ABSTRACT
Scholars have long struggled with the notion of the public interest, and the work of welfare economists has been particularly instructive. Public opinion on planning matters is generally ill-defined, diverse, contentious, confusingand decidedly nonlinear. Planning based on this rationale is largely reactive; it focuses on smoothing out existing problems rather than on helping to define and achieve a more desirable future. The chapter suggests that values—those of the planner and those of the diverse individuals and communities whom the planner serves—constitute the real bedrock of planning. The public interest of a particular society should somehow comprise the individual interests of all those who make up that society. Writing early in the twentieth century, Vilfredo Pareto proposed a criterion for determining whether a given policy proposal is consistent with the principle that social decisions should reflect the welfare of all individuals who make up the society.
