Planning As a Moral Discourse: Some Ideas For Planning Education in Indonesia

INTRODUCTION

While maintaining technical-rational analytical and design aspects, planning has come to be conceptualized and practiced more as intensely political and value laden. As I will explore and defend in this paper, at the very basic, planning is a moral discourse -- it concerns some basic moral issues such as justice, equity, rights, welfare, and power relations. Planning as a moral discourse deals not only with questions on how to plan and what is a good plan, but more fundamental ones such as: what is planning? what is the basis for making a plan? what are the objectives of planning? for whom are we planning? These very basic questions concerning moral issues in planning, I would argue, become more crucial in developing

countries such as Indonesia where problems concerning justice, rights, equality, public goods, and power relations are more crucial than that in developed countries. Planning theories and practices, however, have been developed based on some sets of western norms, values and ideas, and assumed to be implemented within a liberal-democratic western society, therefore, I assert, their application into developing countries should be somehow modified or even redeveloped.

In this context, my view is that planning education in developing countries plays a very crucial role -- they can and should perform as a nurturing place for modifying, developing, and disseminating planning ideas that are perhaps more contextual to the local problems and needs. Addressing the first

¹ Staf pengajar di Jurusan Teknik Arsitektur dan Magister Perencanaan Kota dan Daerah, Universitas Gadjah Mada; saat ini sedang tugas belajar di School of Community and Regional Planning, The University of British Columbia, Canada.

issue of Journal of Planning Education and Research in 1981, Perloff points out that "the quality of professional attainment is directly related to planning education and to enhance the quality of education is probably the most direct method available to raise the quality of the profession." From this perspective, I argue that if the planning profession is to be developed and expected to help solve societal and environmental problems in developing countries, it is an urgent need for planning education programs in developing countries to revisit their goals, emphasis, structure, and teaching methods, even perhaps at the early stage of their development.

PLANNING AS A MORAL DISCOURSE: TOWARD A HOLISTIC APPROACH IN PLANNING

Planning Theories Revisited

As we learn from the literature, debates on planning theory have resulted in substantially rich alternative planning theories. This richness of alternatives however, brought about more divergent views and visions of planning. In other words, it is unfortunate that the increasing amount of alternative theories in planning has not resulted in clarifying our understanding of planning. In the following section I will discuss four streams in planning theory proposed by Friedmann (1987) namely social reform, policy analysis, social learning, and social mobilization.² It is hoped that by clarifying the ramifications of ideas in planning theory we can have a holistic view toward planning;

a view that is important as a benchmark for the development of planning education.

1) Social reform

Social reform, as Friedmann argued is the main stream of planning theory and practice. It is the grand tradition of planning in which despite ongoing criticism still has many proponents and supporters. This stream holds that planning is rational-scientific means to efficiently achieve a unitary or stated goal devised by the state. Three things are important in this stream: stated-unitary goals, the scientific-rational means or methods, and efficiency of efforts. Derived from these unitary goals, social reform holds that "public interest" is also clearly stated and unified. Its belief in scientific methods put this stream as applied rationality or the importance of reasons in public life particularly in the decision making process.

This stream has been widely criticized on the basis that it views planning as a technical, value-free, apolitical activity, and that it fails to deal with the socio-political context in which planning functions. Justice is not an explicit agenda of this stream, because it lies beyond the purely rational decision making process. As the state plays the dominant role in the whole process of development, this stream tends to maintain the status quo for the benefits of the power groups. Welfare state is the promise of this stream however, it usually fails to meet the need of the majority, particularly in developing countries. In this stream, the role of the planner is not more than an expert or technician. Although some planners also play roles as bureaucrats, they do not really have the power to make decisions. In other words, this stream maintains the justification of planning as a pragmatic profession, where planners are seen primarily as handmaidens to power and as part of a comprehensive process attempting to maintain hegemony or domination of existing power (Friedmann, 1995). Despite many critics of this stream

There are many ways to categorize a wide array of planning theories. I personally see that the category proposed by Friedmann in Planning in the Public Domain (1987) is the most comprehensive one, as he discussed the underlying epistemology of each category.

however, planners continue to utilize this approach. Particularly in developing countries, the application of this stream is believed to be the prerequisite for "modernizing" the country. It is applied both in term of macro-economic planning and urban-land use planning.

2) Policy Analysis

Further an elaboration of social reform, policy analysis stresses the importance of rational-systematic means in the decision making process. Based on the assumption that there is no conflicting goal or values policy analysis focuses on how to improve the effectiveness of the decision making process. There is no explicit explanation regarding the issue of justice; it holds that justice and power should be treated separately from the decision making process. It assumed that if public goods can be maximized it would be increase the justice as well. Thus, the most importance agenda of policy analysis is the advancement of rational means to effectively enhance the decision making process. By improving the decision making process it is assumed that the best alternative to achieve the maximum good can be found. Planning process is the privilege of planners; their roles are to provide scientific data and information, to construct the explanatory models, to propose and select the best alternative means to achieve a goal.³

Planners in this stream tend to regard themselves as "technocrate," or "social engineers" serving the existing center of power-large private corporations and the state (Friedmann, 1987). Justice and equity, in this policy analysis stream, would appear as an effect of equilibrium in the market.

Thus, they are not the goals in the process because the goals are efficiency of the market and maximizing of outcomes. Both social reform and policy analysis are the grand tradition of planning theory and development theory for which productivity, free market, liberalism, and open competition are the dogma. They are grounded in positivist science, with emphasis on quantitative modeling and analysis and an assumption that development and modernization is a linear process.

3) Social Learning

As a reaction against the inability of both social reform and policy analysis to bridge a planner's scientific endeavor with popular action by citizens, Friedmann proposed the idea of Social learning or Transactive Planning. It stresses the importance of bridging the gap between knowledge and action or between theory and practice through a transactive process between planner and client/ordinary citizen (Friedmann, 1981, 1987). The social learning stream holds that the roles of planners are as mediators or facilitators; planners dialectically move between scientific and the popular arena or between knowledge and action.⁴ Although not explicitly explained, social learning emphasizes justice as the primary goal. It acknowledges the power and the rights of ordinary citizens in the process of developing plans.

Social learning then, conceives the ideal democratic society in which every group has the same right and access to power and resources. Unlike social reform and policy analysis, social learning does not pre-set a unitary or single goal or outcome because the goals will be negotiated among and formulated within parties in a fairly

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3 Several planning approaches that are considered under this stream are: applied rationality (Alexander); systems approach (Chadwick); incrementalism (Banfield and Lindblom); mixed scanning (Etzioni); and libertarian approach (Harper and Stein).

⁴ Schon called these planners "reflective practitioners", those who continually learn from their everyday experiences and aspire to better ones in the future (Schon, 1983).

democratic process. This stream views that the role of the state should be minimal or limited since the domain is a democratic civil society. Planners' roles in this stream are regarded as mediator or translator or social activist (Forester, 1989).

Although social learning stresses the importance of democratic process, some argue that it does not really offer the possibility of restructuring existing power relations (Friedmann, 1995; Harper and Stein, 1995). The underlying weakness of social learning is that it does not specifically address the important issues of emancipation and empowerment. In a situation of domination and hegemony, Friedmann argues that is needed is a radical transformation in which the powerless marginal groups could be emancipated and liberalized (Friedmann, 1987).

4) Social Mobilization

Social mobilization emerged as an alternative that focuses on a radical way to change existing power structures within society. It therefore views planning as a totally political means which tends to de-emphasized the role of the state; it places social and political justice as the main agenda. This stream also rejects the notions of objectivism and rationalism since they often are used to maintain the status quo. For the proponents of this stream, there is no unitary public interest, which acknowledges the interest of the powerless and there is no consensus values but the values of the people "at the bottom" are incorporated. The role of planners in social mobilization is as socialpolitical activists who help and advocate for the powerless to radically change the existing political and economic structure.

By working from the below, a planner should be able to mobilize community resources and empower people (Friedmann, 1987, 1993). This stream exhibits the acceptance of new epistemologies -- among them radical theory, feminism, and postmodernism -- in the field of planning and as such has enriched planning discourse that previously relied on positivism and objectivism. Feminist, advocacy planning, and radical planning are usually regarded as alternative theories in planning. Unlike social reform and policy analysis, their focus is often on the powerless, marginalized groups, and stresses empathy rather than rights.

This alternative stream however, is also not free from critics. Harper and Stein argue that it provides no real solution to planning practice and could even bring the profession to another planning theory crisis. The radicalists views toward the state, for example, could bring this approach into anarchy with the greatest cost to the powerless. As argued by Friedmann then, it is important that within the social mobilization tradition, the role of the state is still acknowledged. In his recent book, Empowerment, (1992) Friedmann argues for a new planning alternative: "empowerment" which emphasizes on local autonomy, democracy, and experiential social learning.⁵

Planning as a Moral Discourse: Towards a Holistic Approach

In the previous section, I have discussed four streams in planning theory concerning justice, welfare, power, and the role of the planner. The summary of these discussions is presented in Table 1. Both the discussion and the table show that each stream of planning theory offers different moral considerations concerning four important issues in planning. But what is the most

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⁵ Harper and Stein (1995) called this approach radical pragmatism; it represents a new alternative integration among various streams. The term itself, as promoted by Hoch almost a decade ago, does not conceive of power relations solely in terms of class struggle, instead it concentrates on the promise of individual and community emancipatory and democracy (Hoch, 1984).

Table 1 Some Important Features of Planning Theories in Relation to Moral Issues

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appropriate stream to address planning problems in developing countries?

My view is that we need to approach planning in a holistic way in where we place moral considerations at the center of planning ideas and practices. As can be seen in the illustration below, the idea of planning can be abstracted into a triangle with three aspects. At the bottom of the triangle are two aspects in planning: first, the technical procedural debates or discourse, concerns with the rational-effective means to achieve a particular end or goal; second, the utopian debates or discourse, seeks the best alternative of urban forms and grand design. At the top of the triangle is the newly acknowledged political debate or discourse, relating to power relations in the decision making process. It should not be forgotten however that at the center of this triangle is embedded a moral-ethical discourse that gives direction for further discourses in planning. Building on this, a holistic approach in planning is one that acknowledges sociopolitical, technical-procedural, and utopian discourses in planning and places moral considerations at the heart of planning theory and practice.

Conceptualizing planning as a moral discourse is very important because while maintaining technical-rational procedures, utopian-design or good urban form aspect, planning from the top has come to be practiced as intensely morally and politically laden. Only by having a holistic view toward planning, planners would be able to guide their own journey into this value-laden field and develop a morally correct idea and action in a diverse and unprecedented situation. Planners in developing countries such as Indonesia are facing a rapid and unprecedented era, both economically, socially, and politically. In this situation, it would be a "naiveté" for them to have a single-minded view and focus only on a particular planning idea. Planners should be open-minded to any kind of alternative planning options that inevitably emerge. I propose that several alternative planning approaches should be "critically" and "contextually" redefined and implemented as they might have valuable contribution to solve problems in developing countries. I argue that what we need is "responsive"and "reflective" planners, those who have a commitment to improve the situation in developing countries who critically and continually

Illustration 1 Planning as a Moral Discourse: Toward a Holistic Approach socio-political debates

questioning the existing power relations moral discourse concerns with moral reasoning & moral judgments

questioning urban forms & grand design questioning effective means & methods

utopian debates technical-procedural debates

learn from their past and present experiences resulting in better ones in the future.

Planning as a moral discourse means that planners should go beyond their present narrow technical-utilitarian perspective and explore their potential roles in the dynamic socio-economic and political system in which their activities take place. They must deal not only with the issue of economic efficiency and good urban form but as well with power structures, and act to further values of equity, justice, and democracy. Planners in Indonesia must be sensitive to local culture but aware of the fact that local culture is evolving. In brief, within the idea that planning is a moral discourse, planners should have a responsive and reflective attitude to questioning rather than maintaining or justifying the existing social and political system.

THE CONTEXT OF PLANNING IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: PLANNING EDUCATION AS THE CORNERSTONE

Why Plan? How It has been Exercised?

To recall my ten-year experience in both planning practice and education in Indonesia, it is interesting that I hardly ever heard such discussions as why do we plan? for whom do we plan? To my knowledge, most discussions on planning, both among practitioners as well as academics in Indonesia focus more on the question of how planners could advance their comprehensiverational planning process and issues regarding the achievement of ideal urban form. It seems that planners in Indonesia are worrying more about how to develop a comprehensive master plan, land use planning, zoning, building codes and how to set a better institutional framework to implement those plans. Thus, we perceive our roles as technocrats, serving the need of public interests as represented by the state and justifying the already stated urban development goals derived through rational calculation and grand metaphor. This is a kind of synoptic planning that is now under attack on the basis that it is value-free.

This evidence reflects that planning in developing countries such as Indonesia is conceived and practiced merely as an instrument of social guidance, in which it functions to make the state's intervention more efficiently and effectively; in this idea, planners are clearly work for the state and articulating the state's interests. This is unfortunate, because as Friedmann (1987) stated, this situation could lead to a crisis in planning, a situation where state's intervention on society is great, yet is unable to satisfy the legitimate needs of people. It is true that, to some extent, planners have helped perpetuate economic progress, maximize public goods, and develop infrastructure and basic services in their country. Planners, however, also play an important role in widening the gap between the wealthy and the poor and in increasing the reliance of the people on the state. I am afraid that we miss more basic, more challenging, and more fundamental discourses in planning: moral discourse concerned with more fundamental roles of planning in society.

The Urgent Mission of the Planner in Developing Countries

It is usually perceived that urbanization and urban change, as both engines and forms of globalization, will assume the same process and form in both developed and developing countries. Yet, the facts that many cities are still able to present their uniqueness or transform into a different form suggest the ability of local variables or human agents to modify or transform global influences. As we have seen, geographically, socially, and politically, the urban development process that is taking place in developing countries is different compared to what happened in developed countries.⁶ It is unfortunate however that many planners in developing countries continue to perceive urban development as essentially unproblematic - demand for urban space, as they assumed, would be translated into supply. This implies that the production of urban space could be easily seen only from the rational model of the market and, therefore, policy and planning options to respond to that change has often been developed on the basis of a simple market model. The result is clear: inefficiency is commonly found in their efforts to determine urban development.

The fact that we are dealing with a complex setting of "illegality" and "informality" in urban development forced us to find more appropriate planning and management alternatives. There are some doubts that the status-quo policy will be able to serve the "efficiency" and "productivity" objectives of urban development. On the other hand, as the literature indicates, there is no clear answer to whether a more formalized and regulated form of urban development, particularly in the field of land and housing development, is likely to support the "equity" objectives or urban development (Jones and Ward, 1994).

Looking back to the problems faced by developing countries such as poverty, sociopolitical justice, equity, and environment, I

argue that at least four urgent missions are faced by planners in developing countries such as Indonesia. Those are: (1) to ensure the realization of social, economic and political justice; (2) to ensure the provision of basic needs; (3) to empower people and to support the development of democratic-civil society; and (4) to ensure the sustainability of the environment. How then, we challenge these missions? What is the role that planning education can and should play in achieving these missions?

Planning Education in Developing Countries: Its Rationale, Problems and Prospects

In my view, there are at least four reasons why developing countries such as Indonesia should have our own graduate planning program. The first, and this is a pragmatic reason, is that sending students abroad costs much more money than educating them in their domestic universities. The fact that funding from donor countries is becoming limited, leads to a decreasing number of students from developing countries able to study abroad. Of course, for some reasons (such as access to literature, transfer of knowledge, international experience and relations and so on) there is the need to continue to send students from developing countries to schools in developed countries. But at the same time, there is the need for more affordable and accessible graduate program for all people, conducted in developing countries.

The second reason, still a pragmatic one, is that in some universities in developing countries there are already enough human resources to develop their own graduate program. The third reason, which is more than a pragmatic reason, is that there is the need for universities in developing countries to develop their institutional capacity. By having a larger variety of graduate programs it will strengthen the institutional capacity of ⁶ Many theories have been developed to better understand the unique process and product of urban development phenomena in developing countries such as "urban involution", "urban dualism", "pseudo urbanization" and "kota-desasi". Interestingly enough however, as these theories focus more on the descriptive aspects of the phenomena, we know very little on how to deal with these unique phenomena.

the university in conducting both teaching, research, and community services. The last, and more fundamental reason is that the development of the planning field or profession in developing countries, surely should not depend only on planning schools in developed countries. By having our own graduate planning program, we would be able to develop planning ideas that are more appropriate to the local problems and needs.

In short, I would argue that the prospect of developing planning education in developing countries such as Indonesia is promising and therefore, it is the time to really think about missions and programs. As planning education is the cornerstone for the development of the planning profession, advancing our planning education is necessary. In a more broader-global context, it is hoped that by cultivating good planning education in developing countries, a better network and collaboration could be developed among planing schools around the world to further advance the role of planning in the society.

SOME IDEAS FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF PLANNING EDUCATION IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES⁷

As we have learned from the previous discussion, planning educators in developing countries are facing a very challenging moment. Further thoughts and ideas should be shared among planning educators concerned with the development of planning education in developing countries. Several questions that should be addressed include: what are the goals of planning education in developing countries;? what is the focus of the programs;? what concepts of planning

should we teach students? what is the specific role that planning education has to play in the era of globalization and rapid development process;? what skills and content knowledge will we teach? what is the appropriate format and teaching methods we could develop and implement.? In this following section, I will discuss some ideas concerning: (1) the goals and focus of planning education; (2) the structure of planning education; (3) teaching planning theory course.

The Goals of Planning Education: Reflective and Responsive Planners?

As I have argued earlier in this paper, beyond merely determining urban form and pattern, planners have a potential roles to ensure the realization of social, economic and political justice and to ensure the sustainability of the environment. With these missions in mind, I would suggest that planning education in developing countries such as Indonesia should be directed to create what I call "reflective"⁸ and "responsive" planners. What I mean by a reflective and responsive planner is one who comprehensively understands their specific role and function in improving the situation in developing countries. Perhaps they are not mastering advanced or a wide variety of technical skill (that students could learn outside the program) but, they have a clearcomprehensive understanding of: why plan?, what to plan for? As I have pointed out, planning is a moral discourse; this means that "the value of planning, rests not on its technical character, but its social potential."

7 This paper is exclusively concerned with planning education at the graduate level. It thus assumes a two year education that aims in general at producing a generalist with specialty.

⁸ Donald Schon is the first promoter of using this term, in his book The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action, he advocates the integrative process of knowing, understanding, and acting by a planner in every planning episode that they are involved with. This is a kind of phenomenological approach that not only criticizes but also act as an alternative to positivism in planning (Schon, 1983)

Building on this idea, I argue that beyond merely supplying the demand for a professional planner with very specific skills, planning education in developing countries should go further by preparing students for a greater role in society. ⁹ In other words, I stress here that providing students with visions about planning is as equally as important than training them with very specific-advanced skills. With a broadholistic vision, students would be able to conceive the world and planning more in a "probabilistic" rather than in a "deterministic' way.

As we have witnessed, the role of planning in society has undergone a significant change, evolving from a basically utopian endeavor to map out future history, using scientific means to achieve the best effective policy, into complex and ambiguous roles in guiding social change and empowering communities. If we want to place planning in its best position in society, we have to explore a wide variety of planning roles and potentials. The trend of disseminating planning ideas only in its procedural-rational form overlooked the potential roles of planning to improve the situation in developing countries. The acknowledgment that planning is not value free, informed us that there should be an increased appreciation of the politics of planning. Responsive and reflective planner must therefore prepare for a lifetime learning. It is reflective in the sense that he/she critically evaluates their experiences as the basis for further knowing and acting.

9 Feldman (1994) and also Krueckeberg (1984) argue that there is a tendency in most planning schools in North America de-emphasize planning's social impacts. While some schools change their curricula to attract more students and help them find jobs, other schools emphasize skills, such as design or computer or GIS, with equally little concern for substantive content or purpose.

Responsive and reflective planners are urgently needed in developing countries, where the process and product of urbanization and urban change are unique and do not mimic circumstances of developed countries. This includes the fact that urban phenomena in developing countries consists of a complex mixture of "formal" and "informal" or "legal" and "illegal" settings. Planners graduating from schools which focus on formal and legal issues therefore, should open their mind and learn how "informal" or "illegal" planners work among squatters and the poor to efficiently and effectively create affordable housing without help from the state. In other words, responsive and reflective planners should acknowledge the responsiveness and richness of planning ideas and practices within so called "informal" and "illegal" planning systems.

Alternative for the Structure of Graduate Planning Program¹⁰

I propose that planning education in developing countries is to be structured in the form of a course of studies organized around a common core curriculum. This means that the curriculum consists of three parts: the core, the area of specialization or streams and the general skills. The core is the most important and rigid area as it contains visions of and knowledge about planning. The core functions as a foundation upon which areas of specialization or streams are built. An area of specialization allows students to develop their knowledge and skills to be capable to conduct a particular planning project. This area of specialization is more flexible or loosely structured, depending on the needs and resources available. The third part is general skill, consisting of several ¹⁰ As the primary concern in this paper is on the substance of planning education, aspects such as credit courses, schedules, course material,and so on, although they are important, will not be discussed in this paper.

courses which supplement the core and specialization areas.

In brief, the structure is presented in Table 2.

1) The Core

The core contains four courses: planning theory, planning studio or project, research method, and thesis. As the goal of this core is to enable students to master visions and knowledge of planning, careful attention should be given not just to the individual course within this core but also the integration among these four courses. In general, the planning theory course provides visions and knowledge of planning; it gives students lenses through which they can see planning and understand how it works. The planning project offers a view of how planning praxis works and how to link theory and practice, ideas and reality; it provides valuable exposure to the real world of planning.¹¹ Research methods provides an opportunity for students to master several methods in knowing, describing, predicting, and reporting a phenomenon. The thesis challenges students to comprehensively review a particular planning issue or problem. This planning workshop could assume many forms such as planning simulation, case studies, or evaluation, but it should be the medium for incorporating all knowledge and skills gained from both the core courses, the specialization, and the elective courses.

2) The Streams

The streams or the periphery of the curricula can contain as many subjects as possible. It however should be grouped in a such a way that reflects a specialty or stream that ¹¹ According to Heumann (1988) workshop is still central to the curriculum at many planning schools in North America. About 72 percent required at least one workshop for all students and nearly 65 percent require two or more.

students could focus on. As Table 3 shows, four streams or specialization could be developed which I think are reasonable for developing countries, due to some planning issues that should be solved. These streams are:

• 1) Physical Planning;
• 2) Environment and Regional Planning;
• 3) Urban Management; and
• 4) Alternative Planning.

The physical stream is for those who are interested in the physical aspect of urban environment such as: land use, urban design, transport planning, and urban infrastructure. Although it is considered as a "traditional" stream in planning, it is however still very important to improve the decreasing quality of the urban environment. The second specialization concerns integrating economic development into environmental considerations. With focus on regional planning, this stream provides students with knowledge and skills to enable them to critically exercise or evaluate regional planning and resource management. The third, urban management, is for those who are interested in the political or managerial aspect of development. This includes topics such as: planning and law or governing, urban management, and public policy. In developing countries, such topics are urgently needed especially to strengthen the capacity of local government in planning and development. The fourth stream, alternative planning, is for students interested in working with communities or NGOs. It is a new specialization that accommodates new ideas in planning such as empowerment, gender perspective, or advocacy planning.

The four streams that I propose above reflect the need to solve many urgent problems in planning practice in developing countries. And that can be different in many countries and regions, depending on their local planning problems and educational resources. It however, should be remembered that planning practice should not always dictate planning education programs. Further, these streams should be developed in such away that not deemphasize the comprehensiveness or the

Table 2 Alternative for the Structure of Graduate Planning Program in Developing Countries

• 5. Tourism Planning cific planning issue.
• 6. Real Estate/Property Development

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7. Historic Preservation

3. Working with Small Group To provide knowledge and skills enable stu-4. Geographic Information System dents to critically conduct or evaluate a speholistic dimensions of planning. Students who master in a particular skill for a particular planning issue should have a realistic understanding of the profession and possibilities, without being naively optimistic or cynical.¹²

3) The General Courses

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Besides the core and the streams, planning education should offer several elective courses to advanced students for a particular skill. Hendler (1995) has argued, that because planning practice is becoming more and more politicized, planning students need skills that are often not part of planning education -- skills such as dispute resolution, listening, cross cultural communication, working in small groups and so on. It is important therefore that planning education provides students with skills that enable them to perform in a variety of roles including roles as a mediator, communicator, social activist, and even politician. In developing countries, communication skill is very important since planners are supposed to deal with a wide variety of community groups. As can be seen in table 2, some alternatives are: communication or mediation skill, working with small groups, computer skills, and geographic information system. Within elective courses, several substantive courses such as tourism planning, historic preservation, or real estate, could be offered for students interested in specific substantive planning issues. In relation to this, it is crucial for planning students to take some courses from other departments that will enable them to broaden their visions and maintain the holistic vision of planning.¹³

Teaching Planning Theory Course

For the reason that the course content in planning theory should reflect the comprehensiveness of thoughts in planning theory, I would suggest that my conception of the holistic approach to planning can be elaborated into themes in a planning theory course. Thus, I propose that four themes should be discussed in a planning theory course:

• 1) philosophical foundations,
• 2) visionary or utopian debates,
• 3) procedural theory debates, and
• 4) the politics of planning.

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¹² It is interesting that while in North America, about half of all planning graduates go into nontraditional fields (Glassmeier and Kahn 1989, in Feldman, 1994), in Indonesia almost all planning graduates remained in traditional fields. This reflects, to some extent, that planning education in developing countries is trapped within a narrowly defined traditional role. It is unable to persuade students to enlarge and broaden their vision and seek more challenging roles of planning.

¹³ To my knowledge, for only practical reasons such as marking, scheduling and so on, graduate students in Indonesia are not suggested (by their school) to take courses outside their school.

As can be seen in table 3, each theme can be elaborated into several sub-themes, but in general, these four themes cover the ideas of planning as a moral discourse that I propose in this paper. For planning educators, it is very important to ensure that these four themes or topics are understood comprehensively by students, as these are the essence of planning. Perhaps some planning educators tend to prefer one

particular topic, they however, should equally explain and discuss these four themes.

The tendency that planning theory courses do not pay enough attention to the debates concerning the evolving role of planners and with whom planners plan must be changed. As Klosterman (1981, 1992) has shown, there has been an increasing trend in planning theory courses in North American

Table 3 Proposal for Themes in Planning Theory Course

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planning schools to give more attention to the politics of planning, and the field's intellectual foundations. This is a positive trend that planning educators in developing countries should follow.

I am not suggesting de-emphasizing the procedural and the visionary aspect of planning, as there are several reasons for continuing to teach this model.¹⁴ What I am suggesting is that planning educators in developing countries should not describe one

¹⁴ Alexander (1984) and Dalton (1986) are among those who advocate the importance of teaching rational planning model in planning. Bueauregrad (1995) also mentions that teaching planning without a subject on designing a good urban form and society (the utopian discourse in planning) is paying too little attention to the potential of planning.

particular model as a dogma or as the only alternative in planning. Here, I took Friedmann's suggestion that a planning theory course should be designed as a critical survey of planning ideas and thoughts, so that students may comprehend a wide array of planning ideas.

Explicit in the table that I propose is to bring discussions on planning theory back to the moral-ethical philosophies. This means that in a planning theory course, planning educators and students should always question the underlying moral-ethical considerations of each planning idea; how each planning theory treats moral issues concerning: justice, public goods, welfare, power, and the role of planners. The recognition that planning deals very much with moral issues and therefore cannot be "value free" has suggested to us to increase our appreciation for the ethical and moral issues in planning.

CONCLUSION

In this paper, I have explained and defended that planning is a moral discourse. At the most basic, planning concerns some basic moral issues such as: how we shall define and promote justice and equity; how we shall distribute public goods; how we shall share power; how we shall treat the environment; and how we shall place ourselves in the society. Further, I argue that if planning education is the cornerstone for the development of planning profession, the notions of planning as a moral discourse should be highly placed in planning education. Consequently, there is an urgent need to further discuss the development of planning education in developing countries; a need that I assume will be growing in the years ahead, years in which the demand for more morally sound planners will be increasing. In this conclusion, I will summarize several important considerations regarding the development of planning

education in developing countries such as Indonesia as follows.

• 1. The goals of planning education. As planning education is the keystone for further development of the planning field, it is important to set the goal of planning education beyond merely the production of a professional planner oriented narrowly to a particular planning practice. This means that planning education should become the place for innovative and critical visions concerning the role of planning in society. Consequent to this, the development of planning education should not be determined solely by planning practice or profession. Having a greater independence from the profession, would allow planning education to broaden its substance and purpose.
• 2. The focus of planning education. Building upon the notions that planning is a moral discourse, planning education should anticipate the need to work toward a better democratic-civil society, community empowerment, eradication of poverty and injustice, and sustainable development. It should be clear to both planning educators as well as students that they should give a greater emphasis on moralethical deliberations and social responsibility.
• 3. The context of planning education. As planning has always been closely related to social change, planning education must raise critical questions and generate answers about the structure of the society and about how globalization and current transformations are to be understood and interpreted. Planning education must have local focus with

• global considerations. In Indonesia, planning education should aware of the fact that planning is working in a complex of mixture between "illegal" and "legal" settings, between "informal" and "formal" procedures.
• 4. The content of planning education. The ideas of planning should be explained comprehensively, under four basic theme areas: (1) the philosophical foundations of planning, (2) the visionary/utopian ideas, (3) the procedural methods, and (4) the politics of planning. In developing countries, where the idea of planning is relatively new, it is very important that planning education provides not only technical skills, but more importantly the comprehensive and critical visions concerning the role of planning in society. Only if planning educators can sensitize students to the moral values in planning, are they likely to implement that sensitivity into their practices.
• 5. The format and teaching techniques. Within the goals, focus, and context of planning education stated above, I propose that the appropriate format of graduate planning education is to be structured to produce a "generalist with specialty". In the form of planning curriculum it means: a core course and several streams or specialties, supported by some elective courses. Regarding teaching techniques, it is important to consider that a wide array of planning theory, should be logically and interestingly linked to the reality of local political and cultural context. This means that, an abstract formulation of knowledge about planning, which is constructed from western ideas

should be contextually interpreted and explained into local situations.