What Is Planning? Definition and Strategy

Abstract

A profession, such as planning, needs an explicit definition, a satisfactory something to profess. The purposes such a definition must serve are touched upon, but whatever other characteristics the definition has it must be “strategic,” that is, adapted to the internal and external necessities of the planning game. A number of going definitions are examined and summarily rejected, and a new start is attempted. The complexities of what is actually intended by “planning” are given fresh consideration. A “clouded clarity” is aimed at: something clear enough to make certain vital distinctions, but not so clear as to introduce an artificial distinction or corner one in an untenable position. The much neglected side of planning as “Art” rather than technology is sketched as to its nature and pleaded for as to its place. A final cast is made—final to the paper, but we would hope initiatory to an extended conversation—at a definition of the planner as a rational artist or artist of rationality. It is in his spanning of the terms of such an antinomy that his peculiar role is believed to lie.