ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the initial aims of the research, discusses the ways they were limited and interpreted as work progressed and summarises the main contextual assumptions made. As stated in an application for research funds made to the Centre for Environmental Studies in1974, the broad object was to investigate the 'way planners in practice use and relate to theories and concepts'. The initial focus of the research programme, was on the individual planner as claimant to specialist knowledge and skills. The research programme set out to investigate, via case studies of planners in 'practice', the ideas planners were referring to, the way they were using them in different sorts of organisational contexts and the influence of such contexts on the ideas used. London Borough planning departments were selected for the case studies partly because they were familiar and accessible to the researchers and partly because of their intrinsic interest as the bottom tier of a 10-year-old two-tier local government system.
