ABSTRACT
It seems that hardly a day goes by without a conflict in land use planning emerging in the headlines somewhere. Whether it is the latest in a line of corruption scandals, rural people concerned about the loss of greenfield land, protesters living in trees to halt new road building, bureaucratic nightmares making ‘innocent’ people jump through hoops or the loss of town centre shops, planners are in one way or another ‘to blame’. Planners may cry ‘foul!’ at such accusations, claiming that it is the political process that is to blame, or that they cannot control everything. It is not them that make decisions but others. This myth of professional neutrality still peddled in some quarters (see Greed, 1996). But fifty odd years on from the inception of our current planning system, why do we still have homelessness, car choked cities, damp infested tower blocks, and environmental degradation? While planners cannot be held responsible for the crimes of others, they must surely take some blame and ask themselves ‘why?’.
