The social construction of Urban Planning. Elements for empirical research and reflection from practice

Abstract

Objectives

This article proposes a new epistemology of urban planning research, considering it as a social construction, emphasizing its political implications to overcome the historical dualism between “instruments” and “context”.

Methodology

To this end, through the review and systematization of specialized literature on three complementarity theoretical approaches –the institutionalist approach, the communicative theory and the strategic-relational approach– are explored, emphasizing the possible consequences for empirical research and professional practice.

Conclusions

It is argued that urban planning is constituted by a set of more or less consistent institutions that depend on the antagonism between scientific rationality and the multiple social rationalities that determine the "styles" of professional practice.

Originality

The main contribution of the article argues that urban planning presents two dialectical dimensions: an opportunistic one, which shows the cyclical vector of strategies (of adaptation or structuration) from the institutions to the actors and vice-versa; and an instrumental dimension, which explains how the actors "produce" the institutions of and for planning, and how, at the same time, they "operate" through them. Without pretending to completely disentangle the initial problem, this incipient epistemology of planning as a social construction opens a potential field of research and a necessary reflection from practice.