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The contribution of planning to environment and society

In Australia, much of the everyday work of planning is managing change, or proposals for change, at the local and regional scales. In this country, there have been few attempts to undertake spatial planning at the national level. This describes what planning does. It does not, however, tell us what planning achieves. What are the consequences of planning? In what ways, and to what extent, are societies and environments improved by these activities? In what ways, and to what extent, would societies and environments be poorer without them? As McLoughlin (1992) pointed out in his extensive evaluation of strategic planning in post-war Melbourne, there has been little debate about the impacts and contributions of planning in Australia. By contrast, the issue has been addressed sporadically, if not extensively, by commentators in the United Kingdom (e.g., Healey, 1986; Reade, 1982, 1983) and North America (e.g., Wildavsky 1973). In the United Kingdom, Reade (1982) lamented the lack of self-awareness amongst planners about the contributions of their professional endeavour, whilst Healey (1986) regarded the evaluation of planning policy impacts as critical to 'democratic accountability'. In the USA, where the consequences of weak spatial regulation are revealed in dysfunctional urban growth patterns, there has been extensive analysis of 'the costs of sprawl' and the benefits of planning. ^