If Planning isn't Everything, Maybe it's Something

Ernest R. Alexander

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Urban Planning and Governance Local Governance and Planning Public Policy and Administration Research

Abstract

Though Aaron Wildavsky's conclusions are based on several fallacies, his case raises some issues which deserve our attention. These include the question 'what is planning?' and the related problem of how, if at all, planning is to be evaluated. Wildavsky's case against planning has not been seriously examined, I believe, and far less refuted, for three reasons: 1. It appeared in a journal which few planners read, and unfortunately has not been reprinted in the 'mainstream' of planning literature. 2. Many among his readers surely found Wildavsky's case persuasive, and saw no reason to take up the cudgels on behalf of planning. 3. Some of his readers who intuitively disagreed (perhaps because, like this author, they are planners or associated with planning) failed to articulate a reasoned response because the paper's provocative title and deliberately polemic style makes its unpalatable conclusions easy to dismiss.

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References

1973Dilemmas in a general theory of planning 1960Plans and the structure of behavior.1981The Private Government of Public Money 1962A Choice Theory of Planning 1978Why Allow Planners to Do What They Do? A Justification from Economic Theory 1977Planning Theory in Retrospect: The Process of Paradigm Change 1969Notes on Societal Action 1976IMPLEMENTATION ANALYSIS AND ASSESSMENT**The chapter is revised from an earlier paper of the same title that appeared in Policy Analysis, Volume 1, No. 3, pp. 531–566 (Copyright by The Regents of the University of California), and the portions used from the earlier work are included with the permission of The Regents of the University of California. Work on the paper was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation. A number of individuals commented on earlier drafts: Richard Elmore, Lucille Fuller, Eleanor Holmes, Laura Kemp, and Jeanette Veasey, all at the time at the University of Washington; Robert Levine, Congressional Budget Office, and Arnold J. Meltsner, University of California, Berkeley. The author, however, is solely responsible for the views expressed.

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