Front cover image for Planning in the public domain : from knowledge to action

Planning in the public domain : from knowledge to action

John Friedmann addresses a central question of Western political theory: how, and to what extent, history can be guided by reason. In this comprehensive treatment of the relation of knowledge to action, which he calls planning, he traces the major intellectual traditions of planning thought and practice. Three of these--social reform, policy analysis, and social learning--are primarily concerned with public management. The fourth, social mobilization, draws on utopianism, anarchism, historical materialism, and other radical thought and looks to the structural transformation of society "from below." After developing a basic vocabulary in Part One, the author proceeds in Part Two to a critical history of each of the four planning traditions. The story begins with the prophetic visions of Saint-Simon and assesses the contributions of such diverse thinkers as Comte, Marx, Dewey, Mannheim, Tugwell, Mumford, Simon, and Habermas. It is carried forward in Part Three by Friedmann's own nontechnocratic, dialectical approach to planning as a method for recovering political community
eBook, English, 1987
Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., 1987
History
1 online resource (xii, 501 pages) : illustrations
9780691214009, 069121400X
1159003370
pt. 1. Concpets
1. The terrain of planning theory
pt. 2. Traditions
2. Two centuries of planning theory: an overview
3. Planning as social reform
4. Planning as policy analysis
5. Planning as social learning
6. Planning as social mobilization
pt. 3. Emergents
7. Where do we stand?
8. From critique to reconstruction
9. The recovery of political community
10. The mediations of radical planning