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Statement
of Principles
Read and comment on the latest draft version of our statement of principles on the wiki site here.
In
order to describe what the network is about we have,
taking a lead from the already established planners
network in North America, been working towards a
statement of principles. This work is ongoing but below
you can find a summary of key points that emerged from
discussion at our launch
conference on December 6, 2006.
What
are we trying to do in pnuk?
: NOT be a talking shop and NOT be cynical
: Provide an alternative voice to the market driven
view of planning and
specifically to revitalise the social, political and
environmental
significance of planning
: To provide an independent, critical perspective on
mainstream dogmas
: To promote principles of justice (etc) and ensure
that such principles
are on and remain on political agendas
: To provide an umbrella under which people can act
and debate
: To fight Treasury and corporate agendas when necessary
: To re-energise meaningful community or grass-roots
planning
: To express critical concerns, and provide a forum
for critical debate,
on key issues
: To set new (?) agendas, and expose hidden agendas
: To defend marginalised people (those who may lose)
: Re-inspire public interest in planning
Planning
is a collective political activity, that should seek
to challenge the
corrosive nature of many contemporary agendas. Such
agendas include
individualism and the declining 'publicness' of public
services, the
ideal of choice (and challenging the 'mantra' of choice
by exposing who
doesn't have choice), the use and abuse of 'community',
the dominance of
all things economic and especially the dominant use
of economically
derived measures to understand the world, undermining
of local
democracy, contemporary society's obsession with consumption,
and the
'flattening' of planning by uni-dimensional views of
the world and of
what planning should be.
We
must seek to ask challenging questions of both others
and ourselves: where are 'we' when an expert witness
is needed to support marginalised voices in planning
settings? how can the network be an alternative voice
for planning? How can we revitalise the social, political
and environmental significance of planning?
We
hope that this will provide a starting point for further
discussion and debate that will lead to a more fully
developed statement in the near future. To join in the
discussion sign up to our mailing list.
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