The review of democratic procedures in urban planning theories

Abstract

Over the past few decades, democratic procedures have been raised as a core of most planning methods. In this regard, the present research adopts descriptive-evaluation methods and uses meta-analysis so as to review the democratic procedures at the heart of planning theories and democracy and to explore their paradigmatic interaction. The results of present research suggest that transition to post-modern era of planning perspective is accompanied by association between democratic procedures and certain subjects such as public interest, consensus, pluralism, uncertainty and agonistic arenas. In this regard, the theory of planning has experienced a paradigmatic shift towards agonistic planning which is a democratic accountability mechanism premised on intellectual support of agonistic democracy. In general, the theory regards the rational consensus of communicative planning as nothing but illusion and explains it as a strife to remove alternative discourses and eliminate democratic policy altogether. Compared with communicative planning, the essential notion of agonistic planning is turning hostility into agnostic and consequently replacing enmity by disagreement or aggression by competition.