PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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In a market-oriented paradigm, we may expect that the central values are likely to
follow the needs of the market.
(Dabinett and Richardson 1999:233)
In transport planning the synoptic paradigm still represents a barrier towards
acknowledging the importance of rhetoric.
(Langmyhr 2000:684)
Communicative rationality offers a new paradigm for transportation planning.
(Willson 2001:1)
Goodwin et al. (1991) suggest that the [UK] road traffic forecasts of 1989 could be the
key factor, ‘the watershed’, in bringing about a change in attitudes and approaches to
transport planning. … They can be seen retrospectively as the central factor in
facilitating a policy, or indeed a paradigm shift.
(Vigar 2000:22)
The first and theoretical part of [the Ph.D. thesis] draws a detailed picture of
automobility as a modern mobility paradigm.
(Beckmann 2001a:1)
This list of quotes could easily be extended indefinitely. We will come back to
most of the above statements later in the chapter. The last authors in particular imply that
paradigm shifts are mainly related to changing attitudes of researchers and/or policymakers.
This is not entirely incorrect but highly misleading. The key distinguishing
feature of a paradigm is that it provides a new meta-theory, i.e. a larger explanatory
framework that serves to explain many sub-theories. Most scholars today, however,
employ the term only at the level of middle-range theorizing and theory-building. To
boot, the diagnosed changes are often rather incremental, non-revolutionary, and
sometimes largely amount to wishful thinking on the part of the diagnosing scholars as
far as actual practice is concerned. 14
Note that for a meta-theory to become a new
paradigm, as defined in the Kuhnian sense, it also has to be accepted by a community of