Back to basics in planning

Abstract

“Sometime during the 1970s, the city planning movement began to turn upside down and inside out…” (Hall, 2002: 379). Hall’s observation is not simply a historical note; it is a warning. Planning did not merely adapt to new realities; it abandoned its foundational purpose. A discipline once concerned with ordering space and guiding development in the public interest increasingly became an instrument for enabling growth, often irrespective of social consequences. The planner, traditionally positioned between competing interests as regulator and mediator, increasingly became an accomplice to short-term economic interests. In Hall’s metaphor, the gamekeeper became the poacher. This commentary argues that the crisis in planning cannot be understood purely as a professional or technical failure. It is rooted in a deeper intellectual and cultural transformation: the erosion of responsibility in modern society. Planning reflects that erosion in its theories, practices, and outcomes. To move forward, planning must return to basic principles, to a clearer understanding of human behaviour, and to a renewed commitment to responsibility. Nowhere is this more urgent than in South Africa, where planning failures intersect with broader political and economic instability.