ABSTRACT
Urban and regional planning faces multiple challenges associated with collective action. Planning must ultimately determine and represent some sort of technical and professional position, while attempting to draw together various sorts of information, influence and opinion from markets, environmental concerns, various government agencies and citizens. Further, planning in western democracies is inevitably embroiled in politics, questions of equity, equality, efficiency and ecology, while drawing upon an array of technical skills and practices. In doing all this, planning must seek to achieve collective goals through a mix of public, private, governmental and individual mechanisms. At the same time, the democratic ‘mantle’ that planning falls under requires that it deal appropriately with many different interest groups while variously restricting and facilitating their activities.
