The Communicative Turn in Urban Planning: Unravelling Paradigmatic, Imperialistic and Moralistic Dimensions

The emerging paradigm of communicative or collaborative planning has dominated theoretical discourse since the early 1980s. Rather than one coherent position, there are a variety of schools that vary in their emphasis on different aspects of social and critical theory and their mixture of analyses and prescription. Critiques of communicative planning have been scarce and have challenged or questioned specific aspects rather than critiquing the paradigm as a whole. We identify six broad themes in the paper from a variety of sources and explore their relationship to communicative planning theory. These critiques do not, in our opinion, threaten to undermine communicative planning but present questions that need to be addressed. In undertaking a dialectical engagement with such critiques, communicative planning theory will be strengthened and made more attractive to practitioners--an audience that so far has been less than willing to take up such ideas.