Planning and Political Power: Toward a Strategy for Coping

There is a widely held view, among those who think and write about such matters, that planning practitioners are suffering at present from a dearth of compelling and workable planning theories. Robert Beauregard, for example, is critical of the current state of planning theory on the grounds that it has become largely irrelevant to the physical and political realities of the city (Beauregard 1990; also see Alexander 1984). I agree with his assessment.