To explore how the lens of practical wisdom could apply to a real-world case, I reviewed the planning case of Bukit Brown in Singapore, and the role that practical wisdom through public engagement played in how the case unfolded, as work for a public policy ethics class.

In this paper, I developed an idea of how practical wisdom and the “primacy of the particular” that informs this wisdom ties in with the concept of communicative planning that has been gaining traction in planning in recent decades.

I suggest that the top-down, techne-emphasising planning context in Singapore has meant that planners, as a whole, have not developed the planning wisdom that can only come with continued meaningful public engagement. This in turn led to the mutual suspicion between the public and the government that characterised the Bukit Brown case.