Moral Obligations, Planning, and the Public Interest: A Commentary on Current British Practice

Abstract

Planning, as a form of state intervention administered at the local level, is inevitably subject to the pressures and vagaries of governmental and societal change. The recent past has been a particularly turbulent period for local governance and this has inevitably impacted on the role of planning practitioners and the expectations placed upon them. As a consequence, fundamental value questions have arisen concerning the role and purpose of planning and, in addition, the hegemonic status of a unifying ethic of professional responsibility has been called into question. Our aim in this paper is to explore the different obligations which at various times influence the individual planner's behaviour or actions, with the further purpose of exploring the changing nature of planning and the consequent implications for contemporary conceptions of the public interest. The main body of the paper consists of an analysis of the competing tensions of contemporary practice as viewed from the perspective of the obligations owed to individual values, professionalism, employing organisations, politicians, and the public. In the course of this exploration we examine the ways in which these tensions have been influenced and heightened by the reconfiguration of the relationships between the state, society, and the individual which occurred during the 1980s and 1990s as part of the neoliberal agenda of successive Conservative governments in Britain. We conclude by considering the extent to which the notion of the public interest still has value as a legitimising frame of reference for public planning.

Local Building Regulators’ Institutionalised Behaviour Towards Mass Customised Housing (MCH)

“…The second-most appealing characteristic of MCH is the higher level of housing satisfaction experienced by house buyers (μ=3.68). These two statements illustrate the public-interest motivation among respondents, which has long been reported by other researchers (see for instance Campbell & Marshall, 2000). Illegal renovations have long been a problem for Local Authorities, in terms of time and resources needed for enforcement and negative impact on the neighbourhood in terms of health and safety and aesthetics.…”

“…Respondent 20's observation is along the same line with Respondent 4, again citing differences in actors' motivations and practices as the determinant of acceptance of housing innovations. These indications of scepticism hinted of the possessiveness of planners over public interest as argued by Campbell and Marshall (2000). However, Respondent 20 was more critical on how stakeholders define innovation, as sometimes innovation is promoted despite the seemingly insignificant departure from convention.…”

“…For these respondents, developers are generally the 'bad guys' looking out to make as much economic profits as possible from their ventures, at the expense of house buyers and regulations. The dogma of developers as profit-hungry cowboys is not a recent belief (Agus, 2004;Campbell & Marshall, 2000 Clearly, there was a stigma attached to the business of housing development, particularly the perception of excessive profiteering among developers. Conversely, the authority was often seen as defenders of the people, operating to uphold public interest (Campbell & Marshall, 2000).…”

“…The dogma of developers as profit-hungry cowboys is not a recent belief (Agus, 2004;Campbell & Marshall, 2000 Clearly, there was a stigma attached to the business of housing development, particularly the perception of excessive profiteering among developers. Conversely, the authority was often seen as defenders of the people, operating to uphold public interest (Campbell & Marshall, 2000). However, a respondent had a different opinion regarding the clear dichotomy of 'good government/bad developer', whereby the government was seen as facilitating developers' unethical activities.…”

“…According to Gao, the web interface that enables user-designer interaction also could be used by other development actors, including the government in implementing and enforcing development control. Thus, the computeraided process flexibility may be impeded by the local authority's interpretation of planning and design guidelines , which is in turn influenced by extraneous factors such as public interest and political input (Campbell & Marshall, 2000), overlapping policy instruments (Malpezzi & Mayo, 1997) and the local economy (Bramley & Leishman, 2005) and in the case of Malaysia, insufficient manpower, in terms of both inadequate number and skills of personnel (Sufian & Ab. Rahman, 2008).…”