ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the implications of the changing orientations of American national planning efforts, the potential for theoretical synthesis and better integration of theory and practice, and the philosophic and pragmatic implications for further democratic evolution in the United States as viewed in terms of the several approaches. It discusses some future considerations, directions, and prospects for the resurgent American national planning debate and efforts that, although once again only launched and only poorly resolved, are likely to be around for many years to come. National leadership was exercised during the period by the most vigorous, vocal, and economically conservative advocates of the incremental tenets of the free market and political pluralism since the 1920s or perhaps even the 1890s—the Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford administrations. A final factor that could facilitate the potentials for theoretical synthesis of national planning approaches is the gradual integration of public policy theory and practice.
