===================== HES POSTING =====================
As a former national/regional planner, I'm puzzled by the
disappearance of national planning from the Economics
and International Development Studies agenda since 1980. In the
1970s, I avidly read and quoted the writing on planning by such great
economists as W. Arthur Lewis, Jan Tinbergen, Raul Prebisch, Albert
Waterston, and Keith Griffin (and also the work of such Public
Administration Profs. as Aaron Wildavsky, Luther Gulick, and
Bertram Gross).
Around 1980 I disappeared from the world of national/regional
planning, and I have spent most
of the last 16 years doing local-level land-use planning, urban
design, and employment promotion, and also exploring urban
planning history. Recently I have been looking at the works of such
New Deal proponents of national planning as Rexford Tugwell, Stuart
Chase, Lewis Lorwin, and Lauchlin Currie.
What happened to national planning? W. Arthur Lewis, Tinbergen,
Prebisch, and many other great crusaders have passed away, many
national planning institutions have shrunk or disappeared, and the
whole field seems to have "faded quietly." Symbolically, on February
1st this year, after 62 years with its old name, the National Planning
Association in Washington DC changed its name to the National
Policy Association.
Rather naively, I would like to ask "HOW DO YOU INTERPRET
THIS?"
* Has national planning really faded in most parts of the world?
* If so, why did it rise and why has it fallen?
* What are the best writings by economists and historians of economics
which might help me to interpret the fate of national planning?
* Is the fate of broad-scale regional planning somehow tied to that
of national economic and social planning?
As you might guess, I can think of some possible explanations (Hayek,
Thatcher, Reagan, the fall of the Soviet Union etc.), but none seem
to counter the common-sense (and clearly anti-Soviet) logic of W.
Arthur Lewis, Tinbergen etc. What did I miss? Who stuck the knife
in so deep and so effectively? I'd greatly welcome the chance to dialog
with others on this topic.
Ray Bromley
Dept. of Geography & Planning
The University at Albany - SUNY
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