Potentials for planning support: a planning-conceptual approach

Over the course of many years, professional planners have used a plethora of methods and tools to support their planning activities. Nevertheless, it can be argued that planning practioners have never fully embraced the much wider diversity of available methods, techniques, and models developed in the research laboratories. On the basis of this observation, this study poses several questions about why there is an apparent mismatch in planning practice between supply, demand, and applications of planning-support instruments (including ‘planning support systems’) and their outcomes (dedicated information and knowledge), and how this mismatch can be solved. In order to arrive at an answer, a conceptual framework is constructed, which constitutes crucial factors that influence the potential planning support roles of information, knowledge, and instruments. With the help of this framework, a developmental overview is interpreted of the theoretical planning traditions that exerted an influence on planning practice during the last half millennium in the Western world. From this interpretation, some lessons can be learned about the improvement of the planning-support role in factual planning practice, and moreover, it opens up some new questions and discussion points.