PLANNING AS A PROFESSION/ETHICAL ISSUES

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Planners as discussed in both the cases in a negative light in acting ethically in decisions that are directly related to one of most important aspects of American life: segregation. In both the cases, although there was obvious limitations to the way planners act, they are indeed at fault to varying degree.

Baltimore offers a very general issue that many planners face today when it comes to community participation and taking decisions and the quality to the outcomes of these meetings. Although the planners could have gone the distance in understanding the community identity and diversity often times it becomes harder for planners in their roles to wear the hats of sociologists and go about affecting the outcomes through educating the community. Understanding the roots of any community is very important in taking decisions for its future course. The way the planners acted here is more a natural course of action that most of the planners go by today. Baum asks for the planners to be enforcers to be ethical in this case pushing the agenda of common good that is probably ignored by the homeowners that participate for their own self interests. He also says the issue crops when planners do not do more to create the climate for everybody to feel emotionally on the same page for them to feel more comfortable in seeing not just their own interests but others, thereby allowing them to see the diversity in the community without feeling shame or depression.

In my opinion it becomes more than a question of ethics for planners to create the environment Baum was talking about. Often times it is very much difficult to even garner community participation from varied groups for the reasons as diverse as the communities themselves. Even in a hy...

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...ouncil. The quandary that planners seemed to face here was to work with the system of politics. The minutes of the meetings suggests that planners did not do enough to push for the initial proposals that are more evenly distributed. It is also interesting to notice the effect of council members and their vested interests in the regions they were represented. They are not characterized as professionals but when it comes to ethical issues and working towards common good there is no other body that has vested interests in community’s common good. When a political body itself takes decisions that are contrary to planners’ proposals it becomes bigger issue than ethics. But it is to be noted that the planners have to make the decisions objectively taking into consideration all the possible outcomes, in this case the effect on schools and education which they did fail.

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