PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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1.3 Situating the Study within the Existing Social Science Literature
Changes in planning and policy discourse are not always congruent with changes
in policies and development trends (see e.g. Filion’s 1999 local case study on Toronto).
Nevertheless, “the argumentative turn in policy analysis and planning” (Fischer and
Forester 1993) continues relatively unchallenged. Over the past three decades, all social
scientists, no matter whether they are considered to be working in a modernist (e.g.
Habermasian), post-modernist (e.g. Foucauldian), or anti-modernist (e.g. Deep Ecology)
framework, have learned to pay greater attention to discourses and rhetoric. 2 As Fainstein
(2000:451) recently summarized for the academic discipline of planning:
The past decade has witnessed a reinvigoration of theoretical discussion within the
discipline of planning. Inspired by postmodernist cultural critique and by the move
among philosophers away from logical positivism toward a substantive concern with
ethics and public policy, planning theorists have reframed their debates over methods
and programs to encompass issues of discourse and inclusiveness.
The parallel existence of different “discourses” - or rather, as I clarify in my
theory chapters: of different “discursive frameworks” - all display varying levels of
optimism with regard to the merits and prospects of rational decision-making. This
indicates that the social sciences are fundamentally in need of redefining themselves.
Especially when it comes to environmental questions, traditional disciplinary distinctions
are easily blurred. Twenty years ago, most social scientists concerned about the macro
issues of (sustainable) development and globalization probably would have been content
to self-describe themselves as economists, political scientists, geographers or perhaps
2 Greater attention to discourse and language is typically seen as a postmodern phenomenon. Yet it can equally well
be interpreted as a decidedly modernist trait. In the Condition of Postmodernity, David Harvey reminds us that in
facing the practical dilemmas of implementing the modernist project, “modernism, from its very beginning,
therefore, became preoccupied with language, with finding some special mode of representation of eternal truths”
(Harvey 1989:20).