ABSTRACT
Planning is achieved only with conflict. City planners use a variety of strategies to guide both developers and neighborhood residents through the complexities of planning process. The complexity of permitting processes is a source of influence for planning staff. Formal municipal boards, typically planning boards and boards of zoning appeals, have decision-making authority to grant variances, special permits, or design approvals. This chapter explores a repertoire of mediated negotiation strategies that planners use as they deal with local land-use permitting conflicts. Planners need administrative to create an organized process to match incoming projects with one or more of the mediated-negotiation strategies. More than a lack of independence keeps planners from easily adopting roles as mediators. The emotional complexity of mediating role makes quite different demands upon planners than those that they have traditionally been prepared to meet. The ways that mediators and negotiators consider the interests and enable the voice of weaker parties will affect existing power imbalances.
