The Crisis in Planning (Don't Yawn! Don't Turn the Page!)

摘要

The recurrent 'crisis in planning' is a chronic Anglo-American professional health issue that does not seem to affect the vocal chords—or at least the writing hand. Thus planning is "bureaucratic, sclerotic, hidebound, hostile to enterprise, resistant to change" (Hall, 2002, p. 263), "ossified, complacent, and blanketed in technocratic minutae ... a zombie institution" (Gleeson, 2003, p. 769) or just plain "lacking in purpose and meaning" (Sandercock, 1999, p. 224). The release of the Planning Institute of Australia's report on Planning Education and Employment this September (Holliday, 2004) should usher in another round of breast-beating on the part of the scholars. A quick summary of the problems identified by the report will raise few eyebrows amongst teachers, researchers and practitioners in planning: 1. there is a nation-wide shortage of planners, a national 'vacancy rate' of about 16 per cent throughout the field, which is particularly acute in rural and regional areas; 2. planners are leaving the profession in droves, especially female planners over the age of 35: the Holliday report estimates that about 570 older women in Australia (of a total census-identified profession of 5400) are no longer working as planners; 3. planners complain about 'toxic workplaces', particularly those in the front-line statutory work of development review.