ABSTRACT
An essential challenge for planners is to help to create places that better meet people’s needs and aspirations. Too often, this end is obscured by excessive concentration on the means, with the result that many planners and politicians mistakenly believe that the production or regulation of plans completes the planning task. In reality, places come about as political power engages with the dynamics of real estate development, 1 which is why planners working for public agencies are essentially engaged in shaping, regulating and stimulating real estate markets. Indeed, what is required is not for planners to become market actors, but rather for them to realise that they already are market actors, intricately involved in market construction and reconstruction, and to develop their capacity and confidence to act accordingly.
