Towards a Theory of Movement Planning Practice

AbstractTowards a Theory of Movement Planning PracticebyRobert W. SmithDoctor of Philosophy in City and Regional PlanningUniversity of California, BerkeleyProfessor Emeritus Fred Collignon, ChairThis dissertation is an attempt to understand how planning practice can be utilized by social movements in the city through the experience of the planner. Consequently, it is a work that attempts to bridge three areas--urban redevelopment politics, planning theory, and methodology--in a way that might draw some useful practice tips for what I call "movement planners." In some ways, this is very much a theoretical dissertation. It attempts to address the gap in planning theory that largely ignores the practice of planning outside traditional settings. As such, this work sets out to understand how planning and politics intersect through a study of community organizing around a large urban redevelopment project in which I was a participant. It offers some insights about meaningful methodologies for planning research that incorporate the experience of practice. The core issue in this dissertation is the interaction between city planning and social movements in the city, and what that intersection means for planning theory and methodologies for studying planning practice. As devolution and privatization continues to complicate Peterson's city limits thesis, land use development has become an important locus around which social movements organize to demand policy changes for economic, environmental, and social justice. Through this process the classic conflict between exchange and use values in land has also been complicated. Rather than opposing urban development projects, social movements are organizing to be stakeholders in their formulation and implementation. The debate is then shifted from a stark "capital versus neighborhood" dynamic to one over creating more democratic and inclusive stakeholder tables and using development to address social problems.This dissertation is based on five years of participant-observation in the economic justice movement in Oakland, California (2001-2006). The findings of my research are as follows:1. There is a role for planners inside social movements that planning theory does not currently address. I call the planners who practice within social movements movement planners.2. Community benefits campaigns are specific strategies for economic justice that require movements to obtain and use planning expertise. These strategies are specific to the project level, which Krumholz has observed is often the only real object of city planning (planning at the project level, that is).3. These campaigns, although somewhat decentralized, are increasingly coordinated to create economic justice policy agendas at policy scales superior to the project level. This coordination is evidence that the project level campaigns are a response to the project of devolution and privatization.4. Community benefits campaigns are not not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) campaigns. The activists are arguing for equitable development, not for no- or even slow-growth policies. The activists are also not arguing for relocation of locally unwanted land uses (LULUs). NIMBYism is the unfortunate and somewhat defamatory response planners often make to demands for project outcomes and meaningful community participation in project decision-making. This helps explain the context for finding number 1.Practice is the key mediator between theory and policy. Planning theory traditionally attempts to explain practice; and practice is the evidence used to periodically re-think theory. Planning theory has little direct interaction with public policy. Planning practice, however, can have a serious impact on policy, particularly in the context of movement planning. And policy certainly has an impact on planning practice. This is seen in the campaigns examined in this dissertation where policy barriers forced activists to use planning expertise to put pressure directly on the developers, which in turn created calls for new policy solutions.The dissertation is organized as follows. The first chapter discusses the context of urban redevelopment politics, how redistribution has been forced to the municipal scale, how this has impacted development politics, and how this relates to planning practice. The second chapter outlines the conceptual framework for procedural interventions in the urban planning process at the city level. I call this the procedural fix, an environment in which movement planners operate. The third chapter explores how planning expertise was utilized by two community benefits campaigns in Oakland to further their agendas between 2003 and 2005. The fourth chapter addresses the methodological questions I both faced and now raise. The fifth chapter concludes with a discussion of traditional equitable planning theory and how a movement planning theory would be situated in the tradition, including suggestions for planning practice and next steps for a movement planning research agenda