“Advocacy and Pluralism in Planning”

Abstract

Paul Davidoff (1930-1984) was an American lawyer/planner, activist, and planning educator. In 1964 he founded a housing advocacy organization named the Suburban Action Institute, to bring racially integrated low-income housing to predominantly white suburbs, and the Hunter College Department of Urban Planning. This article from the Journal of the American Institute of Planners (1965) describes Davidoff’s vision of advocacy planning as an alternative to conventional city and regional planning practice. Davidoff argued that the conventional way of formulating city plans in the United States is deeply flawed. Staff of local government planning departments working under the direction of planning commissions, in turn accountable to elected city council members, prepare city plans reflecting the values of local elites without adequately including other stakeholders. Rather, Davidoff argued, urban planning in democracies should be pluralistic – explicitly designed to incorporate the views of different individuals and groups. Since low-income and minority groups are ill-equipped to describe and lobby for their interests, Davidoff argued that they need advocate planners acting like to lawyers representing clients. Davidoff’s advocacy planning paradigm and the example of his own activism profoundly influenced activist planners of the 1960s and 1970s. Advocacy planning is taught as one approach in city planning programs today. Some planners define themselves as advocacy planners and the concept has sensitized others to the importance of diversity and inclusion.

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