ABSTRACT
As outlined in Jean Hillier’s Overall Introduction, the planning idea focuses on dreaming alternative futures abut place qualities, their potentials and possibilities. It is these days infused with a commitment to seeking futures which offer better and more sustainable opportunities than those at present available for many people, and which pay more attention to the environmental systems within which we humans live our lives. But the planning idea is not just about dreaming. It is also about actively shaping practices, now and in the future, which might bring more desirable worlds into being. The focus of ‘planning theory’ is therefore on ideas and practices, and how these interact in an active project of bringing futures into being, in a ‘project of becoming’ (Hillier 2007). Following Friedmann (1987), it is about how ideas, knowledge and ways of thinking get to shape action, and how action in turn shapes the development of ideas, knowledge and imaginations.2
