Planning in the Face of Power [antikvár]

PrefaceA book may be written by one person, but it is inevitably the product of many others. Among the varied sources of this book 1 find that one, one 1 seldom thought directly about as 1 wrote these chapters, hes at the foundarion of all the others: my parents' emigration from fascism in 1939. 1 doubt that the word "fascism" even appears in the chapters that follow. Yet this whole book is about the vulnerabilities of democracy, about power and professional responsibility, about political action and ideology, inequality, domination and resistance, illegitimate authority and democratizing practices. These issues arise as subtle matters of everyday practice for planners of all kinds, for planners routinely work to assess future choices, to think practically about who we shall becomein our neighborhoods, in our schools, in our health-care system, and so on. Citizens and public servants can presume the legitimacy of established power only at great risk. But if legitimacy cannot be presumed, and concentrations of economic power seem to threaten classical democratic political processes, what then? What are planners to do?This is no simple question. It is one of the classical problems that motivate the study of political philosophy, and it is one form of the more pressing political question faced every day by every political actor: "What is to be done?" This book draws from social and political theory to illuminate ordinary practical problems of professional, bureaucratic, and, more generally, political action. Thus, a second source of the chapters that follow is scholarly. Here my debts are many. Faculty at my alma mater, the University ofXI