Community Planning for Political and Academic Debates

Discuss about the Community Planning for Political and Academic Debates.

Concept of Neo-liberalism:

The concept of ‘Neo-liberalism’ has become the locus of a myriad of political and academic debates over the past twenty years. As the term suggests, Neo-liberalism is a revived version of the concept of ‘liberalism’. As a political ideology, liberalism has been missing from all the political discussions only to resurface in its reincarnated form (Corbett and Walker 2013). The theory of liberalism has undergone a metamorphic change, ranging from its initial growth, to an intermediary decline in its popularity and finally coming back rejuvenated. Therefore, ‘neo-liberalism’ shares its roots and the basic properties from the concept of liberalism in general.

The irony, which this theory faces, is that any writer, who writes about the subject, always discusses this theory from a critical point of view. They are never to sympathize or even discuss about it from a neutral point of view. Neo liberalism is considered to be a component of critical literature, perceived as the return and spread of the economic liberalism. Economic liberalism believes in preventing the state from intervening in the economic activities of the individuals and hence encourages self- regulated and free markets (Bunyan 2013).

In order to understand the concept of Neo liberalism clearly, the knowledge of liberalism is necessary. Liberalism has dominated the political ideology in the west for more than sixty years now. The traces of this theory were present in almost all the political theories, discussions and movements in its native countries. This can be validated from the fact that there is no one who criticizes freedom or democracy (Sager 2014). These two elements are considered to be the primary attributes of liberalism. Liberalism is of the view that the state should limit its activities to the minimal, which means that the citizens should be left to freely do everything except managing the armed forces, enforcing the law etc. These responsibilities lie with the state and they must execute them efficiently.

Even though liberalism is considered to be a new phenomenon, the usage of the term dates back to early nineteenth century. The theory of neo liberalism is related to the political economic practices. It proposes that the human well-being can be encouraged by giving them entrepreneurial freedom in an institutional framework, which is strongly characterized by free markets, free trade and strict private property rights. The responsibility of the state is to only formulate and create an appropriate institutional framework for the people to continue with their economic practices (Becker et al. 2015).

In this case, the state also has to guarantee the integrity and quality of the money. It must establish the necessary defense, military, political and legal structures for the proper functioning of the markets as well as monitoring the private property rights. In case if the markets, do not exist, the state must create them by deliberate action. The responsibility of the state does not extend beyond these tasks. The state should not interfere much with the markets and must keep their interference to a bare minimum. This is because the strong interest groups will bias the state intervention in their favor for their benefit (Featherstone 2013).

The Role of Planners:

Community planners assist the communities in determining their future. Apart from working with the citizens, they perform various other functions like devising maps, working with the developers, protecting the environment and planning the transportation systems as well. These community planners are also responsible for implementing the policies and plans. Planners operate in every state around the world. They work in suburb, rural communities and cities. They work for the public sectors and the local governments (Myers and Goddard 2013). Planners can either focus on one particular type of planning such as urban design and transport planning or work in general towards the development of the community.

A good community plan is intended to benefit the community as much as it can and hence is a public good. However, the public goods do not receive the rewards from the benefactors like the private goods promoted in the public forums. Public goods always require public benefactors. Planning must be purposeful; otherwise, there is no point in getting involved in the planning process (Featherstone et al. 2015).  For example, if a giraffe fancies a long neck, it must extend the length of its neck. In the same manner if planning wants to move beyond the sphere of justifying the positions of the status quo and confirming the strengths of the powerful interest groups, it must transform from dormant to active community developers.

The community planners must identify and locate good places and ask the community members to go and settle there. The members of the community must have the opportunity to choose from good locations and landscapes. Whether they select it or not, the decision lies up to them. The role of community planner is also to regulate and monitor private land rights (Linenberg et al. 2013).

The two most important concepts that are crucial to understand the need for proper functioning of the community planners are the concept of public good and the neo liberal hegemony, which prevents a company from achieving the public good (Lippert 2014). Here, public good refers to a community preferable environment, which influences all the other communities.

There are certain groups, which make profits from the development of lands, and these profits are more than the specific patterns of development. These groups are called the growth machines of the given community of the state. The vision proliferated by the growth machines, become the vision of the community depending upon the cultural and political structure of the community (Waterhout et al. 2013). The problem does not lie in the incapability of the growth machines to offer the best vision of the community. The problem is that the prevalent neo liberalism ensures that the voice of the growth machines is the only voice that the local governments consider  Since the alternative visions provided by the public goods, provide no profit for the private firms, they are not considered to be adopted, even though they offer the best vision for the given community.

Contention of Neo-liberalism practice:

The resource, which must be allocated for community planning, depends upon the particular market actor. For the developers of land, a favorable outcome is directly related to the increase in profits. The most simple and hypothetical comparison indicate that there are certain types of community plans that emanate from planning processes that are collaborative in nature. As long as the market actors behave in a rational manner, the market will not be capable enough to allocate the resources effectively to provide public good (Guzey 2014).

The contemporary community planning processes are abiding by the neo liberal theory. It refers to the use of neo classical economics that is orthodox in nature, which is guiding the government and even the cultural and social relationships (Nelson 2013). In such a situation, the role of the state is to encourage unhindered functioning of the private markets.

The community planners are widely following the principle of market economy. The government has itself become a business, treating profit maximization as the sole purpose of governance. Economic growth, instead of any philosophical goal, has become the legitimator and the mission of the state. The effect of neo liberalism has led the community planners to use the land-use policy. Deregulation and protection of private property are the core principles of neo liberalism (Macleod 2013).

Currently, the contemporary planning is failing in two aspects. It emphasizes on the inclusion and process over the results of the participation of the most interested members. Secondly, these interests benefit from the easily manipulated and vague planning language. This facilitates the acceptance of a wide variety of the applications of land use, even those who are not included during the contemplation of the plan creation (Perera 2013).

The community planning process, lead by the neo liberalism concept, is defined by its ideology and purpose, at least as the public comprehends it, rather than the planning theorists might understand it. The problem with the contemporary community problem lies with pro-modernist tendencies that create out comes, which are disrespectful for the community. is The modernist approach is less confused because it demands a single narrative and is informed by a technical rationality (Featherstone 2015).

From a legal perspective, the community planning process is failing in two ways: It encourages neo liberal hegemony, and prefers a privileged perspective in such a way that it legitimizes the outcomes of the planning process. If it is not entirely adopted by the neo liberal interests, they become extremely vague and go on to affect the neo liberal influences on the reviewing courts as well as the local governments. Because of these failures in the community planning process, it leads to building the environment that is without any meaning. The community planning processes influenced by neo liberalism concentrate on the processes instead of the substance and continuously reinforce the prevalent power structures (Lippert 2014). 

Neo liberal ways of community planning emerged as the part of the postmodern reformation as well as reaction to the dissatisfaction with the implementation of the modernist approach. The neo liberal paradigm defines the community planner as the expert who exercises instrumental rationalism and can identify the best planning approach for the given community. This planner is systematic and knows how to solve problems and maximize the welfare of the community (Macleod 2013).

Neo liberal planning assumes that a single narrative with respect to the community exists, and the community planner can implement that narrative through scientific and rational analysis. The problem occurs when it becomes difficult to comprehend how the modern community planners choose to fulfill those goals on the ground.

However, because of the diversified nature of the thought that are a given in any place in question, any community plan will be dominative to some other section of the community. This is an unavoidable feature of any neo liberal system of community planning (Becker et al. 2015). Completely abiding by any particular plan or perspective will lead to the oppression of the other existing perspectives.

The neo liberal system of community planning is unnecessarily oppressive and non-inclusive. This system of community planning is a kind of democratic exercise and is focused at promoting the environmental sustainability and the social justice. The non-inclusive nature of neo liberal system of community planning emerges from tendencies, which are unstated and are likely to be unintentional. These tendencies are buried deep inside the theoretical origins of neo liberalism indicates that it is the most popular post-modernist approach towards community planning (Sager 2014).

From the perspective of a planning theorist, this form of community planning encourages open communication, with all the community members enjoying equal status and access to the sources of information. If the planning process is based on the principles of honesty, truth, sincerity, and openness towards the opinion of the people, it can rise the quality of community planning in the region (Bunyan 2013).

If the focus of the community planning is rational communication, it will be identified as a pro-modernist approach and that is beneficial for the society. It is the responsibility of the community planners to prevent the oppression, which occurs when one community imposes its view on the other. Although some amount of oppression is inevitable, the community planners must make sure that they minimize the effects of this oppression on the subjected community.

There is no scientific method to measure the success of the community planning process. The success cannot be determined by comparing the problems that existed in the community to the outcomes of its solution. Instead, the success is measured by evaluating the process of planning. This emphasis on the process is quite understandable (Corbett and Walker 2013).

The only way to know the importance of a particular idea is to imagine the after effects of acting on that idea and then compare those imagined consequences to the realistic ones. This is the true essence of community planning. The best future of a community can only be materialized when all the possible future scenarios are taken into consideration. This is the most important feature of a pragmatic democracy in any state. Good ideas are not identified through accidents or natural evolution. The implementation of favorable ideas needs voluntary action. The goal for a community planning should be simple and transparent, representing the overall welfare of the community members (Myers and Goddard 2013).

New direction of Neo-liberalism practice:

Having considered several major standpoints of neo-liberalism, it is evident that an approach of neo-liberalism is highly necessary in order to address numbers of ecological as well as economical aspects in the future days. The contemporary transformation of the entire globe in terms of technology, culture, as well as perception, has significantly changed the definition of crisis. These crises are identified as social and urban development as well as critical infrastructure development. In order to address the future societal activities, new urbanism approach will be extremely suitable (McLaughlin and Murji 2012). The planning practitioners will be assisted by this ideology to develop a cohesive and compact social community by using spatial relations.  This particular community will aim to allow a myriad of miscellaneous components for effective interaction.

This new direction of neo-liberalism practice will be focused on the planning of a diverse range of building styles, uses. It will definitely concentrate on the combination of income groups for divulging into an individual housing project. According to this new direction of neo-liberal community planning, the planning consists of a basic unit as a neighborhood. This neighborhood has a very small physical size, focused center as well as well-defined edge (Allen et al. 2012). The major focus of this particular planning approach will be concentrated on the substance of plan instead of various methods of planning. The implementation of the respective direction of neo-liberalism successfully created a number of the well-reputed neighborhood as well as cities.

This particular approach of neo-liberalism will focus on several crucial principles, which are imperative for neoliberal community planning. These principles are mostly focused on

Walkability: The spatial plan in neo-liberal context will be planned in such a manner that every necessary thing would be obtained within a short distance. The streets will be designed in Pedestrian style.

Connectivity: The street of all over the city will be designed in an interconnected network of the street It will be effective for dispersing the traffic as well as making easy for walking. The entire city will contain a myriad of alleys, boulevards as well as narrow streets (MacLeod 2013).

Mixed Use: The entire planning will focus on intermingling offices, shops, homes as well as apartments. The entire city will be intermingled with the people from a diverse range of cultures, income levels, races as well as age.

Mixed Housing: The building style of the entire city will be differentiated into various types, prices as well as sizes.

Quality Architecture: The architecture of the whole city will put a greater emphasis on aesthetics, beauty as well as human comfort. The community will include a number of special placement and sites for civic uses. The neoliberal approach will immensely focus on beautiful surroundings as well as human scale architecture.

Traditional Neighborhood Structure: According to the neo-liberal approach of community planning, the entire neighborhood structure will include a discernible center as well as edge. The center of the city will encompass with public This particular approach to community planning will put a greater emphasis on the quality public realm (Sager 2016). In this particular approach to community planning, the city will be designed in such a manner that the center of town will contain high densities of population. On the other hand, the outer region of the city will contain a low density of populace.

Increased Density: In order to make the walking easier, the neoliberal approach to community planning will develop numbers of buildings, shops, residences as well as services closely. This strategy will significantly help to use the service and resources more efficiently. Moreover, it will create a more enjoyable as well as convenient living place.

Green Transportation: The cities, designed by ‘new urbanism’ community planning will contain various high-quality trains that will run through various interconnecting networks (Waterhout et al. 2013). This network will provide an impressive transportation link between various neighborhoods, towns as well as cities. The pedestrian styled streets will allow the inhabitants to use various rollerblades, bicycles, walking as well as scooters.

Sustainability: This new direction of community planning will heavily focus on the minimal impact of environmental development. In this context, this particular approach will use various eco-friendly technologies as well as natural systems.

The quality of life: This particular approach of neo-liberalism will produce a high quality of life that will focus on creating a place that will assist to inspire, uplift and enrich the spirit.

In the light of modern viewpoint, most of the city is highly populated with an extreme amount of suburb area. These suburbs have been noted to be deteriorating with the gradual passing of time (Sager 2014). The major reason for this deterioration is alienating the society in various large segments, the rise in the rate of crime as well as environmental degradation. There are various studies have indicated that the suburbia of any city is mostly responsible for the major congestion of traffic in comparison with freeway part of the city. In addition to that, the suburbia is also significant in terms of producing a great deal of anomie as well as crime. The ‘new urbanism’, recognized as the future direction of neo-liberalism, puts on show little theoretical strictness. Setting side by side with other approaches to community planning, the new urbanism is more popular in terms of noteworthy response (Campbell et al. 2014).

Although the dissatisfaction of the suburbia of various cities along with nostalgia of former community planning approach differs from the appeal of this new direction, the supporters still can obtain a serious amount of advocacy. The community planners in the new direction of neo-liberalism can effectively play a significant role, which is disregarded by the communicative theorists. The new direction of neo-liberalism will effectively be flexible as well as open- minded for new suggestions. However, the new urbanism community planners must stay firm on the non-violate principles (Sager 2012). At the same time, the community planners must be influential as well as persuasive. In order to influence others, the community planners must be polemical rather than equivocating so that they can convince others with their certainty.

Reference List:

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