Populist or Democratic Urbanism

In the past, the planning advice function came from a compromise between 'expert power and bureaucracy,' justifying itself. Whenever being influenced by the client-planner relationship and the client's political affiliations. In the 1960s, as new political powers emerged, planning shifted towards a client-oriented and focused on politicians. However, this led to neglecting the public's needs. This sparked the discourse on the participation movement in planning (D Godschalk). After that, new planning theories were developed. #Social # Training and #Social #Guidance are the most important new views. #Advocative #planning is essential to address social values, and today's questions, and provide social guidance and training in planning. These three aspects suggest a new way of thinking linked to the purpose of planning, in response to the changing social and political concepts of planning. They are viewed as interconnected social processes.

Advocacy Planning

In urban democracy, should urban planning include everyone's attachments? The main challenge in grasping people's desires is the lack of dialogue between city planners and the people. People's desires can be categorized into needs and developmental goals. Advocacy planning considers people's qualifications and values. Should planning address the conflict between meeting needs and promoting development? Advocacy planning aims to recognize societal diversity. A lack of dialogue between city planners and the community can lead to ignoring certain groups' interests, forgetting public interests, and abandoning planned societal progress. The new legitimacy of urban planning is based on supporting the values and needs of the community members affected by planning decisions (Rein, M.). Urbanization following future-oriented steps must actively participate in political decisions to create effective urban democracy (Davidoff). Advocacy planning must align with beneficiary needs and community engagement while introducing new values and respecting existing ones, but these goals can be incompatible, presenting a key challenge.

Social Guidance

The emphasis of advocacy planning on the citizen-city planner relationship highlights the normative concept of the #Active #Society (Etzioni). Social guidance relies on the importance of values, societal supervision, and people's satisfaction. These are connected with the determination of values, with additional factors such as knowledge, consciousness, and power playing a role in decisions.

Social Training

Advocacy planning aims to involve engaging community groups in urban development. However, a major challenge arises from the misalignment between the scientific methods used by city planners and the practical experience of community members, leading to differences in objectives, technical expertise, and communication styles. #Transactive #planning (Johan Fridmann) facilitates two-way learning between city planners and the public within a cellular structure. This social training model is linked to small, unranked committees overseen by popular councils.

This article is based on the article by Johann Albrecht, 1986. "Development, context, and Purpose of Planning