Urban planning is used loosely to refer to intentional interventions in the urban development process, usually by local government. The term “planning” thus subsumes a variety of mechanisms that are in fact quite distinct:
regulation, collective choice, organizational design, market correction, citizen participation, and public sector action. Plans, more narrowly defined, have logic and functions that are distinct from each of these other mechanisms, but related to each of them. The objective of this book is to set out the logic of how plans work and how they relate to other types of intentional actions in urban development. Clarity about how plans work leads to more reasonable expectations of what plans can accomplish and more careful choices about when to make plans, about what, for whom, and how.