Advocacy and Pluralism in Planning

This weeks reading was called Advocacy and Pluralism in Planning by Paul Davidoff and was written in 1965. It strongly concentrated on the interaction between planning professionals and people or local communities, highlighting the importance of putting plans into action that involve what the people actually want and need, as opposed to assuming everything the government says is the correct course of action.

Pluralism describes the process and advocacy describes the role performed by the professional in the process, in this case we are referring to planners.

In this weeks seminar Dan and Adam prepared two group activities for us to participate in, these involved taking on the role and point of views of Government, Corporations and the people. Through this we were able to look at certain situatuions from different perspectives and how planning decisions effect each individual group.

An important aspect I noticed during the first activity is that the government and corporations proposals were ultimately going to succeed over the needs of the local community, in this case Grassington (sorry if I got the name wrong). This then raised the issue amongst the group, how do we as planners give the community a better voice? How can we advocate and give a voice to the ideas that people believe will be most sustainable and economically viable for there town.

Similar to a legal advocate, a planning advocate pleads for his own and the peoples view of the good society. One of the many benefits that comes with advocate planning is the possibility it creates for a planner to find employment with agencies holding values similar to his or her own. If a planner can be surrounded by a working environment where everyone shares the same values, then the liklihood of gaining the best possible result for the client is increased.