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What Is Planning?

How articles address planning is an important consideration for the Journal of the American Planning Association. Of course, planning is notoriously difficult to define, with fuzzy boundaries. Here I want to speak in practical terms about the wide range of articles on planning issues that would be appropriate in the journal. In sum, there are many potential types of articles, but planning needs to be a main focus. Authors who have attempted to define planning have done so in numerous ways. Some have proposed a core concern or function of planners, often quite narrowly construed. In the United States, comprehensive land use planning might be one such core (McClendon et al., 2003). Others have proposed a much broader view of planning reflecting a central idea or process, such as linking knowledge to action in the public domain (Friedmann, 1987) or “social science knowledge plus action” (Edwards & Bates, 2011, p. 173). Taking more of a middle ground, another group of scholars have outlined a set of topics or themes shared by most planning problems. Myers (1997, pp. 223–224) provides several example themes, including improving human settlements; focusing on interconnections, the future, and a diversity of needs; “open participation”; and “linking knowledge and collective action.” Among these themes, Myers pointed to some areas where planning is strongly positioned, such as “identifying interconnections within community and human settlements” (p. 224). Yet another approach has been to look more institutionally as Myers and Banerjee (2005, p. 212) did in JAPA, differentiating between “the organized profession, practice at large, and the academic field,” each with different but overlapping activities. This approach incorporates forms of planning outside the organized profession, including activist planning, other planning practice outside a traditional governmental role, and work on emerging topics often conducted by planning academics. Though planning is a contested field, as editor I work to ensure that articles engage planning centrally. Articles could deal with the profession or wider planning practice, addressing actors engaged in the issues being studied and topics that are relevant to planners. This involves a range of work, including at least the following: