Official proceedings of the annual meeting: 1968

Advocacy and Urban Planning
by MARSHALL KAPLAN
To DATE, THE CITY PLANNING PROFESSION and, therefore,
most city planners have played a peripheral role in American
urban life. Steeped in a philosophical tradition of logical positivism, planners have for the most part viewed their role as primarily that of applying the value system of others to a set of facts
which they can aggregate, analyze, and (under guidance) forge
into a set of alternative programs and strategies. This bifurcation
of fact and value parallels the historical fears of the planning profession to "mix in politics." Indeed, one of the earliest institutions to evolve from the acceptance of planning as a city function
was the planning commission. Its prime function, besides serving
as collective salesman for the still embryonic profession, was to
separate the planner from the "evil" influences of city hall.
The separation by fiat reflected in the insertion of the commission between technician and politician merely ratified the
already accepted normative behavior pattern that technicians
should, like mystics, receive values from the outside. Both the
institution and the philosophy would have been enough to lessen
the impact of the emerging profession. Unfortunately, however,
a third millstone was added as a burden. In essence, city planning
and the city planner were mesmerized by their concern, primarily
with the physical environment, and their acceptance of a deterministic view of the importance of that environment. Paraphrasing Robert Frost, good neighborhoods make good people.
Unfortunately, planning came of age during an aseptic era in
American city government. In effect, the combined influence of
the New Deal and the local government reformer diminished the
role of city hall as a broker of conflict, as a place where often