Forester, J. (1989) Planning in the Face of Power, Berkeley, CA: University of California press.

• If they [planners] to recognize how their ordinary actions have subtle communicative effects, they will be counterproductive, even though they may mean well. They may be sincere but mistrusted, rigorous but unappreciated, reassuring yet resented. Where they intend to help, planners may instead create dependency; and where they intend to express good faith, they may raise expectations unrealistically, with disastrous consequences. 138
• When planners recognize the practical and communicative nature of their actions, they can devise strategies to avoid these problems and to improve their practice as well. 139
• Planners do much more than describe, of course. They warn others of problems, present information, suggest new ideas, agree to perform certain tasks or to meet at certain times, argue for or against particular efforts, report relevant events, offer opinions and advice, and comment on ideas and proposals for action.
• Mutual understanding depends on the satisfaction of these four criteria: comprehensibility, sincerity, legitimacy, and accuracy or truth. 142
• Planners staff must learn to anticipate the practical effects both of the class based communicative actions and practical arguments of others, and of their own argumentative practices as well. 143
• The context of what a planner says is defined by the historical, political, and social relations that provide the planners with a stage from which to speak from the first place. 145-6
• Only in the most isolated or most routine cases will future-oriented planning problems be resolved by a technical planner acting alone. 152
• The most well-meaning technical planning activities have at times communicated, if unintentionally, that planning is the exclusive domain of the planner…153
• It has worked to separate planners and planned for; it has made information less accessible to those affected by plans; it has minimized planners' abilities to learn from project review criticism; and it has generated public mistrust in planning staff and reinforced planners' apprehensions that public participation will inevitably be disruptive. 153
• What planners choose to say--and choose not to say--is politically crucial. 153
• Planners must assess encompassing power structures and recognize how their own actions can work either to discourage or to encourage citizen organizing. 155
• By treating planning practice as a communicative action, we are given a conceptual (and researchable) bridge from analysis to implementation (via the shaping of attention), from information organization (via the shaping and reproduction of political identity), from cognition to action (via the claims-making structure of communicative action), and thus from the analysis of abstract meaning to a pragmatic assessment of practical professional activity. 157
• A critical communicative account of planning practice seeks not only to integrate analyses of action and structure but also to combine empirical and interpretive research with normative and ethical arguments that help us counteract the obstacles to democratic and legitimate planning processes. 161
• This is the contribution of critical planning theory: pragmatics with vision--to reveal true alternatives, to correct false expectations, to counter cynicism, to foster inquiry, to spread political responsibility, engagement, and action. Critical planning practice, technically skilled and politically sensitive, is simultaneously and organizing and democratizing practice. 162