A number of questions relating to the design and implementation of research projects in cross-national comparative planning are considered. Given the nature of the subject matter involved, it is argued that the main problems that face analysts in this field arise out of the difficulties...

In this paper, I describe the rhetorical conventions which allow participants in a planning or policy discussion to distinguish publicly between memories and anticipations and to agree as to what time it is <I>now</I>. The principal contribution of the paper is the conception of an 'artificial present'...</i>

Several cross-national studies are reviewed, to consider their range of objectives and research structures. The emphasis is on studies comparing the United Kingdom with other West European countries. Three categories of objective are proposed: improvement of planning practice, development of...

The article is based on the premise that the practice of planning is heavily dependent on the administrative and legal framework within which it exists. The theme is developed by comparing French and British local government and administrative law. The fragmentation of territorial units and the...

Traditionally, large integrated land-use and transport models require considerable amounts of computer resources, restricting their use to a small number of metropolitan or regional planning authorities and to an elite of consultancy firms. The increasing availability of microcomputers should be...

The planning process is interpreted as a process of rational argumentation. The structure of and standards for rational arguments in any discipline are discussed and subsequently applied to the field of public planning. The principal threats to rational argumentation in planning are seen to be...

Optimization models for complex regional planning problems can be used to generate planning alternatives that are good with respect to the objectives included in the models, but significantly different from each other with respect to the decisions specified, in order to provide more insight and...