Advocacy in Planning: A Reflective Analysis*

Toward a Political Urban Planning: Learning from Growth Machine and Advocacy Planning to “Plannitize” Urban Politics

“…Various types of Advocacy Planning are identified by Corey (1972) and include those where government agency planners advocate for people, and those where planners work outside planning agencies and advocate with people. Others still—whether inside or outside government planning offices—focus advocacy on educating people in the planning process; such is the type practiced by Peattie’s Urban Planning Aid, which worked to “transfer the skills we have to the groups we work with, so they can become more effective in their own political struggles” (Corey, 1972: 52).…”

Neo-advocacy for neo-liberal times: Planning Aid and the Advocacy Project in England

“…Those active in the West Midlands felt a tension between the instrumental 'reality' of needing to find funds, set against the aims and integrity of the organisation which had interested them when they first became involved: Funding is a recognised issue in the wider not-for-profit sector, where 'mission' is often seen to be in tension with organisational effectiveness and trade-offs between mission and organisational survival are common (Frumkin and Andre-Clark, 2000). This has rarely been given much attention in advocacy planning Corey's (1972) Indeed the overwhelming majority of the funding received by PAE since 2003 was shaped by governmental policy agendas, whether in the form of grant or project funds.…”

“Who's Going to Man the Factories and be the Sexual Slaves if we all get PhDs?” Democratizing Knowledge Production, Pedagogy, and the Detroit Geographical Expedition and Institute

“…The widening of access to knowledge production, not the protection and reproduction of professional expertise, is the goal of the enterprise. As Kenneth Corey puts it (1972:49), “a kind of experimental college in the community was born from the Expedition's education component”. Thus, the DGEI enterprise was conceived of not as a mode of research focused on the professional geographer, but specifically as a theoretical and pedagogical critique of professional expertise and traditional social scientific notions of knowledge production:…”

“…Bunge insists that “to change geography toward humanism was going to take an organization not a book or series of articles” (1971:11). Corey maintains that “this form of advocacy in planning has learning as its primary purpose” (1972:56). Bunge explains that “a major portion of the effort will be to provide scholarship money to train folk geographers in the professional aspects of geography and through increasing their skills also enrich our own profession” (1971:39) 3…”