ABSTRACT
Organizations must find ways to mesh public involvement and social impact demands with older views of planning. Public involvement programs themselves generate social impacts. Responding to changing rules, public involvement programs encourage the political system to adjust to mixes of new issues, new values, and new clients. Public involvement programs then induce the elected political system to adjust to planning decisions needs. Thus, the planning process itself encourages a mixed public involvement strategy. However, a mixed public involvement strategy will, in turn, force the planner to adjust the planning process to accommodate the varying forms of information resulting from the mixed techniques. Public involvement and social impact assessment are clearly interactive in such a planning process. Public involvement for nonstructural plans presents several unique requirements. Public involvement programs become critical to cost effective use of even the most advanced project techniques.
