ABSTRACT
The basic problem which sociologists face in their relations with planners is this. The planners expect them to predict patterns of social relations which are likely to exist in a future community, when in fact such patterns of social relations are inherently unpredictable for two reasons. The first reason is that patterns of social relations are subject to rapid change and that there are no laws, proven in past research, which can certainly be held to apply to the future. The second is that patterns of social relations are, to some extent at least, a matter of choice, and that to pretend otherwise is simply to give legitimacy on pseudo-scientific grounds to the imposition of social patterns by one lot of people on another.
