ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the nature and multiple potential meanings of the national planning concept arriving at a broad stipulative definition for further exploration and analysis of the several alternative approaches. The multiple facets of planning must be acknowledged as well, although as yehezkel dror observes the effort to apply a facet design methodology or facet approach to the planning process is difficult because of its many-faceted, interactive complexity. The planners may be located under the chief executive; under the legislature; as an independent, nonpolitical advisory commission; or dispersed among a number of groups. The chapter discusses the ideas of planning and national planning as narrow, relatively specific administrative processes to much broader concepts of national planning as a process of societal guidance with fundamental philosophical, sociopsychological, economic, political, and administrative implications. Graham's Toward a Planned Society provides a very readable history of American national planning efforts from the 1930s to the 1970s along with many useful insights.
