The Analysis And Study On The Planning Failure

Bridging the gap between theory and practice in urban planning is a long-term and arduous process for planning theories, and despite serious efforts to do that, theorists have fallen short of this goal. The lack of success can be attributed to the fact that such mainstream planning approaches as "theory in planning" , based on city engineering, architecture and fragments of the social sciences, and "procedural theory" , based on mathematical models, overlooking real-world conditions and excluding many important political, economic and social phenomena. Therefore, urban planning theory has not adequately satisfied the need to solve empirical and conceptual problems in the practice of urban planning.A planning process consists of three fundamental factors: context, plan-making, and plan-actualizing. The context provides the backdrop against which values in planning are selected. Although the core values (environment, equity and efficiency) provide the legal basis for the legitimate authority of planning, these values are inevitably alienated by the impact of the institutional context. The author goes on to argue that planning is only one of the tools used to achieve policy objectives. Thus, in addition to limited rationality in technological aspects, the feature of rationality in plan-making also symbolizes the political biases and processes. On the other hand, the institutional rationality in a statutory planning system exists on the condition that relationships within the government hierarchy, especially between the central and the local governments, necessarily maintain balance.The author argues against those pessimistic viewpoints that highlight only the limitations and difficulties that exist within the planning profession and pessimistically declare the failure of planning. Instead, she argues for the re-establishment of rationality in the profession. Her study suggests threeconditions for a more effective urban planning field of practice. First, additional rational theories and methods of planning are needed. Second, planning-in-action should pay added consideration to political strategy during plan making and development control. Third, planning should be based on wider consultation with communities.