The Communicative Turn in Planning and Evaluation

Abstract

The interactive and communicative nature of planning is widely recognised by planning theorists and practitioners. It is increasingly argued that the outcomes of planning process are not confined to policies but also include other essential results such as transformative learning (Friedmann, 1987), communicative networks (Forester, 1989), institutional capital (Healey, 1996) and consensus and commitments (Innes, 1994). This development raises compelling questions about which outcomes should be evaluated and how. Traditionally evaluation has been concerned with the assessment of consequences of policies with a view to searching out their comparative advantages and disadvantages (Lichfield, 1996). This type of evaluation is neither entirely adequate nor relevant in the case of communicative planning. Evaluation should provide occasions for ideological and procedural reflections on various results of communicative planning (Faludi and Altes, 1997). Recent research in evaluation moves beyond previous evaluation approaches which focused on rational and systematic measurements and judgements and envisages evaluation as an interactive exploration of claims, concerns and issues among stakeholding groups (Guba and Lincoln, 1989). This advance in evaluation research provides opportunity for extending the assessment of planning process to include even ‘communicative outputs’.