ABSTRACT
It also may be appropriate to begin our essay by stating our impression of some of the intellectual trends which have been developing in the planning community, particularly with respect to economic thinking. The history of Utopia (in its positive sense) in the West as Martin Meyerson once noticed (Meyerson, 1961), is dominated by two distinct coursesthe physical approach and the social approach. Intellects in the two camps have not really communicated, perhaps because they didn't understand each other. Historically, the social Utopians regarded the physical approach as limited and non-fundamental while the physical Utopians regarded the social approach both as too abstract and as deficient in providing direction for courses of action for implementation. The neoclassical economist's Utopian world, a world of Pareto optimality, was not mentioned in Meyerson's essay-that world would probably be viewed as limited by other social Utopians. Yet, we would like to argue that the Pareto world, simple and abstract as it is, is more relevant to our real world through its impact on the current science of policy analysis. In our opinion, the theme of this conference can be interpreted as the response of two types of Utopians to the challenge provided by economists with a Pareto-type orientation.
