City Planning and Political Values

Planning is identified as a special case of pol'al decisionmaking. A typology of planning rationales which is empirically meaningful may be defined by dimensions which specify how planning goals & means are to be chosen. The 4 types of rationales are (1) traditional; (2) user-oriented; (3) advocacy; & (4) incremental. Each of these types of planning is a fragment of an analogous type of pol'al theory: respectively (1) technocratic, (2) democratic, (3) socialist, & (4) liberal. These analogies serve to show the implications of each type of planning in terms of the distribution of benefits among diff soc groups, & help explain why certain kinds of planning have been favored in particular societies. An examination of the pol'al thought underlying each planning type reveals the pol'al values embedded in planning procedures. In this way, planning methods can be related to pol'al culture & the preference for only incremental planning in the US is explained. AA.