PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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and policy-making. For these Habermasian adherents to the communicative rationality
approach, the focus on discourse and rhetoric is itself the centerpiece of a new approach
to planning and policy-making, and even to the social sciences more generally (for the
realm of transport planning, see especially Sager 1999; Langmyhr 2000; Willson 2001).
Here, discourse theory is no longer a means to an end. Rather, discourse and
communicative rationality provide the solution to environmental and social equity
struggles that we have been struggling with of late. Greater communicative rationality is
assumed to result in greater equity and social justice and better environments. In sum, we
have an entire theoretical approach that is strongly process-oriented at its core. We will
come back to this important point during our detailed discussion of the different
discursive frameworks in Chapter 4. For now, suffice to note that for communicative
rationality scholars, Habermasian ideal speech situations usually seem more important
than either Foucauldian discourses or Flyvbjergian power-rationalities. I, however,
ultimately tend to stress the latter.
3.3.2 Modernity, Post-Modernity, Anti-Modernity
Above, I defined the EU’s dominant discursive framework of ecological
modernization as a “modernist” model of development. Modernity and modernism are
rather contested notions these days, and this categorization therefore deserves some
additional explanation, also with regard to the other discursive frameworks I develop.
Overall, one can differentiate between three different meta-theoretical
perspectives on social science: pro-modern, post-modern and anti-modern views.
Generally speaking, the rise of greater environmental awareness is frequently seen in