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This chapter employs the survey findings to create a typology with which to classify the five primary exemplars whose narratives appear throughout the book. The typology consists of four distinct yet permeable categories that represent important patterns in the experience and expression of godly love: Global Mystics, interviewees with high scores on both extensive benevolence and a spiritual/mystical worldview; Global Planners, those with high scores on extensive benevolence but low on the spiritual worldview; Local Mystics, those with low scores on extensive benevolence (although still highly benevolent at the local level) but high scores on the spiritual worldview; and Local Planners, those with low scores on both extensive benevolence and spiritual worldview but high scores on benevolence at the local level.

This chapter presents an attempt to explore and understand the difficulties involved in the articulation of causal-descriptive descriptions in an effort to find a resolution. It begins by presenting Frank Jackson’s version of the complaint against Kripke’s arguments, which emphasizes the role of implicit knowledge. This complaint has garnered widespread criticism due to this emphasis. After discussing these criticisms as articulated in recent works by Scott Soames, the chapter provides suggestions on what is lacking from Jackson’s version of the complaint, and from all others. The latter part of the chapter presents arguments stating that, although Canberra Planners have been keen to find a place for a respectable form of descriptivism, what is missing from their story is an acknowledgment of the notion of a referential plan in the institution of referring with names.

The introductory chapter outlines the ongoing programme of planning reform being pursued by central and devolved government in Great Britain. The reforms implemented by New Labour (1997-2010) are explored and provide the context for policy intervention by the current UK Coalition Government (2010- ). It is argued that, whilst planning reform intersects with a wider agenda to modernise local government and the public services, there is a lack of rigorous empirical data on the reaction of planners to these broad reforms. This leads to a tendency to focus on structures rather than peopled practices, ignoring the fact that reforms require implementation by frontline planners.

This chapter considers the role of planners in reform processes by outlining how they can be understood as professional technical experts, as subjects of neoliberalism and as frontline ‘Street-level Bureaucrats’. This leads to an exploration of ‘sociological institutionalism’, which draws upon Giddens’ structuration theory, and which provides the theoretical framework for the subsequent chapters. The chapter concludes that planning reform, like other public sector modernisation, must be considered as a ‘peopled process’.

This chapter explores how local authority planners responded to the Labour Government’s performance management agenda for planning, particularly the targets for speed of the development control function. It is revealed that the performance agenda has had a massive impact on the professional life of planners ‘at the coalface’. In common with other public sector professions, a range of negative consequences were associated with the targets, including concerns about a focus on process over outcome and a range of unintended consequences. Strikingly, however, most planners did not support the abolition of targets. A range of ways in which planners have successfully used national targets to further their own agendas are evident. Having discussed the continued currency of the efficiency agenda for the Coalition government, it is concluded that there is significant active agency amongst these frontline professionals, whilst working within an overall structure imposed by central government.

The concluding chapter considers the cross-cutting themes emerging from the range of empirical data about planning reform under New Labour presented in earlier chapters, and refers back to the previous literature and framework set out earlier in the book. It considers what ‘planning at the coalface’ can tellus about the implementation of modernisation agendas, about power and agency and about planning as a profession. This then frames a discussion about planning reform under the Coalition Government, and the possible future roles for the planner and indeed the planning system.