Truth, Lies or Allies? The Agency of Estimates

Estimates–whether a project budget or a patronage forecast–are problematic planning artefacts. Current scholarship seems divided between those that hold estimates as objective statements and those who see them as rationalities of the powerful. Both constructs, if allowed, constrain the planners’ agency in daily practice. These worldviews can be reconciled if estimates are acknowledged as social constructs. I explore this alternative view by re-examining Wachs’ classic case of When planners lie with numbers and an example from my own experience. The analysis uses ANT to make explicit the tacit knowledge gained through working with estimates in practice.