Planners as Urban Managers: An Exploration of the Attitudes and Self-Image of Senior British Planners

The question of the nature and homogeneity of planners' attitudes and self-image is central to the current debate on planners as urban managers. If planners do possess an ‘institutional mind’ which is closely attuned to the ‘ruling ideas of a ruling elite’, and if their role in determining who gains and who loses in the process of planned urban development is influenced by a coherent professional ideology, then planners can be expected to share distinctive orientations towards the holders of political office, towards the urban environment itself, and towards specific social groups. In this paper we explore this issue, drawing on data from a survey of senior British planners. It is shown that British planners are drawn from a fairly narrowly defined spectrum of society and that they do in fact share distinctive attitudinal orientations. They subscribe to professional roles as mediators, guardians of the physical environment, and, above all, managers of the urban system. It is suggested that the ‘ideal type’ of planning personality centres on a managerial ethos which is directed towards ‘problem solving’ in a rationalist, positivistic way within a strictly defined hierarchy of authority. There is evidence, however, that there exist several subtypes of planning personality within this overall orientation.