Adaptive Idealism: Delusional Optimism, Practiced Daily

I accidentally developed my own personal planning theory once upon a time, when asked to do the keynote for a UBC conference aimed at urban planners and aspiring urban planners. Delusional Optimism is what I called the theory I developed then—and have gone on to present and write about a few times since.

That theory describes what it feels like to be an urban planner with a lifelong commitment to the big picture: 

never forgetting why we exist as a profession, 

why we are drawn to this work, 

how we must match realism with blind hope for a more just city in order to keep trucking, and 

how we might abide as idealists seeking equity and beauty without becoming jaded—or worse, malign actors. 

Sure, I meant it. But at the time—and, if I’m honest, in the years since—I was looking to inspire more than to explain. I wasn’t yet grappling with the how.

Now, as a co-instructor with Cherie Enns in the Planning Theory course at the University of the Fraser Valley, we’ve assigned every student the task of developing their own “personal planning theory.” Cherie and I decided to share ours as well. Perhaps, we thought, sharing our own theories might embolden theirs.

—But wait. Is mine fully baked?

I realized something was missing. Or many things, really.

My why needs a how. We don’t talk about this enough. How do theories in planning policy and practice actually come to fruition? How does our passion for change hit the ground? How does change—real but imperfect, negotiated but conflicted—actually occur?

Charles Lindblom first got my attention when I was a planning student at UBC, back in 1998. Decades earlier, he had articulated what became known as disjointed incrementalism—the idea that policy evolves through small, successive adjustments in policy, practice and design.

Later, Rob Buchan—my first municipal planning boss and a mentor at a formative time in my career—took that thinking further. While working full-time in senior municipal roles, he completed a PhD and developed what he called transformative incrementalism: a planning theory that accepts the piecemeal nature of progress, but insists on intentionality, direction, and strong values. We may move in increments, but we need not drift on our journey. This theory speaks to me.

Something else was brewing in the back of my mind.

While I consider myself something of a Luddite, I am also the offspring of two of the first computer scientists in Canada. Perhaps because of these long-buried genes, I’ve found myself increasingly intrigued by what’s known as the agile process in programming—a method that elevates flexibility, ongoing adjustment, continuous feedback loops, and iterative success. It is, in many ways, a form of transformative incrementalism (not at all in opposition to it) that embraces the language of micro-adjustments, and reframes failure as success. 

Delusional optimism was never meant to stand alone. It is my fuel—but not the engine I rely on. Adaptive idealism means holding fast to a clear and ambitious vision of what should be, while moving toward it through small, deliberate steps; adjusting course as we go; learning from failure; and refusing to give up on the possibility of better cities.

With the profession of planning, as in life writ large, progress (we hope) belongs to those of us willing to believe in uncertain outcomes—and to work, increment by imperfect increment, to achieve the big bold future we seek together. That is my personal planning theory—incrementally adjusted.