Analysis of planning practice has led theorists to claim that planners are increasingly
involved in communicative work as they negotiate between competing interests' and
opposing parties. A normative study of the resultant theory of communicative planning,
alongside a review of current trends in leadership and mediation literature, leads to a set of
guiding attributes of conduct and action. This research begins by synthesizing these
guiding attributes of effective planning into a framework of Empathic Leadership. In
sustainability planning Empathic Leadership is particularly concerned with mediating
between different perspectives while simultaneously advancing a specific agenda. The work
of eight sustainability planners in the Vancouver region, each a leader in her respective
field, was analyzed using the Empathic Leadership framework. Planners were interviewed
shadowed and observed, and their staff and colleagues were surveyed to gain multiple
perspectives on the significance of the various attributes of leadership. Empathic
Leadership was found to permeate every aspect of the practitioners' work and they were
found to possess many of the skills necessary for being exemplary leaders. The research
also revealed that their work is an iterative pentad of: visioning, engaging emotions,
building community, employing strategy and implementing action. The visions are
compelling, seductive and infectious yet ambiguous. Emotions are strong and recognized
as being significant, yet poorly integrated into the other elements of the pentad.
Communities rallying around the visions are cohesive, fluid, diverse and context-specific,
but largely untested. The strategies are political, relatively transparent but rarely uphold the
inclusive values of the vision. Actions are varied, innovative and often democratizing, yet
implicitly homogenous and classist. While ample evidence of communicative planning
exists, it is an unrealized ideal; the reality is a temporally larger scope of relational planning
whereby change is achieved through the building of relationships over time. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UBC/oai:circle.library.ubc.ca:2429/17066 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Senbel, Maged |
| Source Sets | University of British Columbia |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis/Dissertation |
| Rights | For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use. |
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