Abstract
This issue honours the life and work of Sue Hendler, who died, too young, in September 2010. Sue was North American Editor of Planning Theory from 2006–7, when her illness forced her to step down, and she remained an editorial board member until her death. She contributed to planning in this and many other ways: as scholar, educator, critical friend of professional planners and community activist. A focus for a significant portion of her written work was the nature and role of ethics, particularly in relation to the planning profession. In a number of papers, she explored in detail the potential, and limitations of, professional codes in assisting planners to plan better, a clear illustration of the importance she attached to making a practical difference. A concern about ethics, values and specifically social justice ran through other aspects of her work, notably that on environment, feminism, equality and diversity, and community. The sub-title of the valuable Reader she edited on Planning Ethics: A Reader in Planning Theory, Practice and Education illustrates the way that for Sue ethics was a route into framing planning and the world, not a rarefied activity cut off from the task of creating a better, fairer society.
Her written work was only a part of what Sue contributed to planning and the academy. Those who met her, however briefly, can testify to the openness, enthusiasm and genuine sense of engagement that she brought to any discussion. For those who worked with her in various settings for longer periods the loss has been enormous. In the eulogies and obituaries prompted by her death, the contribution that a well-lived rounded academic life can make shines through. Having one’s name on a title page can be complemented by constructive engagement in shared projects, caring and inspiring teaching, and – so significant in Sue’s case – the example of one’s day-to-day life in all its dimensions.
The papers in this issue honour Sue by taking as a starting point some aspect of planning or ethics that was of importance to her life or work. There is no pretence that the issue provides comprehensive coverage of what she was concerned about. But we would like to think that there would be much in it that she would find interesting, and perhaps provocative, and would view as taking her work forward.
It is fitting that the issue opens with a contribution from someone who was a friend of Sue’s and also shared her interest in applied ethics. Christine Overall’s paper persuasively sets out a philosophical framework within which to place Sue’s consistent interests in the nature of professional relationships and how professional planners might approach their work. The paper relates feminism, a concern for justice and professionalism in a satisfying way which both deepens our appreciation of Sue’s work and provides a spur for fresh work among planning theorists working in these areas. The focus on the nature of the relationships within planning processes is one which is developed in other contributions to the issue. Incidentally, Christine illuminates Sue’s everyday life, her passions and quirks, as only a good friend can.
Social justice and feminism are also linked in Suzanne Speak’s paper. In recent years feminism played a more overt role in framing Sue’s research and writing. She would have appreciated the way Speak’s contribution uses a feminist-inspired conceptual framework, the ‘everyday-life approach’, in order to analyse the implications of approaches to planning for poor residents of part of Delhi, India. The paper explicitly marries feminism and a concern for social justice, and seeks to build foundations for improving policy and practice, as Sue always tried to do. The paper’s focus on the Global South would also chime with the breadth of Sue’s political vision.
Geoff Vigar explores a topic that was central to Sue’s interests – the nature of professionalism in planning – and sets about it in a way that resonates with her work, where she often travelled between reviews of academic literature and the views and struggles of those engaged day to day in planning. His discussion is informed by a review of current thinking about professionalism, views from practice, and a concern that any benefits of professionalism in planning be identified and nurtured. Intertwined with the paper’s contribution to planning scholarship is an evident belief in the importance of getting planning right. And that mix is very much Sue Hendler’s approach. Vigar’s paper breathes new life into discussions of professionalism in planning, where, arguably, well-worn critiques have had an increasingly stultifying effect on attempts to develop constructive ways in which planners in their everyday work can make a difference.
The desire to get beyond critique underpins Heather Campbell’s paper too. It is evident from its broad historical review just how central Sue’s work was to placing ethics ‘on the map’ for planning theorists and educators. Yet, as Campbell states, decades beyond Planning Ethics there is not much evidence of collective engagement with ethical matters in planning practice or education. For Campbell, a reassertion of the importance of the idea of planning, as a politico-ethical commitment to creating a better world, is central to rectifying the situation. I think this is a position Sue Hendler would find congenial. As for practical steps forward, she identifies three areas where attention is needed in (ethical) discussions of planning. First, a shift to considering what might be better ways of doing things, taking into account current circumstances, as opposed to damning initiatives against some idealised notion of the ‘best’. Second, developing the ability to have respectful conversations across differences of views, Finally, rethinking how ethics might be incorporated into planning education.
This latter point is explored in Huw Thomas’s paper, which relates itself to Sue Hendler’s commitment to planning education. The paper argues that planning schools should aim to cohere around distinctive world-views, by which is meant value-infused understandings of the world and planning’s place in it. He is arguing, in effect, that the ‘idea of planning’ commended by Campbell can be given radically different and contested kinds of content, and that schools should organise their collective lives around one, and only one, of these. As the paper says, it is a view that Sue might not have found entirely congenial, though she would appreciate that it arises from taking planning ethics seriously.
In their different ways, all of these papers offer evidence of the continuing salience for contemporary planning of Sue Hendler’s work. She tackled big themes, big issues, and did so in an honest, open, non-egotistical way that was itself an example of engaged scholarship at its best. The papers illustrate ways in which her work will continue to inform discussions of issues which mattered to her. That said, they can do no more than hint at the profound and continuing impact that her life and ideas have on all those who have had, and will have, the privilege of coming across them.