Spatial Planning in the Twenty-First Century: Continuing or Ceasing?

Why planning? Since the very first days of mankind, the unpredictable, the unforeseeable, and the unknown has been something bewildering, uncomfortable and even dangerous for human beings. However, the abilities of rational thinking and reasoning, of resolving conflicts and problems, and of perceiving space and time has enabled man to devise proposals for the future and design ‘plans.’ Planning, the “ideal of an alternative to the competitive management of uncertainty,” (Marris 1998:16) thus seems to be a basic need of mankind.