重温规划理论

Planning Theory Revisited

在对规划理论的起源进行了简要回顾之后,作者提出了以下问题:在规划理论建设经历了50年的活跃发展之后,为什么从事规划理论著述的人们还不能对其学科的正式定义达成一致?经过研究作者提出了四个可能的答案:规划定义作为一种理论建设目标的问题;我们在讨论规划时不可能将它与实际的制度和政治环境分离开来;进行规划理论研究有若干种模式,而且在它们之中难于取舍;将权力关系纳入规划论述中的困难。本文对三个应该作为理论建设的中心问题进行了简要评论:城市人居环境的产生,公民社会的兴起,以及权力问题。

After brief personal recollections of the origins of planning theory, the author poses the question of why, after five decades of active theorizing, it is still impossible for people engaged in writing planning theory to agree on a formal definition of their subject. Four possible answers are explored： the problem of defining planning as an object to be theorized, the impossibility of talking about planning disconnected from actual institutional and political contexts; the several modes of doing plannning theory and the dilemma of choosing among them; and the difficulty of incorporating power relations into planning discourse. The paper concludes with a brief comment on three themes that should be made central to theorizing the production of the urban habitat, the rise of civil society, and the question of power.