Teaching Theory in a Time of Crisis

Thursday I stood in front of a group of undergraduate planning students at the University of the Fraser Valley’s School of Regional and Community Planning and did something that surprised me: I taught planning theory. This was out of step with much of what I’ve done before. For 8 years at the UBC planning school, my motto for students has been, “OK you have the theory, but this is how the sausages are made.” Now, I’m teaching the THEORY too. My challenge to myself: how can I do this in a way that feels of the moment? That helps in the moment?

We waded into the “big systems” thinking that shaped the twentieth century — the era when modern planning grew up alongside the expanding state. We talked about the rise in bureaucracy, standardization, Keynesianism, public works, and the professionalization of planning. The story of how zoning bylaws, building codes, infrastructure investment, and large-scale housing programs became normal tools of governance. In short: how planning became institutionalized as a way the state organizes urban life

It’s easy to teach this material as a triumphalist narrative. “Look what planning achieved!” Public health protections. Coordinated infrastructure. Housing that achieves economies of scale. Roads, water systems, transit networks. The rise of the public servant planner — technical, rational, working for the collective good

And to be clear: those achievements matter. Standardization saved lives. Public works shaped daily life in ways we now take for granted. Government intervention helped stabilize economies and build cities in moments of crisis

But.

I didn’t want students leaving with the idea that “more system” automatically equals “more good.”

Because embedded in that same legacy is a powerful assumption: that cities are problems to be solved through rational analysis, expert knowledge, and comprehensive plans—without necessarily engaging with the public—the many publics—and without humility. The rational–comprehensive model of planning — define the problem, analyze the options, select the optimal solution — the clean, linear logic that many of us were taught as the gold standard of decision-making — is not without many drawbacks.

The trouble? Cities are not mathematical equations. People are not variables. Power is not evenly distributed.

Rational-comprehensive planning often presents itself as neutral and objective. But who defines “the problem”? Who decides what counts as a benefit or a cost? Whose knowledge is considered valid enough to enter the analysis? When these questions go unasked, “rationality” can become a cloak for existing power structures — smoothing the path for highways that bulldoze through neighbourhoods, urban renewal that erases communities, or standards that fit some bodies and households better than others.

If rational planning can overestimate the power of expertise, incrementalism can underestimate the need for transformation. Yes, we also discussed Charles Lindblom’s theory of incrementalism — “muddling through,” small steps, bounded rationality, adjusting policy bit by bit. In many ways, this feels closer to the lived reality of planning practice. Budgets are tight. Politics is messy. Change happens through negotiation and compromise.

But incrementalism without a moral compass is just drift.

Small steps can either move us toward greater equity, inclusion, and environmental responsibility — or quietly entrench the status quo. If we’re only asking “What’s feasible right now?” and not also “What kind of city are we trying to become?” then incrementalism risks becoming a management style for inequality rather than a pathway out of it.

That’s why the most important part of these lectures, for me, wasn’t the historic models themselves, but the questions that close the loop: How much state? How much standardization? Who decides? Who pays? How much equity is built into the system — and for whom?

Planning theory can sound abstract, but students quickly recognized its fingerprints everywhere: in housing rules, local transit investments, and the design of everyday public space. The “old” theories are not old at all. They’re embedded in our institutions, procedures, and professional norms.

What I hope they took away is that planning is never just technical. Planners are not only experts or public servants; we are also, inevitably, political actors, mediators, change-makers, and justice-seekers, whether we acknowledge it or not. The choice is not between “political” and “non-political” planning, but between being conscious of the values shaping our work or letting them operate unexamined.

Teaching theory right now, in a moment of housing crises, climate shocks, and deep social inequities, feels less like an academic exercise and more like handing students a set of lenses. These frameworks help them see that the systems they’re entering were designed, that they carry assumptions, and that they can be redesigned.

If the twentieth century gave us big systems, perhaps the twenty-first demands something more: systems that are not only rational, but just. Not only incremental, but directional. Not only standardized, but humane.

That’s a theory worth planning for.