Planning and Language

I first began my university studies with only geography in mind. Critical thinking around spatial concepts is natural and joyful for me and the emerging field of geographic database management and analysis is a pathway into almost any field of study. A few years into finding where to apply my studies, I took a course that ultimately led me to the University of New Mexico focusing more on planning and community development with GIS mostly as supplement. I’m thrilled with the concepts and discussions happening in the UNM CRP program, though, it’s not quite as easy for me as pure geography. I find myself frustrated with some use of language within these concepts that I’ll highlight in these blog posts. Granted, some of my views may come from naivete with these concepts (or just general naivete) but, I think, at least a little, comes from deeper problems within planning that I hope to help in my future career.

My first language barrier was with the “wicked problem.” The idea is that a problem becomes wicked once it is so complex that there is not a one time solution that doesn’t make more problems. Dr. Jordan J. James further defines wicked problems, in his lecture, as not inherently evil but instead resistant to resolution (personal communication, August 23, 2018). According to Wikipedia, the term was first used in the Management Systems journal in 1967 when C. West Churchman, an internationally known professor in operations management, was describing how, in whatever field in which there are these problems, managers should be informed about all attempts to solve them that did not work. The term was later the subject of a papers talking about how problems in planning, architecture and social sciences are not often clearly defined and Wikipedia has a list of characteristics that these problems need to follow to become “wicked” taken from those papers (Wikipedia).

The next language barrier I encountered was a debate in our text about cities being "leftover baggage." As Bluestone describes, some economists refer to the city as leftover baggage from the industrial age, saying we don't need cities any longer now that we have the technology to globalize the economy, the centralization of work places that arose from the industrial revolution are unnecessary. Other economists argue that this isn't true, companies will value the innovation that comes from having a team that works in the same building "bumping" ideas into each other (Bluestone, 2008).

Now, I agree more with the argument that the city is not leftover baggage, but mostly because I can't ignore the social aspects of living in cities that create value outside of economics. This entire debate strikes me as one of the fundamental problems of planning in the 20th and 21st centuries; most of the policy implemented is focused only on economic growth. During and after the industrial revolution, economic growth directly aligned with better quality of life. Gone is the the rime of more money, the better. The growth of our economies is too reliant on fossil fuels and I strongly feel the emphasis of planning policy needs to change from how to create business but how to cultivate sustainable, local economies that can cope with increasing fuel prices and a changing climate much easier. What language and debates do we as planners have to create to see better approaches to complex problems?

Citations:

Bluestone, B., Stevenson, M. H., Williams, R. (2008). The Urban Experience: Economics, society, and public policy. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Wicked Problem. (n.d.). Retrieved September 4, 2018 from the Wikipedia Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem