PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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principle) for the development of their ecological modernization theories. Yet it appears
as an almost Freudian slip for Gleeson to suggest that the suggested re-enlightenment of
planning in essence consist of an improved identification and regulation (!) of “the
ecological and social risks arising from the production of space.” By presenting such a
limited vision, Gleeson holds planners (and policy makers) locked within the bounds of a
crisis-managing ecological modernization approach that keeps them deeply implicated in
the ongoing crisis of state legitimacy which he himself also bemoaned at the outset of his
article (and which is now more fashionably discussed under the label “governance”). The
actual “producers of space” in modern capitalist democracies (e.g. property developers,
industrialists, construction companies, and, in some limited cases, the state itself), on the
other hand, remain fundamentally unchallenged in their role, since their actions are at
best being “regulated”. Planners are once again relegated to being the “henchmen” of
capitalist market development. Foglesong’s (1986) capitalist-democracy contradiction
remains unresolved. Finally, Gleeson’s suggestion that this precautionary action (i.e.
regulation) be legitimated by “democratic rather than simply scientific or economic
opinion” shows a welcome post-positivist awareness regarding the impossibility of
scientific objectivity, but it also ends the discussion at the very point where it should
begin, namely with a debate over how exactly democratic institutions would need to be
re-conceptualized in order to successfully build critical awareness (and, equally important
in my view, re-distributive mechanisms) into planning and political decision-making.
Gleeson simply leaves us hanging, concluding with the insight that democracy, (defined
here as “the refusal of humanity to be governed without reason”) is the central ideal of
reflexive modernization.