ABSTRACT
The concept of rationality may indeed be broadened —to include, for example, analyses of political pressures and the preferences of various stakeholder groups—but strategic planning never completely departs from the centralized, rational camp. Chicago scholars were applied social scientists, and rationality was the major instrument they intended to employ in the creation of a more orderly, attractive, and just urban America. This examination of rationality-based planning models should not conclude without consideration of the one that is most prevalent—namely, strategic planning. Strategic planning is, in the final analysis, simply one more entry in the long line of rationality-based strategies that have been packaged for use by planners. More interesting than the responses of planning theorists, however, are those of practitioners. Most public planning issues—and certainly all of them that we would consider major—generate outcomes that affect individuals and groups differentially.
