Introduction
What are wicked problems? This article looks at what wicked problems are, different examples and how we can communicate about them.
This article is from Chapter 6, Wicked Problems, from the book, Public Interest Communication, by Jane Johnston and Robyn Gulliver. It was published by the University of Queensland in 2022.
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Wicked Problems are…
The concept of ‘wicked problems’ was first proposed by planning engineers Horst Rittell and Melville Webber in 1973 to contrast the difference between ‘tame’ problems – which could be resolved using standard scientific techniques – and complex, policy-based problems – which were neither simply nor completely resolvable. They said because wicked problems exist within pluralistic societies there was no way of knowing what was an “undisputable public good” and there was no clear picture of what “equity” meant when making decisions (1973, p. 155).
Wicked problems may have emerged from urban policy planning, but they are now used to describe social, political, environmental and economic problems more broadly.