Abstract
This article argues that parties to planning disputes assume policy positions in concordance with institutional identities that are informed by reigning planning discourses. Building on the work of Kenneth Burke and its advancement through the perspective of positionality in socio-linguistics, a case study of the dispute around the completion of highway I-710 through South Pasadena, California, is used to illustrate how the potential for intractability increases when discourses are mutually reinforcing of a particular positionality. However, avenues to reconciliation can be found in exploiting constructive dispositions suggested by particular discourses in contingent discursive settings. The article ends by reinforcing that policy-makers pay increased attention to the discursive context of planning disputes.
Introduction
For more than four decades, a protracted, intractable dispute has stalled the completion of the I-710 Freeway through South Pasadena, California. In this locally infamous and contentious episode, the state’s plan to complete a regional transportation network threatened to bisect the small city and compromise its territorial integrity. What is perhaps noteworthy about this case is that informing South Pasadena’s (henceforth S. Pasadena) positions was a set of discursive frames that, over the decades, hardened its approach to the dispute.
Two decades ago, Schön and Rein (1994) advanced the notion of ‘frame reflection’ to suggest avenues to reconcile firmly held positions impeding dispute resolution. While their work remains path breaking, this study advances their thesis by highlighting the discursive dimension to such disputes. What I will argue in this paper is that dominant discourses, such as those informing the positions assumed by S. Pasadena officials, allow entities involved in planning disputes to enact planning identities distinct from those envisioned by their counterparts. These discursive positions can also impede opportunities for constructive resolution over the long term.
While a modernist planning discourse demanded that S. Pasadena assume a freeway-friendly disposition, subsequent discourses on environmentalism, historic preservation, smart growth and environmental justice served as resources that shaped its less cooperative positions. The case reinforces findings that have stressed the importance of considering the discursive dimension of public policy and organisational identity (Czarniawska, 1997; Fischer and Forester 1993; Hajer 1995; Yanow 1996). The concept of ‘positionality’, referenced by Czarniawska and Hajer, is particularly relevant here. The positionality perspective develops the concept of discursive ‘roles’ proposed by Kenneth Burke to afford actors a measure of agency in how they use discourses as resources for action (Bamberg, 2005; Davies and Harre, 1990; De Fina et al., 2006). While central to this perspective, the idea that actors can ‘position’ themselves vis-à-vis multiple discourses in their construction of an institutional identity and enactment of appropriate policy positions has yet to be exploited. This case illustrates and advances our understanding of intractable planning disputes by applying this insight from the discursive thesis on positionality.
When discourses are mutually reinforcing, such as in the case of the I-710 dispute, they shape an institutional identity that informs positions that are inflexible, thus furthering dispute intractability. In this case, the environmental, historic, preservation, smart growth and environmental justice discourses reinforced positions through which the city moulded an identity that I interpret as being one of an agent of progressive planning. The discourses delegitimised the obstructionism implied by the modernist discourse, and emboldened S. Pasadena’s mayor, city council and transportation commissioners in their approach to the dispute. Some discourses, however, imply more conciliatory positions than others. In this case, the state paid insufficient attention to the discursive dimension of the dispute. As a result, S. Pasadena’s identification with the environmentalist or smart growth discourses presented opportunities for a reconciliation of differences that went unrecognised.
Discourse, organisational identity and policy
Resolving planning disputes is a key area of study in policy studies and planning theory. In their seminal reflections on this question, Schön and Rein (1994) make a distinction between policy disagreements, or disputes that can be settled factually, and more difficult controversies, where an underlying ‘frame’ disjuncture is the cause of intractability. In their thesis, the intractability that underlies policy disputes can be overcome through a reflection on frame disjuncture. Conflict resolution, in this sense, is the situated reflection on frames, or the paradigms that give meaning to situations.
Schön and Rein make two important observations in the course of their description of frames. First, they (Schön and Rein, 1994: 25) speak of ‘powerful stories that shape public consciousness’. Although not suggested as an explicit discursive perspective on policy-making, this justification of planning positions by invoking stories implies a fundamental role for narrative. On the other hand, Schön and Rein also describe a connection between frames and action that is made through the distinction between ‘rhetorical’ and ‘action’ frames. Action frames, by their very definition, ‘inform policy practice’. They are constituted by powerful stories that imply ‘decisions, mechanisms, sanctions, incentives procedures and patterns of behavior’ (Schön and Rein, 1994: 32). This perspective offers much that is compatible with a discursive view on policy-making. However, its focus on the practical resolution of frame disjuncture does not comprehensively address how discourses hamper or inform such a resolution.
These two elements of Schön and Rein’s work, the importance of narrative for understanding policy contexts and its implications for decision making, are central to the ensuing ‘narrative turn’ in planning, public administration and organisation studies (e.g. Boje, 1991; Czarniawska, 2004; Feldman et al., 2004; Fischer and Forester, 1993; Roe, 1994; Skoldberg, 1994; Yanow, 1996). In these fields, discourse is analysed for how it informs problem definition and decision making, and how participants use narrative to frame identity. This scholarship, however, has yet to apply the narrative perspective to the essential questions asked by Schön and Rein: what makes disputes intractable, and how can intractability be overcome?
Burke and discursive roles
Discursive approaches to contemporary planning and policy studies have typically borrowed from frameworks developed by Foucault and Habermas (see e.g. Fairclough, 1992; Fischer and Forester, 1993). However, a theoretical strand finding first expression in the work of Kenneth Burke and culminating in the notion of ‘positioning’ as developed in the field of social psychology has informed the discursive understanding of agency, policy actions and organisational identity (Davies and Harre, 1990; Potter and Wetherell, 1987). Of the different perspectives on the important question of agency in social action, Burke’s (1962) idea of ‘roles’ is unique in its attention to the discursive dimension. This tradition proposes a formative role for discourses in the moulding of social identity.
Kenneth Burke’s writings have greatly influenced literary criticism and rhetoric, as well as allied fields such as socio-linguistics, social psychology and speech studies (Branaman, 1994; Brock, 1985; Wess, 1996). The dramaturgical model is perhaps the most recognisable adaptation of Burke’s work to the analysis of social action. The concept of dramatic ‘role’ is central to Burke’s dramaturgical model (Coppierters, 1981). When Burke describes a dramaturgical frame featuring an act, scene, agent, agency and purpose, as a ‘representative anecdote of reality’ (Burke, 1962), he is invoking the fundamental claim that roles play a fundamental part in fashioning self-identity.
In this view, the social sphere is understood as a ritual drama (Burke, 1967) where the various roles available to actors in this performance imply social typifications. Using this simile of drama, Burke argues that language defines social identities in the same way that actors in a play, for example, enact characters. In the role perspective, an agent thus takes on a predefined, dramatically inspired identity (Bamberg, 1997). As a consequence, one may dismiss ‘intrinsic’ conceptions of identity, and adopt a perspective where identity is constrained by expectation and familiarity (Clapp, 2003). Identification is here the instrumental affiliation with a role in a normative interpretive scheme.
Burke refers to this instrumental view of discourse ‘as an equipment for living’ that moulds social identities (Burke, 1962, 1967). In his dramaturgical model, Burke interprets subjects as actors with identities predetermined by the values, motives, and actions that these roles imply. This is the process whereby the actor seeks to either identify with others as he forms his own identity (Burke, 1962). In this model, identity is constituted by social idioms and contributes to a personal mythology that allows one to be ‘at home in the world’ (Burke, 1967: 27).
Positionality
More recent writings on the notion of positionality have proposed a less deterministic model where subjects selectively channel dominant discourses to construct a sense of self (Bamberg, 2004). The Burkean notion of roles pre-dates and informs this discursive perspective on the articulation of identity in social psychology (Bamberg et al., 2011; Tirado and Galvez, 2007). The concept finds maturation in the idea of ‘positioning’ in the writings of Brownstein (1984), Potter and Wetherell (1987) and Smith (1988). Distinguishing between the agent and the subject, Smith frames the latter as the the position into which the subject is ‘momentarily summoned’ by the discourse he is invoking in any particular situation.
The idea of positioning thus enhances claims of agency by recovering the subject’s capabilities of negotiating identity claims in concrete social settings (Bamberg, 2005; Fairclough, 1992). Here the metaphor of a pre-structured drama gives way for one of strategic employment. This entails the reinterpretation of a discourse as a ‘resource’ for the assertion of identity claims, as opposed to a more deterministic notion of roles (see e.g. Davies and Harre, 1990; De Fina et al., 2006; Harré and van Langenhove, 1999). The question of how actors use discursive resources to articulate social positions animates this debate.
In a traditionalist interpretation, positions are described as being grounded in discourse, which provides the meanings that subjects apply to these positions (Boxer, 2003; Harré and van Langenhove, 1999; Korobov and Bamberg, 2004). From the viewpoint of the ‘problem of agency’, the interpretation where subjects identify with, and enact a discourses is the practical meaning of discourse as a resource. Although subjects can only express positions through categories available to them in a discourse, subscribing to different discursive frames allows them to negotiate their identities in particular settings. Agents thus continuously ‘manage’ their identities in practical contexts (Bamberg, 1997, 2003, 2004; Bruner, 1990; Korobov and Bamberg, 2004; Squire, 2002).
The emphasis on actions, pivotal to understanding the effects of discursive identification, is central to both Burke’s notion of roles and the perspective on positionality. For Burke, what is important is that assuming a role implies actions that are consistent with the substance of that part. Burke referred to roles as ‘strategies for dealing with situations’ (Burke, 1954, 1967). Actors thus identity with narratives in order to induce action towards a pattern of experience (Branaman, 1994; Cheney, 1983). In the positionality perspective, identity narratives enable actors to navigate through challenging situations by informing the decision-making process (Korobov and Bamberg, 2004).
Discourse and policy-making in organisations
The perspective on the notion of positionality can also be fruitfully extended to the study of institutional identity, as Bamberg et al. (2011) acknowledge. The contributions by Martin Hajer and Barbara Czarniawska have most directly applied these insights to the scholarship on policy analysis. Hajer’s writings on policy coalitions (Hajer, 1995), governance in the network society (Hajer and Wagenaar, 2003), and mediatised cultures (Hajer, 2009) have been pivotal in furthering our understanding of how policy controversies are discursively framed. In Czarniawska’s (1997, 2004) work, the question of the discursive underpinnings of organisational identity takes heightened importance. Three key ideas are reinforced by these contributions.
First, both subscribe to the view that discourses offer resources to ascribe meaning to policy contexts. Hajer calls this process ‘discourse structuration’. Actors position themselves within accepted discourses that in turn structure meaning in policy settings. For Czarniawka, organisations are rarely the authors of their own institutional narratives, but are positioned both reflectively (by themselves) and interactively (by others) in established narratives. ‘We are never the sole authors of our stories. In every story a positioning takes place’, Czarniawska asserts (Czarniawska, 1997: 14). Actors, however, retain the ability to actively select and adapt discursive resources.
Second, discourses inform policy positions. Hajer encapsulates this idea in the notion of ‘discourse institutionalization’, or routine and structured approaches to dealing with policy problems. Hajer borrows from Davies and Harre (1990) the idea that discourses provide subject positions where actors engaged in policy negotiations articulate policy allegiances. ‘Story lines’, or discursive articulations of positions, drive the formation of positions leading to discursive coalitions. Czarniawska alternatively applies discursive approaches in organisational studies to analyse decision making in organisations through the lens of storytelling. Czarniawska speaks of actions that are consistent with the demands of the discursive scenes in which they unfold.
Finally, the application of actionable positions constitutes a ‘dramatic’ enactment of institutional identity. Hajer speaks of governance as the authoritative enactment of identity. Drama, or the sequential ordering of political moments, is the process through which institutional identity is created and legitimised. In organisational studies, the perspective of discursive formation is used to analyse how collective identities are formed. Organisations exhibit a good amount of continuity defined by stories that inform their collective identities (Boje, 2001; Brown, 2006; Rhodes and Brown, 2005). As Czarniawska highlights, organisations perform their identities in an institutional conversation. Discourses supply the identities that allow organisations to rationalise and define institutional positions in policy contexts.
However, Davies and Harre (1990) have also expressed the following central idea in their elaboration of the perspective of positionality: agents, engaged simultaneously in different discourses, enact multiple positions as the conditions dictate. This is an idea that is not adequately addressed by the scholarship cited above. How can this perspective inform the question of the intractability of policy disputes? The case of the I-710 impasse provides evidence for the following observations: First, it reinforces the insights in the literature above on the integral role of discourse in informing policy positions. Discourse is valuable because it allows for actions that are consistent and definitive of an institutional identity.
Furthermore, what I propose is that the case provides strong evidence in support of what Bamberg has termed the ‘traditional’ view on positioning, and the yet unexploited notion of identification with multiple discourses. The degree of concordance and discordance between these positions, I assert, is a key consideration in the eventual intractability of disputes. Overlapping discourses create institutional positions that are mutually reinforcing. Disputes, I conclude, are hardened when actors assume positions reflecting reinforcing discourses. Organisations, in concordance with the positionality perspective, however, also exhibit agency vis-à-vis institutional positions. If some discourses imply actions that are more conciliatory than others, capitalising on these distinctions creates opportunities for the de-escalation of policy disputes. These assertions rearticulate, from a discursive perspective, Schön and Rein’s thesis on frames.
The I-710 dispute as an illustrative case
Prior to the Second World War, the state of California resolved to connect communities in the Los Angeles region through a network of state highways, one of which was State Route (SR) 7, later to be designated Interstate I-710. When the State Department of Transportation (later Caltrans) revealed plans for the final stretch of the freeway in 1964, the small city of S. Pasadena, which lay in the path of the proposed extension, embarked on a campaign to modify the alignment. This effort sought to minimise what was perceived to be the project’s unacceptable impact on the city.
The proposed alignment would have entailed a dramatic loss of land, up to one-fifth of the area of the small city, as well as a loss of more than 600 dwelling units, or up to one-tenth of number of existing dwellings. Perhaps, more importantly, the city feared that the highway, when coupled with the Arroyo Seco Parkway that already passed through it, would have bisected S. Pasadena into four quadrants, entailing a loss of territorial integrity (City of South Pasadena (CSP), 1974c, 1974d). By the early 1970s, the enactment of national and state environmental legislation created a basis for S. Pasadena to appeal Caltrans’s decisions (CSP, 1981). In 1972, a court brought construction to a halt some six miles short of connecting to the I-210 (Figure 1).
The ‘meridian’ and ‘westerly’ alignments.
S. Pasadena’s campaign against the ‘meridian’ alignment was unwavering. Its policy decisions were, however, conditioned by positions implied by the reigning discourses. Successive discourses on environmentalism, historic preservation, smart growth and environmental justice would define what I describe as S. Pasadena’s identity as an agent of progressive planning.
The fact that these discourses reinforced each other was a critical development that emboldened the city in how it approached the dispute.
Over the course of four decades, a number of legal judgements determined whether the city’s approval of the route was necessary. Courts deemed an agreement unnecessary between 1983 and 1993, necessary between 1993 and 1995, and unnecessary after that. Although all four discourses were complementary, the evidence suggests that the historic preservation and environmental justice discourses implied policy positions that were less conciliatory. S. Pasadena assumed these less conciliatory positions during periods when Caltrans was free to act unilaterally and obstructionism was thus necessary.
The modernist discourse
What I refer to as S. Pasadena’s progressive identity evolved against a modernist philosophy that informed the actions of state planners. Facilitated by the rise of the technocratic state, modernist city planning defined the planning orthodoxy of the post war years (Scott, 1998). This valorised a technocratic approach to policy-making. Two related discourses, rational planning and systems theory, informed the modernist planning philosophy. The rational process, with roots in decision theory, created the procedural frame for a process of policy inspired by systems theory (Faludi, 1973). In this discourse, cities and towns were seen as interconnected systems of land uses and transportation infrastructure. The goals of completeness and interconnectedness were paramount (Hughes and Mann, 1969; Taylor, 2004).
This view bolstered the recourse to rigorous quantitative methodologies as planning doctrine. In the systems approach, fields of planning that were more amenable to expression in a mathematical language gained in prominence. The systems view was, in this sense, easily reconciled with transportation planning. In the language of forecasting and modelling, the notion of system optimisation was central (Chadwick, 1979; Taylor, 2004). Optimisation implied system-scale repercussions for the failure of network completion. For S. Pasadena, the position implied by the systems discourse demanded action that facilitated the completion of the system. S. Pasadena however challenged claims that the specific solution in consideration satisfied the normative dictates of this view. S. Pasadena thus accepted the logic of the need to complete I-710 and the freeway network, but challenged the idea that optimisation was reducible to cost considerations. This is how the city negotiated competing demands of system accountability and self-preservation.
In May of 1966, state transportation officials declined a request to meet with officials from S. Pasadena, making clear that ‘all due process has been had, and the matter of location of this route is no longer at issue’ (Telford, 1966). In conformance with the reigning discourse, S. Pasadena was clear and overt in its support of the project. ‘It is the consensus in the city council that construction of the remaining link in the Long Beach Freeway is needed and that there is a need to solve the transportation problem in the region’, the city resolved in 1974 (CSP, 1974b), and reiterated for years to come (Arnold, 1977a). However, the city sought to save its territorial integrity in conceptualising the marginally more costly ‘westerly’ route (see Figure 2). In arguing for its own alignment, S. Pasadena legitimated the idea of optimisation, but contested its reductionist interpretation by Caltrans as an issue of construction costs (CSP, 1974a, 1975c).
The I-710 ‘missing link’.
In the decades that followed, however, the emergent discourses on environmentalism, historic preservation, smart growth and environmental justice offered mutually reinforcing counter-narratives that reframed Caltrans’s position as being outmoded, reinforced the city’s sense of righteousness and informed the city’s actions in ways that would often lead to irreconcilable positions (Figure 3).
The four discursive frames.
Environmentalism
Environmentalism has roots dating to the Industrial Revolution. Environmentalism’s constitution as a matter of relevance to planning, however, took heightened form in the late 1960s, with its formulation a question of resource depletion. A consolidation of the discourse occurred when a ‘silent revolution’ in values raised fears of natural system degradation at the global scale. In documents such as the UN’s 1972 ‘Limits to Growth’, a discourse that challenged the ethos of unbridled growth and framed the defense of resources as the protection of valuable public goods emerged (Hajer, 1995; Inglehart, 1971).
A changing attitude towards development was embodied in an approach to ecological modernisation that celebrated pre-emptive impact mitigation. Perhaps most critically, the emerging discourse helped consolidate a new social role for an informed and engaged citizenry. Environmental stewardship, in this sense, implied an active defense of public goods in monitoring and, when need be, challenging decisions of corporate and government actors (Andrews, 1997; Clapp, 2003). In the USA and in California, the enactment of federal and state environmental legislation in the early 1970s marked this rise in environmental consciousness (Clapp, 2003).
Locally, the policy position pursuant to this discourse informed the elaboration of an alignment that protected local parkland. An appreciation of the environmental impact of large civil works was forming during that time. The contribution of freeways to this degradation was rapidly becoming a flash point of local debate, and helped shape the city’s attitude to the dispute (CSP, 1977b). S. Pasadena was guided by this environmental discourse and the goal of environmental protection when it modified its ‘westerly’ route. In its interpretation, the city avoided the destruction of the local park, which most local residents frequented for their recreational needs. The framing of the dispute in environmental terms and actions would however intensify in 1975, when a bill barring the encroachment on the Arroyo Seco river watershed was enacted into law.
The bill called for the protection of land, which partially overlapped with the city’s alignment, as parkland. However, the hillsides designated parklands by the state as per the 1975 law were steep and peripheral, and therefore not usable as such. Nevertheless, the city, at times collaboratively with Caltrans, studied a refined alignment that reduced encroachment unto the riverbed. More importantly, the city’s proposed alignment resulted in creating usable park space in the city centre. But when draft environmental documents were published, it was clear that Caltrans had sought little compromise, and even went to lengths to misrepresent the concessions that S. Pasadena was willing to make (CSP, 1975a, 1975b, 1975d).
The discourse on environmentalism led to conciliatory dispositions on the part of the city, especially at a time when the city’s approval was required by law. If the state had recognised the opportunity for compromise presented by these actions, it could have presented both parties as having complied with the demands of the discourse. A case in point is the city’s offer to steer clear of some of the most sensitive riverbed lands. Rebuffed, S. Pasadena officials sensed tokenism, even opportunistic manipulation, on the part of Caltrans (Arnold, 1977b). The environmentalist discourse thus committed S. Pasadena to actions protecting local parkland in the path of the state’s alignment, which impeded opportunities for constructive resolution. However, it was also obliged to concede, if partially, the argument for protecting the Arroyo Seco. The city reacted by modifying its preferred route, a reconciliatory opportunity missed by the state.
Historic preservation
In the early 1980s the city’s actions vis-à-vis the dispute were gradually informed by the embrace of a discourse on historic preservation. Historically, this discourse took form in the effort to curb the onslaught of industrialisation, efforts that led to such landmark programmes as the creation of the National Trust in 1949 (Barthel, 1996; National Trust for Historic Preservation (NTHP), www.preservationnation.org). It gained wider legitimacy after postwar urban renewal threatened to destroy many of the nation’s most historic communities. But perhaps what invigorated historic preservation in the early 1980s was a rising movement to conceive of preservation as an economic development tool. This enabled cities around the country to define a sense of civic identity and to conceive regeneration strategies around historic narratives (Page and Mason, 2004; Schwartzer, 1994). A slew of programmes such as the Main Street Program and the creation of local historic registers ensued.
Locally, the position that ensued from identification with this discourse implied refining the alignment to avoid historic structures, and nominating structures or districts to local, state and national registers (CSP, 1974a). In a momentous turn of events, the city’s efforts translated into the successful lobbying of the national Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) (CSP, 1984). The ACHP developed its own alignment in support of the city, and issued a historic declaration criticising the state’s plans (ACHP, 1984). In a subsequent commentary, another state entity, the State Historic Buildings Code Advisory Board (CHBCAB, 1984), also issued an opinion expressing concern about the demolition and relocation of historic structures. These rulings galvanised support for S. Pasadena (American Institute of Architects (AIA), 1984).
After a 1994 state law once again dismissed the requirement for an agreement, the discourse on historic preservation more markedly informed the city’s institutional identity. It successfully lobbied the NTHP to be placed on a list of historic places (Tawa and Hudson, 1994), and itself placed an ever growing list of buildings on the city’s books as historic landmarks, even if its bid to have the National Register consider most of them failed (National Register of Historic Places (NRHP), 1997). In an ensuing row, S. Pasadena met the state’s accelerated abandonment of homes in its possession (Anonymous, 1995) with listings on historic registers. This led to further rounds of insubstantial tweaks to the alignment that only furthered local disillusionment. Caltrans remained unmoved in its defense of its actions, even if it did attempt a slightly modified alignment in 1986 that aimed to reduce the number of affected properties. Over the years, city officials protested what they deemed was an intentional neglect of property that Caltrans owned along the proposed route, and demanded maintenance that never materialised (CSP, 1995; Ferazzi, 1995; Jacobs, 1995).
The actions of nominating structures to historic registers thus allowed for an obstructionist disposition that served the purpose of curbing Caltrans’s plans and blocking the project. This seemed particularly suited to a period when the courts deemed unnecessary a need for local agreement on an alignment. With its sensitivity to historic preservation elevated, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) later issued a finding that the state’s assessment of alternatives was flawed. In the aftermath of this decision, S. Pasadena secured a number of historic district designations to further raise the profile of the threatened districts in the public eye (CSP, 1992; Winton, 1995a). Subsequent design and landscaping mitigation measures proposed by an advisory panel only furthered S. Pasadena’s impression that cosmetic gestures were being offered in lieu of genuine compromise (CSP, 1993; Hudson, 1993a, 1993b). The discourse significantly emboldened S. Pasadena and allowed it to frame the actions of the state agency as outmoded, unperturbed in its willingness to sacrifice its historic building stock. The historic preservation discourse, by committing the city to the obstructionist actions of nominating structures in the path of the state’s alignment to historic registers, strongly discouraged paths towards reconciliation.
Smart growth
The discourse that contributed most to reinforcing what I label as S. Pasadena’s identity as an agent of progressive planning was that of ‘smart growth’. In the early 1990s, prominent actors in urban development started arguing for an alternative growth paradigm. In 1991, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) issued recommendations for networks to join forces around a smart growth agenda, in which the question of traffic congestion loomed large (Knaap, 2006). The discourse took form in reports by such groups as such as the Sierra Club, the National Resource Defense Council (http://www.nrdc.org/ej/history/hej4.asp), the American Planning Association (APA), and later the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (Goetz, 2004). Most importantly, smart growth at its core figured a reorientation of the philosophy of transportation planning by stressing the link between public transit and high-density development. The smart growth discourse singled out the freeway as a prime culprit in sprawl, and celebrated the investment in light rail and public transit (Handy, 2005; Ye et al., 2005). The emphasis on inter-modal transportation became integral to this agenda (Burchell et al., 2000).
Locally, this discourse implied a course of action that involved elaborating a multi-modal alternative to the freeway. By 1987, light rail became a serious subject of study. With federal and state funding being made available, an interest in a local multi-modal solution to the impasse, locally dubbed the ‘low-build’, gained support (CSP, 1987). Soon, the ‘westerly’ came into serious consideration as the route for a light rail extension of the regional rail system (Reynolds, 1988). S. Pasadena’s involvement in the light rail project and the then-recently state-mandated ‘regional transportation demand management’ quickly helped establish smart growth as a new frame for articulating the policy dispute.
The dispute was now framed as a modal and not strictly a vehicular capacity issue. Light rail, projected to cost a fraction of the freeway extension, catalysed an interest in sustainable transportation (CSP, 1992).
The multi-modal approach championed by S. Pasadena offered a conciliatory disposition, one where the city again sought to reach a compromise by agreeing to a transportation project. This emerged between 1992 and 1994, a time when the state’s need for a local agreement was restored. Instead of a highway, the ‘low-build’ called for an enhancement of two arterials in the path of the ‘meridian’ designated for high volume traffic, a concession on the part of the city that intended to address the issue of high volume traffic.
The ‘low-build’ challenged the idea that the region’s transportation needs could not be met by a transit-centric solution. However, after the 1994 decision freeing the state of the need for a local agreement, perspectives diverged irrevocably, with Caltrans continuing to espouse a freeway solution (FHWA, 1997). By this point, the city’s positions had become clearly defined in contrast to the state’s increasingly rigid and outmoded position. The smart growth discourse thus committed S. Pasadena to actions questioning the freeway solution and proposing enhancements to surface streets and public transit. However, the discourse’s recognition of the primacy of transportation efficiency, not recognised by the state, also constituted a missed reconciliatory opportunity.
Environmental justice
The environmental justice discourse is the last to define what I describe as the city’s progressive identity. Although protests against landfills and treatment plants erupted as early as the 1960s, it was not until the Warren County, NC, toxic soil protests in 1982 that a discourse around racism, poverty and environmental discrimination started to take shape nationally. The ensuing movement moulded aspects of the civil rights and environmental discourses, and was given further credence through a number of landmark studies, including a 1983 US Government Accountability Office (GAO) study linking landfills to poor communities, and a landmark Commission for Racial Justice (CRJ) study on race and discrimination. By the 1990s, publications such as Robert Bullard’s Dumping in Dixie (2000) helped formulate the discourse, eventually leading to former President Clinton’s 1994 executive order directing federal agencies to integrate environmental justice concerns in their policies. The discourse thus evolved from roots in civil rights politics and environmental racism to frame a progressive identity of environmental security (Agyeman et al., 2002; Taylor, 2000).
Locally, the position that ensued from acting to identify with this discourse implied a course of action that sought to block the project in its entirety on grounds of discrimination. The freeway extension had the effect of encroaching into the poor, Latino-majority Los Angeles neighbourhood of El Sereno (Snyder, 1983). The ensuing debate cemented a place for a calculus of ‘fair share’ of burdens in any discussion (Arnold, 1977b). However, rising consciousness about the impact of infrastructure projects on ethnic or disadvantaged neighbourhoods led to El Sereno becoming the centre of a heated battle on the fate of the highway. As S. Pasadena’s position gradually shifted towards the ‘low-build’, the Latino-majority neighbourhood came to be closely aligned with a ‘no build’ position (CSP, 1988).
Culminating this contestation, were activists in the El Sereno Neighbourhood who filed a lawsuit in Federal Court in 1995 against the California Transportation Commission and Caltrans alleging violation of civil rights laws in the predominately minority community (Winton, 1995b). These events rapidly transformed S. Pasadena’s actions, which took the form of challenging the project’s environmentally disproportionate impact. The discourse allowed El Sereno and S. Pasadena to frame themselves as victims of discrimination, on social and geographic grounds, respectively. After the 1994 decision, both seemed solidly united in their rejection of a freeway alternative. Caltrans, for its part, attempted to offer the community some of the same mitigation measures it offered S. Pasadena in tunnelling for a section of the alignment (Simon, 1995).
The obstructionist disposition implied by this discourse was suited to a time when the state proceeded with unilateral decision making. These measures were necessary after the state approved a ‘meridian’ variation in late 1994, and the federal government signalled satisfaction with the mitigation measures considered (FHWA, 1993, 1997). Although a go-ahead decision by the FHWA in 1998 momentarily set an end to the impasse, a subsequent lawsuit and a historical decision that deemed the environmental report outdated finally sealed the highway’s fate. Today, the idea of a surface freeway is all but dead. Instead, Caltrans is investigating the idea of tunnelling for the entire length of the gap, and an environmental review for this new direction is currently under way. By committing the city to the obstructionist actions of seeking to block the freeway altogether on equity grounds, the environmental justice discourse also impeded opportunities for a constructive resolution.
Discussion
Institutional agents routinely confront situations requiring a policy response. Actors must, however, conceive of their actions as carrying some consistency. For example, early on, S. Pasadena took policy decisions in protest of the freeway, including one attempt at designating a civic centre in its route (Editorial, 1983). Such attempts that did not enact a consistent identity were ultimately abandoned. Discursive forms informing institutional identities are henceforth appealing because they afford this consistency. S. Pasadena’s actions, shaped by the environmental, historic preservation, smart growth and environmental justice discourses, informed a consistent and emboldened institutional identity.
As normative resources, these discourses significantly emboldened S. Pasadena and legitimated a view of the state’s actions as an antiquated planning practice, predicated on a set of binaries: sensitive versus irreverent, grassroots versus top-down and measured versus disproportionate. First, the emergent discourses defined a sensitivity versus irreverence binary that contributed to a valorisation of local uniqueness, whether in the form of unique landscapes, structures or communities. In the environmental row, Caltrans, for example, ignored the fact that its plans would have led to the destruction of local parkland. The historic preservationist discourse exposed the poverty and insensitivity of the vision of replacing historic structures with bearing walls and asphalt. Later, a growing appreciation of the intrinsic qualities of the social fabric of small tight-knit communities such as S. Pasadena and El Sereno infused a social dimension into this argument. Just planning, in this sense, was careful and mindful while state practices, by this metric, were destructive and indiscriminant.
Second, the discourses in a grassroots versus top-down binary, also seriously challenged the idea of planning as a removed process and legitimated a view of planning deferential to local solutions. The ‘westerly’ alignment, proposed by S. Pasadenans themselves, is best described as planning predicated on local knowledge. The ‘meridian’, in comparison, was tainted by the fact that it was conceived of in distant offices. In proposing the ‘westerly’, S. Pasadena reflected a local understanding of environmental sensitivity as the protection of used open space. Caltrans, on the other hand, argued that preserving the Arroyo Cliffside would protect parkland, even though it was not usable as such.
Pursuant to the smart growth discourse, the low-build alternative was developed by a consultant at the behest of the city, even though it was ultimately rejected by the state. On the issue of historic preservation, Caltrans’s acknowledgement that it did not keep properties in its possession in repair betrayed the perils of a removed process where impacts cannot be appreciated. As a normative claim against unjust planning, the costs of top-down planning were further reinforced by the growing perception of the social costs of the proposed alignment.
Third, discourses such as environmentalism and environmental justice also reinforced a measured/disproportionate binary predicated on the consideration of fairness in the absorption of costs. The ‘fair share’ calculus presented standard practice as resulting in disproportionate impacts. The mitigation measures proposed were essentially aimed at ameliorating a perception of disproportionate impact. S. Pasadena harboured a fear that these measures, often cosmetic, would be diluted after an alignment agreement was reached. It was natural for S. Pasadena, the entity subject to a planning action, to identify Caltrans’s actions as being regressive. To push against an irreverent, top-down and unbalanced state planning, S. Pasadena channelled mutually reinforcing discourses and enacted an identity that I describe as being an agent of progressive planning.
The positionality perspective, however, implies a certain measure of agency in how an institutional actor interprets and orients themselves vis-à-vis identity-informing discourses (Bamberg, 1997; Davies and Harre, 1990; De Fina et al., 2006). Although it was emboldened by the four discourses, S. Pasadena did not necessarily disavow gestures of reconciliation. The discourses were mutually reinforcing, but some implied actions that were more conciliatory. For S. Pasadena, the assumption of a cooperative or obstructionist disposition was contingent on the shifting legal determination of a need for a state–local agreement. In the period leading up to 1983, and between 1993 and 1994, when a state–local agreement was required, a cooperative disposition prevailed. Between 1983 and 1993, and after 1994, when a state–local agreement was not required, an obstructionist disposition prevailed.
The discourses on environmentalism or smart growth provided some flexibility in defining dispositions, although the inattention to discursive frames meant missed opportunities. During the early phases, the discourse on environmentalism allowed S. Pasadena to support a freeway, but challenge the ‘meridian’ as judged by a metric of impacts. The flurry of activity after 1983 in designating and defending historic structures and districts is an unapologetic example of obstructionism at work. The overtures represented by the ‘low-build’ exemplify a cooperative attitude in 1993–1994, while the environmental justice-inspired lawsuits after 1994 (along with an escalation of historic preservation obstructionism) would ultimately seal the fate of the freeway.
Conclusion
Planning scholars, such as Schön and Rein (1994) in their work on ‘frame reflection’, have shed light on the discursive dimension of policy disputes. More recently, Clapp (2003) provided a renewed engagement with the subject by applying Kenneth Burke’s dramarturgical model to her analysis of the rise of environmental consciousness in the USA. The development of the concept of positionality in socio-linguistics (Davies and Harre, 1990) promises to be a productive advancement of the discursive and Burkean approaches to the study of policy coalitions and organisational identity, one that conceptualises discourses as resources informing actionable positions in contingent political settings (Czarniawska, 1997; Hajer, 1995). The episode serves to reinforce the following conclusions.
First, the relationship between planning discourses and institutional identity must be acknowledged. Why institutional actors take on certain positions is informed by interests, but is framed by a discursive environment that sets powerful guidance for appropriate action. In later reflections on the transition from the complacency of the 1960s to the progressivism of later years, S. Pasadena officials were acutely aware that their activism was made possible by a discursive paradigm shift (Winton, 1993). ‘By the 70s, we were duking it out with highway planners’, the late AlvaLee Arnold, former mayor of S. Pasadena, once said in reflection on changing attitudes (Hudson, 1993b). The evidence suggests a view of discourse as a resource from which institutional actors draw action-informing identifications. In this sense, discourse is formative, but not deterministic. This warrants the traditional view on the concept of ‘positionality’.
Second, discourses may sometimes present mutually reinforcing demands on institutional identity, potentially hardening an agent’s position with respect to a particular planning dispute. In the context of this particular case, the state department of transportation, insensitive to these shifts, accelerated the divergence of positions, eventually leading to the city’s decision in 1991 to disavow a highway solution. Finally, a discursive perspective on planning disputes may point in the direction of potential compromise. Some discourses carry stronger obstructionist undertones than others, and present opportunities for reconciliation when their demand can be interpreted in a mutually acceptable manner.
As a general conclusion, this episode reinforces the lesson that policy-makers pay increased attention to the discursive context of planning. Discourses can be mutually reinforcing by enabling entities in a planning dispute to enact an institutional identity that informs consistent policy positions. If these positions conflict with the counterparty’s outlook, they can impede opportunities for constructive resolution over the long term. Only by being attuned to this discursive dimension can parties capitalise the reconciliatory potential of select discursive frames. Decision makers neglect this at the peril of allowing disagreements to grow into intractable policy disputes.
Footnotes
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.