Planning and Design as Theological and Religious Activities

Planning and design, especially in urban planning and architecture, are technical and transformative activities. Models drawn from the natural and social sciences are used to articulate the technical aspects, and those drawn from politics are used to articulate the transformative. Religion and theology provide a set of useful models, regularly employed by practicing planners and designers, for both kinds of activities. Decisionmaking may be viewed as conversion; environmental planning is often about the creation of sacred places of Nature; and social planning may aim to transform the society leading it to a promised land. Designs are presented as provisions of order and gracefulness, their evaluation a matter of judgment, and their inauguration a process of creation. Plans are treated as authoritative documents subject to interpretation, and error in making and implementing plans is treated as a matter of the failure of a sinful human nature. The models are described in this paper and it is shown how they influence the practice of planning and design. What is taken as scientific and secular seems often to be religious and theological.