ABSTRACT
Planning is by definition about the future, and thus, the most important applications of planning evaluation should be ex ante evaluations, concentrating on the future, the main concern of planning. However, any application of planning evaluation makes no sense unless founded on a true belief and some sort of verification that planning actually makes a difference. How can we know that planning makes any difference, without sometimes checking the outcomes by doing ex post evaluations? Therefore ex post evaluations are of primary importance, and the subject of this chapter. The present chapter highlights a part of a larger study that looks into
the theoretical base for ex post evaluations of public planning efforts. The author has made a multiple case study of twelve cases of (possible) planning results in two different Norwegian communes (municipalities),1 six cases in the City of Flora in Sogn and Fjordane County on the west coast, and six cases in the Commune of Onsoy in Ostfold County in the southeast, with a time span from 1861 to about 1996, making a retrospective analysis of planning results and the preceding processes. The mainly rural commune of Onsoy was merged with the neighbouring city of Fredrikstad in 1994. The crucial point is to establish a causal relationship, or at least a possible causal relationship between the end result and the planning efforts. Wildavsky (1973: 4) stated: “attempts to plan are no more planning than the desire to be wise may be called wisdom […]. Promise must be dignified by performance. The determination of whether planning has taken place must rest on an assessment of whether and to which degree future control has been achieved.” The field in focus (ex post evaluations of planning efforts) is not well
covered in the planning literature (Khakee and Eckerberg, 1993: 13). More
recently, focus has shifted a little from prospective to performance evaluations (Mandarano, 2008: 457, see also Lichfield and Prat, 1998). The safest research design approach in a “poorly mapped land” is an exploratory approach, with an open mind for all possible outcomes of the search. However, the present author’s close relationship to the data opens up for possible bias, which has to be controlled for in the analysis and synthesis.
