Development Planning: Lessons of Experience

Since the end of the World War II, a considerable literature on development planning has accumulated. Most of it is concerned with how planning ought to be practiced, or more explicitly, how planning would work if it worked as originally conceived or as the writer might wish. While examples from experience have been used to illustrate principles, most authors have chosen to concentrate on theory rather than practice. These writers have generally been as aware as anyone that there was always a gap – often a great one – between the theories they espoused and planning as it is practiced, especially in less developed countries. But mostly they have considered discrepancies between the two as short-run aberrations, which would tend to disappear as more planners were trained and acquired experience.