Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
now widely held view that any planning framework exerts power over subsequent
decisions, and that all communication is the exercise of power, whether exercised
consciously or not.
Despite the increasing recognition of the importance of language and com-
munication, however, work within the planning community has so far focused on
words and not images. In the same way that using a certain style of language can
help to get a strategy accepted, it could be argued that using familiar plan con-
cepts (i.e. the images used to describe the components of the spatial structure)
can help to communicate spatial policy and increase its acceptability (Needham,
1997). Therefore, it could be argued that, if communicative planning theory is to
reflect the full range of modes and media of communication in planning and
society, it needs to address images as well as words (Neuman, 2000).
Given that planning theory has so far largely ignored the consideration of the
'visual language', planning approaches that consider the role of information and
knowledge in shaping planning processes provide a useful starting point for the
analysis of communicative distortions through cartographic representations in plan-
ning processes, assuming that these illustrations are understood as a specific
form of information, and 'maps' are treated as an extended concept of 'text' (cf.
Chapter 3). The contemporary planning theorist John Forester has been concerned
with the way in which political power imbalances influence and shape the planning
system. Drawing on Habermas's theory of communicative action (1984), Forester
analyses the way in which information and language frame 'reality' in planning, and
the way in which the 'expectations, beliefs, hopes and understandings' (Forester,
1993: 25) of planning actors are shaped through communication and interaction.
Forester argues that informed, unmanipulated action depends upon four practical
conditions of communication, i.e. information and communication in the planning
process need to be (1) clear and comprehensive, (2) sincere and trustworthy, (3)
appropriate and legitimate, and (4) accurate and true. Just as these conditions are
never guaranteed to be satisfied, Forester (1989) argues, there is no guarantee
against the presence of misinformation, or even manipulation, in planning.
Following Lukes (1974), Habermas (1984) and Foucault (1980), Forester iden-
tifies three types of power: first, the ability to
make decisions
(for instance over pol-
icies or resource allocations); second, the ability to
filter issues
on to or off
decision-makers' agendas; and third, the ability to
shape others' perceptions
of
issues, needs, and even themselves. Forester's reformulated model of bounded
rationality (Forester, 1989) thus integrates formal rational and the different political
analyses of planning into a single model that conceptualises the potentially multiple
roles that information may play in planning. According to Forester, there are several
types of misinformation: inevitable or unnecessary,
ad ho
c or systematic; and related
causes for distortion in communication in the planning process (see Figure 2.1).
