[S3 Discussion] Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning

[tarngerine]

Rittel & Webber, defines "wicked" problems

http://www.uctc.net/mwebber/Rittel+Webber+Dilemmas+General_Theory_of_Planning.pdf

[tarngerine]

While reading this I recalled we discussed Wicked Problems while in design school. I'm not quite sure what the lesson was back then, but I recall learning to avoid them somehow

Couple notes:

• Wicked problems are problems where the problem itself is hard to pinpoint/define objectively, and solutions are almost impossible to test the way that scientific problems can be (e.g. if you build a highway thru a neighborhood, you won't be able to do experiments to validate it before you do it), since implementing a solution will likely change the whole context
• Most societal problems > wicked problems due to its subjective nature/complexity

[frnsys]

these first few paragraphs are really reminiscent of the current situation of anti-expert opinion, though the way they write about it sounds condescending/elitist (though a lot of coverage around the brexit vote sounds the same way 🤔)

We must learn to look at our objectives as critically and as professionally as we look at
our models and our other inputs.

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Systems analysis, goals commissions, PPBS, social indicators, the several revolts, the poverty program, model cities, the current concerns with environmental quality and with the qualities of urban life, the search for new religions among contemporary youth, and the increasing attractiveness of the planning idea--all seem to be driven by a common quest. Each in its peculiar way is asking for a clarification of purposes, for a redefinition of problems, for a re-ordering of priorities to match stated purposes...

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really striking how this describes the present as well:

Many Americans seem to believe both that we can perfect future history--that we can deliberately shape future outcomes to accord with our wishes--and that there will be no future history.

I wonder if those two groups were composed similarly to the way they are today? e.g. transhumanist futurist-types fall into the former, is there an analogue in the 1970's?

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planning used to be about efficiency, now it also asks if whatever is to be done should be done in the first place

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We have been learning to see social processes as the links tying open systems into large and interconnected networks of systems, such that outputs from one become inputs to others. In that structural framework it has become less apparent where problem centers lie, and less apparent where and how we should intervene even if we do happen to know what aims we seek.

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systems analysts thought they could solve anyone's problems in a straightforward way; turns out it's really, really hard

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...we are all beginning to realize that one of the most intractable problems is that of defining problems...and of locating problems (finding where in the complex causal networks the trouble really lies). In turn, and equally intractable, is the problem of identifying the actions that might effectively narrow the gap between what-is and what-ought-to-be.

maybe where we are in solving such problems is where medicine was when the solution to many bodily issues was amputation...e.g. we know there problem is somewhere in your leg, we don't know exactly where, so let's cleave the whole thing off. even with modern medicine, drugs are really imprecise...maybe the other end of this analogy is "acupuncture", extremely precise and targeted (though I don't know how effective a treatment acupuncture is considered?)

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Social problems are never solved. At best they are only re-solved--over and over again.

i like this acknowledgement of no "end of history", social progress is a continual process and we can't ever delude ourselves into thinking we're "done" with it

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part of what makes wicked problems so difficult (aside from identifying and defining them in the first place) is that you're not always sure if they've even been "solved"; if they seem like they have been solved, you're can't even be sure it was your intervention that did it, and solving it for one person might not be the same as solving it for another (there is no objective metric for declaring a problem "solved"). furthermore, the space of solutions is effectively infinite/not well defined.

the definition of a problem typically implies certain solutions (e.g. the paper's poverty example), and since with wicked problems no one can agree on solutions, no one can even agree on the problem definition - "The formulation of a wicked problem is the problem!"

although, with the poverty example, those all seem like plausible causes, wouldn't "solving" it involve having multiple people/organizations solve each aspect of it?

wicked problems are also difficult because any attempted intervention can alter the dynamics of the problem, so in some sense you only ever have one shot at fixing it in its current form.

wicked problems are "essentially unique" in that even though there may be similarities between two, they may only be superficial, there may be hidden components that cause them to have very different dynamics, and so it's hard to say if you can ever take a method which worked for one problem and apply it to another.

every wicked problem can be described as a symptom of another problem; they are all entangled and enmeshed in each other and they are multi-scale, even fractal in some way. how do you decide at which level to approach the problem? (again, why not have multiple people/organizations approach it at multiple levels simultaneously?)

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Under these circumstances it is not surprising that the members of an organization tend to see the problems on a level below their own level. If you ask a police chief what the problems of the police are, he is likely to demand better hardware.

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A few years ago there was a nearly universal consensus in America that full-employment, high productivity, and widespread distribution of consumer durables fitted into a development strategy in which all would be winners. That consensus is now being eroded. Now, when substitutes for wages are being disbursed to the poor, the college student, and the retired, as well as to the more traditional recipient of nonwage incomes, our conceptions of "employment" and of a full-employment economy are having to be revised.

again so weird how this feels like it describes today

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Whichever the tactic, though, it should be clear that the expert is also the player in a political game, seeking to promote his private vision of goodness over others'. Planning is a component of politics. There is no escaping that truism.

[michaelpace]

dump of notes from vim:

Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning, Rittel & Webber, defines "wicked" problems

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social problems are wicked problems
    "policies that respond to social problems cannot be meaningfully correct or false"
        "it makes no sense to talk about "optimal solutions" to social problems unless
        sever qualifications are imposed first"
        "there are no "solutions" in the sense of definitive and objective answers"
    the public have recently been (in ~'73) vocally criticizing professionally-implemented
        public policy, be it in education, medicine, etc. (i assume because the problems
        are wicked problems, e.g., "you can't win" problems b/c requirements are conflicting
        or changing).

"There seems to be a growing realization that a weak strut in the professional's support system lies
    at the juncture where goal-formulation, problem-definition and equity issues meet. We should
    like to address these matters in turn."

1. goal formation (or, the practice of creating goals)
    in the early 60s, professional fields started to think less about how the systems in their
        fields worked and more about what the fields _do_, and especially: what the fields
        _should_ do.
    still, goal-finding turned out to be extraordinarily difficult. there were many revolts:
    "Systems analysis, goals commissions, PPBS (government-talk for"Planning-Programming-Budgeting"),
        social indicators, the several revolts, the poverty
        program, model cities, the current concerns with environmental quality and with the qualities
        of urban life, the search for new religions among contemporary youth, and the increasing
        attractiveness of the planning idea--all seem to be driven by a common quest. Each in
        its peculiar way is asking for a clarification of purposes, for a redefinition of problems,
        for a re-ordering of priorities to match stated purposes, for the design of new kinds of
        goal-directed actions, for a reorientation of the pro- fessions to the outputs of
        professional activities rather than to the inputs into them, and then for a redistribution
        of the outputs of governmental programs among the competing publics."
    two approaches to goal formation going forward: being able to plan and shape it through pragmatism,
        and the "feeling approach" of compassionate engagement and dramatic action.
    policy sciences are optimistic in that they believe they can shape the future, or at least do better
        than anarchy.

2. problem definition (or, the practice of defining problems)
    the idea of "efficiency", sourced from the industrial age, got applied to planning.
    over time, as the problems changed, the focus on efficiency hasn't been as helpful to planning.
        the new question became, "is what we're doing the _right_ thing to do" instead of
        "how well are we doing the thing we're doing?". ritter says the focus shifted more to
        the _outputs_ of actions.
    it became evident that solving a problem in one system can induce problems in some other
        non-obvious connected node.
    "By now we are all beginning to realize that one of the most intractable problems is that of
        defining problems (of knowing what distinguishes an observed condition from a desired
        condition) and of locating problems (finding where in the complex causal networks the
        trouble really lies). In turn, and equally intractable, is the problem of identifying
        the actions that might effectively narrow the gap between what-is and what-ought-to-be.
        As we seek to improve the effectiveness of actions in pursuit of valued outcomes, as
        system boundaries get stretched, and as we become more sophisticated about the complex
        workings of open societal systems, it becomes ever more difficult to make the planning
        idea operational."

3. planning problems are wicked problems
    "wicked problems" don't have clear missions, and it is never obvious if a given solution has
        worked.
    nearly all public policy issues (e.g., location of a freeway, adjustment of a tax rate, modification
        of school curricula, confrontation of crime, etc.) are wicked problems.
    ten distinguishing properties of wicked planning -type problems:
        1. there is no definitive formulation of a wicked problem.
            there is no definitive way to pose or describe a wicked problem such that the problem
            solver has all of the information they need to solve it. to be able to definitively
            state the problem would require the speaker to know all possible solutions.
        2. wicked problems have no stopping rule.
            it's impossible to know when you're "done" solving the problem.
        3. solutions to wicked problems are not true-or-false, but good--or-bad.
        4. there is no immediate and no ultimate test of a solution to a wicked problem.
        5. every solution to a wicked problem is a "one-shot operation".
            because there is no opportunity to learn by trial-and-error, every attempt counts
            significantly. actions are irreversible, and they themselves have consequences, or
            "traces" that cannot be undone and are now part of the context surrounding the
            problem.
        6. wicked problems do not have an enumerable set of potential solutions, nor is there a
           well-described set of permissible operations that may be incorporated into the plan.
        7. every wicked problem is essentially unique.
        8. every wicked problem can be considered to be a symptom of another problem.
            wicked problems are made of sub-wicked problems.
        9. the existence of a discrepancy representing a wicked problem can be explained in numerous
           ways. the choice of explanation determines the nature of the problem's resolution.
            ""Crime in the streets" can be explained by not enough police, by too many criminals,
            by inadequate laws, too many police, cultural deprivation, deficient opportunity,
            too many guns, phrenologic aberrations, etc. Each of these offers a direction for
            attacking crime in the streets. Which one is right ? There is no rule or procedure
            to determine the "correct" explanation or combination of them. The reason is that in
            dealing with wicked problems there are several more ways of refuting a hypothesis than
            there are permissible in the sciences."
        10. the planner has no right to be wrong.
            (...in contrast with scientists, for whom being wrong is expected & helps everyone learn).

4. the social context
    the world is getting increasingly differentiated and heterogeneous.
    "We have come to realize that the melting pot never worked for large numbers of immigrants to America,
        and that the unitary conception of "'The American Way of Life" is now giving way to a recognition
        that there are numerous ways of life that are also American."
    "one thing is clear: large population size will mean that small minorities can comprise large numbers
        of people; and, as we have been seeing, even small minorities can swing large political
        influence.
        In a setting in which a plurality of publics is politically pursuing a diversity of goals,
        how is the larger society to deal with its wicked problems in a planful way? How are goals to
        be set, when the valuative bases are so diverse? Surely a unitary conception of a unitary "public
        welfare" is an anachronistic one."
    "We also know that many societal processes have the character of zero-sum games. As the population
        becomes increasingly pluralistic, inter-group differences are likely to be reflected as
        inter-group rivalries of the zero-sum sorts. If they do, the prospects for inventing positive
        non-zero-sum development strategies would become increasingly difficult."

interesting point:
    at first, public policy problems were easily defined and solved: building roads, bringing
        water to houses, etc. once those problems were solved, people began demanding
        varied and more complex things, and the guiding principles that helped earlier
        (efficiency, etc.) were no longer as helpful.

another interesting point:
    line between science and applied science; they have different types of problems.

"tame" problems are opposite of wicked problems.