ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests practitioners to take a more critical view of planning evidence—essential to better understanding and then addressing public needs. Using evidence effectively in our professional policy and planning work requires understanding its strengths and weaknesses. The chapter outlines some pitfalls of our ongoing narrow evidence and knowledge use in planning and policy. It discusses the potential for error and bias in the formal rationality guiding planning and policy work over much of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. A problem arises with mismatches between data and the research or policy question being asked. When recommending action, we should use evidence, which specifically seeks to unveil a cause and effect link between a programme or policy and outcomes or results. By extension, planners could obtain helpful next steps from public health on how to better use evidence.
