ABSTRACT
Professional planners often struggle with the ethical ambiguity of compromise in the preparation of spatial plans. Instead of pursuing ideal rules or principles to guide judgment, they should look to the ways in which people make plans that reconcile complex ethical and political demands. The moral promise of a comprehensive approach works as it offers practical guidance informing these provisional plans created to anticipate and cope with messy situations. Integrity flows not from fidelity to a fixed ideal, but the adaptive practical effort to imagine and pursue ideals conceived collaboratively with others sharing the journey.
