PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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excellent, discourse- and rhetoric-focused micro-level case studies that are very useful for
understanding how exactly decision-makers go about doing their work (e.g. Forester
1989; Healey 1992; Throgmorton 1992; Healey and Hillier 1996). It is only when the
analyses turn from critique to recommendation that the model runs into problems. Here,
many communicative theorists display a tendency to be overly idealistic about preexisting
power relationships, which are particularly relevant when dealing with large
scale infrastructures (as is certainly the case with the EU TENs). Taken together, Susan
Fainstein’s and Tim Richardson’s critiques present a concise summary of the model’s key
deficiencies from a political economy perspective. Fainstein (2000:455) notes that
in its effort to save planning from elitist tendencies, communicative planning theory
runs into difficulties. … Although their roots, via Habermas, are in critical theory,
once the communicative theorists move away from critique and present a manual for
action, their thought loses its edge. Habermas posited the ideal speech situation as a
criterion by which to register the distortion inherent in most interactions. … But when
instead ideal speech becomes the objective of planning, the argument takes a
moralistic tone, and its proponents seem to forget the economic and social forces that
produce endemic social conflict and domination by the powerful. There is the
assumption that if only people were reasonable, deep structural conflict would melt
away. Although unquestionably many disagreements can be ameliorated through
negotiation … persistent issues of displacement as a consequence of modernization
and siting of unwanted facilities proximate to weak constituencies are less susceptible
to resolution.
And, one might add, as scores of local activist groups fighting unwanted
motorways all over Europe will confirm, such “weak constituents” are often only able to
make their voice heard if they are able to frame their opposition within solid
environmental arguments, i.e. arguments backed by scientific evidence and couched in
legalistic language that allows them to take their arguments to court. Consequently, as
Richardson (2000:13) points out, communicative rationality theorists’