Planning professionalism in the face of technocracy: ethics, values and practices

This chapter considers the extent to which today's planners and planning experts fulfil a key role: assisting in the protection of disadvantaged and marginalised groups. While discussing these professional principles, the chapter questions the extent to which contemporary planning expertise is increasingly internalising neoliberal logics of interventions. It starts by presenting examples of how planning is currently being provided in councils to highlight how the planning service has become more commercialised through increasingly technocratic practices. The chapter subsequently reflects on what this means for planning's professional credentials and right to intervene, and concludes that planning is becoming increasingly commodified. However, planning practitioners are not questioning their professionalism or their profession's status. When set against the planning and professional academic literature's concern for altruistic public service provision, this appears to be a narrowing down of planning's and professionalism's understanding of social concern that creates disquiet for those observing the direction of travel.