HAIFA DECLARATION on THE SOCIAL CORE OF URBAN PLANNING
The gathering of senior planning educators, all of whom have devoted much of their career to thinking and writing about the social concerns of urban planning, provides an excellent opportunity to draft a Declaration about the Social Core of Urban Planning. I suggest we jointly try to write our statement. If we succeed, we may want to submit our declaration to the boards of ACSP and AESOP, asking them to consider adopting it and distributing it among their member schools of planning.
The new website of our international workshop may be used to exchange opinions on such a declaration. Let me start the discussion by suggesting three parts for the potential declaration:
- The first rule that planners may want to adopt (like the first rule of medical doctors) is: Primum non nocere i. e., First, Do No Harm. It comes to remind us that planners have been deeply involved with serious harms (even where started with good intentions, as, for example, in Urban Renewal), and therefore, need to consider the potential harmful impacts of proposed changes.
- The second part may take as a point of departure the sixth rule of the code of ethics of professional planners as adopted by AICP: (f) we shall seek social justice by working to expand choice and opportunity for all persons, recognizing a special responsibility to plan for the needs of the disadvantaged and to promote racial and economic integration. We shall urge the alteration of policies, institutions, and decisions that oppose such needs.
- The third part may deal with what planning educators would see as their commitment to Think Social and deliver this to their students.
Dr. Ravit Hananel, a graduate of the Technion who has recently completed a period of Post-Doc with Susan Fainstein, is willing to help us with the process of building this declaration. Each one of you is invited to express her/his thoughts and comments on the above by writing (at your earliest convenience, please) to Ravit: hananelr@post.tau.ac.il
Waiting for your responses,
Naomi Carmon.