The Collaborating Planner? Practitioners in the neoliberal age

摘要

What is it like to be a planner in Britain? Part of what it means to be a planner is how planning has become a professional occupation today. Over a long period of time, the role and status of planners have been transformed significantly as the planning profession has adapted to a changing world. As a public sector activity, while planning has been impacted heavily by the wider changes in the way societies are governed, planners have been urged to find a balance between short-term needs and long-term trends. The reason why this is such an extraordinary case is because planning not only necessitates effective communication in dealing with a variety of different organisations and interests but also it has been exposed to constant pressure at the same time from government, politicians, businesses, environmentalists, developers, NGOs, activists and public individuals. Accompanied with contemporary governmental discourses, planning now signifies the nature of living in a context understood to be characterised by hitherto unprecedented levels of uncertainty in multiple arenas, diversity in societies and unknown amounts of qualitative and quantitative changes while adopting changing ideological stances of the state and political preferences of governing parties. So what comprises the planners' duties today are very different than those of planners in the 1980s and before.