For this week, note that the case is not on blackboard – it is available online at:
Only pages 54-60 of this case are assigned – the rest is part of a sociology text and interprets the case differently than the way we are approaching it.
As we have discussed, modern planning was born on very big and debatable assumptions—mostly about who could and should “guide society” and how. Not surprisingly, modernist or rational planning came under severe criticism, especially on political grounds. But much of that criticism (like Altshuler’s) stayed at the broad, structural level without offering much advice on the micro-level, everyday settings in which planners actually practice. Our aim for next class is to focus on the micro level by focusing on planners as facilitators of disputes among stakeholders in pluralist democracies, where interests and values often come into conflict.
Your discussion question:
Drawing explicitly on different ideas from the readings, how would you approach the problem in the “Towering Dilemma” case as a planner? What are the principal obstacles to achieving resolution, and how can planning as facilitated dispute resolution help?
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