ABSTRACT
The planning dilemma is sourced in people's relationship with their place. The meanings of some basic terms as they are used in this discussion are explained briefly. Planning is a set of interrelated imperatives and processes that can be clustered into certain disciplines but the boundaries of these disciplines are porous. This means that processes of the planning categories described here are not intended to be strictly distinctive, but absorptive. The significance of the problems that arise with planning urban places is illustrated here through a brief overview of three real urban masterplanning developments. The three redevelopments discussed here have much in common in that they are urban renewal sites developed as a result of an urban blight crisis. The three developments describes different approaches to masterplanning large scale, urban sites with a developer-centric strategy in a public and private partnership. This illustrates the problems involved and highlights the critical role of change in the masterplanning process.
