Professional Roles and the Public Interest in Planning

Abstract

A central ethical issue for planners today is how they can justify the use of administrative discretion in a democratic society. One major indicator of how planners think about their relationship to decisionmakers and to the public is how they define the "public interest. " The argument is made here that unless there are countervailing controls, the further planners'ideas of the public interest diverge from the ordinary moral principle of democratic responsiveness, the more difficult they will be to legitimate. This article explores four ideas of the planner's role and the ideas of the public interest associated with them. They are pluralist aggregation, an economic/analytical approach, the common interest, and the good reasons approach.

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