In a series of articles spanning the 1970s into the 1990s and 2000s, Wildavsky (1972), Reade (1983), Wadley and Smith (1998), Huxley (1999) and Phelps and Tewdwr-Jones (2008) have considered the questions of what is planning and whether it can be distinguished as a discipline. Aaron Wildavsky set this series in train with perhaps the most critical perspectives of the discipline of planning, whose reputation was restored to some extent in subsequent articles by Reade (1983), Huxley (1999) and Phelps and Tewdwr-Jones (2008). Nevertheless, Reade came to the conclusion that ‘we should regard with considerable scepticism the idea that there can exist a specific way of informing or making public decisions called “planning”’ (1983, p 168). The debate here, and one that academic planners and politicians constantly concern themselves with even today, relates to the merits, purpose and ethics of state intervention in regulating private property interests, contention over individual rights versus public protection, notions of planning versus pragmatism, long-term sustainable visions and short-term economic gains, utopian ideals and the practical realism of economic and political agendas, and finally – and put simply – fundamental objection to the very concept of planning. Underlying these contentions is a concern – still apparent today – of how decisions are made, in whose interests they lie, and whether planners (predominantly in the modern era) were supposedly rational unbiased creatures (cf Faludi, 1973; Cooke, 1983; Allmendinger and Tewdwr-Jones, 2002).

Planning today has undergone a metamorphosis into a very different activity than in 1945, 1960 or even 1980 as it has ebbed and flowed within a political arena. It survived the New Right period, the Blair period, and if anything, has been strengthened since 2004. Presently, it has been suggested that planning now lacks a central paradigm or guiding principle, particularly since the demise of comprehensive planning (Beauregard, 1990). Instead, Phelps and Tewdwr-Jones (2008) suggest that it is suspended between modernism and postmodernism (Wadley and Smith, 1998; Allmendinger, 2002a). For others, the evolution of planning thought and practice may have become at least partly detached from its role within capitalist economic systems. As Reade notes, ‘planners appear to abandon particular ways of working, and to adopt new ones, not on the basis of empirical evidence, but in accordance with changes in professional fashion’ (1983, p 160).