ABSTRACT
It is a truism to say that we all pEm. Bur planning as a ptofession has a much more restricted domain. Fight as they might for some other rationale fer their existence, professional planners find themselves confined, for the most part, to the task of defining and attempting to achieve a "successful" ordering of the built environment. In the ultimate instance the planner is concerned with the "proper" location, the appropriate mix of activities in space of all the diverse elements that make up the totality of physical structures - the houses, roads, factories, offices, water and sewage disposal facilities, hospitals, schools, and the like - that constitute the built environment. From time to time the spatial erdering of the built environment is treated as an end sufficient unto itself, and some form of environmental determinism takes hold. At other times this ordering is seen as a reflection rather than a determinant of social relations, and planning is seen as a process rather than as a plan - and so the planner heaves himself away from the drawing board to attend meetings with bankers, community groups, land developers, and the like, in the hope that a timely intervention here or a preventive measure there may achieve a "better" overall result. But "better" assurnes some purpose which is easy enough to specify in general but more difficult to particularize about. As a physical resource complex created out of human labor and ingenuity, the built environment must primarily function to be useful for production, circulation, exchange, and consumption. Ir is the job of the planner to intervene in the production of this eomplex composite commodity and to ensure its proper management and maintenance. Bur this immediately poses the question, useful or better for what and to whom?
