ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at how the public is imagined in planning. It shows how the public' is less a term to denote a set of people than an idea used to organise planning processes. A series of public meetings were held in Haddenham, in Buckinghamshire in 1995 about proposals to build a spice factory, where hundreds of residents turned up to hear arguments for and against, in increasingly angry exchanges between householders, planners, politicians and company representatives. It is certainly not a concept that has escaped the attention of planners, and the question of public good is closely considered. Less attention is perhaps paid to the rhetorical use of the public, not only as a political tool, but as a bureaucratic motif. Having identified the public as an idea with a history, and not simply a universal human concept, it looks again at how the term is used in planning.
