The Moral Work of Participation: Disillusio, Expertise, and Urban Planning Under Neoliberalism

How do urban professionals morally orient themselves toward their work to transform the built environment? Contemporary urban planning is a field that is defined by both a strong ethos of equity and social reform and a widely shared realization that the profession itself is relatively powerless. The question of whether justice can be planned, and whether exercises in planning can ever achieve just outcomes has been a perennial question facing progressive planners. A generation ago scholars of a critical bent made the persuasive case for “no.” Yet planning continues, and the profession continues to attract and train equity-minded, reform-oriented individuals. This paper examines how planning theory and theorists reconcile their motivating civic visions and moral stances with constraints on practice that thwart their efforts to achieve a just society. We find that far from being naïve, planners adopt a reflexive, pragmatic morality that allows them to maintain normative commitments even in highly constrained environments. From this case, we argue for more attention to the moral work involved in professionals’ formulation of strategies for environmental change.