Antiplanning Undercurrents in US Planning Education: Antithesis or Ideology?

The schooling and the practice of planning remain two very distinct cultures, and this gap has seemingly widened in recent years. The author argues that what is driving the wedge between the schooling and the practice of planning today is a growing undercurrent of antiplanning sentiment in the US planning academia. The two streams of antiplanning thoughts discussed are not new as ideas, and flow out of two very distinctive intellectual traditions: Marxism and marketism. The antiplanning roots of marketism are deeper and are derived from the ideas of economic liberalism. Yet until recently, the marketist critique of planning had remained seemingly muted within the field of planning. In the wake of the Thatcher-Reagan era, however, the marketist critique of planning has become vocal and shrill, and has indeed continued to chip away at the very intellectual foundations on which the practice of planning is based. Comparatively speaking, the Marxist critique of planning, although potentially no less pernicious, has been more cynical than threatening, and has remained largely as a rhetorical stance. In considering the antiplanning positions of these two traditions the author considers whether these positions are ideologically motivated or are simply presented as a logical antithesis to the very arguments for planning.