Rationality and Power - Democracy in Practice

Abstract

Flyvbjerg narrates in intense detail a decade of politicking around physical planning of the Danish city of Aalborg - a story of how business interests step-by-step blocked and gutted a long debated, internationally praised plan centred on restricting private motor vehicle access to the old city centre, despite its overwhelming approval by the city council. Underlying this account is an attack on idealist planners too exclusively reliant on Habermas-style visions of communicative rationality and discourse ethics. The book’s dearth of reference to contemporary planning literature reflects this preoccupation. In the foreground is constant reference to Nietzsche; for if one takes Enlightenment ideals seriously, one must harness the insights of such opposed ‘practical thinkers of power’.