PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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most certain victor of modernity” (p.166). To be sure, he is speaking of a doubt “arising
not from ignorance but from greater knowledge and further questioning” i.e. a doubt
arising out of a general attitude of self-awareness and even self-criticism.
Gleeson (2000:124), inspired by contemporary defenders of Enlightenment
thought such as Beck and Hayward and, ultimately, by Kant himself, joins their plea for
“a non-reductionist view of the Enlightenment that avoids the simple depiction of
modernization as the rule of instrumental rationality.” In particular, he correctly points to
the misleading dichotomy apparent in much ecological thought opposing Nature and
Enlightenment. Gleeson (132-133), however, ultimately ends up concluding his call for a
re-enlightenment of planning and policy-making by simply suggesting the following:
In the contemporary context, modernization implies a broad reanimation of urban
governance that recognizes and addresses the demise of simple industrialism and the
rise of a new reflexive modernity.… What Beck’s thesis suggests is that planning, and
other democratic institutions, must project uncertainty into domains of ‘constructed
certitude’, such as the market, and resist the pressures to surrender up critical
awareness. The precautionary principle seems to recommend itself as a concrete
instance of what Beck has in mind. Reading Beck, this principle represents perhaps
one possible public interest for a re-enlightenment of planning. [Its] application to
planning would help identify and regulate the ecological and social risks arising
from the production of space. This is not to furnish an excuse for institutional
procrastination, but a new remit for precautionary action authorized by democratic
rather than simply scientific or economic opinion.
[Bold emphasis added, italics in the original.]
For Gleeson, as an urban theorist/planner, to inadvertently revert to this oldest,
most original of all ecological modernization principles at the end of his reflections on
reflexive modernization is highly revealing. The article is explicitly based on a review of
Ulrich Beck’s work and makes no reference to the ecological modernization literature, so
Gleeson does not mention the central role that the originators of ecological modernization
theory, Jänicke and Huber, afforded to the Vorsorgeprinzip (i.e. the precautionary