Types of Planning
Various types of planning have emerged over the course of the 20th century. Below are the six main typologies of planning, as defined by David Walters in his book Designing Communities.
Traditional or comprehensive planning: Common in the US after WWII, characterized by politically neutral experts with a rational view of the new urban development. Focused on producing clear statements about the form and content of new development.
Systems planning: 1950s–1970s, resulting from the failure of comprehensive planning to deal with the unforeseen growth of post WWII America. More analytical view of the planning area as a set of complex processes, less interested in a physical plan.
Democratic planning: 1960s. Result of societal loosening of class and race barriers. Gave more citizens a voice in planning for future of community.
Advocacy and equity planning: 1960s & 70s. Strands of democratic planning that sought specifically to address social issues of inequality and injustice in community planning.
Strategic planning: 1960s-present. Recognizes small-scale objectives and pragmatic real-world constraints.
Environmental planning: 1960s-present. Developed as many of the ecological and social implications of global development were first widely understood.
Today, successful planning involves a balanced mix of analysis of the existing conditions and constraints; extensive public engagement; practical planning and design; and financially and politically feasible strategies for implementation.
Current processes include a combination of strategic and environmental planning. It is becoming more widely understood that any sector of land has a certain capacity for supporting human, animal, and vegetative life in harmony, and that upsetting this balance has dire consequences on the environment. Planners and citizens often take on an advocacy role during the planning process in an attempt to influence public policy.Due to a host of political and economic factors, governments are slow to adopt land use policies that are congruent with scientific data supporting more environmentally sensitive regulations.
Smart Growth: Since the 1990s, the activist/environmentalist approach to planning has grown into the Smart Growth movement, characterized by the focus on more sustainable and less environmentally damaging forms of development.
Smart growth supports the integration of mixed land uses into communities as a critical component of achieving better places to live. Putting uses in close proximity to one another has benefits for transportation alternatives to driving, security, community cohesiveness, local economies, and general quality of life issues. Smart growth strives to provide a means for communities to alter the planning context which currently renders mixed land uses illegal in most of the country.
Read more about this topic: Land-use Planning
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