In his 1965 article Advocacy and Pluralism in Planning, the planner and lawyer Paul Davidoff argued that planning is never value-neutral and that planners should openly represent the interests of particular groups, especially the poor and excluded. He proposed that, as in a courtroom, competing plans should be advanced by advocates for different communities rather than a single official plan imposed as objective. This would expose the political choices hidden in technical planning and give disadvantaged residents a voice. The argument emerged amid the destruction wrought by urban renewal and the civil-rights era.
It reframed the planner as an advocate rather than a neutral expert, founding the equity and participatory traditions in planning. Advocacy planning underpinned community organising against top-down renewal and later equity-focused practice.