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Planning

Planning is the rational pursuit of goals by actions. Planning normally involves either explicitly or implicitly the following stages: identification of goals, objectives, and targets; development and evaluation of alternative strategies to achieve goals; identification of the preferred strategy; implementation; monitoring; and adjustment of plans based on monitoring results.

Within this broad definition there are many variations of planning. Before reviewing variations, it should be cautioned that the large number of planning types and inconsistencies in terminology preclude developing a comprehensive typology. However, it is useful to organize discussion of planning typology around four themes: the scope of decision-making strategies, political responsibility for planning processes, mechanisms for planning implementation, and the subject matter of planning.

Decision-Making Strategies

Commonly identified decision-making strategies in planning include rational, comprehensive, systems, incremental, and strategic. The rational comprehensive model of planning proposes consideration of all goals and all ends for achieving goals. Ends are assessed for all possible consequences and the ends are chosen that maximize social welfare. The founding assumption of comprehensive planning is the ability of experts to use rational scientific analysis to identify and implement appropriate actions to achieve the public interest. Comprehensive planning is based in part on systems theory, which views society as being comprised of interdependent components whose relationship and behavior can be understood and modeled. The modeling of the system can identify key levers of control that can be used to affect system behavior and achieve desired outcomes. An example is monetary and fiscal policy, which can be used to affect economic performance.

Critics of comprehensive planning suggest it is naïve and counterproductive to attempt comprehensiveness. Goals are too diverse and conflicting, and systems are too complex to understand or manage. A more realistic model, according to some, is incremental planning. Incremental planning focuses on short-term problem solving based on considering only limited ends and limited means. Choices are made by agreement among competing political interests as opposed to rational methods of evaluation.

Most empirical analysis of planning concludes that incremental planning is one of the most commonly used models. However, criticisms of incremental planning are that it ignores interdependencies and responds to problems instead of preventing problems. Consequently, incremental planning is not very effective. A third planning strategy that attempts to combine some of the benefits of the comprehensive model while recognizing the constraints is strategic planning. Strategic planning tries to provide a comprehensive framework focusing on the large, key issues. A vision is created of the desirable future, the environment is scanned to identify major trends, and a strategy is devised for achieving the desired outcome. The strategic plan provides the framework that identifies key priorities and issues that require more intensive comprehensive planning to address.

Political Responsibility for Planning

A second feature distinguishing types of planning is political responsibility for decision making. Commonly identified models of political responsibility for planning include technocratic, advocacy, mediation, collaborative, and postmodern structuralist.

Technocratic planning delegates planning control to experts that use scientific analysis to prepare plans. In its most extreme form, technocratic planning gives experts control over the setting of goals and the preparation of means to achieve goals. For example, providing basic public services, such a clean drinking water, setting pollution emission standards, and setting allowable harvest levels for natural resources, are often viewed as decisions that should be made by independent experts above politics. In the 1960s, however, this more extreme model of technocratic planning came under increasing criticism for its failure to acknowledge that planning attempts to achieve goals that are based on the values of citizens, not the values of experts. Decisions by experts, such as building freeways through poor neighborhoods, building urban renewal projects that displace the poor, and setting resource harvesting rates for forests that failed to protect other environmental values, illustrated the political nature of planning. It was increasingly acknowledged that planning goals should be articulated through a democratic process, not expert judgment. Under this less-extreme form of technocratic planning, experts are relegated to evaluating appropriate means to achieve goals that are provided by democratic processes. Democratic processes for determining goals include direction from politicians as well as direct consultation with affected citizens.

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