Planning Theory For Practitioners

This book is recommended reading for planners preparing to take the AICP exam. In this new book, the author bridges the gap between theory and practice. The author describes an original approach-Feedback Strategy-that builds on the strengths of previous planning theories with one big difference: it not only acknowledges but welcomes politics-the bogeyman of real-world planning. Don't hold your nose or look the other way, the author advises planners, but use politics to your own advantage. The author admits that most of the time planning theory doesn't have much to do with planning practice. These ideas rooted in the planner's real world are different. This strategy employs everyday poltiical processes to advance planning, trusts planners' personal values and professional ethics, and depends on their ability to help clients articulate a vision. This volume will encourage not only veteran planners searching for a fresh approach, but also students and recent graduates dismayed by the gap between academic theory and actual practice.

Why do we plan? Who decides how and where we plan and what we should value? How do theories and ideologies filter down into real policies and plans which affect our lives? Written in a deliberately practitioner-friendly manner, this useful guide answers these questions and reveals planning theories to be simply new ideas that can help one see the world differently. Thinking about them enables us to take a step back to appreciate the wider context. The guide discusses the value of planning, how rationales for planning have changed, and whether we have too much, too little, or just the wrong kind of planning. Written in a deliberately practitioner-friendly manner, this useful guide answers these questions and reveals planning theories to be simply new ideas that can help one see the world differently. Thinking about them enables us to take a step back to appreciate the wider context. The guide discusses the value of planning, how rationales for planning have changed, and whether we have too much, too little, or just the wrong kind of planning.

What is this thing called planning? What is its domain? What do planners do? How do they talk? What are the limits and possibilities for planning imposed by power, politics, knowledge, technology, interpretation, ethics, and institutional design? In this comprehensive volume, the foremost voices in planning explore the foundational ideas and issues of the profession.Explorations in Planning Theory is an extended inquiry into the practice of the profession. As such, it is a landmark text that defines the field for today's planners and the next generation. As Seymour J. Mandelbaum notes in the introduction, ""the shared framework of these essays captures a pervasive interest in the behavior, values, character, and experience of professional planners at work.""All of the chapters in this volume are written to address arguments that are important in the community of planning theoreticians and are crafted in the language of that community. While many of the contributors included here differ in their styles, the editors note that students, experienced practitioners, and scholars of city and regional planning will find this work illuminating and helpful in their research.

Instead of seeking theory to justify practical professional judgments this book describes how professionals can and should use theory to guide these judgments. Professional spatial planning in the US, and globally, continues to suffer from a weak conceptual grasp of its own practice. Practitioners routinely recognize the value and wisdom of practical judgment finely attuned to context, nuance and complexity; but later offer banal testimony and glib stories of 'just so' best-practice discrediting the ambiguity of their own experience. The chapters in this book provide a vocabulary tailored to the conventions of practical judgment, challenging students and practitioners to treat professional expertise as work in progress rather than 'best' practice. Instead of seeking theory to justify practical professional judgments, Hoch describes how professionals can and should use theory to guide these judgments. The pragmatist plan helps cope with complexity rather than control it, making it invaluable in the anyone's pursuit of a planning career. This book will appeal to a wide cross section of students and scholars, especially those working in urban planning, public policy, and government. t invaluable in the anyone's pursuit of a planning career. This book will appeal to a wide cross section of students and scholars, especially those working in urban planning, public policy, and government.

Theory and practice in city planning have never been known for their compatibility. The planner, dealing with stresses such as the personalities at work in a board meeting and coping with the realities of fund raising, political realities, and the like, can find little guidance in the theory of the trade. The issues of poverty groups, whether rural or urban, the provision of services, and the packaging of them are seemingly insuperable. The sheer frustration in the inability to deliver, which so many planners feel, can result in considerable impatience and a questioning of the relevance of theory.The editors argue that this state of affairs, though understandable, is unacceptable. While short-range meliorismwithout sense of perspective may be good for the practitioner's individual psyche, the cost may be borne by the long-run best interests of the groups to be served. The risks of a lack of perspective and the experiences generated by this phenomenon are too serious in their implications to permit the process to continue.In this new age of anxiety it is essential for both planners and theorists to understand their roles as well as provide guidance in shaping them. Burchell and Sternlieb have thus gathered here a variety of individuals, all of whom in their separate and distinct fashions are seasoned, both in practice and in theory. The book is divided into five sections: Physical Planning in Change, Social Planning in Change, Public Policy Planning in Change, Economic Planning in Change, and a final section detailing the roles of planners and who they are. These shared puzzlements and insights will prove useful to all practitioners and theorists in the planning field.

Featuring updates and revisions to reflect rapid changes in an increasingly globalized world, Readings in Planning Theory remains the definitive resource for the latest theoretical and practical debates within the field of planning theory. Represents the newest edition of the leading text in planning theory that brings together the essential classic and cutting-edge readings Features 20 completely new readings (out of 28 total) for the fourth edition Introduces and defines key debates in planning theory with editorial materials and readings selected both for their accessibility and importance Systematically captures the breadth and diversity of planning theory and puts issues into wider social and political contexts without assuming prior knowledge of the field

In this original approach to the world of planning theory, Robert A. Beauregard cuts across the many different ways to think about planning by organizing them around four core tasks: knowing, engaging, prescribing, and executing. In doing so, Beauregard explores how a basic concern with the relationship between knowledge and action has evolved into a complex discussion of democracy, inclusion, and justice.

The Routledge Handbook of Planning Theory presents key contemporary themes in planning theory through the views of some of the most innovative thinkers in planning. They introduce and explore their own specialized areas of planning theory, to conceptualize their contemporary positions and to speculate how these positions are likely to evolve and change as new challenges emerge. In a changing and often unpredictable globalized world, planning theory is core to understanding how planning and its practices both function and evolve. As illustrated in this book, planning and its many roles have changed profoundly over the recent decades; so have the theories, both critical and explanatory, about its practices, values and knowledges. In the context of these changes, and to contribute to the development of planning research, this handbook identifies and introduces the cutting edge, and the new emerging trajectories, of contemporary planning theory. The aim is to provide the reader with key insights into not just contemporary planning thought, but potential future directions of both planning theory and planning as a whole. This book is written for an international readership, and includes planning theories that address, or have emerged from, both the global North and parts of the world beyond.