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INTRODUCTION Public-private partnerships that encourage specific types of real estate development have been widely praised as a means of addressing complex social problems. For example, many affordable housing programs, urban renewal initiatives and transit-oriented development projects rely on strategic interactions between government entities and private firms to alter the built environment in positive ways. Nonetheless, the merits of these collaborative efforts have been drawn into question by those who fear limited stakeholder involvement, significant transaction costs and disparities in negotiating power may impinge upon the benefits derived by the public sector. These concerns threaten to undermine the legitimacy of partnerships and prevent their use, even in situations where they are potentially advantageous. The analysis presented in this paper addresses these governance issues using data collected from a segment of a national survey of over 1,400 American Planning Association (APA) members. A series of empirical models are estimated to assess planners' attitudes towards partnerships, as well as the extent to which those attitudes are influenced by a planner's age, education, gender, race, political ideology and sector of employment. The analysis is intended to advance the study of both cross-sector collaboration and representative bureaucracy in an era where local governments continue to seek out opportunities to leverage private sector resources to promote the public good. In the aggregate, the analysis offers a means of assessing whether those engaged in the practice and study of urban planning have favorable attitudes towards partnerships or if significant concerns exist about their ability to effectively promote social policy goals. Examining planners' personal and professional attributes additionally provides an opportunity to determine if diversity in the planning profession is essential to ensure communal interests are taken into account when local governments enter into collaborative agreements. Both issues are important in response to recent calls for members of professional organizations such as the APA to actively protect the public interest when partnerships are formed. The paper begins by reviewing the existing planning and public administration literatures to identify practical and ideological concerns associated with the use of partnerships. A series of related studies are then introduced to support the contention that planners' personal and professional attributes affect their perceptions about this form of collaboration. The dataset and methodology used to assess planners' attitudes in this study are discussed next, before concluding with an analysis of the empirical results and the policy implications. Overall, the findings indicate that planners are optimistic about the use partnerships to stimulate real estate development, but their individual attributes influence their perceptions about the need for stakeholder involvement, the magnitude of transaction costs and the social policy goals that can be achieved. PRACTICAL AND IDEOLOGOICAL CONCERNS The term public-private partnership has many connotations, but usually refers to some form of collaboration between a government entity and a private firm to advance mutually beneficial goals (Nijkamp et al. 2001). Private firms are often expected to bring technical expertise, managerial capacity and innovation to the table, while government entities contribute financial resources, institutional knowledge and a means of overcoming regulatory hurdles (Koppenjan and Enserink 2009). Leveraging each sector's unique strengths in this manner provides municipalities with a way to address problems that could not be easily resolved otherwise. Public-private partnerships have been studied extensively in the field of infrastructure provision, where private firms routinely construct, manage and finance facilities essential to the operation of government. …
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