The Institutional Focus of Planning Theory

Abstract

There is a good deal of talk these days about the ways in which planning theoreticians have neglected practice and practitioners. Some of the talk comes from practitioners, some from theoreticians themselves. This essay reflects on this talk, discerning a coherent theme in the varied chorus of complaints The conventional image that planning theory deals with the interaction between planners and clients no longer seems compelling. In the place of this dyadic image, theoreticians have focused attention on the planning processes embedded in the design of institutions This institutional focus powerfully illuminates the work of practitioners but also looks past them to groups and issues that were barely touched when planning theory dealt with the familiar dyad of planner and client. In the eyes of practitioners and academic colleagues, the community is likely to continue to seem both fragmented and neglectful — riddled with great rifts of incommensurable purposes, language, and analytic models