Ethics and Planners or Planner Ethics (December 12, 2023)
..."Its never a matter of ethics over pragmatism. Its a question of what informs the other." Cindy Milstein, 2001
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Todays Ice Sculpture: Ethics and Planners or Planner Ethics (December 12, 2023)
Hardly-A-Spoiler Alert - Ethics is a messy topic. It is very hard to know where to start or end. In addition to the literature, I explored my own underlying tensions, contestations, reflecting on my personal values that surfaced in ways that are obvious and not so apparent at the time. My literature review was also not void or absent of my values, but I did look for discordant perspectives as my writing began to coalesce. In some ways this process was both cathartic and troubling. There was loss of sleep involved 🤔…
The quote above by an american anarchist scholar Cindy Milstein resonated with me. Ethics is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as: “moral principles that govern a person's behavior or the conducting of an activity.” Pragmatism defined (by Wikipedia) is a philosophical tradition that views language and thought as tools for prediction, problem solving and action, rather than describing, representing or mirroring reality.
Milsteins quote made me ponder which informed my practice decision-making - pragmatism or ethics? What informs your practice?
Codes of Ethics/Practice
The American Planning Association has an extensive document that outlines aspirational principles, rules of conduct. These two sections alone total approximately 1650 words in paragraphs with sub-headings. The APA is an advocacy and regulatory body.
The Canadian Institute of Planners code is much less specific, and leaves it up to provincial chapters to provide more definitive directions. The CIP code of conduct makes general three statements (i.e., public interest, clients and employers, the profession and other planners) totalling approximately 100 words. CIP is not a regulator. National CIP does do excellent research and advocacy (i.e., climate change, equity and diversity, healthy communities, transportation, indigenous peoples, etc) that provide great sources of information to inform local decision-making, but whose application is only advisory. This is not a small benefit!
The Alberta Professional Planning Institute is a regulating, not advocacy body. The Alberta Code of Practice is about 350 words, and further refined in some ways by the practice exam training materials, and the practice exam itself. The Alberta Code of Practice encourages behaviours in support of the public interest considering the competing and overlapping needs of a community, respecting the confidentiality of the client, following all legislation and laws, not engaging in illegal activity, etc. There are a number of clauses that speak to protection of the organization itself (APPI), including “ill considered criticism of a member” or “practice.” How do you balance competing needs? What is public interest? Ill considered criticism of a member? Ethics is messy, because practice is messy, not to mention the often heard trope “democracy is messy.”
In short, professional planning organizations provide a really good starting point, built on ethical practice, but as always, the (practice) devil is in the details. I will tell you my ethical north stars later!
Literature Perspectives
“The Structure of Ethical Choice in Practice” (1983) Journal of Planning Education and Research (1983) by Richard S. Bolan
The goal of Bolans paper is to set forth the structural framework of social influences under which professional planner functions in developing ethical decisions and ethical justifications of performance. He focuses on developing a moral cartography that maps the existential framework of professional life. He argued professional ethics has to be concerned about the processes involved in the social construction of moral meanings and it is to this end that his analysis is directed.
Bolan raises the following questions. First, who are we responsible to? Who is it that makes a claim on us to be responsible? Second, what is it that our responsibility obliges us to do? What forms of behavior are considered appropriate responses to a claim of responsibility? Is there a catalog of duties or is our responsibility more profound and less well defined? Third, under what circumstances are we responsible? Or, to put it another way, do circumstances and situations affect our responsibility?
Who are we responsible to? Bolan identifies a continuum of moral communities: self, family, friends, employer, clients, colleagues, the corporate profession, the municipality or local community, the nation state, past generations and future generations. He suggests that planners are inevitably involved in all of these to a lesser or greater degree, hence the overlap, complexity and full scope of our responsibilities.
What does our responsibility oblige us to do? Two writings on ethics contrast our potential obligations - the ethics of ultimate ends vs ethical responsibilities. The Moral actions are justified based on the ends, regardless of the impacts, often referred to as teological actions. The ethics of responsibility is based on a deontological approach, which means there is intrinsic rightness and wrongness in human actions. The ethics of responsibility would argue that good outcomes cannot be justified by bad means, and makes the good, less valuable.
Under what circumstances are we obliged to act? Underlying obligations are the specific situation under consideration. Real world problems are not “either-or,” but instead different sets of facts and different levels of knowledge in the short and long term. He developed a continuum of contexts, where our actions or potential are complicated if not conflicted, starting with simple conflicts and finally unavoidable situations where our actions can be complicated and must be fully interrogated.
He blends these three questions into a three dimensional matrix of all three - who, what and how with respect to our responsibilities.
Bolan concludes that there is no easy metric or way to guage ethical action to inform or guide practice. As he says, we are immersed in a world of multi-varied countervailing norms. Ethical professional practice is intrinsically a process. It can be seen as a way of being in the world; or, rather, it is finding a way of being in the world. He argues that practitioners are intrinsically moralists working in a complex world of competing needs. The true task of the planner is not creative problem solving, but instead should become a creative moralist.
“Is the Right Thing To Do Or Is It? Contemporary Issues in Planning Ethics” Plan Canada (2002) by Sue Hendler Queens University
Hendler developed an ethical framework to planning actions building on the work of Martin Wachs.
Everyday behaviours - speaks to accountability and transparency. She argues that economic factors are can be used to preclude open transparency and accountability.
Administrative discretion - planners are called upon to perform more roles than ever before. Gone were the days of planners as technicians implementing a process, to one focussed more on communication, empathy and identity.
Plans and policies - The normative role of planners is now challenged by new or emerging issues imbued with urgency. These issues complicate determining ethical behaviours by planners, as noted in a quote from her article:
“Calls for smaller government and less reliance on public services, all made within the context of globalization and ever increasing mobility of capital, have contributed to profound gaps between rich and poor individuals, communities and nations. Environmental problems such as the pollution generated by long-obsolete practices and developments promise to continue to plague our land, air and water, as well as all of us who depend on these resources. Economic development has, in some communities, become almost synonymous with planning, thus limiting the mandate of the people who choose this profession.” (pg. 10-11).
Planning techniques - organizations that hire planners are looking for specific techniques and skill sets that are of immediate use (i.e., public engagement, GIS, etc). Hendler opined that ethics training is typically not part of the skill set taught in planning schools, at least up to 2002. She goes on to say that given the new and emerging techniques and tasks today, more focus and research on how those tasks are implemented is necessary.
Planning theory - A growing multicultural diverse society and impacts of past decisions is challenging existing hierarchies and norms, and defining the public interest is more elusive than ever. If there is no unitary public interest, then establishing ethical practices is problematic. In its place is procedural practices, such as the ideas of consensus-building, facilitation, involvement of stakeholders, collaboration and discourse become important to our quest for ethically responsible thought and practice. Similarly, discursive or communicative ethics replace Kantian or utilitarian ethical theory. She argues that empowerment of planners is absent from most planning codes, leaving planners in complicated ethical positions at the hands of entrepreneurial elected officials.
Sue Hendler posed a thought experiment involving development of housing on a wetland, and provided four options. Would you:
(a) Support the development proposal-homelessness and inadequate housing are more important planning issues than wetland conservation;
(b) Reject the development in favour of conserving the wetland-they're not building any more of them, and housing can go elsewhere;
(c) Have a public meeting and facilitate a compromise among stakeholders; or
(d) Complete a cost-benefit analysis and go with whatever option creates the most benefits?
All of these questions above are embedded in a mix of policy and process considerations involving state and non-state actors, set within a broader evolving intersecting social/economic/ecological/cultural/health and wellness settings, at both the macro and micro level. Not all social actors are equal. Nor is the starting point of this process decision, and who have been engaged or not engaged thus far.
Mijung Kim, “The Ethics of Knowing,” Cult Stud of Sci Educ (2015) 10:1175–1181 DOI 10.1007/s11422-014-9597-9
Mijung Kim a scientific researcher suggests that there is often a gap between knowledge and action in teaching science. She quotes Frederico Mayor, the former head of Unesco, “the possession of knowledge carries with it a moral obligation.” The ability to share and explore maybe limited by internal conflicts, social or cultural norms. She suggests that a deficit model alone for science communication cannot be improved through simply “more” engagement. It instead takes embedding a proactive ethical approach from the drop, and apply them to macro and micro situations until they become then norm, and scientists simply react to any situation where conflicts, social or cultural norms are being challenged. This resonates with me as well.
“Ethical Dilemmas in Professional Planning Practice in the United States,” Journal of the American Planning Association (2019) by Mickey Lauria and Mellone F. Long
A research study of urban planners collected two types of data exploring planner ethical perspectives and practices: a sample survey of 1334 APA members and follow up semi-structured telephone interviews of 61 of the survey respondents. A review of extant literature suggested an incongruence may arise in situations where there is a disjuncture between the individual planner’s understanding of planning’s domain ethics (coes of practice) and the ethical considerations of their workplace’s culture. The authors also wondered whether there are differences in practicing planners’ ethical frameworks used in their private lives and their perceptions of, or experiences with, their personal constructions of professional ethics and their workplace ethical norms. Four types of ethical perspectives were explored - a deontological (rule based) approach; a utilitarian (i.e., most good to most people) approach, a hedonistic approach (what works best for the interviewee); and an aspirational approach (i.e., what works best for the planning profession).
Planners tended to support the deontological (rule based approach) regardless of the outcome in both interviews (57%) and surveys (84%) in their work environment. The second best alternative for interviewees used the utilitarian approach when resolving files. When making personal decisions, both survey and interview respondents were more likely to use a utilitarian approach, suggesting that they used different ethical perspectives and stances depending on the context, particularly in their professional and personal lives.
A deeper dive into ethical conflicts were explored with the interviewees. The study found that private sector planners tended to be more deontologically based than public sector planners. The degree of concern about ethical conflicts for both public and private sector planners ranged from no problem, to uncomfortable work environments, to loss of job or a personal decision to change jobs. Job security was identified as a threat to following ethical codes of practice. Those with the greatest ethical concerns tended to be those with the most experience in the field. The study suggested an ethical dissonance is sometimes consciously or unconsciously applied to uncomfortable positions.
My Take - Connecting the Dots
As the four authors noted above imply or explicitly state, urban planning is by its nature nuanced. Clearly identifying ethical practice is therefore much more difficult than it would seem. In the extreme, we would recognize unethical practice immediately (i.e., personally financially directly benefitting from a land use file or policy you are supporting, accepting job with an applicant immediately after supporting an approval, supporting a land use file that puts the public at immediate physical risk, physically or verbally assaulting others, denigrating other planners or the public, etc). However, beyond that, much is open to interpretation and nuance complicated by ideology, political directives, policy, practices, legislation, and power and agency in decision-making. Nor are planners the final arbitrators of policy or land use file decisions. Planners are not the masters of our own disasters at times.
My practice experience is that my planning colleagues acted ethically, as per Bolan, Hendler and Long/Lauria. You could make an argument for all of the behaviours citing one or more of the authors. When I periodically disagreed with my colleagues, it was philosophically based (i.e., community based vs development based), and process based, with side order of structural disharmony if not violence.
My personal version of moral ethics can be reduced down to two north stars - transparency in process and accurate knowledge dissemination practices. Planners can legitimately influence both in meaningful ways, and are implicit or explicitly described in Hendlers thought experiment noted above. Planners need to act at the speed of trust with our ethics informing process, not arbitrary socially constructed timelines defined in legislation and policy. In hindsight, I failed at times to act as morally creative and ethical as I could have - it is easier said than done.