The making of good public plans Phronesis, Phronetic Planning Research and Assemblage Thinking

Abstract

Planning for the common good requires the exercise of phronesis and a fitting ontology of planning situations. This paper critically appraises Flyvbjerg’s Phronetic Planning Research approach through the lens of Aristotelian phronesis and Assemblage Thinking, showing that it inadequately addresses these interdependent issues. It proposes an Assemblage-based Phronetic Planning Approach (APPA) and a methodology to implement it. APPA conceptualizes planning situations as multiplicities comprising assemblages which best represent their complexity, materiality and spatiality and simultaneously enunciate the relationality and situatedness of individual and collective phronesis. APPA offers an immanent approach to study and support the making of public plans. It stresses the co-constitution of phronesis, phronimos, collective phronesis and the situated ‘common good’ within interacting assemblages and entangled planning multiplicities unfolding in a milieu over the planning process. Making good public plans under present and future uncertainty involves steering these multiplicities to foster the emergence of collective phronesis and the good plan that delivers the situated common good. Professional planners and other actors, desiring the ‘successful symbiosis’ of humans and the material world, may strive to become phronimos. Future research needs to engage with the Deleuzoguattarian and Aristotelian scholarship to elucidate critical theoretical issues, develop novel methodologies and analytical tools and empirically test APPA in diverse planning situations and geographical contexts.