Technically Speaking: Planning Theory and the Role of Information in Making Planning Policy

Abstract

Understanding how technical information is used in planning is important: the ability to carry out and interpret technical analysis is part of the basis for the legitimacy of planning as a profession. The role and influence of technical information in planning is, however, contested. The article presents a conceptual framework that has been tested in research that examined the use of technical information in British planning policies at a local level. The article concludes that planners are engaged in processes of mediation and negotiation to make policy and implement it. They are not involved in a simple process of rational choice between alternatives. Thus, technical information is not influential purely because it is 'correct' in some sense, but because of the way it is incorporated into the processes through which land use change is initiated, controlled and evaluated. These processes are structured by the rules and procedures created by the institutionalization of planning activities, and the use of technical information as an influence on land use change can only be understood within this context.

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