PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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While Flyvbjerg’s claim that social science is ruled by different waves of
“fashion” seems a bit overstated, his polemic statement nevertheless underscores the
urgent need to develop a term distinct from the notion of “paradigm” to connote
fundamental differences in the way that social scientists and professionals intellectually
frame, conceptualize and apply their work. These described differences can, but need
not, be directly linked to meta-theoretical, epistemological discussions about
postmodernist challenges and the (im)possibility of conducting doing valid, objective,
true social science research. In either case, it seems preferable to avoid the use of the
term paradigm. Taylor (1999), in an essay that analyzes intellectual changes in Anglo-
American town planning developments from 1945 onwards, also comes to the conclusion
that even the important shift from “modernist” to so-called “postmodernist” planning
theory is “a significant development but no paradigm shift”. I find Taylor’s (1999:329)
argumentation convincing:
Of course, we are not compelled to adopt the strong, fundamentalist conception of
paradigms … It is possible to use the concept in a weaker, more generous sense to
describe shifts of thought which are significant, but not necessarily fundamental to
people’s world view or conceptual scheme. …. However, … we need to be alert to the
dangers of over-using the concept. If every twist and turn in planning thought over the
past fifty years is described as another paradigm shift, the very notion of ‘paradigm
shift’ becomes superfluous. I therefore favor the use of the term in its ‘purer’, more
strict (and more restricted) sense.
According to Muller, Taylor, and, most recently and most emphatically,
Flyvbjerg, it is therefore incorrect to speak of a “paradigmatic shift” every time social
science theory and/or their resulting policy approaches undergo significant change. I
all to use the label “science” for this kind of activity. Even the expression ‘body of knowledge’ is too
pretentious for Foucault: ‘let us say, to be more neutral still … body of discourse.’” (The quote is taken