Distinguishing 'planning' from the 'plan'. Institutional and professional implications of taking urban complexity seriously

In the twentieth century, planning as a (public) activity and the plan as an instrument came to coincide. According to this perspective, planners are professionals specialised primarily in conceiving and designing plans. This article suggests that we should reject the overlap between planning and plan, recognising the latter as just one of the tools that planners can use - and for very specific purposes. The article starts by distinguishing between two different tasks of local administrations: the infrastructural task, and the regulatory one. Subsequently, it emphasises how the pre-twentieth-century idea of the plan was in the twentieth century inappropriately extended from infrastructural activities to regulatory ones as well. The article proceeds by suggesting how to remedy this situation: that is, demarcating more sharply between two different kinds of planning intervention - infrastructural and regulatory - and employing plans prevalently in the former case while utilising different instruments for the latter.

Automated summary

This article suggests that the overlap between planning and plan should be rejected, and the plan should be recognized as just one of the tools that planners can use. It distinguishes between the infrastructural and regulatory tasks of local administrations, and highlights how the pre-twentieth-century idea of the plan was inappropriately extended in the twentieth century. The article suggests demarcating more sharply between infasctructural and regulatory planning interventions, and utilizing plans mainly for the former case while using different instruments for the latter.