ABSTRACT
The feedback strategy reflects an explicitly experimental orientation to the planning process, and there are compelling reasons for planning in this manner. The distinction has practical implications, then, for the nature and extent of public attention to and involvement in the planning process. The effective planner will typically consider several alternative actions that might be taken to deal with the problem. The effective planner will take pains to ensure that the problem is defined operationally at the outset. A more serious concern is one suggesting that the feedback strategy may be difficult to apply in cases where the end product of planning is a physical entity of some sort—a building, highway, reservoir, or housing subdivision, for example. The feedback strategy retains some elements of rationality-based planning but includes political and normative dimensions that ultimately differentiate it from the rational paradigm.
