ABSTRACT
By giving free rein to our imaginations in the preceding chapter, we have attempted to suggest one of many ways in which we believe a wide-ranging experimental process might be mobilized, and evidence might be gathered that would either support or cast doubt on the kinds of hypotheses that we formulated at the end of Chapter 16. We should, of course, be surprised if future initiatives towards innovation in planning followed at all closely the lines of our speculations in Chapter 17. Equally, however, we should be surprised if the future pattern of innovations were to develop in completely divergent directions. The pressures for effective mutual adjustment between different public agencies and different sets of constituency interests can, we believe, be expected to grow increasingly insistent, in England and indeed elsewhere. The result is likely to be a widespread search for innovative lines of response, even though such responses may in most cases take a more fragmented form than the 'Policy Network Development Programme' upon which we have just speculated.
