Planning in the Face of Power

John Forester’s book is about “the vulnerabilities of democracy, about power and professional responsibility, about political action and ideology, inequality, domination, and resistance, illegitimate authority, and democratizing practices” (p. xi of the original). The author combines an analysis of social and political theory with his own empirical investigations to examine what planners do in the face of concentrated economic and political power. In this chapter, he tries to demonstrate that planners can make choices about their exercise of political power in the planning process. He argues that information is an important source of a planner’s power and, if used strategically, can be a means of empowering citizens.