CITY PLANNING AS IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE
BY DR. EARL A. LEVIN
THE FOLLOWING is excerpted from the forthcoming book, City Planning as Ideology and Practice: Selected Speeches by Dr. Earl A. Levin, published by the Institute of Urban Studies at the University of Winnipeg.’
L’ARTICLE QUI SUIT est tiré du livre à paraître « City Planning as Ideology and Practice: Selected Speeches » par le Dr Earl A. Levin, publié par l’Institute of Urban Studies de l’Université de Winnipeg. Veuillez consulter le site Web
ius.uwinnipeg.ca pour tout renseignement connexe.
T
he town planning movement in Canada emerged as a move- ment which held that society generally could be improved
through town planning. [It was] a movement with rather a limited and specialized following, made up of high-minded members of the middle class and inspired by an urban utopian ideology.
As a utopian ideology, city planning can
be discussed and theorized about simply as a system of ideas. The ideas which com- prise such a system need not necessarily have any reference to practical reality, nor indeed, for that matter, to any aspect of reality. Ideas have their own reality and can exist in their own ideological world. This is why the medieval schoolmen could seriously debate the question of how many angels can stand on the head of a needle, and why town planning enthusiasts in the early years of the 20th century could believe that town planning, through the application of science, and motivated by sound moral principles, could achieve
unlimited improvement not only of our towns and cities, but also of our rural coun- tryside and indeed of our entire society. The view of city planning as a utopian
ideology is still a very current one. From this viewpoint city planning is seen as hav- ing an identity apart from city government. Nor is this view held merely by the uniniti- ated layperson. It is found among those who earn their living as planners, very commonly among academics and research workers in the fi eld of urban aff airs, and particularly in the planning programs taught in our planning schools. It is not uncommon to encounter the view that city planning exists outside of the context of
city government or has only a circumstan- tial relationship with city government arising simply out of the circumstance that the city is the appropriate location for a city planning movement. This view holds that city planning has its real being in the realm of social ideology or reform, and that its true goals lie in the improvement of the human condition; that it pursues its sepa- rate goals apart from those of the city government and shares those goals with city government only insofar as those of the city government accord with its own; that it has its own morality and code of eth- ics over and above those which prevail in the community and the civic government; and that the “city planner” as part of “city planning” also stands in this same remote relationship to city government. Most academic planning theory is still
based on the view of planning as an ideol- ogy. That is why academic planning theory is so frequently indistinguishable from sociological theory or moral philosophy. That is why words like rationality, justice, and equity recur so frequently in the theo- ries of planning, and why the betterment of the human condition is postulated as the goal of city planning. I believe that none of this really makes any sense at all except in the context of planning as a utopian ideol- ogy; and to build a theory of city planning upon these [ideas] is to woefully misunder- stand the nature of the city planning
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