Joe Hill posted about 'everythingism' <a href="https://x.com/jo3hill" target="_blank" rel="noopener">on X</a> recently: the basic idea is that we make decisions about a particular thing, into decisions about all the things we are interested in. For example, if you wanted to make a decision about whether X was the best energy generation, and then you started taking into account the extent to which that technology contributed to wider social value. The remedy to this is not to make each individual policy (or planning) decision reflect all the outcomes we want, but to have as many policies as desired outcomes. Joe’s idea is a re-telling of the Tinbergen Rule: governments must use multiple policy instruments if they want to impact multiple policy targets.

What does this have to do with planning? I think one of the greatest complexities in planning is that it forces us to treat a planning decision not as an overall trade off, but a series of clashes between competing principles. Let’s say you wanted energy generation infrastructure quickly, but you wanted to ensure environmental protection too. There is a conflict, and inevitably a trade off between the two. Rather than preventing permission for the former because of the latter, you could seek to use things outside of the planning decision to enhance the environment. Taking the Tinbergen Rule seriously you might even simply say that the role of the planning system in environmental protection could be even more reduced by, for example, requiring environmental contributions (which are then directed by a government body) based on the scale of the development but the development itself will proceed. A system like this would align with the Tinbergen Rule, and may end up being better at protecting the environment.