ABSTRACT
Because in recent years planning for urban and other regional areas has been changing markedly in scope, character, and method, many persons, even knowledgeable and thoughtful citizens of these areas and students of the urban and regional scenes, find difficulty in keeping it in focus. This difficulty is shared by some practicing members of the planning profession as well. The writers of several recent articles and books say many acute, wise, and provocative things about planning problems and possibilities without ever quite coming to grips with the essential nature of planning-what it basically is, what its principal relations with other institutionalized activities are or might become, what its limits are in our society. Certainly, however, these are precisely the questions with which any serious consideration of the relations between land economics research and urban and regional planning should start.
