ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a multi-faceted set of alternative perspectives from which to assess contemporary American national planning debates, processes, pitfalls and potentials. Two rather specifically defined approaches, as polar opposites and relatively idealized stereotypes, have long dominated national planning ideas in the United States. Both these approaches tend to work on the surrounding environment, viewing it as a set of mechanistic cause-and-effect processes which can be controlled with a problem-solving approach. The rational approach enlists expert professionals to structure public policy planning problems and actions using the tools and methods of positivistic science. The mixed-scanning approach attempts to combine the best features of the two dominant approaches to planning in the context of an active, developing, consensual society. The learning adaptive approach focuses on the potential of new educational strategies, new societal values, and innovative social approaches which would allow a society to generate and regenerate its own psycho-social transformation.
