Every planner should understand what epistemology means. Sandercock highlights that legitimacy and authority are the two main concepts revolving around this term. The acquisition of knowledge in planning depends on philosophical questions pertaining to the origins, the purposes, and the applicability of prior knowledge for planning processes. Aristotle sees three kinds of knowledge: theoretical, technical, and practical wisdom, which is divided into intuition, imagination, and emotion. Practical wisdom is essential for an Aristotelian rational deliberation. Plato states that Aristotle’s rational deliberation is impossible since emotion and desire are corrupting influences. Hence, intellect needs “to go off by itself” in order to make practical deliberations. Mysticism is another source for knowledge. Physicists like Newton and Einstein believed that knowledge is achieved by contemplation and meditation. In the 17th scientific revolution knowledge started deriving from empiricism -- observation, hypothesis, and experiment. In the 19th, Marx affirmed that knowledge was a product of reflection over material conditions. The 18th Enlightenment philosophers pointed out the crisis of values and knowing. They defied authority and refused to stay silenced. They argued against topics related to natives, colonials, women, all places in a client relationship to experts. They questioned whose representations of reality prevail and who has the authority to represent reality. “Spaces can be real and imagined. Spaces can tell stories and unfold histories. The appropriation and use of space are political acts.” Therefore, it is important that planners replace the very idea of the expert planner able to arrive at an understanding of “the public interest” through rational deliberation with a notion of planning for multiple publics. “Epistemology of multiplicity” involves six ways of knowing: through dialogue, from experience, through gaining local knowledge of the specific and concrete, through learning to read symbolism and non-verbal evidence, through contemplation, and through action planning.
The complexity of indigenous issues exposes the need of planners to understand issues from multiple epistemic standpoints. According to Sandercock, the toughest thing about cross-cultural work is facing the confront between planning and indigenous communities. The concepts of state and sovereignty involve lifestyle preservation, identity, and tradition customs. In this context, planners must understand, respect, and give expression to distant indigenous needs in the use of land management. Indigenous people have historically been trying to reverse foundational injustices and dispossessions. They claim land-use participation, land management, and private property law. Planners are usually confronted with values incommensurable with modernist planning. To protect indigenous sovereignty, planning has to become more inclusive of indigenous interests, knowledge, and aspirations. For indigenous groups in Australia, the main issues are rights and material benefits. The three points that Aboriginal Australians claim are related to political autonomy; maintenance of distinct cultural practices and social relations; and regain control over resources, especially land. Successful planners are able to manage concurrent ownership of lands. In Bolivia, however, indigenous groups claim participation in decision-making especially because racism and discrimination are ingrained in the construction of the nation state and national identity. This has happened because of failure of state-directed planning to recognize and validate indigenous knowledge. To satisfactory deal with this issue, planners have to foreground their prior knowledge by adapting to indigenous culture and forego their own habits and backgrounds. The ethical consideration is “unlearning one’s privilege” by adopting an attitude of genuine humility, accepting that we do not have the answers and that we may be part of the problem. Planning must work to strengthen indigenous communities’ autonomy and their capacity to regain and manage their custodial lands. It is not ethical for planners to stand on the sidelines of the realities they research. As important as actively participating accordingly to indigenous traditions, planners should be able to share every information produced.
It is possible to find consensus by acknowledging multiple epistemologies. Watson says that contemporary planning theory grapples with the tension between acknowledgment of context-related diversity versus desire to produce normative theoretical positions. The reason for this clash is that planning theory attempts to respond to diversity are still unable to comprehend the very real clash of rationalities which so frequently occurs when planning or developing projects. The main problems happen because different value-systems are still often treated as superficial in planning theory. Planning research needs to return to the concrete, to the empirical and to case research, not as a mindless return to empiricism, but as a way of gaining a better understanding of the nature of difference, and generating ideas and propositions which can more adequately inform practice. Planners should stop develop planning theories through “readings” of various social theorists and focus on understating assumptions of ideologies by asking themselves what is a “proper” community. Watson borrows the term of Sandercock “acknowledgment of diversity” to explain that the point of departure is that citizenship is fragmented by identity, and that society is structured by culturally different groupings based on sexuality, ethnicity, gender or race. Diversity requires to be celebrated rather than repressed, and the claims of different groups need to be recognized and facilitated. Sandercock believes it is possible to find consensus between groups valorizing differences. Planning theories attempting to recognize social difference and multiculturalism represent an important advance even though the clash of rationalities and worldviews is great. The solution is to identify the very real material base of conflicts by incorporating conflicting rationalities and power operation in planning by focusing on methodology and ethics.
Planners can successfully deal with conflicts stemming from epistemic differences. Harvey says that the answer is understanding the forces at work shaping conflict over the public space. The different arguments and aspects to look into are: efficiency, economic growth, aesthetic and historical heritage, social and moral order, environmentalism and ecology, distribution of justice, and neighborhood and communication. These arguments are not mutually exclusive. Planners should also pay attention to “communities of interest” and how they articulate particular discourses. The objective of planners is to build coalition over principles to provide a basis for consensus. The argument battle here is between “social rationality” and “social justice”. Social rationality defends utilitarian arguments like efficiency and growth. They assume that “public goods” lead to the greatest benefit to the greatest number while recognizing that individual sacrifices are inevitable and that it is right and proper to offer appropriate compensation for those who would be displaced. Social justice proponents state that “there is nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequals”. The concept of justice has to be understood in the way it is embedded in a particular language game. Each language game attached to the particular social, experiential and perceptual world of the speaker. Justice has no universal meaning, but a whole “family” of meanings. This is the relativism of discourse about justice since these discourses are expressions of social power. Justice in terms of oppression has to be analyzed through exploitation in the workplace, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, violence, and ecological differences. These principles should be unified to formulate a composite strategy.
Sandercock, L. "Towards Cosmopolis", 1998
Watson, V. "Conflicting rationalities". Planning theory & practice, 2003
harvey, D. "Social justice, postmodernism and the city", 1992
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