ABSTRACT
This book offers illustrations of planning instruments across different planning jurisdictions, and the tensions and challenges they introduce for achieving equitable and sustainable cities. One of the main themes presented consistently throughout this book is the notion that the political context, in which planning instruments themselves are situated, matters. This book asserts that planning instruments are a means to an end and what ought to be achieved is a political question which planning instruments themselves cannot determine alone. Planning serves human endeavours and as such should be a public exercise from which planning instruments simply become the apparatus planners and policy-makers acquire to enact or inhibit certain change. Citing from Willem K Korthals Altes’ contribution in this volume, planning is a political process working towards a ‘planning equilibrium’ – inhibiting unwanted development and facilitating desirable development. It is for this reason that many of the planning instruments presented throughout this book engage directly with urban governance questions including, but not limited to, the role and potential that inclusivity, deliberativeness and transparency can bring to the process of urban policy generation and its implementation. Determining what that equilibrium should be is, in itself, a contested prospect for city making.
