Re-Examining the Role of Knowledge Within Planning Theory

While modernist planning theory reifies knowledge as an object and makes it an inherent part of modernism's legitimacy, postmodern planning theory celebrates multiple epistemologies but fails to specify institutional arrangements for handling multiple knowledges in a way that recognizes the specificity of knowledge claims. An argument is made here for the limited variety of forms that such knowledge claims can take and the need to create spaces within planning processes for testing and recognizing these different knowledge claims.