appraisal Study w i l l be presented in detail in each chapter of this report, and summarized in the f i n a l chapter \u00E2\u0080\u0094 The General Plan.\" * GENRE. Expected order of presentation. Grammatical to do the analysis f i r s t and then to show how the proposals have been generated by the preceding analysis. F. General Land Use Proposals (Map), Fig. 1 (54) The map. * GENRE. The map i s the imagined end product of a fully implemented plan \u00E2\u0080\u0094 what the Don should look like, as far as land use i s concerned, after the incentives, new by-laws, etc. have been in place for several years. In general, a map is an iconic form involving actual resemblance between the signifier and what i s signified. But there are two important spaces for meaning associated with a map. One is the choice of 'differences' that are mapped. The other is the style of the cartographer. The style i s what the imitator of the actual applies to the production of the icon. In this case we are at a third level of abstraction. First i s our perception of the territory i t s e l f . Next i s the 'real' land use map \u00E2\u0080\u0094 the one that i s representative of what exists now in 1963. Then there i s the map reproduced here which presents future land uses. In the 'real* land use map, a l l the street and blocks of structures are shown. The corners are sharp 90\u00C2\u00B0 angles; there is a great deal happening in the map. The style of the future land use 160 is quite different: the street structure i s simplified; the houses and buildings are l e f t out altogether; the different land uses have rounded edges so that they s l i p smoothly into the spaces and soften the harshness of the street grid. 2 LJS\"|g \u00E2\u0080\u0094ip^oS 5' 0=1 { [ \u00E2\u0080\u00A2 \u00C2\u00BB\u00C2\u00BB i C o f \u00E2\u0080\u00A2\u00C2\u00BB'0 \u00C2\u00AB \u00E2\u0080\u00A2 \u00C2\u00BB0\u00C2\u00AB < * S t r u t 162 O P lOUOMt\u00C2\u00A9 P B . A & I & 3 B f t G B O A 13 D 129 ADELAIDE STREET WEST, TORONTO 1, PHONE NO. 367-7182 Commissioner of Planning and Secretary-Treasurer: M. B. M. LAWSON September, 1963-\u00C2\u00B0We a r e p l e a s e d t o p r e s e n t t h i s s t u d y o f t h e Don P l a n n i n g D i s t r i c t . T i t i s t h e f i f t h t o be p u b l i s h e d i n t h e s e r i e s o f a p p r a i s a l s which w i l l e v e n t u a l l y c o v e r t h e C i t y ' s 25 p l a n n i n g d i s t r i c t s . The a p p r a i s a l s f o r t h e Annex, R o s e d a l e , Deer Park and Downtown D i s t r i c t s have been p u b l i s h e d . S t u d i e s o f t h e Y o r k v i l l e , West Harbour and E g l i n t o n D i s t r i c t s a r e i n p r e p a r a t i o n . ^ B e f o r e the P l a n n i n g Board makes i t s f i n a l recommendation 9 a s h o r t and l e s s t e c h n i c a l summary o f t h e main i s s u e s and p r o p o s a l s ^\u00C2\u00B0will be d i s t r i b u t e d t o r e s i d e n t s o f t h e Don D i s t r i c t and o t h e r s who have an i n t e r e s t i n t h e a r e a . \u00E2\u0080\u00A2'--'-There w i l l be o p p o r t u n i t i e s f o r c o n s i d e r a t i o n o f the p r o p o s a l s by i n d i v i d u a l s and l o c a l groups and d i s c u s s i o n s o f the i m p l i c a t i o n s o f t h e r e p o r t a t f o r t h c o m i n g p u b l i c meetings'. -^The P l a n n i n g Board i s a n x i o u s t h a t i t s p r o p o s a l s f o r the Don D i s t r i c t have wide p u b l i c r e v i e w and u n d e r s t a n d i n g b e f o r e f i n a l recommendations a r e made. ; 1 3 i n c o n s i d e r i n g t h i s s t u d y o f a r a t h e r complex d i s t r i c t , ^ two p o i n t s c a l l f o r some emphasis. F i r s t , t h a t the A p p r a i s a l p r e s e n t s a l o n g r a n g e programme f o r the improvement o f t h e Don D i s t r i c t . The r e q u i r e m e n t s o f p u b l i c d i s c u s s i o n , d e l i b e r a t i o n s by C i t y C o u n c i l , o f f u r t h e r d e t a i l e d work and f i n a n c i n g , s u g g e s t t h a t t h e p r o p o s a l s can o n l y be implemented o v e r a c o n s i d e r a b l e p e r i o d o f t i m e . - 1 - 5 3 e c o n c j > t h a t t h e s t u d y , w h i l e s o u n d i n g a c a u t i o n a r y n o t e about c o n d i t i o n s i n t h e D i s t r i c t , e n v i s a g e s the g r a d u a l improvement o f most o f t h e a r e a by t h e r e s i d e n t s t h e m s e l v e s . Many p r o p o s a l s for* p u b l i c a c t i o n a r e d e s i g n e d t o improve the a r e a and c r e a t e a b e t t e r e n vironment, and thus g i v e encouragement t o r e s i d e n t s t o r e n o v a t e t h e i r p r o p e r t i e s . \u00E2\u0080\u00A2 ^ i t i s d e s i r a b l e t h a t l ? t h o s e most d i r e c t l y concerned s t u d y t h e c o n t e n t s o f t h i s r e p o r t v e r y c a r e f u l l y . I t w i l l be t h e b a s i s f o r the P l a n n i n g Board's f i n a l recommendations t o C i t y C o u n c i l , whose d e c i s i o n s w i l l e s t a b l i s h the p l a n f o r the Don P l a n n i n g D i s t r i c t . ( s i g n e d ) -jnald D.' Summerville (Hon. Choirman) W. H. Clork (Choirmon) Cont. H. Orliffe, Q.C. (Vice-Chairman) M . J. Kelly (Vice-Chairman) P. Churchill H. G. Kimber J. S. Midanik S. M. Philpott. Alderman 0. Rotenberg M r s . G. S. V i c t o r s i0W. H a r o l d C l a r k Chairman 163 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS \u00C2\u00B1 y I n the course of making this appraisal, the staff of the City of Toronto Planning Board consulted 20many individuals, associations, organizations, elected representatives and o f f i c i a l s . Zljhe information and the views they expressed on planning issues in the d i s t r i c t , and their reactions to the preliminary analysis of problems, were most valuable in helping formulate the proposals contained in this appraisal. The Planning Board acknowledges with gratitude the co-operation, assistance and thoughtful consideration they so willingly gave. 164 BON PLANNING BISTRICT APPRAISAL TABLE OF-CONTENTS Page CHAPTER I - Conditions, Problems, Solutions. (A Summary) 1 CHAPTER II - History, Character & Functions of the District 4 CHAPTER III - The Residential Areas 22 CHAPTER IV - Schools 57 CHAPTER V - Parks, Recreation & Community Services 64 CHAPTER VI - Retail Shopping 72 CHAPTER VII - Offices, Institutions & Industry 79 CHAPTER VIII - Transportation 96 CHAPTER IX - The General Plan 106 APPENDICES: I Analysis of Residential Condition . 123 II Public Elementary School Enrolment - 1963 127 165 LIST- OF -ILLUSTRATIONS Figure Following Page 1 GENERAL LAND USE PROPOSALS 3 2 EXISTING LAND USE 5 3 POPULATION AND HOUSEHOLDS, CITY AND DISTRICT COMPARISONS- 9 4 HOUSEHOLD AND FAMILY CHARACTERISTICS BY CENSUS AREA 10 5 CENSUS TRACTS AND BLOCKS 11 6 EXTERIOR CONDITION OF DWELLINGS 22 7 AGE OF DWELLINGS 22 8 HOUSING INSPECTIONS 22 9 OVERCROWDING 22 10 ROOMING HOUSES 22 11 FIRES 22 12 SOCIAL FACTOR RATING 22 13 RESIDENTIAL CONDITION 22 14 AREAS OF CHANGE 23 15 COMPATIBLE NON-CONFORMING USES IN IMPROVEMENT AREAS 28 16 STREET TREES IN IMPROVEMENT AREAS 30 17 BACK LANE AND YARD IMPROVEMENT - PROPOSAL 1A 34 18 BACK LANE AND YARD IMPROVEMENT - PROPOSAL IB 35 19 RESIDENTIAL PARKING DEFICIENCIES - in improvement areas\u00E2\u0080\u0094 35 20 PARKING PROPOSAL 2A and 2B 36 21 IMPROVEMENT AREAS AND OWNER OCCUPANCY 41 22 PLACE OF EMPLOYMENT OF REGENT PARK NORTH AND REGENT PARK SOUTH TENANTS AND APPLICANTS 45 166 Figure Following - Page 23 GUIDE PLAN - BLOOR, SHERBOURNE, WELLESLEY AND PARLIAMENT- 54 24 MAJOR CHANGES IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL POPULATION 57 25 PARKS AND RECREATION 64 26 PARKING PROPOSALS FOR RIVERDALE ZOO 70 27 REDUCTION OF C.l ZONES 73 28 RETAIL FLOOR SPACE - PRESENT, FUTURE 74 29 GUIDE PLAN - PARLIAMENT AND GERRARD 77 30 OFFICES 79 31 INSTITUTIONS 85 32 TRAFFIC VOLUMES P.M. PEAK HOUR 1959 96 33 TRAFFIC VOLUMES - MAIN AND LOCAL STREETS P.M. PEAK HOUR 1959 99 34 PROPOSED PARKING BAYS - SELBY, LINDEN & EARL 102 35 GENERAL PLAN 106 36 EXISTING ZONING 118 37 PROPOSED ZONING 118 167 CHAPTER I 23CONDITIONS, PROBLEMS, SOLUTIONS (A-SUMMARY) 24 The Don Planning District has a very central position in Toronto: the intersection of Parliament and Carlton is about one mile from Yonge and Queen, ^and i t i s in the path of high volume peak t r a f f i c movements on traversing arteries. \u00C2\u00B0It is at present mainly a residential area, accommodating 41,615 people. The Appraisal Study indicates that the District w i l l continue to be predominantly residential for the assumed planning period of twenty years, and that the population w i l l expand to about 49,000. 27 'The other uses, which are not s t r i c t l y local, have limited expectations of expansion - industry within established zones, east of River Street and between Shuter and Queen, east of Parliament; offices and institutions w i l l continue to gravitate toward Jarvis Street, and to some extent, Sherbourne. The Wellesley and Princess Margaret Hospitals and research f a c i l i t i e s form a distinct complex that w i l l be more intensively developed and w i l l extend into the surrounding area. 28 The key fact about industry in the Don i s that of a comparatively static industrial shell; that i s , established factories, within which new companies come and go. This incubator character of industry does not create significant demands for industrial land. pQ ^The key fact about offices in the Don i s that no major thrust of downtown offices - e.g. finance, legal and accounting - can be expected to extend to Jarvis Street in the next twenty years. New office development in the Don District w i l l be confined mainly to small-scale business and professional services, government and institutional offices. 3\u00C2\u00B0The growth in these w i l l represent a 67% increase over existing office floor space. 168 ?1 J The key fact about institutions in the Don i s that those that occupy most of the land - e.g. the welfare,- -religious-and- recreation-group -Salvation Army services, counselling and family aids, old and young persons* clubs and churches; and the government -group, e.g. the Juvenile Court and the National Employment Service, provide a city-wide service, but are (or wi l l be) strongly anchored in their service to the d i s t r i c t population. The hospital group, which has a regional base, is the conspicuous exception to this rule. 3p The other users of land - recreation, schools and shopping - are closely tied to, and greatly influenced by, the needs of the residential population of the d i s t r i c t . 33 34 -'-'The continued dominance of housing in the Don, J leaves as the central question for the Appraisal: J How can residential conditions in the d i s t r i c t be improved for the 40,000 to 49,000 people who w i l l live in the area in the next 20-year period? ^and as a corollary of this - what City policies are implied by the future needs of the residential areas? 3?ln addition, there i s a question that i s relevant to the planning of any d i s t r i c t in the City: what pattern of development w i l l best meet the requirements of growth and change as well as stability? 3.8 It i s an unfortunate fact that much of the housing in the Don i s deteriorating, or in danger of decline. One area in particular - bounded by Gerrard, Shuter, Jarvis and Ontario Streets - contains, in addition to a high proportion of houses in poor physical condition, a marked concentration of social problems. 30 J The Appraisal presents a comprehensive, long-range strategy designed to halt decline and to set the area on the path of steady 40 41 improvement. The elements of this strategy are: home improvements 42 and rehabilitation; enforcement of by-laws on housing standards; 113, Mil -\"elimination of non-conforming uses; rehabilitation of houses, with 169 45 p u b l i c a s s i s t a n c e ; e s s e n t i a l p u b l i c improvements such as s t r e e t t r e e s , o f f - s t r e e t p a r k i n g ; ^ p u b l i c and p r i v a t e redevelopment. 4 ^ I n a r e a s o f p u b l i c l y - i n i t i a t e d redevelopment g r e a t emphasis i s p l a c e d on (a) the need f o r a comprehensive programme based on t h e c o - o r d i n a t i o n o f t h e g o a l s and a c t i v i t i e s o f the p l a n n i n g , h o u s i n g , h e a l t h , w e l f a r e and development a g e n c i e s , and (b) t h e need f o r new h o u s i n g and f a c i l i t i e s t o meet t h e r e q u i r e m e n t s o f the d i f f e r e n t elements o f the p o p u l a t i o n i n the a r e a . 48 D u r i n g the next twenty-year p e r i o d , two a r e a s i n p a r t i c u l a r w i l l prove a t t r a c t i v e t o comprehensive p r i v a t e r e b u i l d i n g - the a r e a between W e l l e s l e y , B l o o r , Sherbourne and P a r l i a m e n t ; and Homewood Avenue and a d j o i n i n g c u l s - d e - s a c . The complete r e b u i l d i n g o f these a r e a s , under the proposed s t a n d a r d s , would produce a t o t a l o f 4,500 new d w e l l i n g u n i t s . T h i s r e p r e s e n t s about 15% o f the t o t a l p r i v a t e apartment development expected i n the e n t i r e C i t y by 1980. The A p p r a i s a l proposes measures d e s i g n e d t o promote a h i g h s t a n d a r d o f development. 49 Other s p e c i f i c p r o p o s a l s i n the A p p r a i s a l i n c l u d e a p l a y f i e l d and community c e n t r e n o r t h o f W e l l e s l e y ; the e x t e n s i o n o f p a r k i n g f a c i l i t i e s f o r R i v e r d a l e Zoo; t h e expansion o f t h e Duke o f York, L o r d D u f f e r i n and S t . M a r t i n ' s s c h o o l s i t e s and the r e - o r g a n i z a t i o n o f s e n i o r s c h o o l f a c i l i t i e s w i t h i n the d i s t r i c t i n t o two s c h o o l s - W i n c h e s t e r , n o r t h o f C a r l t o n , and Lord D u f f e r i n o r Park, south o f C a r l t o n ; f o r the P a r l i a m e n t S t r e e t shopping d i s t r i c t - o f f - s t r e e t p a r k i n g f a c i l i t i e s f o r 170 c a r s , a s t r e e t r e h a b i l i t a t i o n programme and a s p e c i f i c p r o p o s a l f o r r e b u i l d i n g t o c r e a t e an a t t r a c t i v e f o c a l p o i n t a t P a r l i a m e n t and G e r r a r d . T r a n s p o r t a t i o n p r o p o s a l s i n c l u d e the wid e n i n g o f S a c k v i l l e and Sumach, between W e l l e s l e y and G e r r a r d , W e l l e s l e y from P a r l i a m e n t t o Sumach, and o f Huntley, S e l b y , L i n d e n and E a r l . They a l s o p r o v i d e f o r the e s t a b l i s h m e n t o f p a r k i n g bays on S e l b y , L i n d e n and E a r l ; a new l o c a l s t r e e t p a t t e r n n o r t h o f W e l l e s l e y between Sherbourne and P a r l i a m e n t t o be i n t r o d u c e d as r e b u i l d i n g o c c u r s and the 170 extension of bus services, east along Wellesley to serve hospitals, an increasing residential population and the Riverdale Zoo. 50 The judgments made by the Appraisal on the future role of the d i s t r i c t and on development trends, ^ a r e expressed in the General Land Use Proposals. The main features of the Plan are indicated in the accompanying map (Fig. 1). The structure of uses is clear - a residential d i s t r i c t - bounded by various types of commercial uses on the west, north-west, and south; by industry in the south-east, and by parkland or private open spaces on the north and east - and focused internally on a commercial shopping d i s t r i c t on Parliament Street, centred at Gerrard. Residential densities are highest on the west side of the d i s t r i c t , near Jarvis and Bloor, and Jarvis and Dundas. The high quality, low density office area - suitable for institutional and government offices - extends along the length of Jarvis and along Sherbourne from Earl to Gerrard, and merges with the hospital - research complex, which extends along Wellesley between Jarvis and Sherbourne. A local shopping area to serve high density development in the north-west is provided on Wellesley between Bleeker and Ontario; Allan Gardens and Moss Park w i l l serve both office and higher density residential areas. One major parkland addition - a playfield and community centre site - i s shown immediately north of Wellesley, conveniently located for the residential community north of Carlton. The zoning proposals arising out of the General Land Use Plan are outlined in the fi n a l chapter of this report. 52 Appraisal proposals involving public expenditures w i l l require more detailed follow-up studies, and should be programmed in relation to city-wide capital improvement needs. -'-'The main proposals emerging from the Appraisal Study w i l l be presented in detail in each chapter of this report, and summarized in the fi n a l chapter - The General Plan. ^GENERAL LAND USE PROPOSALS CD 1 1 m O J O O 4 C O 6 0 0 S C O OFFICES,INSTITUTIONS a A P T S . R E S I D E N C E S , O F F I C E S 8 I N S T I T U T I O N S IN R E S I D E N T I A L B U I L D I N G S HIGH D E N S I T Y R E S I D E N T I A L MED, HIGH D E N S I T Y R E S I D E N T I A L M E D . L O W C E N S I T Y R E S I D E N T I A L L O C A L SHOPPING DISTRICT SHOPPING CENTRE PARKS 8 OPEN SPACE INDUSTRY S WAREHOUSING N E W S C H O C L . C I T Y O F T O R O N T O P L A N N I N G B O A R D D O N P L A N N I N G D I S T R I C T 172 List of Digressions Ti t l e Page I Time and Difference 9-3 II Written and Oral 9-8 III Staying with the Genre 9-20 IV Transparency and Enigma 9-27 V A Tip of the Hat 9-32 VI Stripped-Down Writing 9-37 Index of Selected Patterns We as separate 5/6/8/9/17/19/21/31 They as objects 35/47/49/50/51 Citizens and plans 9 - 10/11/12/17 Benefactorism 5/15/35/44 Public education 9 - 10/12 Planning model 14/22/36/39/40/47 Residentiality as residuum 25/27/28/29/31/33 173 CHAPTER 10 BISGUSSION 10.1 A Sensitizing Device This concluding chapter deals with two matters: f i r s t , in this section, with the critique as a demonstration of the perspective described in the preceding chapters, and second, in the next section, with the place of such a perspective in the study and practice of planning. Fragment by fragment scrutiny demonstrates the richness of connotation in the text. By contrast, the parsimony of a reading that takes the \"capsule version\" to be the f u l l statement of planners' goals becomes more fully evident. But a number of criticisms might be raised against this method. Some of the most likely ones w i l l be considered here. The overriding objection, of which each of the following i s a different dimension, i s likely to be that the method steers one away from the palpable plan where solutions to pressing problems are laid out. It may be correctly claimed that the perspective suppresses those things with which the planner traditionally works \u00E2\u0080\u0094 cost constraints, by-laws, diverse client and customer values, power clashes, development permits, t r a f f i c \u00E2\u0080\u0094 and instead turns the analyst's attention toward something called \"plausibility\". Plausibility, having no definite form, and, being neither something to strive for nor something to avoid remains only something to be aware of. Parts One and Two of the essay presented theoretical arguments for focussing on the network of relations in order to understand the justification 174 for a text, rather than on chains of cause and effect in order to understand the explanation for i t . Now that the critique has been presented, we can ask i f i t successfully shows that the network of relations has effects for the planning enterprise which are at least as significant as the answer to the evaluator's question, \"Does this plan achieve this stated goal?\". In response, i t should be said again that the critique works at a different level of concern than traditional evaluations. It i s a meta-evaluation; i t does not ask about the order of things but about our beliefs about the order of things. A principal objection may be that the critique produced using this method is overly subjective. Indeed i t i s subjective but whether i t i s overly so needs particular consideration. I believe i t can be shown that the method uses an \"acknowledged and controlled subjectivity\" which does not negate i t s value as a method.\"'\" Earlier chapters have attempted to show that we are inevitably concerned at a l l times with both objectivity and subjectivity, rather than with one or the other. One i s not 'good' and the other 'bad'. A critique w i l l reflect the analyst's personalized version of the text. Yet the text i s also a bundle of social constraints which are collectively constructed and which the analyst is not free to interpret in just any way at a l l . One recognizes the connotations by referring also to our lived world; they are simultaneously social and personal, not the subjective creations of an individual. They are held intact by collective agreement that these represent relations in the world. -\u00E2\u0080\u00A2-With Fish, who says in defence of his affective criticism method, I would say: The procedure usually offered i s to regard the work as a thing in i t s e l f , as an object; but as I have argued above, this i s a false and dangerously self-validating objectivity. I suppose that what I am saying i s that I would rather have an acknowledged and controlled subjectivity than an objectivity which i s fi n a l l y an i l l u s i o n \" Self^Consuming Artifacts, p. 407. 175 Against the view that the commentaries are impressionistic I would respond by stating that they are detailed assertions. The assertions may of course be refuted and replaced with others. They w i l l s t i l l be assertions and not impressions. Another objection may be that while traditional evaluations seem parsimonious by comparison, the leap has been made from too l i t t l e 'flavour' to too much. Consider, however, what the critique i s attempting to point to. First, i t permits both the practice and theory of planning to be engaged simultaneously. Thus the connotations of a single fragment are referred to a number of codes. Fragment 11, for example, refers to the theory of participatory democracy in which citizens are assumed to be capable of rational judgment about individual subjects as well as about the ensemble of subjects presented at formal elections. In addition, fragment 11 refers to the relations between readers and writers in the context of planning practice \u00E2\u0080\u0094 how the plans are to be considered by readers. Second, i t pre-supposes an ideology-bound analyst and an ideology-bound text, and the analyst's task is to try to make the ideological film less transparent. The connotations are innumerable. It i s an on-going and unfinishable task because we cannot ever escape our own ideology, but can only change i t . As we change, our reading of the text changes. The more closely the analyst's views correspond with those in the text, the greater the d i f f i c u l t y with recognizing the connotations because the text w i l l appear denotative (as i f i t were pointing to facts) rather than connotative (as i f i t were pointing to relations). A frugal critique of this sort would warrant caution. This raises the question of whether one can f r u i t f u l l y critique one's own work. To some extent, the answer to that question must depend, ^Fragment 11: \"There w i l l be opportunities for consideration of the proposals by individuals and local groups and discussions of the implications of the report at forthcoming public meetings.\" 176 f i r s t , on one's willingness to step back from the assumptions implied by one's statements in order to experience them afresh by bringing them back to the threshold of awareness. Second, i t depends on one's courage to swap the comfort of habit for the relative insecurity of the new. The objection may be brought that the critique does not lead to any conclusion. S t r i c t l y speaking, this i s correct. If i t did lead directly to a conclusion i t would have failed to remain within the s p i r i t of searching for the rules by which justification becomes plausible. What is justifiable in one set of circumstances may not be justifiable in another. We cannot conclude. Conclusions attempt to make everything stand s t i l l , to freeze the relations, and we are brought back to the 'referendum syndrome'. However, the critique does offer leads to patterns of information which point up attitudes toward man, society and environment and how these should be coupled, as understood by readers. (A f u l l examination of patterns has not been included with the critique. Only an i n i t i a l l i s t i n g of some repertoires i s presented.) The patterns therefore offer access to those consensual beliefs which we take to be so natural and entirely plausible that they are generally below the threshold of our awareness. Once brought to the surface, one can reflect upon them and choose to retain or change them. Choice cannot be escaped. The individual patterns found in the critique may also be compared with those elucidated by other methods. For example, the pattern which has been called \"benefactorism\" could be compared with studies of the area by Rose or Fraser, or studies of other areas such as by Gans, or broader studies of the subject, for example, by Gans or Dahl.^ ^Rose, Citizen - Participation; Fraser, Fighting Back; Herbert Gans, \"The Human Implications of Current Redevelopment and Relocation Planning,\" Journal of the American Institute of - Planners 25 (February 1959): 15-25; Herbert Gans, \"The Failure of Urban Renewal,\" Commentary (April 1965): 29-37; Robert Dahl, Who Governs? (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961). 177 Yet another criticism may be that one has substituted for the external model against which a plan may be evaluated, an 'internal' structure against which plausibility i s measured. To this I would say that there are structures, not structure, and that they embody both constraints and poss i b i l i t i e s : they do not present a fixed vision of how a plan must be. Besides providing constraints which were spoken of earlier as being of the \"thou shalt not\" variety, they also provide latitude for the possibilities of imagination and creation. The reader encounters the idiom that has been constructed within the interwoven structures. By taking the plan as subject, planning i s critiqued in i t s own terms, and those terms, we find, lead us to an array of codes as structures, codes of the 'everyday' and of the 'intellectual' spheres. The codes as structures permit a vast transposition of fragments from what in traditional evaluations are usually considered to be a l l part of \"The Real\" \u00E2\u0080\u0094 that i s , considered to describe a relatively fixed and invariable world. A fine-combed reading builds up connotations in a number of codes concerned with relations rather than 'realities', dispelling the i l l u s i o n that we are dealing with law rather than rule. Finally, how much of one text needs to be critiqued, or how many texts need critiquing to demonstrate that a pattern really i s a pattern? The method is concerned to show how plausibility i s produced and the processes by which this occurs. It does not provide evidence for a particular meaning. It i s , in Fish's terms, a \"sensitizing device\". Used as such we are helped to \"leave unobscured the vast darkness\" of how we go about coupling man, society, and the larger ecosystem. 10.2 Evolving Theory and Practice Chapter 1 began by noting a major current of thought devoted to considering in a new light how we know and how we communicate what we know. In chapters 2 to 7 I have tried to show why planners also need to consider 178 these questions in a new light. In brief, the reason is that planners work with the arrangement and rearrangement of, or the relations among, things, ideas and persons. These relations are rarely fixed and immutable; they are constructed, so to speak, from our understanding of and beliefs about how the world works and ought to work. The tendency in planning has been to objectify these things, ideas and persons, and to try to explain their existing and proposed arrangements by reference to objective c r i t e r i a . I have argued that this approach is no longer either convincing or successful. To look at planning in terms of relations rather than objects requires more than superficial adjustments. One must begin with the epistemology of planning to effect a reorientation. The reassessment is beginning. Hudson, for example, refers to \"a growing literature in the area of ' c r i t i c a l theory'\" which is concerned with matters relating to planning epistemology. However, a number of paths are possible. Efforts to study relations have been launched in many fields and i t is hard to know which work in which fields is pertinent to give clues for proceeding in planning. In a l l cases, however, i t seems that one comes to communication in one form or another: the physiological and verbal communication of our understanding of relations. A communications orientation distinguishes one domain central to the reorientation. Another foundational domain, from my point of view, is \"adaptiveness\". Major portions of the thesis have been devoted to showing that analogic application of hypotheses of various types to planning results in reductionism whereby planning is denied an irreducible core, and partly because of this, the responsibility of the planner for the plan is heavily shrouded. Thus, the perspective I have chosen for a c r i t i c a l theory and method involves, most importantly, the purposefulness (conscious and Hudson, \"Current Planning,\" p. 395. 179 unconscious) of adaptive, goal-seeking persons. The adaptiveness of symbolizing persons is missing, for example, from the common organismic analogue and from the newly popular linguistic analogue. Planners, whose task i t is to couple whole persons in an ecosystem, cannot risk separating the adaptiveness of persons from the adaptiveness of the rest of the living ecosystem. For this reason, I have adopted Bateson's non-mechanistic cybernetics as an approach which seems capable of helping to c l a r i f y the adaptiveness of persons with respect to assumptions, or the adaptiveness of a professional group with respect to a disciplinary matrix, or the adaptiveness of facets of the ecosystem. A wide-ranging discussion of adaptiveness in the planning f i e l d is forthcoming, I expect. We have just about exhausted the ways to go around the subject by turning attention to absolutes such as rationality, to accusatory ideological debate, to quantification as a way to get answers to social stalemates, and so on. Once one questions the correctness of trying to explain human action and looks instead to justifying, I believe one is led to consider adaptiveness. After a l l , when a l l is said and done, the only way one can decide, for example, that the classical economist's description of land rent is better than the Marxist economist's is to accept the premises of one rather than the other. And what are premises? Are they not the assumptions we begin with when we approach a question? But why do we have to start with any assumptions at al l ? Because we cannot, apparently, swim about in a totally unstructured soup of poss i b i l i t i e s . How do we get our assumptions? We learn them from others whose culture we share, and we also devise new ones or new constellations suited to ourselves. Some assumptions survive for a long time; others have short lives. Their duration depends on their adaptiveness to our purposes. Those that work for us survive; those that do not, are changed for ones that do. 180 Consideration of adaptiveness leads d i r e c t l y to the sort of c r i t i q u e proposed here \u00E2\u0080\u0094 a cr i t i q u e i n a r e f l e c t i v e mode. Overall, the thesis has been an e f f o r t , f i r s t , to describe and to support th e o r e t i c a l l y a view of adaptive persons j u s t i f y i n g t h e i r plans because they are plausible; and second, to demonstrate by use of a c r i t i c a l method how one may recognize adaptiveness i n ways which allow one to ask why certain assumptions and habits of thought are adaptive to the ongoing a c t i v i t y of planning. The method w i l l be helpful for studying more deeply the assumptions of an era, or the evolution of an assumption over a long period. P r i n c i p a l l y , the c r i t i q u e offers a way to use the perspective of the early chapters to acquire a larger measure of self-awareness and therefore s e l f - c r i t i c i s m for planners as we go about our work, and i n par t i c u l a r , a greater awareness of: our use of assimilated ideas (e.g., from economics); our use of metaphor (e.g., organism; cancer); our use of c u l t u r a l appeal (e.g., helping the helpless); and our stances (e.g., 'we' versus 'they'). The value l i e s i n becoming aware of the relations one normally takes to be ent i r e l y natural and certain. In awareness one has choices. In conclusion, i t i s evident that c r i t i c a l analysis i s an uns t a b i l i z i n g a c t i v i t y , especially for those who f e e l they have f i n a l l y managed tp sort out how the world works and how i t ought to work. This un s t a b i l i z i n g effect i s both i t s p r i n c i p a l value and the reason why i t i s , and w i l l continue to be, widely resisted. However, wherever useful debate i s threatened by the \"referendum syndrome\", c r i t i c a l analysis of assumptions may be the only way onward. Of course there i s a paradox: i n order to introduce c r i t i c a l analysis to the d i s c i p l i n a r y matrix one must f i r s t take the step of questioning the adequacy of the d i s c i p l i n a r y matrix, which act i s i t s e l f to make a c r i t i c a l analysis. SOURCES CONSULTED ADAMS^ Thomas. Outline of - Town and - City - Planning:- - A Review -of - Past - Efforts and Modern Aims. Foreword by Franklin D. Roosevelt. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1935. ALONSO, William. \"Beyond the Inter-disciplinary Approach to Planning.\" Journal -of the - American Institute-of - Planners 37 (May, 1971): 169-173. AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF PLANNERS. Journal of the - American Institute of Planners 23 (January 1957): 1. AMERICAN PLANNING ASSOCIATION. Journal of -the American - Planning Association 46 (October 1980): back cover. ARDREY, Robert. The Te r r i t o r i a l i t y Imperative. New York: Atheneum, 1966. ARGYRIS, Chris and SCHON, Donald A. Organization-Learning:--A-Theory of Action Perspective. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1978. BANFIELD, Edward C. \"Ends and Means in Planning.\" International Social Science Journal 11 (March 1959): 361-368. BARRETT, William. Irrational Man. New York: Doubleday, 1958; Anchor Books, 1962. BARTHES, Roland. S/Z. Translated by Richard Miller. New York: H i l l and Wang, 1974. . \"Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives.\" In Image^Music^Text, pp. 79-124. Essays selected and translated by Stephen Heath. New York: H i l l & Wang, 1977. . \"The Structuralist Activity.\" In European - Theory and Practice, pp. 157-163. Edited by Vernon W. Gras. New York: Delta, 1973-BATESON, Gregory. \"Afterword.\" In About Bateson, pp. 235-247. Edited by John Brockman. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1977. . Steps - to an Ecology of Mind. New York: Ballantine Books, 1972. BATESON, M.C. Our-Own-Metaphor: - A Personal- Account of a - Conference on - the Effects of Conscious - Purpose on Human - Adaptation. New York.: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972. 182 BERGER, Peter L. and LUCKMAN, Thomas. The -Social Construction of Reality. New York: Doubleday, 1967. BLACK, Max. \"Metaphor.\" Proceedings of - the-Aristotelian Society, 1954-55: 273-294. . Models and Metaphors. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1962. BOLAN, Richard S. \"Mapping the Planning Theory Terrain.\" In Planning-in America: Learning-from Turbulence, pp. 13-34. Edited by D.R. Godschalk. Washington, D.C: American Institute of Planners, 1974. BROWN, Richard H. A Poetic - for Sociology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. CANADIAN INSTITUTE OF PLANNERS. Charter,-By-laws - and Code of Professional Conduct. Handbook, 1979 edition. CATANESE, Anthony J. Scientific Methods of Urban - Analysis\u00E2\u0080\u00A2 Urbana, 111.: University of I l l i n o i s Press, 1972. CROLL, David A., Sen. \"The Objectives of Redevelopment in Canadian Cities.\" Community Planning - Association -of- Canada -Review 6 (December 1956): 144-146. CULLER, Jonathon. Structuralist Poetics. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975. DAHL, Robert. Who Governs? New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961. DALZELL, A.G. \"The Attitude of the Engineer Towards Town Planning,\" Journal of -the Town Planning Institute of Canada 3 (June 1929): 42-46. DAVIDOFF, Paul. \"Advocacy and Pluralism in Planning.\" Journal-of the American Institute of - Planners 31 (November 1956): 331-338. and REINER, Thomas A. \"A Choice Theory of Planning.\" Journal of the - American -Institute-of- Planners 28 (May 1962): 103-115. DERRIDA, Jacques. Marges de la philosophie. Paris: Minuit, 1972. Dictionary of-Economics. G. Bannock; R.E. Baxter; and R. Rees, eds. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972. S.v. \"Equilibrium\". DYCKMAN, John W. \"Planning and Decision Theory.\" Journal of -the - American Institute of Planners 27 (November 1961): 355-345. ECONOMIC COUNCIL OF CANADA. Toward More Stable -Growth - in Construction. Ottawa: Information Canada, 1973. Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th ed. S.v. \"Positivism and Logical Empiricism,\" by Herbert E. Feigl. ENVIRONMENT COUNCIL OF ALBERTA. Involvement and Environment. Vol. 1. A Review -of -Issues and Approaches. Proceedings of the Canadian Conference on Public Participation. Edited by Barry Sadler. Edmonton: The Council, 1977. 183 ETZIONI, Araitai. \"Mixed-Scanning: A 'Third' Approach to Decision-Making.\" Public Administration Review 27 (December 1967): 385-392. FISH, Stanley E. Self^Consuming-Artifacts. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972. FOLEY, D.L. \"British Town Planning: One Ideology or Three?.\" British Journal of-Sociology 11 (September I960): 211-231. FRASER, Graham. Fighting Back: Urban Renewal in Trefann Court. Toronto: Hakkert, 1972. FRIEDMANN, John. \"The Epistemology of Social Practice.\" Theory and Society. 6 (March 1978): 75-92. . Retracking America: A Theory of Transactive Planning. New York: Anchor Press, 1973. . \"A Conceptual Model for the Analysis of Planning Behaviour.\" Administrative Sciences Quarterly 12 (September 1967): 225-252. . \"Planning As a Vocation.\" Part I: Plan - Canada 6 (April 1966): 99-124; Part II: Plan\u00E2\u0080\u00A2Canada 7 (July 1966): 8-25. . \"The Institutional Context.\" In Action Under Planning, chapter 2. Edited by Bertram M. Gross. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966. and HUDSON, Barclay. \"Knowledge and Action: A Guide to Planning Theory.\" Journal of the - American - Institute of - Planners 40 (January 1974): 2-16. GANS, Herbert J. \"The Human Implications of Current Redevelopment and Relocation Planning.\" Journal-of-the-American-Institute of Planners 25 (February 1959): 15-25. . \"The Failure of Urban Renewal: A Critique and Some Proposals.\" Commentary (April 1965): 29-37. GARDINER, W. Lambert. \"The Consumer and the Conserver.\" Conserver-Society Project, Phase II, v.4: Values-and -the -Conserver-Society\u00E2\u0080\u00A2 Montreal: GAMMA, July 1976. . \"On Turning Development Inside-Out or (better) On Not Turning Development Outside-In in the First Place.\" Paper presented to GPID Study Group on Human Development, Bariloche, Argentina. December 1980. (Mimeographed) . The Psychology of Teaching. Monterey, Calif.: Brooks/Cole Publishing Co., 1980. GERECKE, Kent. \"Towards a New Model of Urban Planning.\" Ph.D. dissertation, University of British Columbia, 1974. GOULD, Stephen Jay. Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History. New York: W.W. Norton, 1979. 184 GRABOW, Stephen and HESKIN, A l l a n . \"Foundations f o r a Radical Concept of Planning.\" Journal-of the -American I n s t i t u t e -of Planners 39 (March 1973): 106-114. GREENBIE, B a r r i e . \"What Can We Learn from Other Animals?: Behavioral Biology and the Ecology of C i t i e s . \" Journal of the American I n s t i t u t e of Planners 37 (June 1971): 162-168. _ . \" S o c i a l T e r r i t o r y , Community Health and Urban Planning.\" Journal of the American I n s t i t u t e of Planners 40 (March 1974): 74-82. GROSS, Bertram. Management Strategy f or Economic and S o c i a l Development. Public Administration D i v i s i o n : United Nations, 1970. GUTTENBERG, Albert Z. \"The S o c i a l Uses of City Planning.\" Plan-Canada 9 (March 1968): 6-14. HARRIS, B r i t t o n . \"The Limits of Science and Humanism i n Planning.\" Journal of the American -Institute of- Planners 33 (September 1967): 324-335. HAMPDEN-TURNER, Charles. Radical Man. Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman, 1970. HERBERT, G i l b e r t . \"The Organic Analogy i n Town Planning.\" Journal of-the American I n s t i t u t e of - Planners 29 (August 1963): 198-209. HILLIER, B i l l . \"In Defence of Space.\" Royal -Ins t i t u t e - o f - B r i t i s h - A r c h i t e c t s Journal 80 (November 1973): 539-544. and LEAMAN, Adrian. \"Structure, System, Transformation.\" B a r t l e t t Society Transactions 9 (1972-1973): 36-77. HIRSCHLEIFER, Jack. Price - Theory-and Applications. New Jersey: Prentice-H a l l , 1976. HOFSTADTER, Douglas, R. Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. New York: Basic Books, 1979: Vintage Books, 1980. HOLLING, C.S. \"Resilience and S t a b i l i t y of Ecosystems.\" In Evolution and Consciousness: Human Systems i n Transition, pp. 73-92. Edited by E r i c h Jantsch and Conrad H. Waddington. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1976. H0PW00D, Alison and ROSE, Albert. \"Regent Park: Milestone or Mill s t o n e ? \" Canadian Forum 29 (May 1949): 34-36. HUDSON, Barclay M. \"Comparison of Current Planning Theories: Counterparts and Contradictions.\" Journal of the - American Planning Association 45 (October 1979): 387-407. HUGHES, H. Stuart. Consciousness and Society: The-Reorientation of-European Social-Thought, 1890-1930. New York: Vintage Books, 1958. ISER, Wolfgang. \"The Reading Process.\" In The Implied -Reader, pp. 274-294. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975. JACOBS, Jane. The-Death-and L i f e of Great American C i t i e s . New York: Modern Library, 1961. 185 JAKOBSON, Roman. \"Two Aspects of Language: Metaphor and Metonymy.\" In European Theory and Practice, pp. 119-127. Edited by Vernon W. Gras. New York: Delta, 1973. JANTSCH, Erich. \"From Forecasting and Planning to Policy Sciences.\" Policy Sciences 1 (1970): 31-47. JONES, W.T. \"World Views: Their Nature and Their Function.\" Current Anthropology 13 (February 1972): 79-109. KLOSTERMAN, Richard E. \"Foundation for Normative Planning.\" Journal of the American - Institute - of Planners 44 (January 1978): 37-41K . \"Results of Course Outline Survey.\" Florida State University: Department of Urban and Regional Planning (June 1980). Mimeographed. KRIESIS, Paul. \"Catch T.P.\" Journal of - the Town Planning -Institute 49 (December 1963): 176-l8X KRUECKEBERG, Donald A. \"Practical Demand for Analytic Methods.\" In Planning Theory - in - the -19801s, pp. 309-340. Edited by R.W. Burchell and George Sternlieb. New Brunswick, N.J.: Center for Urban Policy Research, Rutgers University, 1978. KUHN, Thomas S. The-Structure of Scientific-Revolutions. 2nd ed., enl. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970. LANGER, Suzanne. Philosophy in a -New Key. 3rd ed. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976. LASH, Harry. Planning in a Human -Way. Toronto, Macmillan Co., 1976. LEE, Douglas B., Jr. \"Requiem for Large-Scale Models.\" Journal of-the American Institute of Planners 39 (May 1973): 163-178. LINDBLOM, Charles E. \"The Science of Muddling Through.\" Public Administration - Review 19 (Spring 1959): 79-88. . The-Intelligence of Democracy. New York: The Free Press, 1965. LORENZ, Konrad. On-Agression. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1966. MARCH, James G. and SIMON, Herbert. Organizations. New York: John Wiley, 1959. MARUYAMA, Margoroh. \"Toward Cultural Symbiosis.\" In Evolution and Consciousness, pp. 198-213. Edited by Erich Jantsch and Conrad H. Waddington. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1976. MARX, Leo. \"Reflections on the Neo-Romantic Critique of Science.\" Daedalus (Spring 1978): 61-74. MAY, Rollo. \"Gregory Bateson and Humanistic Psychology.\" In About Bateson, pp. 77-99. Edited by John Brockman. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1977. MCLUHAN, Marshall. The Gutenberg Galaxy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962: Mentor Books, 1969. 186 MILLER, S.M. Review -of S o c i a l - P l a n n i n g : - A - Primer - f o r - U r b a n i s t s , by E l i z a b e t h Wood. J o u r n a l o f the American I n s t i t u t e o f P l a n n e r s 32 ( J u l y 1966): 248-249. MINI, P i e r o V. P h i l o s o p h y and Economics. G a i n e s v i l l e , F l a . : U n i v e r s i t y o f F l o r i d a P r e s s , 1974. MORRIS, Desmond. The Naked Ape. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967. MORRIS, Monica B. An - E x c u r s i o n - i n t o - C r e a t i v e - S o c i o l o g y . New York: Columbia U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s , 1977. MYRDAL, Gunnar. O b j e c t i v i t y i n - S o c i a l - R e s e a r c h . New York: Pantheon Books, 1969. NEWMAN, Oscar. D e f e n s i b l e Space: - Crime - P r e v e n t i o n through Urban-Design. New York:\" M a c m i l l a n Co., 1972. \" NIEBANCK, P a u l L. \"The C a p t i v i t y o f t h e P l a n n i n g P r o f e s s i o n . \" I n The S t r u c t u r a l - C r i s i s o f the 1970's -and - Beyond: The Need-for-a New Pl a n n i n g - T h e o r y , pp. 202-208. E d i t e d by Harvey A. G o l d s t e i n and Sa r a A. Rosenberry. V i r g i n i a P o l y t e c h n i c I n s t i t u t e & S t a t e U n i v e r s i t y : May 1978. 0LSS0N, Gunnar. \" S o c i a l S c i e n c e and Human A c t i o n o r on H i t t i n g Your Head A g a i n s t t h e C e i l i n g o f Language.\" In P h i l o s o p h y in-Geography, pp. 287-307. E d i t e d by S. Ga l e and G. O l s s o n . D o r d r e c h t , H o l l a n d : D. R e i d e l P u b l i s h i n g , 1979. 0RT0NY, Andrew, ed. Metaphor and Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s , 1979. PACK, Janet Rothenberg. \"The Use o f Urban Models: Report on a Survey o f P l a n n i n g O r g a n i z a t i o n s . \" J o u r n a l - o f the - American - I n s t i t u t e o f Pl a n n e r s 41 (May 1975): 191-200. PEPPER, Stephen C. World Hypotheses. B e r k e l e y : U n i v e r s i t y o f C a l i f o r n i a P r e s s , 1942. . Concept-and Q u a l i t y . L a S a l l e , 111.: Open Court P u b l i s h i n g Co., 1966. PERIN, Constance. E v e r y t h i n g - i n - i t s - P l a c e . P r i n c e t o n : P r i n c e t o n U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s , 1979. PIAGET, Jean. The P l a c e o f the S c i e n c e s o f Man i n the System o f S c i e n c e s . New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1970. . Main Trends i n I n t e r d i s c i p l i n a r y R e s e a r c h . New York: Harper & Row, 1973. PIVEN, F r a n c e s Fox. \" P l a n n i n g and C l a s s I n t e r e s t s . \" J o u r n a l o f the American I n s t i t u t e o f P l a n n e r s 41 (November 1975): 3 0 8 - 3 1 0 . PLATH, S y l v i a . \"The Munich Mannequins.\" In A r i e l . London: Faber & Fab e r , 1976. p. 74. 187 POLANYI, Michael. Personal-Knowledge. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958; corrected edition, 1962. POULET, Georges. \"The Dream of Descartes.\" In Studies - in -Human - Time, pp. 50-73. Translated by E l l i o t Coleman. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1956. PRIGOGINE, Ilya. \"Order Through Fluctuation: Self-organization and Social System.\" In Evolution-and - Consciousness, pp. 93-133- Edited by Erich Jantsch and Conrad H. Waddington. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1976. . \"Order Out of Chaos.\" Public lecture presented at the University of Texas. November 18, 1977. (Verbatim transcript) PROST, Robert. \"Emergence des sciences de l'action.\" Universite de Montreal. June 1979. (Mimeographed) RAPPAPORT, Roy A. \"Sanctity and Adaptation.\" Co-Evolution Quarterly (Summer 1 9 7 4 ) : 5 4 - 6 8 . RATTRAY TAYLOR, Gordon. The Natural History of the Mind. London: Seeker & Warburg, 1979. REDDY, Michael J. \"The Conduit Metaphor: A Case of Frame Conflict in our Language About Language.\" In Metaphor-and Thought, pp. 284-324. Edited by Andrew Ortony. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979. REIN, Martin and SCHON, Donald A. \"Problem-Setting in Policy Research.\" In Using Social - Research-in-Public-Policy-Making, pp. 235-251. Edited by Carol H. Weiss. Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath, 1977. RICHARDSON, N.H. \"Editorial.\" Plan-Canada 7 (July 1966): 3-6. ROBINSON, Joan. Economic - Philosophy\u00E2\u0080\u00A2 Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1964. . Economic Heresies: Some Old-Fashioned Questions in Economic Theory. New York: Basic Books, 1971. ROSE, Albert. Regent Park: A Study in Slum-Clearance. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1958. . \"Canadian Housing Policies.\" In The Right to Housing, pp. 63-139. Edited by Michael WheelerT Montreal: Harvest House, 1968. . Citizen Participation in Urban Renewal. Final report of a study conducted under the auspices of the Centre for Urban and Community Studies, University of Toronto. February, 1974. SAMUELSON, Paul A. and SCOTT, Anthony. Economics. 3rd Canadian edition. Toronto, McGraw-Hill, 1971. SAUSSURE, Ferdinand de. Course in General - Linguistics. Translated by Ward Baskins. London: Peter Owen, 1964. 188 SCHOLES, Robert. Structuralism in - Literature. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974. SCHON, Donald A. \"Framing and Reframing the Problems of Cities.\" Paper presented to the York University Conference on Urban Innovation, June 1978. (Mimeographed) . \"Generative Metaphor: A Perspective on Problem Setting in Social Policy.\" In Metaphor and - Thought, pp. 254-283. Edited by Andrew Ortony. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979. _. Displacement -of - Concepts. London: Tavistock, 1963. SEARLE, John R. Speeeh-Acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969. \"Chomsky's Revolution in Linguistics.\" In On Noam - Chomsky: Cr i t i c a l - Essays, pp. 2-33. Edited by G. Harman. New York: Anchor Books, 1974. SENNETT, Richard. The Uses of Disorder: Personal-Identity and City Life. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970. SIMON, Herbert A. Models of Man. London: John Wiley, 1957. SONTAG, Susan. Illness as Metaphor. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1977. SPRAGGUE, Godfrey, L. \"Canadian Planners* Goals: Deep Roots and Fuzzy Thinking.\" Canadian - Public - Administration 18 (Summer 1975): 216-234. SPURLING, Laurie. Phenomenology and the Social World. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977. SUTHERLAND, John W. AGeneral Systems Philosophy for the Social and Behavioral-Sciences. New York: Braziller, 1973. TORONTO. ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON THE URBAN RENEWAL STUDY. Urban Renewal: A Study of the - City-of - Toronto. Toronto: 1956. _. TORONTO. CITY OF TORONTO PLANNING BOARD. Don Planning District Appraisal. Toronto: September 1963. TURBAYNE, Colin M. The Myth of Metaphor. Revised edition. Columbia, S.C: University of South Carolina Press, 1971. WALRAS, Leon. Elements of - Pure Economics. Translated by William Jaffe. Published for the American Economic Association and The Royal Economics Society. Homewood, 111.: Richard D. Irwin, 1954. WEBBER, Melvin M. \"A Difference Paradigm for Planning.\" In Planning Theory in the 1980's, pp. 151-162. Edited by R.W. Burchell and George Sternlieb. New Brunswick, N.J.: Center for Urban Policy Research, Rutgers University, 1978. WEINER, Norbert. The Human Use of Human Beings. 2nd ed., revised. New York: Doubleday, 1950: Anchor Books, 1954. 189 WILDEN, Anthony. \"Changing Frames of Order: Cybernetics and the Machina Mundi.\" In Communication and Control in Society, pp. 9-29. Edited by K. Krippendorff. New York: Gordon & Bresch, 1979. . System and Structure: - Essays in Communication and Exchange. London: Tavistock, 1972. and WILSON, Tim. \"The Double Bind: Logic, Magic, and Economics.\" In Double Bind:- The-Foundation of the Communicational-Approach to the Family, pp. 263-286. Edited by Carlos E. Sluzki and Donald C. Ransom. New York: Grune & Stratton, 1976. "@en . "Thesis/Dissertation"@en . "10.14288/1.0095011"@en . "eng"@en . "Planning"@en . "Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library"@en . "University of British Columbia"@en . "For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use."@en . "Graduate"@en . "Criticism and the plausible plan: theory and method"@en . "Text"@en . "http://hdl.handle.net/2429/23155"@en .