Planning Cultures, Planning Ethics and Citizen Participation in Urban E-Planning

摘要

The International Journal of E-Planning Research (IJEPR) explores, in this second issue of 2014, the relations between Planning and E-Planning, started in the previous issue, and the implications for theory, education and practice in urban e-planning. Three main themes are discussed - planning cultures, e-planning ethics and citizen e-participation in planning -, as part of the broad debate on the theory of urban e-Planning that we aim to develop in the International Journal of E-Planning Research. The first two articles deal with planning cultures and ethical issues in planning. In the first of these two articles, "The Concept of Planning Culture: Analysing how planners construct practical judgements in a culturised context", Frank Othengrafen argues that since planners make judgements in their daily work, and since these judgements are affected by both individual and collectively shared cognitive frames, a conceptual framework, offering a consistent system of criteria, is needed for a correct understanding and comparison of (e-)planning practices. Based on this assertion, Frank Othengrafen develops and proposes a conceptual framework, based on analytical categories taken from the fields of organizational sciences and cultural studies, which will certainly prove useful for the analysis and comparison of specific and situated urban e-planning practices. In the following article, "Planning Ethics in the Age of Wicked Problems", Jeffrey Chan examines and discusses the ethical dimensions of wicked problems in planning, and specifically in e-Planning, amuch neglected aspect within the discourse on wicked problems that has expanded in recent years in the planning field and in other disciplines as well, arguing that "e-planning should engage with the discourse of planning ethics, and further, that e-planning can begin to develop its own ethical discourse in the face of wicked problems in planning today".