On Strategic Planning and Associated Issues

Abstract

One point often overlooked by discourse on ‘strategic planning’ should be highlighted from the start and will be expanded on later in this chapter: a strategy (and hence a strategic plan) can only be justified by a situation of conflict. Urban and territorial changes constitute a locus of conflicts in which ‘contenders’, using their force and attempting to neutralise that of their opponents, try to impose their own objectives (interests). Nevertheless, many ‘strategic plans’ fail to consider this state of things and are based on the assumption of ‘collaboration’ (to be achieved through negotiation). More precisely, the most widely used term is not ‘collaboration’ but ‘sharing’: this is an important distinction but the two issues are closely inter-linked, without one the other cannot exist. The choice of whether to refer to a situation of conflict or one of collaboration (sharing) is clearly not just a matter of terminology; if it were, it would be linguistically relevant but indifferent as to substance. On the contrary, this choice concerns the interpretation of relationships within society in general and the local community in particular.

In the chapter public governance of urban and territorial change to achieve an adequate level of effectiveness must draw up a strategy (since it addresses a situation of conflict) which attempts to: respond to future uncertainty; combat public distrust of government initiatives; raise awareness of future opportunities; incorporate (some) private interests.

The basic intention is to address the theme of the strategic plan by focusing on the objectives and not on the tools, on common rather than partial interests and on a general interest seen not as the sum of agreements and common needs but as responses to the demands emerging in a specific situation. Perhaps this approach is not consistent with strategic planning, but the interest in ‘how’ seems to be of secondary importance with respect to ‘why’.