Advocacy Planning

In the post–World War II era, American cities confronted increasing economic, social, and political challenges resulting from the combined impact of suburbanization, deindustrialization, and disinvestment. As growing numbers of large employers seeking less expensive real estate, lower taxes, better transportation access, and relief from unionization pressures moved to the suburbs, many of their middle-and-upper income employees followed them. This outmigration of businesses and residents resulted in growing residential and commercial vacancies and falling property values in many older neighborhoods within America’s central cities causing lenders to avoid investing in these areas. Further complicating these economic challenges was the arrival of increasing numbers of African American families displaced by the mechanization of Southern agriculture. Unable to access expanding employment and housing opportunities in the suburbs due to exclusionary zoning and building codes, these families were frequently forced to live in older urban neighborhoods with poor schools, deteriorating housing, declining retail services, and underfunded municipal services. Inspired by the example of Southern civil rights organizations, leaders from these communities demanded more redistributive urban policies and participatory decision-making processes. In the mid-1960s, the federal government responded to these pressures by increasing funding for public housing and initiating an ambitious “War on Poverty.” Aware of the tendency of federal programs to achieve their redevelopment goals through displacement of the poor, working-class communities of color fought for a meaningful voice in the design and implementation of these programs. In Boston, New York, Chicago, and other US cities, equity-oriented planners and architects began collaborating with leaders of threatened neighborhoods to challenge the assumptions, goals, analysis, and plans of centralized planning and redevelopment agencies. In 1965, Paul Davidoff, an Assistant Professor of Planning at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote “Advocacy and Pluralism in Planning” which offered a powerful critique of the rational model of comprehensive planning upon which these efforts were based. Davidoff questioned the physical emphasis of these plans, the possibility of value neutral planning, the existence of a unitary public interest, and the ability of a small group of planners to incorporate the interests of diverse communities into a single plan. Davidoff urged equity-minded planners to assist groups overlooked in public planning processes to generate their own empirically based plans designed to challenge the proposals of mainstream planning agencies. Davidoff’s call for advocacy planning led to a significant reform movement within North and South American and European planning that continues to have significant influence within the planning and design professions, municipal planning departments, graduate planning and design schools, and national urban programs in the United States, United Kingdom, and elsewhere.