The Collaborative Shift

Abstract

It should be acknowledged that, during the 1990s, communicative orientation enjoyed growing influence in diverse contexts especially in Great Britain and the United States. The most significant cultural manifesto can be attributed to Patsy Healey, who outlined a new paradigm called collaborative planning (Healey, 1997). It seemed to be a more promising alternative to the traditional models of physical planning as well as a satisfactory foundation for planning as a social science. Her proposal summarises a series of intellectual and empirical explorations that had already been underway for more than a decade (partly discussed in the previous chapter) but was presumably influenced by the new political trends in spatial planning which emerged in Great Britain after Thatcherism (Thornley, 1991) and with the advent of Tony Blair.