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How does the language of “balance” in planning discussions reveal and obscure underlying power dynamics and decision-making processes?

Image courtesy of interviewee. October 16, 2024

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The speaker reflects on the frequent use of the term "balance" by planners and political leaders when discussing decision-making processes. They note that this language often obscures the complexity and messiness of how decisions are made. After retiring, the speaker revisited their extensive interview notes to analyze how the concept of balance was articulated by various stakeholders in planning, conducting a discourse analysis on the use of the term across 231 interviews from multiple research projects.

The findings reveal that while not all interviewees used the term “balance,” it was particularly common among planners. The speaker identified several categories of balance mentioned: conceptual (balancing community interests), physical (balancing elements like density and land use), procedural (different priorities in planning), economic (costs versus amenities), and sociodemographic (diverse community needs). Planners most frequently used “balance” conceptually, whereas developers often used it as a verb, indicating agency.

The analysis also highlighted that the term "balance" can serve strategic functions in justifying decisions, often portraying them as objective or fair, despite underlying agendas influenced by market interests. The speaker notes that this rhetoric can diminish the validity of concerns raised by community members during public meetings, emphasizing the challenges in understanding and communicating decision-making processes in urban planning. Ultimately, the research illustrates how abstract concepts like balance and public interest are employed in planning discussions, revealing a disconnect between formal reasoning and actual stakeholder experiences in decision-making.

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Here are five key points from the video:

1. **Common Use of 'Balance' in Decision-Making**: The author observes that planners and political leaders frequently use the term "balance" when discussing difficult decisions, suggesting it serves as a mechanism to obscure the complexities and messiness of the actual decision-making processes.

2. **Research on Language Use**: After retirement, the author revisits interview notes from various research projects to analyze how the term "balance" was used, discovering that while not everyone used the word, 73% of respondents did, particularly planners, who often referred to it as a "balancing act."

3. **Categories of Balance**: The analysis reveals several categories of how "balance" is used: conceptual (balancing interests), physical (balancing community elements), procedural (balancing priorities), economic (balancing costs and services), and sociodemographic (balancing types of residents), highlighting the word’s various convideoual meanings.

4. **Strategic Use of Language in Planning**: The research indicates that the word "balance" is used strategically to convey objectivity and impartiality, often masking underlying agendas or biases, particularly in the convideo of community development and planning discussions.

5. **Reflection on Public Participation**: The author notes that the notion of "balance" can be used in planning discussions to diminish the concerns of community members, especially when those members oppose development projects, reflecting a complex dynamic in public engagement and the interpretation of "public interest."

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Here are some key quotes extracted from the video you . These quotes reflect the main themes and findings regarding the concept of "balance" in planning and decision-making:

1. **On the Common Use of "Balance":**
- "I had noticed when I was interviewing planners and local political leaders... how common the use of the word balance seemed to be when people were talking about how they made difficult decisions."

2. **On the Obscurity in Decision-Making Processes:**
- "It seemed to me that it was a kind of way of obscuring the processes by which decisions get made... a way of ignoring that kind of messiness of the decision process."

3. **On the Importance of Language Analysis:**
- "When you have time to go back and look at stuff and read through it again and again... you do pick up things that you don't have the time or the luxury to find when you're trying to create... deal with a specific topic."

4. **On the Focus of the Research:**
- "No one had really done this kind of systematic analysis for this kind of use of the term."

5. **On the Categories of Balance:**
- "Some common categories of uses... what I called it conceptual... physical... procedural... economic... sociodemographic."

6. **On the Agency of Different Participants:**
- "I noticed... as developers were using... it was more likely to give them a kind of agency."

7. **On Metaphors in Planning Discussions:**
- "What I call alistic metaphors that are used in planning discussions... developers to use those kind of fight metaphors to discuss what they're doing."

8. **Regarding Strategic Use of Language:**
- "Words are used strategically when people talk about what they do... the word balance is one of those words that serve a certain kind of strategic and political function."

9. **On the Influence of Neoliberal Agendas:**
- "The decisions that are being made in communities everywhere are very much influenced by what many call neoliberal agenda, where market interests are seen as high priority."

10. **On Public Engagement in Planning:**
- "It’s very common in planning that when you have a public meeting, people... are likely to oppose the decision that’s being... looking after their own interests."

11. **On the Use of Nebulous Concepts:**
- "Nebulous concepts like balance or like the public interest... are able to be used in planning practice and in broader political practice... to explain decisions without necessarily putting a lot of content into that explanation."

These quotes encapsulate the essence of the research and highlight the complexity of decision-making in planning convideos, focusing on how language, particularly the term "balance," plays a critical role in those discussions.

X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:90000

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For many years, I had noticed when I was interviewing

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planners and local political leaders

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and others, how common the use of the word balance seemed

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to be when people were talking about

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how they made difficult decisions.

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And I, I see it too, when I'm reading the paper

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or listening to politicians talk about the kinds

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of choices they make, they'll often use this notion

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of balancing, you know, trade-offs,

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trade-offs between different things.

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And it seemed to me that it was a kind of way

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of obscuring the processes by which decisions get made

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that it, it's a way of ignoring that kind of messiness

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of the decision process.

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So when I retired

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and no longer was doing new research, I thought,

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I'm gonna go back through my interview notes

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that I've collected over many years of doing research

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and see what exactly people

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said about use when they were using the word in the

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interviews that I had.

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When you, when you have time to go back and,

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and look at stuff and read through it again and again,

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and really explore the context of what people are saying

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and where they're saying it

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and how they're saying it, you do pick up things that, that

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you don't have the time

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or the luxury to find when you're trying to create,

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you know, deal with a specific topic like what's happening

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with gated communities in Canada,

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or how are neighborhoods changing.

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You don't have time then to really go through the details

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of what people are saying.

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And, it really turns out to be very interesting

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to examine, yeah, that use of language.

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There is a lot of literature out there that

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uses the word balance or talks about balance,

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but nobody had systematically examined how

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practitioners were looking at balance.

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And I did see when I went back through the literature,

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that there were times and places where

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balance was a key issue.

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So in the UK for example, there has no been notions about

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socially balanced communities

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and, in recent years concerns about

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changes in neighborhoods that have left a lot

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of universities, students moving into older,

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established neighborhoods near universities, so concerns

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that communities were becoming unbalanced.

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So there was, that kind of literature was out there

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and a lot of, a lot of planners had, sorry, a lot

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of planning scholars had talked about how

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planning is about balancing competing interests.

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But, no one had really done this kind of systematic

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analysis for this kind of use of, of the term.

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So it seemed to me, me, it was a good opportunity

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to offer something that wasn't in the literature over the

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course of four different research projects

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that I had done here in Canada.

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Um, where we interviewed, we did a total

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of 231 interviews in those four projects,

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and I verbatim transcripts of the interviews.

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So it gave me very specific kind of data to work with.

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So I went back through those interviews that were

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conducted over, I think about a seven or eight year period,

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and pulled out all of the instances where

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people had used some form of the word balance, whether

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that, so there, that kind of root balance,

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whether it's balancing or balanced

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or whatever, it turned out that not everyone used that word,

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but 70, 73 I think of the,

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the respondents had used the word.

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And so I was able to pull out all of the,

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the ways in which they used that word

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to see exactly what they said.

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And, did a, basically a discourse analysis, trying

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to understand the way the word was used,

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the context in which it was used,

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what the person was expressing through it.

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What I discovered was

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that not everybody in the dataset used the word balance.

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It was more commonly used by planners than

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by other categories of respondents.

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So not quite as often by political leaders or by developers

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or by residents.

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But, planners certainly used it quite a bit.

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And that's not surprising

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because, you know, the literature is made pretty clear

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that planners are concerned about this idea of balance

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and they see themselves as,

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as perform performing a balancing act.

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That set of words balancing act came up quite often in the,

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in the data set,

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which is why it ended up in the title of the paper.

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Um, so when I examined the

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kind of patterns in which this word was used, I found

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there were, some common categories of uses.

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So the most common was conceptual,

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what I called it conceptual,

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where people are talking about balancing different interests

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or objectives or ambitions.

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Um, often it was used in association with,

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with concept concepts such as livability or sustainability

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or smart growth, these kind of vague notions that

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have, have become fairly popular in planning discussions

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and in in planning theory.

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So that was a pretty common use

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and it was very common for planners

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to use the word in that context.

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So they talk about balancing different community interests

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or the interests of different players in the,

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in the ga in the planning, activities.

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And then the second category was kind of physical,

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where they talked about balancing different kinds

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of physical elements in the community, whether that's

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high rise, low rise, high density, low density,

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private public use of spaces, urban versus rural,

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though they would talk about needing to be able

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to balance those kinds of things.

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And that, I found was quite common was the, the kind

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of most common way in which the word was used by

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political leaders, developers, residents.

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They all used that kind of physical understanding

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quite, quite commonly.

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And then there's a, a set of what I call procedural,

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you know, where they, they were kind of

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focusing on different priorities, and,

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and sometimes, different ways of approaching a problem.

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So, one developer for example, had talked about the,

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the difference between kind of planning theory,

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new urbanism, planning theory

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and reality that need to kind of balance those things off

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because you, they, they take such different approaches to

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making decisions,

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than a category which I called economic, where they were

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often talking about needing to balance the provision

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of amenities and services with the cost

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or affordability of housing.

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So the kind of economic and,

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and developers were most likely to use that kind of

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economic, classification.

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And then the final one I call sociodemographic, where

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the focus was on balancing different kinds of people,

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people, so new residents coming into communities versus the

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existing residents of the neighborhood, single persons

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or university students versus families.

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And that kind of,

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and that was the least common kind of,

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way in which the word was used.

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I noticed as I was, doing the analysis that sometimes

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the word was being used as a noun.

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So as in balance, we now want to achieve a good balance

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or a healthy balance in the community.

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Sometimes it was being used as a verb where they wanted

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to talk about balancing different needs

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or, agendas sometimes as an adjective

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as in wanting to achieve a balanced outcome

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or a balancing act.

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I was interested in,

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in understanding the different ways in which different

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participants were using the, the, word.

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And, and I noticed in that, that as developers were using,

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the word that was more likely to be a verb,

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and it was more likely to give them a, a kind of agency.

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So one of the developers, for example, said something like,

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the industry's been fighting to balance the scale of,

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of what planners were asking them to do versus

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what they could economically, want to do

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and, and achieve.

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So that kind of, they were using the word in ways

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that gave them greater agency.

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Um, just kind of an interesting thing,

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and I had done work previously looking at this kind of,

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what I call alistic metaphors that are used in,

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in planning discussions where it's quite common

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for developers to use those kind of fight metaphors

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to discuss what they're doing, that they're fighting for.

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The main conclusions that I have coming out of this

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research is that words are used strategically

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when people talk about what they do

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and the importance of what they do

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and when they characterize the, the way

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that they do what they do.

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Um, and, and so this word balance is one of those

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words that serve a certain kind of strategic

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and political function to allow people

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to suggest that the kinds of things that they're doing

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are objective, they're about blind justice.

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Um, they are, you know, like the, this,

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I forget what the name of the character is, who the,

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who wears the blindfold

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and has the scales of justice, in her hands.

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But you know, that using that word conveys that kind

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of concept that we're able to make a, a good decision

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that is not being influenced by our own agenda

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or, development, interests.

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And of, of course, it's very difficult for

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planners or anyone else to operate in a context

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where those kinds of agendas don't influence outcomes.

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And we see today that, that the kind of decisions

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that are being made in communities everywhere

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are very much influenced by

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what many call neoliberal agenda, where market

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interests are, seen as high priority

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and are defended in various ways

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and justified in various ways that the most common one now,

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of course is about affordability,

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that only let the market do what it will,

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will get affordability

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and will have increased housing supply.

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There's not a lot of evidence that that will happen,

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but that's what the, the common discourse is.

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And so I think that this kind of analysis that I did let,

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it lets us see some

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of the ways in which people explain their decisions.

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And I guess, you know, for me, one of the outcomes

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that I had not quite expected when I did the work was to see

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how often this notion of balance was used as a way

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of justifying, limiting,

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interventions by certain elements of the population,

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especially those who, who come out to public meetings

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and argue against certain kinds of development projects.

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I mean, that it's very common in planning

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that when you have a public meeting, people, the people

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who come out are likely to oppose the decision that's being,

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it's a, it's their community, it's their their homes,

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they're looking after their own interests.

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Um, but what planners often said about that was

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that they, they were balancing

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some kind of nebulous interest over here

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that wasn't being shown in the meetings versus though the

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people who were there in the meetings saying this is

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what they thought was important.

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And, so it became a kind of way

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to bring things into a debate that weren't necessarily there

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of, and of minimizing the kinds of concerns

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that were being expressed by those who were there.

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So I was a bit surprised to see that

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coming out, in the discussion because

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although I know there's, there's often a kind of,

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negative reaction to what many people like

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to call nimby outta my, my backyard syndrome.

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Um, on the other hand, people have the right

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to express their opinions

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and to, to have those opinions at least listen to,

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even if those, don't ultimately,

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influence the decision that political leaders make.

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So, I, I guess that was kind of the, an,

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outcome I hadn't necessarily expected.

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But it, I think it does show the way, the way

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that nebulous concepts like balance

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or like the public interest, these kind of undefined,

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notions are able

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to be used in, planning practice

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and the practice of making decisions about our communities.

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And in broader political practice, policy making,

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they're used as, as a way of trying to explain

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decisions without necessarily putting a lot of content into

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that explanation.

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'cause it's kind of process that happens,

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it's like a kind of sausage making right? You

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Know, you don't really see what goes in into

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that, that process.

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And you have to live with the outcome, which

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in some cases maybe be delicious

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and in other cases may be something you can't really

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stomach.

The Obscured Complexity of Decision-Making: The Role of 'Balance'

00:00:00 - For many years, I had noticed when I was interviewing planners and local political leaders and others, how common the use of the word balance seemed to be when people were talking about how they made difficult decisions. And I, I see it too, when I'm reading the paper or listening to politicians talk about the kinds of choices they make, they'll often use this notion of balancing, you know, trade-offs,

00:00:33 - And it seemed to me that it was a kind of way of obscuring the processes by which decisions get made that it, it's a way of ignoring that kind of messiness of the decision process. So when I retired and no longer was doing new research, I thought, I'm gonna go back through my interview notes that I've collected over many years of doing research

00:01:06 - said about use when they were using the word in the interviews that I had. When you, when you have time to go back and, and look at stuff and read through it again and again, and really explore the context of what people are saying and where they're saying it and how they're saying it, you do pick up things that, that you don't have the time or the luxury to find when you're trying to create, you know, deal with a specific topic like what's happening

Examining the Concept of Balance in Neighborhood Planning

00:01:36 - or how are neighborhoods changing. You don't have time then to really go through the details of what people are saying. And, it really turns out to be very interesting to examine, yeah, that use of language. There is a lot of literature out there that uses the word balance or talks about balance, but nobody had systematically examined how practitioners were looking at balance.

00:02:07 - that there were times and places where balance was a key issue. So in the UK for example, there has no been notions about socially balanced communities and, in recent years concerns about changes in neighborhoods that have left a lot of universities, students moving into older, established neighborhoods near universities, so concerns that communities were becoming unbalanced. So there was, that kind of literature was out there

00:02:43 - of planning scholars had talked about how planning is about balancing competing interests. But, no one had really done this kind of systematic analysis for this kind of use of, of the term. So it seemed to me, me, it was a good opportunity to offer something that wasn't in the literature over the course of four different research projects that I had done here in Canada. where we interviewed, we did a total

Analyzing the Discourse of 'Balance' in Planning Interviews

00:03:16 - and I verbatim transcripts of the interviews. So it gave me very specific kind of data to work with. So I went back through those interviews that were conducted over, I think about a seven or eight year period, and pulled out all of the instances where people had used some form of the word balance, whether that, so there, that kind of root balance,

00:03:46 - or whatever, it turned out that not everyone used that word, but 70, 73 I think of the, the respondents had used the word. And so I was able to pull out all of the, the ways in which they used that word to see exactly what they said. And, did a, basically a discourse analysis, trying to understand the way the word was used, the context in which it was used,

00:04:17 - What I discovered was that not everybody in the dataset used the word balance. It was more commonly used by planners than by other categories of respondents. So not quite as often by political leaders or by developers or by residents. But, planners certainly used it quite a bit. And that's not surprising because, you know, the literature is made pretty clear that planners are concerned about this idea of balance

Exploring the Concept of 'Balancing Act' in Planning Discourse

00:04:48 - as perform performing a balancing act. That set of words balancing act came up quite often in the, in the data set, which is why it ended up in the title of the paper. so when I examined the kind of patterns in which this word was used, I found there were, some common categories of uses.

00:05:18 - what I called it conceptual, where people are talking about balancing different interests or objectives or ambitions. often it was used in association with, with concept concepts such as livability or sustainability or smart growth, these kind of vague notions that have, have become fairly popular in planning discussions and in in planning theory.

00:05:50 - and it was very common for planners to use the word in that context. So they talk about balancing different community interests or the interests of different players in the, in the ga in the planning, activities. And then the second category was kind of physical, where they talked about balancing different kinds of physical elements in the community, whether that's high rise, low rise, high density, low density,

Dimensions of Balance in Planning Discourse

00:06:26 - though they would talk about needing to be able to balance those kinds of things. And that, I found was quite common was the, the kind of most common way in which the word was used by political leaders, developers, residents. They all used that kind of physical understanding quite, quite commonly. And then there's a, a set of what I call procedural,

00:06:55 - focusing on different priorities, and, and sometimes, different ways of approaching a problem. So, one developer for example, had talked about the, the difference between kind of planning theory, new urbanism, planning theory and reality that need to kind of balance those things off because you, they, they take such different approaches to

00:07:26 - than a category which I called economic, where they were often talking about needing to balance the provision of amenities and services with the cost or affordability of housing. So the kind of economic and, and developers were most likely to use that kind of economic, classification. And then the final one I call sociodemographic, where the focus was on balancing different kinds of people,

Exploring the Multifaceted Use of 'Balance' in Planning Discourse

00:08:00 - existing residents of the neighborhood, single persons or university students versus families. And that kind of, and that was the least common kind of, way in which the word was used. I noticed as I was, doing the analysis that sometimes the word was being used as a noun. So as in balance, we now want to achieve a good balance

00:08:32 - Sometimes it was being used as a verb where they wanted to talk about balancing different needs or, agendas sometimes as an adjective as in wanting to achieve a balanced outcome or a balancing act. I was interested in, in understanding the different ways in which different participants were using the, the, word. And, and I noticed in that, that as developers were using,

00:09:07 - and it was more likely to give them a, a kind of agency. So one of the developers, for example, said something like, the industry's been fighting to balance the scale of, of what planners were asking them to do versus what they could economically, want to do and, and achieve. So that kind of, they were using the word in ways that gave them greater agency. just kind of an interesting thing,

Strategic Use of Language in Planning Discourse

00:09:40 - what I call alistic metaphors that are used in, in planning discussions where it's quite common for developers to use those kind of fight metaphors to discuss what they're doing, that they're fighting for. The main conclusions that I have coming out of this research is that words are used strategically when people talk about what they do and the importance of what they do

00:10:10 - that they do what they do. and, and so this word balance is one of those words that serve a certain kind of strategic and political function to allow people to suggest that the kinds of things that they're doing are objective, they're about blind justice. they are, you know, like the, this,

00:10:41 - who wears the blindfold and has the scales of justice, in her hands. But you know, that using that word conveys that kind of concept that we're able to make a, a good decision that is not being influenced by our own agenda or, development, interests. And of, of course, it's very difficult for

Neoliberal Influences on Community Decision-Making

00:11:11 - where those kinds of agendas don't influence outcomes. And we see today that, that the kind of decisions that are being made in communities everywhere are very much influenced by what many call neoliberal agenda, where market interests are, seen as high priority and are defended in various ways and justified in various ways that the most common one now, of course is about affordability,

00:11:42 - will get affordability and will have increased housing supply. There's not a lot of evidence that that will happen, but that's what the, the common discourse is. And so I think that this kind of analysis that I did let, it lets us see some of the ways in which people explain their decisions. And I guess, you know, for me, one of the outcomes that I had not quite expected when I did the work was to see how often this notion of balance was used as a way

00:12:18 - interventions by certain elements of the population, especially those who, who come out to public meetings and argue against certain kinds of development projects. I mean, that it's very common in planning that when you have a public meeting, people, the people who come out are likely to oppose the decision that's being, it's a, it's their community, it's their their homes, they're looking after their own interests.

Balancing Nebulous Interests in Planning Discourse

00:12:50 - that they, they were balancing some kind of nebulous interest over here that wasn't being shown in the meetings versus though the people who were there in the meetings saying this is what they thought was important. And, so it became a kind of way to bring things into a debate that weren't necessarily there of, and of minimizing the kinds of concerns

00:13:22 - So I was a bit surprised to see that coming out, in the discussion because although I know there's, there's often a kind of, negative reaction to what many people like to call nimby outta my, my backyard syndrome. on the other hand, people have the right to express their opinions and to, to have those opinions at least listen to, even if those, don't ultimately,

00:13:57 - So, I, I guess that was kind of the, an, outcome I hadn't necessarily expected. But it, I think it does show the way, the way that nebulous concepts like balance or like the public interest, these kind of undefined, notions are able to be used in, planning practice

The Obscured Decision-Making Process in Politics

00:14:29 - And in broader political practice, policy making, they're used as, as a way of trying to explain decisions without necessarily putting a lot of content into that explanation. 'cause it's kind of process that happens, it's like a kind of sausage making right? You Know, you don't really see what goes in into that, that process. And you have to live with the outcome, which

00:15:05 - and in other cases may be something you can't really stomach.

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