Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
the acceptance of policy maps in planning as a negotiated and by definition selective
planning instrument.
Habermas's theory of communicative action counters this conceptualisation
of policy-making as a process of rational choice, as well as the perception of plan-
ning as an ultimately political process. The communicative rationality planning
approach regards policy-making as choice-making, but is also concerned with the
way in which actors in the process communicate and interact. In particular
Forester's model of bounded rationality (1989) links the idea that planning is both
about choice-making and interaction to ideas about the instrumental and different
political roles that information and knowledge may be expected to play in the plan-
ning process. His interactive level of analysis focuses on the relationship between
language, information and power in planning, and although his model does not
explicitly consider the role of cartographic representations in the process, the
typology of communicative distortions is a useful framework for the analysis of
communication of spatial policy through maps (as a particular form of knowledge).
The review of work related to cartographic communication theory has
demonstrated that although this is a well researched area, most previous work has
concentrated on explaining the graphical aspects of cartographic communication.
Instead of continuing to concentrate on developing the 'perfect' model of carto-
graphic communication, developments in the field of Geographic Information
Systems (GIS) and geographic visualisation have been given increasing attention
in the field of cartography over the last years, and potentially increased an under-
standing of how maps are constructed, and the processes and choices underlying
the presentation of data. Furthermore, a social constructivist understanding of
maps as forms and practices of power and knowledge also offers some tools to
analyse the 'meaning' of maps.
Bringing the discussions of the theoretical perspectives on planning and car-
tographic communication together, it becomes obvious that they show some
important parallels in their development over time. Both developed from positivist
and rational approaches, which concentrated on 'observable' phenomena using
'objective', mainly quantitative methods in the 1950s and 1960s, to a more com-
municative, hermeneutic
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and social constructivist understanding today. The com-
municative, hermeneutic approach focuses on social interaction in a complex
world, and increasingly employs qualitative methods. The need for communication
and negotiation in such a shared-power world is evident. The new paradigms have
also led to the acceptance that cultural differences in values and norms between
nation-states and regions exist, and that these have to be dealt with in a European
or even international context.
The literature review also showed that there has been little previous work
explicitly analysing the role of cartographic representations in the planning process.
