1 Introduction: The ethics of wicked problem?

Taming a wicked problem likely requires making ethical decisions (Churchman 1967). Yet five decades after the conception of the wicked problem (Chan and Xiang 2022), the ethics of wicked problem remains undefined. Decisions on which part of a wicked problem should be tamed and which parts to ignore, who or what should be prioritized over whom, and why, or whether one should learn to live with a wicked problem instead of risking an unprecedented solution, are important ethical questions for planning. Yet principled answers to these ethical questions, or at the very least, systematic debates about the practical ethics of the wicked problem, remain elusive. If certain wicked problems can never be solved—“At best they are only re-solved—over and over again” (Rittel and Webber 1973, p. 160)—and if a planner also has no right to be wrong (p. 166), then ethics, which not only can guide action but also aspires repeated struggles with a wicked problem, appears crucial. Yet ethics remains estranged to the research of wicked problems.

On the matter of ethics, however, Rittel and Webber (1973, p. 160) at least made clear that ‘wicked’ has nothing to do with the “ethically deplorable”. Instead, ‘wicked’ is a catchall notion for ‘malignant’, ‘vicious’, ‘tricky’ and ‘aggressive’ properties found particularly in societal problems, which render them ill-defined, elusive, and confounding, yet also highly dangerous and vengeful—biting back even after the problem was thought to have been solved (Churchman 1967, p. B-141). Although planning always comprises of “ought-to-be” deontic prescriptions (Protzen and Harris 2010, p. 160), ethics received scarcely a mention in Rittel and Webber’s (1973) article. Considering Churchman’s (1967) earlier editorial on the centrality of ethics when taming a wicked problem, the omission of ethics becomes all the more inexplicable.

The exact reason for the omission of ethics by Rittel and Webber’s (1973) may never be known. But to continue to omit the ethics of wicked problem is not only to occlude a fuller understanding of wicked problems necessary for responsibility, but also to deny the additional perspectives and tools that accompany moral knowledge. Especially when many of the wicked problems today arise from climate change (Lazarus 2009), urbanization (Campbell and Zellner 2020), and public health (Angeli et al. 2021)—three salient areas of urgent concern that are likely to persist well into the future—the absence of a moral perspective in wicked problems may well risk ethically deplorable consequences.

2 An overview of the ethics of wicked problem literature

The literature referencing ‘wicked problems’ is plentiful. A survey by Lönngren and van Poeck (2021, p. 481) reveals that since 2017, over 200 papers with the term ‘wicked problem’ have been published annually. Nevertheless, there is a dearth of scholarship on the ethics of wicked problems. Coincidentally, the earliest article that referenced the wicked problem is an editorial on the ethics of responding to this type of problem (Churchman 1967). According to Churchman, the problem-solver who has been trained to tackle only the most feasible aspect of the wicked problem is already “morally wrong”. But not realizing this, this problem-solver subsequently either pretends and lies—deceiving others into believing that the wicked problem has been completely tamed even when it was not—or else decides to confess that only its tamest aspects have been tackled. Either way, this violates the strong moral tenet stipulated by Churchman (1967, p. B-142): “whoever attempts to tame a part of a wicked problem, but not the whole, is morally wrong”. And to the sum of moral blindspots and pitfalls that the wicked problem has thrown up, these now belong to the new class of “wicked moral problem” (Churchman 1967, p. B-142).

After a long hiatus, Wexler (2009) builds on Churchman’s editorial by expanding and exploring the moral dimensions of wicked problems. Specifically, Wexler adds a social context where there are ‘buyers’ and ‘sellers’ of wicked problem solutions, and then deduces how moral hazards can arise in this context. He makes four main points. First, problem-solvers tackling wicked problems often operate in a context devoid of precedents and clear norms. For example, no existing social norms guide geoengineering projects that may reduce global warming, as observed in Keith’s (2013) proposal of operating modified Gulfstream jets at high altitudes to disperse sulphuric acid droplets that deflect sun rays. Second, because ‘sellers’ of innovative solutions compete against each other in marketplace, they are susceptible to the moral hazard of raising the expectations of their ‘buyers’ by giving them false assurances of efficacy, safety, or the impression of genuine innovation. For instance, early proponents of nuclear power believed that it would be ‘too cheap to meter’, which has since been rejected in view of the cumulative and growing cost of decommissioning nuclear infrastructure and managing radioactive waste (Manjoo 2022). Third, ‘sellers’ of wicked problem solutions are incentivized to play up the politics of urgency, where the more they can fan anxiety in their ‘buyers’, the more readily the latter would accept an unready version of their solution—observed, for instance, in the urgency to remove carbon from the atmosphere using still nascent energy intensive technologies (Clifford 2021). Finally, following Rittel and Webber (1973), Wexler observes that some wicked problems may be unsolvable. But in the knowledge market context, presenting them as unsolvable problems neither attracts attention nor research or industry funding. New methods, skills, and techniques then emerge with the claim that they can transform the unsolvable into complex but solvable problems. Wexler (2009) then argues that this can result in obfuscation, which in turn is ripe for deception.

According to Campbell and Zellner (2020, p. 1644), there are two typical approaches for explaining why wicked problems can lead to bad policy choices. The first approach suggests that the fault primarily lies in the cognitive or moral fallibility of problem-solvers, while the second approach posits the nature of the wicked problem as the starting point of analysis. Both approach can lead to moral wicked problems. But how wicked moral problems can arise from each approach differs. For the former, wicked moral problems arise as a result of the problem-solver’s cognitive or moral fallibility, exhibited either individually, or reinforced by other agents within an organizational setting. As for the latter, wicked moral problems arise from Rittel and Webber’s (1973) ten properties of wicked problem in practice. If this distinction is taken as a working frame for organizing the literature on the ethics of wicked problems, then both Churchman (1967) and Wexler (2009) exemplify the first approach of explanation, where the unit of analysis is the problem-solver and how he or she responds when taming a wicked problem. On the other hand, another set of literature suggests a stronger leaning toward second approach, where the unit of analysis is one or more properties of the wicked problem and where the aim is to explain how wicked moral problems might arise from these properties in practice.

For example, Chan’s (2016) case study of Singapore’s Semakau Landfill suggests how the formulation of the waste problem as the necessity for an offshore landfill subsequently constrained the way planners responded, which resulted in many morally significant consequences. Among them are the longer-term impacts of constructing an artificial island on marine ecology, the ever-present risk of toxins leaching into the sea, and more importantly, that this radical solution did not come close to substantively addressing the deeper problem of rapid waste generation in Singapore. Inevitably at some point in the near future—nearer than what planners had anticipated—the Semakau Landfill would reach its capacity even while its environmental and moral liabilities continue to compound into the far future. Yet foreseeably, even at this future point, another large-scale landfill somewhere will be needed unless radical steps are taken to counter waste production. This case study also shows how the ‘vicious’ and ‘tricky’ problem of where to site a landfill has been transformed to a new problem of how to manage the risk of an artificial island, made of waste, into perpetuity. The attempt to tame a wicked problem has changed the nature of the original problem, or in Schön’s (1990, p. 128) words, where “running the maze changes the maze”.

Following this, a diverse body of literature alludes to ethics through the various properties of the wicked problem. For example, Lazarus (2009, pp. 1159–1160) defines the “super wicked problem” of climate change, where among other new properties, the longer it takes to address the climate change problem, the harder it will be to do so, and how those who are in the best position to address the problem are also the least incentivized to act. More recently, Bauman (2017) proposes the need for a planetary ethic in order to manage the wicked problem of climate change. From the ecological sciences, there may be no way but to live and work with wicked problems—the question is how to adapt successfully to the realities of wicked problems (Xiang 2013). And from the domain of public health, COVID-19 has been described as a wicked problem centered on a key ethical dilemma (Angeli et al. 2021). Two opposing ethical positions have emerged to guide pandemic management—to protect the most vulnerable while letting everyday life resume, as found in the form of the Great Barrington Declaration, or to impose restrictive lockdowns to prevent uncontrolled spread and to protect the healthcare capacities, as found in the John Snow Memorandum. Finally, how to attain peace and reconciliation in conflict and post-conflict zones is a wicked problem (Choi-Fitzpatrick et al. 2022). Without clarity on the correct or best thing to do, yet where action is often a ‘one-shot operation’ with irreversible consequences, what should a peacekeeper do? And to what extent should a peacekeeper work with local but violent powers in order to attain the aims of peacekeeping (Neufeldt 2022, p. 141)? While all these discussions take place in diverse fields and domains, this much is clear: the acknowledgement of the wicked problem often constitutes the beginning of new ethical perplexities.

3 Research questions and contributions of this article

The literature shows that the ethics of wicked problems has been unevenly broached from multiple angles. Overall, the outlook appears pessimistic: against the increasingly global, complex and uncertain web of interconnected wicked problems (e.g., Mora et al. 2022), cognitively and morally fallible planners are likely to have little traction amid a volatile social and geopolitical climate characterized by distrust, schism and conflict. Is there room for an optimism of the will amid an overwhelming pessimism of the intellect? Rittel was a political thinker who also spoke from a point of cautious optimism; he spoke of the possibility of making good plans that will serve the interest of human and more than-human flourishing into the future (Protzen and Harris 2010, p. 236). Might moral knowledge enable planners to make good plans? Specifically, how can this knowledge help to detect moral blindspots, anticipate ‘tricky’ pitfalls, and perhaps even preempt treacherous moral situations completely? Before a wicked problem, the purpose of ethics as wise action—action that people can still approve after gaining more experience or more reflection than was allowed in the moment of decision (Leys 1952, p. 362)—has never been clearer.

Because ethics is not only about rules and principles that guide action, but also about ideals that aspire action (Gert 1998, p. ix), the ethics of wicked problems cannot solely focus on human fallibility or moral violations. The ethics of wicked problems should also invoke ideals—morally worthy goals and visions that can motivate practical action for ameliorative changes despite but also because of wicked problems. Might planning ideals that can diminish the likelihood of wicked problems from taking root be an intuitive place to start? Specifically, what planning ideals or goals might be derived from examining the wicked problem using the frame of ethics? Formulating this question differently, how might planning be transformed when planners acknowledge wicked problems in their practice and work to overcome them?

To address these primary questions, each of the ten properties of a wicked problem, following the sequence observed in Rittel and Webber (1973), will be examined for their moral content and prospects. The following questions guide the investigation of each property: How has Rittel and Webber (1973) explicated a particular property? What is most salient, and what has been ignored? And where relevant and applicable, how has a specific property been interpreted by other scholars and researchers? How might this interpretation extend understanding in relation to ethics? What is the moral significance of any one of these properties? How can applied ethics, moral philosophy or moral psychology further elucidate this significance? And what may be the new questions of ethics raised by the re-interrogation of each property? In sum, how can a systematic examination of these ten properties in relation to ethics advance prior theoretical and practical knowledge of wicked problems?

Despite different efforts to condense or reduce these ten properties to a smaller sub-set that could still qualify as ‘wicked’ (e.g., Farrell and Hooker 2013; Head and Alford 2015; Xiang 2013), these original ten properties still dominate the wicked problem discourse (Termeer et al. 2019, p. 170). The systematic tracing, interpretation and analysis of each property, in their original sequence, is a well-treaded explicative approach. For example, Farrell and Hooker (2013, p. 686) rely on this approach to draw out a comparative study of design and science problems based on their proposed criteria of finitude, complexity and normativity. On the other hand, Vermaas and Pesch (2020, p. 537) rely on this same approach to assess how designerly thinking can identify appropriate responses to societal distrust. In this article, this approach will be used to systematically draw out the moral significance of each property.

4 The ten properties of a wicked problem

According to Rittel and Webber (1973, p. 160), ten properties distinguish a wicked problem from other problem types encountered in planning. Rittel and Webber (1973) did not explicitly state how many properties must apply, or to what extent any one of these properties must be present in a practical situation, for a problem to be deemed ‘wicked’. Neither did they suggest any ordinal hierarchy or priority within these ten properties. They also suggest that there are “at least” ten properties (Rittel and Webber 1973, p. 160), and leave open the possibility that there can be more. Vermaas and Pesch (2020, p. 537) suggest that this list of properties is not a checklist. Instead, each property should be deemed an entry point to further understand the wicked problem. Adopting this approach, the following analysis will rely on the examination of each property as an entry point for understanding the ethics of wicked problems.

At this point, three recurring and important terms of reference used in this article should be defined. Firstly, ‘planning’ is defined as the public institution for coordinating urban land-use decisions, even though today, ‘planning’ also refers to a diversity of specializations and activities in different spheres of professional practices beyond the municipal bureaucracy (Sungu-Eryilmaz 2018, p. 132).

Secondly, the planner can be defined as, a ‘public and certified professional practicing in various sectors of urban and regional planning’. Defined this way, planners make plans (Hoch 1994, p. 108)—they produce reports, pictures and visions of future landscape, which shape public attention (Beauregard 2015, p. 203). Planners also deliberate, analyze, reflect, and anticipate the meanings and impacts of their plans (Protzen and Harris 2010, p. 153). Subsequently, planners create purposive choices of alternative futures (Beauregard 2015, p, 26).

Finally, there are many definitions of ethics. But framed as ‘the ethics of wicked problem’, and following a classical definition, ethics can be defined as the pursuit of the good life amid wicked problems, or despite wicked problems: “a human future worth seeking, choosing, building, and enjoying” (Vallor 2017, p. 12). Presupposed in the pursuit of this worthy future is ascertaining what counts as improvement relative to remedying the past or present state of wicked problem, and deciding how to measure improvement (Churchman 1968, pp. 2–3). Improvement is commonly measured by comparing present and prior states in terms of the good and bad, right and wrong, or better and worse, in the consequences and nature of the individual, professional and organizational action (Churchman 1968, p. 5). In planning, ethics is primarily concerned with the question of how to evaluate improvements made in one arena in relation to their impacts on another arena—especially if these impacts are undesired and undesirable (p. 12), or if they concern the interests of future generations absent and voiceless in the present (see Churchman 1995, p. 270). Defined this way, ethics in planning practice must comprise of a professional code of conduct and aspirational principles that provide contextual guidance on what should not be done and the values that should be prioritized (e.g., AICP 2021). Nevertheless, neither code nor principles could be enacted without the corresponding personal traits or virtues that motivate their implementation in practice, or conversely in some cases, reject the political pressure to ignore the code (see Lauria and Long 2019, p. 403).

4.1 “There is no definitive formulation of a wicked problem”: formulating a wicked problem is an ethical problem

‘Definitive’, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, suggests finality, authoritativeness, the specific and the precise. Accordingly, wicked problems cannot be formulated with any finality, authoritativeness, specificity or precision. Rittel and Webber (1973, p. 165) further defined a problem as a difference between the present state and an ideal state, which means that the way a problem is formulated will be constrained by how this ideal state could be attained. Consider the following example: for a time, the city of San Francisco was plagued by the problem of street feces (Ting 2021). In this context, the ideal state was a public realm without street feces. Therefore, the problem formulation largely rested on ways to reduce open defecation or to eliminate street feces. Subsequently, planners attempted the following: developing a specially designed mobile ‘Pit Stop’ portable toilet that travels around the city, to more frequent street cleaning, and commissioning an official ‘Poop Patrol’ task force dedicated to managing this problem. This case demonstrates that the wicked problem of street feces could be formulated in a number of ways—from the lack of public toilets to inadequate street cleaning or insufficient staff overseeing a public problem. Here, every problem formulation, following Rittel and Webber’s (1973) suggestion, has already either encapsulated the solution strategy or anticipated the contours of its solution. If the formulated problem is a lack of public toilets, then the solution is to provide them.

Nevertheless, Rittel and Webber (1973) did not say how the choice for any one problem formulation can impact the ethics of a wicked problem. Findings from the cognitive sciences suggest that how a problem is formulated, or framed, can cause significant shifts of preferences (Tversky and Kahneman 1981, p. 457). Kahneman (2011) subsequently refers to this as the significance of the “framing effects”. In turn, moral responses may be strongly influenced by the manner in which problems are framed (Doris and Stitch 2007, pp. 139–140). Take the example of the classic Trolly Problem experiment described by Greene (2013, pp. 114–116). Across experimental studies, many more subjects preferred to save five people by hitting a switch that will turn a trolley down another track, which will kill one person, but desisted from pushing a heavy person off a footbridge in order to stop the trolley from killing five people, despite the expected outcome of one fatality in both scenarios is completely identical. In other words, how a problem is framed can drastically shape their views of what is considered ethical and what is not, which in this case, resembles murder. Furthermore, Schön and Rein (1994, p. 33) suggest that the choice of frames also constrains the nature of subsequent planning. In other words, how a problem is framed is consequential for future development, which impinges ethical possibilities. Retelling their example, when the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) framed the problem of low-and middle-income housing as the need to preserve the city’s healthy building stock, priority was then given to the rehabilitation of existing stock and a clearer separation of ‘decayed’ from ‘healthy’ stock was made. In turn, this policy benefited renters and owners in buildings deemed ‘healthy’, while others who live in ‘decayed’ buildings suffered imminent eviction and considerable losses.

To paraphrase Rittel and Webber (1973, p. 161), the formulation of a wicked problem is also an ethical problem. Which formulation to adopt, and which frame to discard, are ethical questions with different morally significant consequences. Every formulation also presumes the ethical choice of what to prioritize and what to ignore. Framing the problem of street feces as a lack of public toilets means prioritizing the provision of an amenity while deprioritizing other structural issues such as a large population of unhoused in San Francisco, or the lack of affordable housing in the city, among others, that reinforce open defecation. By framing this problem as a lack of public toilets, other frames that could mobilize attention and resources on a growing population of the unhoused, radical inequality, a lack of affordable housing in the city, or even the opioid crisis, among others, have been occluded. Sidestepping structural issues risk prolonging and deepening their trauma on people (Corburn 2021, p. 9; see also Beauregard 2018, p. 161).

Conversely, framing the problem in terms of these structural issues can begin to address their trauma on people, which is tantamount to taking concrete steps toward “urban healing” (Corburn 2021, p. 12). However, this requires far more resources and a longer engagement; these structural issues are also relatively more enduring and intractable, and therefore more likely to defy resolution (Head 2019, p. 182). Consequently, the street feces problem is unlikely to see improvement in the near term, which not only can corrode public trust but possibly, also reinforce the open defecation problem when despairing residents depart and businesses shutter rendering even larger tracts of the city derelict. In finally deciding to frame the wicked problem of street feces as a compound problem of inadequate public toilets, ineffective or inadequate street cleaning, and inadequate administrative oversight, planners prioritized the strategy of gaining “small wins” (Termeer and Dewulf 2019, p. 303)—which are small-scale, concrete, positive changes of moderate importance against a wicked problem. After the implementation of the ‘Pit Stop’ portable toilet, more frequent street cleaning and a dedicated ‘Poop Patrol’ task force, the street feces problem is showing early signs of improvement (Ting 2021). Nevertheless in prioritizing these ‘small wins’, planners risk normalizing the aforementioned structural issues. Structural issues constitute the source of recurring and seemingly unsolvable planning problems (Beauregard 2015, p. 54); they need to change—improve—if planners are to have any chance of success (p. 190). But by treating them as conditions to be accepted or as issues beyond tractable intervention is an ethical choice that may risk dimming the prospect of equitable planning in future.

4.2 “Wicked problems have no stopping rule”: yet there are rules against causing evils and harm

Unlike well-defined chess or mathematical problems, where a respective checkmate or ‘Q.E.D’ terminates problem-solving, wicked problems do not have an equivalent stopping rule. When a planner stops work, it is usually because of circumstances external to the problem space: this planner runs out of “time, or money, or patience” (Rittel and Webber 1973, p. 162). But given more time and resources, the planner or designer can always seek further improvements on any given design solution (Farrell and Hooker 2013, p. 690). For example, given more resources and goodwill, there is no limit to how far planners can pursue the urban vision of 15-min cities (Yeung 2021), which reduces commuting by intensifying activity and amenities at the neighborhood scale. Might planners then amplify this vision by adding new co-working spaces for people? Or perhaps, by proposing a new urban commons that can unify commerce and social activities (e.g., Petrescu et al. 2016)?

A parallel in ethics can be drawn—there is no limit to the good that one can do, but there are clearly unacceptable responses or actions (Whitbeck 1996, p. 11). Contrary to the common perception that there are neither right nor wrong answers in ethics, there are, however, unacceptable or wrong answers—especially in planning. Intentionally diverting floodwater to a location of lesser economic worth in order to protect another location with greater economic worth is deliberate harm, which is an unpopular practice to be avoided if possible but swiftly turns into an outright wrong when people neither consent to, nor were prior informed of the intentional flooding of their homes (Chan and Liao 2022). Moral rules, which are often cast as prohibitions, require avoiding causing evils or harms (Gert 1998, p. 116); yet they do not obligate the pursuit of all possible good. Attempting to pursue all possible good would be supererogatory, or exceeding the moral duty expected from any ordinary person. Returning to the 15-min cities example again, while there is no stopping rule to the good that planners can do, there are however clear limits to what they should not do. For instance, planners should not externalize thoroughfare traffic to improve conviviality within their 15-min cities while making congestion worse for others outside them. Conceived from the sightlines of ethics, this property may then be qualified as, ‘wicked problems have no stopping rule insofar as improvements are concerned, but there are clear rules and limits against causing evils and harm’.

4.3 “Solutions to wicked problems are not true-or-false, but good-or-bad”: the ethics of the good enough

Different practitioners maintain different interests, preferences, and benchmarks when judging solutions for wicked problems. No one, according to Rittel and Webber (1973, p. 163), has “the power…to determine correctness”. Because there are no agreed evaluation criteria (Farrell and Hooker 2013, p. 692), different practitioners in the company of others can only judge any particular solution by comparing solutions—‘this one is better or worse than that solution’—or relying on the more general appraisal language of ‘good’, ‘bad’, or ‘good-enough’.

However, whether a solution is ‘true-of-false’ is not entirely independent of its normative ‘good-or-bad’ as Rittel and Webber (1973) assumed. While ‘truth’ is a property of propositions—for instance, where ‘2 + 2 = 4’ is true, or where ‘today is Monday’ is true when in fact today is Monday—‘being truthful’ in planning is however a moral quality. This quality distinguishes more accountable solutions from less accountable ones. For example, the planned development of Sidewalk Toronto by Google affiliate Sidewalk Labs, which was slated as a prototype smart city, was rescinded in part because citizens could not ascertain truthful answers to questions about data collection, data control and privacy issues, among others, which amounted to a lack of public accountability (Goodman and Powles 2019, p. 458). Or formulating this differently in a milieu of fake news and misinformation, to be able to discern ‘truth-or-false’ has become a precondition for discerning the good from the bad (Gardner 2011). If planning is an activity that makes propositions true by turning them into empirical reality, then the truthful quality of these propositions constitutes a key precondition of accountable planning. When ‘truthfulness’ is absent, plans are neither accountable nor legitimate. And making plans on the basis of known but concealed falsehoods is no different from courting failure.

On the other hand, seeking the ‘good-enough’ is not necessarily the involuntary outcome of bounded rationality; it can also be a form of practical ethics. In the tradition of rational-comprehensive planning, the ‘good-enough’ has been commonly relegated to the result of ‘satisficing’ under bounded rationality (Simon 1983, p. 85). Yet in a world where wasteful competition frequently drives the search for the ‘perfect’, ‘best’ or ‘most marketable’ solution at the expense of alienating people and damaging the environment, seeking just the ‘good-enough’ reflects an ethic of restraint and change (Alpert 2022). The ‘good-enough’ is never excessive and ‘just right’, and recalls Protzen’s (1982, p. 86) notion of the idoneous: that which is “adequate” and proper to the ends and intentions of any design solution. Especially because problem-solving often lead to problem succession—or in Wildavsky’s (2017, p. 2) words, “cut one off and another sprouts”: a state of permanent problems where a new problem always succeeds an older one—seeking the ‘good-enough’ is to reach a state where present problems are still in some ways, ‘better’ than those before (p. 5). Reorienting to the ethical prospect of the ‘good-enough’ then opens an entirely new horizon of appraising solutions of wicked problems in a world increasingly intolerant of excessiveness and waste.

4.4 “There is no immediate and no ultimate test of a solution to a wicked problem”: different ethical frameworks offer different tests and courses of action

Rittel and Webber’s (1973) fourth property here hints at a crisis of faith: if there is neither immediate nor ultimate test of a solution to a wicked problem, then how could anyone know that it has been effectively resolved? Following Merton’s (1936) arguments, complex social interactions almost guarantee that there will be spill-over effects in completely unexpected areas when implementing a planning solution. Unless planners are able to trace all the repercussions of all the consequences—which Rittel and Webber (1973, p. 163) argued to be impossible—they can never be certain that their power to always want good will not end up also creating evil. Or as Merton (1936, p. 903) paraphrasing Goethe wrote: The power that always wants good also always creates evil (“Die Kraft, die stets das Gute will, und stets das Böse schafft”).

On this matter, ethics offers a battery of relevant tests. Consequentialism, which defines moral quality of action in terms of attaining certain good or avoiding some bad, is not the only measure of a solution’s efficacy; there are other ethical frameworks that can offer legitimate measure of the good and the right. For instance, contractualism—where free and equal rational persons come to agree on the moral principles that shape the solution (Darwall 2003, p. 4)—can offer some confidence that the outcome will be ethical in spite of the uncertainty of consequences. In tandem, applying contractualism to planning means ensuring the integrity of deliberative processes that shape consensus. On the other hand, virtue ethics maintains that the planner’s character (Driver 2007, p. 137)—his or her human excellence observed from an individual’s prowess, reputation, and importantly, assessment by adversaries—offers some assurance that a planner, who is recognized to be virtuous, will present solutions that are not completely misguided. Foregrounding virtue ethics may mean not only scrutinizing the quality of planning leadership, but also ensures that the planning solution can, as much as it is feasible, elevate the capabilities of people and non-human living species (see Nussbaum 2011, pp. 18–19). Furthermore, an ethic of care (Gilligan 1983, p. 45) focuses on developing new connections and relationships, and gauge the moral quality of plans by how they weave new webs of interdependencies between individuals and social groups that have little to do with each other in the city. While different ethical frameworks neither cohere easily nor are they free from their respective blindspots, they nevertheless offer new courses of action beyond Rittel and Webber’s (1973) paralyzing crisis of faith. Through them, planners can take concrete steps to evaluate the moral quality and efficacy of their planning solutions.

4.5 “Every solution to a wicked problem is a “one-shot operation”…”: if mistakes are not preventable then guiding ethical principles that limit them become important

Every implemented planning solution is consequential: it cost money and impacts lives, and is “effectively irreversible” (Rittel and Webber 1973, p. 163). The desire to reverse what has been implemented, however, suggests the prevalence of planning mistakes. Consider the ongoing project of highways removal in many cities in the United States (Popovich et al. 2021). Once touted to improve efficiency of commuting from home to work in downtown, these highways were also historically instrumental to the eviction and destruction of Black communities, which subsequently reinforced urban spatial segregation. The project of highways removal is therefore an attempt to undo a regrettable and unjust planning mistake. Yet undoing the mistakes of past planning efforts is no different than starting a wholly new planning project, subjected to the same risk of an irreversible ‘one-shot operation’ as before. What can guarantee that the present planning intervention will not in time also be seen as planning mistakes? Especially when removing highways implies adding new substitutes in their place—for instance, by creating new amenities that can reconnect neighborhoods that have evolved independently for more than six decades, among others—the risk of planning mistakes is ever present.

Rittel and Webber (1973, p. 163) were clear at least on one aspect of ethics: Because every planning attempt counts significantly, planners should not conduct trial-and-error experiments with people’s lives, even if this process is expected to contribute to planning knowledge. To paraphrase Beck (2009, p. 36), planners should not treat the world as their laboratory. However, the guiding principle of “first laboratory, then application” (Beck 2009, p. 36), is unlikely to apply to planning because every ‘trial’ in planning always entails some changes in the world, and accompanying this, the probability of committing mistakes. Consider this emerging example: cities today compete to become testbeds for the research and product development of urban robotics. To be successful, these robots must count on learning from complex urban environment instead of the simpler environment of the laboratory (Woo et al. 2020, p. 343). This means implementing robots in the actual environment of the city even as safety regulations concerning them remain unready.

If it is impossible to prevent all mistakes in planning, then one recourse is to develop guiding principles that can limit errors. Under conditions of uncertainty and ignorance where probabilities of errors are unknown, is the Minimax principle—“choose any policy the worst outcome of which is at least as good as the worst outcome of any other policy” (Lackey 1982, p. 197)—which aims to minimize the largest possible error, relevant? Or might this principle, “No generation shall pass on to the next generation more difficult to reverse conditions than it had inherited itself” (Protzen and Harris 2010, p. 224), constitute a key tenet? And if there is no way but to accept the odds of error, then should the risk ethics principle, ‘ensure that the risks of new planning interventions are imposed, as far as it is possible, only on the beneficiaries of these interventions’ a fairer way of making plans (Hansson 2013)? These general principles merely represent possible places to start, and the task of developing more specific principles tailored to planning remains outstanding.

4.6 “Wicked problems do not have an enumerable (or an exhaustively describable) set of potential solutions…”: the imperative of inventing new ethical choices

Rittel and Webber (1973, p. 164) argued that there are neither criteria that can prove that all solutions to a wicked problem have been identified and considered, nor any logic that constrains how any chosen solution should unfold. In planning, “anything goes”, and it is a matter of the planner’s “realistic judgment” on what should be done. This is the state of “epistemic freedom” (Protzen and Harris 2010, p. 192), where there are neither logical nor epistemological constraints and rules that would prescribe the next meaningful step to take. In this state, Rittel argued that planners are inclined to adopt the “Sachzwang”, which is an arbitrary logic that can limit epistemic freedom by deriving “ought from fact” (Protzen and Harris 2010, p. 192). Consider this frequently encountered claim (e.g., Eliot 2019): ‘Because self-driving cars can reduce traffic accidents, the city should support its development and implementation’. Yet it is unclear if the self-driving car is both necessary and sufficient for reducing traffic accidents. Might not reducing the number of all private cars on the road, in tandem with developing new modes of accessible public transportation as their substitute, also reduce traffic accidents? ‘Sachzwang’ is therefore a common pitfall that follows from the wicked problem, which is always accompanied by a false ethical choice. Following from the case above, the ethical choice of whether to adopt or not adopt self-driving cars because of their anticipated safety promise is false; there are many other factors that contribute to road safety. Instead, the key ethical question is how to improve road safety based on a more complete appraisal of all relevant factors.

‘Sachzwang’ aside, actual planning practice is far starker. Usually, planners do not enjoy the freedom of even setting the agenda. The challenge of public planning is almost always about reconciling competing preferences already framed by a far narrower set of choices reflecting the interests of powerful stakeholders while still finding the necessary mettle to advance the public interest. This reconciliation often requires a tour de force—an inventive and new “integrative compromise”—that can satisfy competing interests while advancing the public interest or the common good (Chan and Protzen 2018, pp. 173–177). In this way, the ethics of wicked problems is never merely about how to properly judge, and then choose, between many choices under conditions of epistemic freedom. Instead, this ethics also requires the invention of a new ethical choice that can satisfy competing and perhaps even antagonistic interests while still being able to advance the public interest. The enduring reminder by Sartre (2007, p. 33) may be relevant here: no existing code of ethics can tell planners exactly what he or she ought to do—the planner must invent.

4.7 “Every wicked problem is essentially unique”: but all wicked problems can share a common process of ethical reasoning

Rittel and Webber (1973, p. 164) made two claims here. First, every wicked problem is essentially unique, where even if two appear alike, new distinguishing features can nevertheless be discovered to differentiate them. Second, it is impossible to construct a taxonomy of wicked problems. Problem-solvers can no more develop general principles applicable to general classes of wicked problems than uncovering rules to organize their taxonomy. Contrary to the second claim, Alford and Head (2017, p. 402) have developed a typology of nine problem types, ranging from tame problems to very wicked problems with a number of others in-between. This typology is mapped by varying degree of complexity on one axis, and on the other axis, the varying degree of difficulty with stakeholders or institutions. Despite this expanded typology of different problems, their typology still converges with Rittel and Webber (1973) at the extreme end characterized by high complexity and high conflict between stakeholders, which Alford and Head (2017, p. 402) refer to as “very wicked problem”.

Here, one may question how the characteristic of uniqueness impinges ethics. Moral reasoning tends to be framed in the following ways (see Jonsen and Toulmin 1988, p. 2). In one approach, moral reasoning proceeds by applying invariable and universal principles to the practical problem and then observing degrees of conformance or deviation relative to the standards implied by these principles. In the other approach, moral reasoning proceeds from the specific details of a particular situation. A possible third approach, which is a form of moral intuitionism, consists of what Rawls (1999, p. 18) refers as “reflective equilibrium”, where an individual goes back-and-forth between universal principles and the contingent or the particular to find a calibrated point between them. The moral judgment that then emerges from reflective equilibrium is anticipated to balance the often-incompatible demands of the universal and the particular. Whichever the approach taken, Jonsen and Toulmin (1988, p. 330) are correct on the following: to frame practical issues in universal terms and principles is likely to make moral disputes irresoluble; but drawing on the contingent or the particular—the unique—as resources and in relation to existing norms, the problem-solver may be able to come to a sound moral judgment. In other words, uniqueness is no enemy of ethics; rather, acknowledging the unique adds resolution and details that can inform ethical decision-making.

What then may constitute practical steps of moral reasoning in wicked problems that acknowledges uniqueness? Jonsen and Toulmin (1988) suggest three relevant steps. First, upon recognizing the impending moral issues in a wicked problem, problem-solvers should consider, or even designate, the moral “paradigm” that best fit these issues. This is not an easy step because it calls for the imposition of a fundamental frame. Nevertheless, consider the wicked problem of street feces in San Francisco again. Is the moral paradigm here about ‘providing relief’—that is, addressing residents’ immediate concerns of hygiene or the lack of essential toilet facilities in the city? Or is this about ‘achieving economic, social and racial equity’ (AICP 2021), that is, acknowledging that the problem of street feces is a symptom of structural injustices that should be identified and then rectified through planning? In turn, the choice of this frame will guide how subsequent steps unfold. Second, problem-solvers then check for any moral ambiguities that accompany the selected paradigm (Jonsen and Toulmin 1988, p. 311). Referring to the abovementioned case again, a problem-solver may ask: under what conditions might the mobile toilet be considered an inappropriate or even wrong solution to the problem of street feces? For instance, from 2017 to 2019, there was a 17% increase in the homeless population in San Francisco (Jung and Moench 2022). Had this rate of growth continued unchecked while the number of shelter beds stayed relatively constant, the mobile toilet would have been overwhelmed, making any improvement on the street feces situation unlikely on one hand, and on the other hand, unintentionally rendering San Francisco even more attractive to the unhoused outside the city, which compounds the problem. Third, problem-solvers should further verify by applying general moral rules and principles to the proposed solution in this problem. In this step, the problem-solver may ask: are there any conflicts in relation to existing norms (Jonsen and Toulmin 1988, p. 312)? For instance, did the mobile toilet solution satisfy the sanitation needs of one social group at the expense of violating the rights of residents and business-owners near to where it has been parked? Formulated differently, to what extent has dignity of the unhoused been achieved at the expense of eroding the well-being or interest of a certain minority? Jonsen and Toulmin’s (1988) offer a calibrated balancing of general and unique factors in moral reasoning, which is compatible to the nature of wicked problems.

4.8 “Every wicked problem can be considered to be a symptom of another problem”: yet addressing symptoms is ethically significant in planning

Taming a wicked problem often begins with a search for ways to explain how it came to be (Rittel and Webber 1973, p. 165). A planner starts from specific issues and then traces them along a hypothetical causal web to their likely sources. Along the way, the planner will discover different levels of hypothetical causes that begin to explain why this wicked problem exists. But at which level should the planner attend to? Earlier discussed, the wicked problem of street feces in San Francisco can be explained at different levels. One could, for instance, hypothesize that the lack of public toilets in tandem to a large unhoused population in the city had led to the problem of street feces. Even so, this planner could always go to a “higher level” (Rittel and Webber 1973, p. 165), where, in no particular order, explanations of worsening inequalities, lack of affordable housing, unemployment, or the opioid crisis, await. Conversely, taming this wicked problem at the level of a mobile toilet may appear as only tackling the symptom of another higher level problem, for instance, the opioid crisis.

Rittel and Webber (1973, p. 165) suggest that a planner “should not try to cure symptoms: and one should try to settle the problem on as high a level as possible”. Success at taming a wicked problem at too low a level may shift attention elsewhere, making it more challenging later to deal with its higher level causes still festering in the background. Nevertheless, Rittel and Webber fail to mention that public planners always practice in distinct bureaucracies with bounded scopes and specialized jurisdictions. Without collaborating with other bureaucrats, a planner is unlikely to tame a wicked problem beyond his or her own established bureaucratic boundaries. Going beyond these boundaries by recommending interventions targeting a higher level problem is likely to conflict with the directives set by the planner’s supervisors (see Weitz 2015, pp. 10–11). A moral conflict between two duties then ensues: this planner has a public duty to address the wicked problem on as high a level as possible, which likely means going beyond tackling mere symptoms. But this planner is also obligated to work within the bounded scope of his or her bureaucracy. To mitigate this conflict in the street feces case, this planner might, for instance, work within his or her bureaucratic boundaries as far as resources permit by planning for more mobile clinics or outreach amenities to address the opioid crisis on top of the mobile toilet.

However, tackling symptoms is not always unjustified. To intentionally circumvent symptoms in order to pursue root causes of wicked problem can be irresponsible. Especially when symptoms are urgent public issues—for instance, the street feces case—or when these symptoms contain risk factors that can change a wicked problem for the worse, planners should not dismiss symptoms for the sake of tackling deeper causes. Returning to the street feces case again, this problem emerged before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet on hindsight, by merely making improvements on this problem with the mobile toilet has, in the context of a protracted pandemic, diminished a potential source of viral infection in the city.

4.9 “The existence of a discrepancy representing a wicked problem can be explained in numerous ways…”: the ethics of biases in planning

This property suggests how planners choose to explain a wicked problem and how they plan to shape their interventions is contingent and arbitrary. Planners will “choose those explanations which are most plausible to them”, or in other cases, pick explanations that either conform to certain existing beliefs, or fit their capabilities best (Rittel and Webber 1973, p. 166). If Rittel and Webber are correct, then even data, evidence and arguments are merely post hoc buttresses for the planners’ already preferred explanation. This contrasts with the perception of scientific planning where explanations, as hypotheses, are deduced from patterns gleaned from the data. In other words, this property of the wicked problem renders bias in planning salient.

Why are biases morally problematic in planning? Intuitive judgment is unavoidable when taming wicked problems (Rittel and Webber 1973, p. 164). Yet if this judgment must nevertheless remain accountable to other stakeholders essential to a successful implementation of the planning solution (Innes 2004, p. 10), then enacting biases, either by conforming to preconceived beliefs, or prejudicing solutions to only what planners want to do, has all the bearings of nullifying the democratic and collaborative basis of planning. Furthermore, biases are also likely to distort what Rittel referred as “objectification” (Protzen and Harris 2010, p. 161). For Rittel, objectification means effective communication to other stakeholders and allowing them to understand the planner’s judgment. Rendering the basis of judgment as explicit as possible improves the chance of successful communication. But because individuals are usually not conscious of their biases (Kahneman 2011), these biases can obstruct attempts to objectify planners’ judgments. Biases can also steer deliberations in unproductive directions even when planners become conscious of them during the deliberative process. Observing that other stakeholders do not disapprove of them, planners may even choose to justify or even embellish their warrant. Consequently, this begins to resemble Churchman’s (1967) argument of deception when taming wicked problems.

4.10 “The planner has no right to be wrong”: Protecting the right to err yet buffer the planner from committing a moral wrong

Arguably, the tenth property is nearly phrased as a moral imperative. Even so, Rittel and Webber (1973) were ambiguous about exactly what ‘wrong’ refers to in their commentary. Were they referring to, ‘the planner has no right to be wrong in his or her hypothesis’, for instance, when a planner wrongly hypothesizes that a planning community can be built solely from greater participation when inclusion also plays a pivotal role (Quick and Feldman 2011, p. 286)? In other words, is ‘wrong’ here referring to a hypothesis that can be falsified by empirical evidence? Or were Rittel and Webber referring to ‘the planner has no right to be morally wrong’, for instance, when a planner deceives stakeholders into believing that something is safe when in fact it is highly dangerous (Churchman 1967, p. B-142)?

The ambiguity is significant because it is possible for a planner to be wrong in his or her planning hypotheses but still for the project, built on these false hypotheses, to yield beneficial outcomes. In other words, wrong hypotheses do not necessarily lead to bad outcomes, but instead, can lead to beneficial ones. Gross (2010, p. 104) describes this as an actual but albeit rare planning “surprise”. In his case study of Montrose Point on Chicago’s north shore, planners hypothesized that a non-native hedge—which attracts native birds that made this place a delight for bird-watchers—was expected to die after an aphid infestation. But unexpectedly, the hedge became stronger and healthier and turned out to be even more attractive for native birds. Subsequently, this led to their reappraisal and then intervention to protect this hedge—to the unequivocal benefit of nature and people. This case reveals the rare but not impossible good that can come about from an initial planning error.

Because to err is human (Protzen and Harris 2010, p. 223), planners have a right to err. People learn from their mistakes and planners are no exception to this reality. Therefore, the ethical question is: how to concede to a planner’s right to err and yet protects this planner from doing a moral wrong? In other words, what are the institutional conditions that must exist such that planners might propose wrong hypotheses, but still do not commit a moral wrong? One key institutional condition is transparency, which can build trust among key stakeholders especially in uncertainty (Gross 2010, pp. 143–144). A planner can increase transparency by subjecting plans to public scrutiny, where their hypotheses can be debated or even refuted before these plans are implemented. Not only can this reduce the odds of getting hypotheses wrong, but this process also diminishes the probability of moral wrongdoing when key stakeholders are keeping watch.

5 Conclusion

Ethics, according to Aristotle, is the study of how to live well (Ryan 2012, p. 78), which in turn is instrumental to the ‘good life’ (p. 79). While definitions of the ‘good life’ vary across individuals, communities and polities, all of them must presume the key preconditions of integral human institutions and natural biosphere, replete with clean air, adequate water and food, and enabled by cooperative governance at different scales making flourishing possible for the present and future generations. Yet these are the preconditions at risk today, threatened by a host of wicked problems on many fronts all at once. Recent findings suggest that human pathogenic diseases can be exacerbated by climate change (Mora et al. 2022). At the point of writing, the COVID-19 pandemic remains an evolving epidemiological emergency that has been further compounded by geopolitical conflicts, energy and economic crises, and growing domestic schisms in many places. In its wake, this pandemic has also produced a growing volume of irreducible medical waste certain to aggravate the fragile state of environmental integrity. Amid these challenges, Kemp et al. (2022) map the cascading catastrophic risks that can be triggered by unbridled global warming: major international conflicts, the spread of new infectious diseases, economic vulnerabilities, and food and water insecurity, which can result in an existential system-wide failure. How can ethics guide practical action toward the ‘good life’, despite wicked problems, for the present and future generations in these disquieting times?

At the very least, planners who are attuned to the ‘malignant’ and ‘tricky’ nature of wicked problems can become vigilant to their ethically deplorable consequences. As discussed, planners make ethical choices when they formulate a wicked problem [see Sect. 4.1]. Even by doing nothing—living with the wicked problem—is an ethical choice. Acknowledging that different formulations will lead to different plans, with uneven consequences to different groups, is the paramount first step. Planners then test the anticipated solution implied by the selected formulation. Usually, planners rely on the framework of consequentialism—whether in the form of utilitarianism of maximizing the good for the greatest number (Fainstein 2010, p. 1), or aiming for a more just and equitable outcome (p. 10). Yet consequentialism is not the only ethical litmus test [see Sect. 4.4]. Contractualism, virtue ethics, and the ethic of care—surely among many others—offer additional frameworks that can test and verify the moral quality of planners’ formulation of, and solution to, a wicked problem. And when this is coupled with systematic moral reasoning [see Sect. 4.7], planners will not only gain deeper insights into the ethical dimension of any wicked problem, but also should be able to sidestep blatant moral pitfalls of Sachzwang [see Sect. 4.6] and other biases [see Sect. 4.9].

Importantly, different ethical frameworks have different powers (Gilligan 1983, p. 39). For example, the power of feminist ethics, in the form of an ethic of care, lies in seeing a world of interdependent relationships while the power of deontological ethics, in the form of Kant’s Categorical Imperative, rests in the respect and dignity given to the individual to be his or her own moral sovereign (MacIntyre 1998, p. 126). Furthermore, different ethical frameworks also raise different kinds of ethical questions. By viewing the formulation of a wicked problem through the lens of different frameworks and their corresponding ethical questions, planners can work out many more plausible and justifiable answers to these questions (see Damon and Colby 2015, p. 170). The purpose is not to discover a single monistic answer that is all-compatible with different ethical frameworks. Instead, different ethical frameworks offer planners different moral perspectives to a wicked problem, which can reduce blindspots while simultaneously compensating for the critical gaps and limitations of each framework. The expanded moral visual and imagination that follows from this process may then help planners to shape new principles that can limit errors [see Sect. 4.5], create new choices [see Sect. 4.6], and develop new institutions that can preclude moral wrongdoing [see Sect. 4.10].

If these are the different ways that planners can avoid the moral pitfalls and blunders of the wicked problem, then what of the aspirational moral prospects of the wicked problem? First, the wicked problem reminds planners that certain virtues, for instance, truthfulness [see Sect. 4.3], and transparency [see Sect. 4.9], are integral to responsible planning. Striving to maintain these moral qualities in the planning institution, as well as the process of plan-making, can prevent the emergence of new wicked problems and even planning failure. In tandem, the wicked problem also reaffirms the ethic of the ‘good-enough’ [see Sect. 4.3]. Especially in the context of debt-financed urban development—or plainly, planning that does not live within its means in a milieu of severe economic retardation and rapid environmental decline—further thinking on what is sufficient, instead of what is spectacular, primes responsible planning visions of the future. Second, the wicked problem demonstrates a necessity, perhaps even a moral imperative, for planners to define specific principles that can limit errors [see Sect. 4.5]. Along this line of thinking, the wicked problem also exhorts planners to invent: to create new choices and visions that may perhaps preclude the emergence of future wicked problems [see Sect.4.6]. Corburn’s (2021, pp. 31–32) ‘cities for life’ sets an example of such a vision: focus planning on lifting up existing assets within communities and cultures rather than only managing hazards, bad behaviors or risks.

While Rittel and Webber (1973) did not focus on ethics in their seminal article, the manifold events and trajectories of the last half-century, converging in what appears to be intractable challenges in many spheres of existential concern today, reveal that the ethics of the wicked problem and its impact have lost none of their significance, but have only become even more vital.