Communicative planning

Communicative planning is an approach to urban planning that gathers stakeholders and engages them in a process to make decisions together in a manner that respects the positions of all involved. It is also sometimes called collaborative planning among planning practitioners.

Since the 1970s, communicative planning theory has formed based on several key understandings. These key points include the notions that communication and reasoning come in diverse forms, knowledge is socially constructed, and people’s diverse interests and preferences are formed out of their social contexts. Communicative theory also draws on Foucauldian analyses of power in that it recognizes that power relations exist in practice and have the ability to oppress individuals. Specific to a community and urban planning context, communicative theory acknowledges that planners' own actions, words, lived experiences, and communication styles have an effect on the planning process the planner is facilitating. Finally, communicative planning theory advances the idea that planning happens in everyday practice and social relations, and consensus-building can be used to organize people's thoughts and move past traditional ways of knowing and decision-making.

In the 1990s, a number of planning scholars began writing about a new orientation to urban planning theory that moved away from the prevalent rational approach to planning. Judith Innes is credited with coining the term "communicative planning" in her article Planning Theory’s Emerging Paradigm: Communicative Action and Interactive Practice. Innes' tries to bridge the gap between planning theories and planning in practice, and offers consensus-building as a tool for urban planners to create collaborative and engaging planning environments that allow different stakeholders to participate.

Around the same time as this article was published, Patsy Healey also published a number of planning theory texts exploring communicative and collaborative planning. Drawing on the theory of Jürgen Habermas in particular, Healey's work focuses on the impact that communicative acts (which can be in spoken or written form) have on a community planning process. Healey also expands on the work of urban planner John F. Forester and economic geographer Bent Flyvbjerg, both of whom examine Habermasian communication and power structures in their planning work.

The emerging field of therapeutic planning is closely related to communicative planning. Therapeutic planning operates on the basis that communities can experience collective trauma, including from past planning processes, and that carefully facilitated community engagement can act as catalysts for community-wide healing. Some planning practicioners use untraditional planning approaches, such as filmmaking and other artistic media, to engage community members in therapeutic planning processes.

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