PLANNING PROFESSIONALISM AND RE-BUILDING TRUST IN A POST-TRUTH ERA

Organizers

Hannah Hickman, UWE Bristol
Mark Oranje, University of Pretoria

Contributors

Katie McClymont, UWE Bristol
Jasper de Vries, Wageningen University
Gabriela Debrunner, ETH Zurich

This roundtable will look at trust in planning and trust in planners with a focus on professionalism and expert knowledge in a populist, polarised “post-truth”, era, where the sense of “public interest” remains vital but is in dispute.  In a broader international context, trust in institutions and experts is often deemed to be under pressure. However, looking more closely to trust in institutions studies show that this is only true among specific groups in society (e.g. those geographically far from governments seats, marginalized groups etc.). However, exemplified by traditional and social media, feelings of distrust of an ongoing crisis in trust in institutions and experts effect planning and planners.  Especially, as trust in planning matters because planning is at the heart of increasingly contentious – and at times polarising - debates about tackling global challenges around climate, access to housing, health, and inequality. This round table, It will enable critical consideration of the commonalities and differences in the role of planning and the planner in different contexts. 

It will draw on divergent experiences in Switzerland, the Netherlands, South Africa and the UK outline differing relationships with residents, governments and knowledges; to seek commonalities and difference between practice and practitioners. We seek new framings of how relationships of trust vary over time and context, and aim to add more conceptual and empirical depth to these questions of key social and academic importance.

Critically, this discussion aims to explore how and if we can learn through international comparison to re-building trust, critical for ensuring planning’s positive role in tackling key global challenges.

Key words: N/A