The public interest- schools of thought in planning

Abstract

The public interest has traditionally been a key reason for the legitimacy of planning. Although planning theory and practice are always shaped by a particular understanding of the public interest, it is a concept that is decidedly hard to define. Over the past century, from the beginning of modern planning to the present, various theoretical traditions of thinking about the public interest have emerged. In the course of this debate, the public interest as the normative content of planning has lost significance to the point of meaningless concepts. Many attempts have been made to revive the concept, but no studies have yet been conducted to explore and describe schools of thought in planning related to the public interest. In this study, using a meta-theory approach and emphasizing the similarities of previous classifications, we present comprehensive coalitions of the conceptions of public interest in planning as distinct schools of thought. In order to organize in a complex and diverse body of literature, we link these conceptions of public interest with relevant planning theories. In order to understand the evolution of these schools of thought, we traced their origin using a genealogical approach. As a result of applying this meta-theory approach, we arrive at a framework that consists of five different schools of thought. We distinguish utilitarian, justice-oriented, communicative, and elitist schools of thought in the mainstream of planning thought and one emerging school in the global south. Identifying these schools of thought contributes, on the one hand, to a clear understanding of how the public interest is defined and applied in planning theory and, on the other hand, helps theorists and professionals to expand the available knowledge base to understand the interwoven concepts of the public interest and planning.