The limits to communicative planning

While studies undertaken by communicative planning theorists provide valuable insights into everyday planning practice, there is a growing debate around the need for greater acknowledgement of relations of power and inequality. In particular, communicative planning theory has tended to obscure planning's problematic relation to the state. This paper opens for debate conceptions of public discourse in planning chat, on thr one hand, draw on Habermas's notions of communicative rationality, bur un the other, fail to critically examine his positioning of these in opposition co state;md economy. It is argued that the implications of critiques of Habermas's ideas may involve questioning the very possibility of communicative planning itself.