ABSTRACT
Planners face an uneasy tension between the world of politics, in which they increasingly have to see themselves playing a direct part, and planning as a profession. On the one hand, no practising planner can fail to be aware of the political dimension of that practice. On the other hand, practice continues to demand a professional approach, which we can sum up broadly here as the application of expert judgement during the process in which decisions are made and implemented (see Marcuse 1976; Blowers 1980; Howe, 1980; Reade, 1982a; Roweis, 1983; Shirvani, 1985; Healey, 1985; Beauregard, 1986). If we are to answer the first question posed at the end of chapter 1, that of the relevance of political theory to planning practice, we will have to sort out the relationship between professionalism and politics.
