The purpose of the book is to elaborate a planning theory which
departs from the plethora of theories which reflect the conditions
of developed countries of the North-West. The empirical material of
this effort is derived from a country, Greece, which sits on the
edge between North-West and South-East, at the corner of Europe. No
doubt, there is extensive international literature on planning
theory in general from a bewildering variety of viewpoints. The
interested professional or student of urban and regional planning
is certainly aware of the dizzying flood of books, articles and
research reports on planning theory and of their never-ending
borrowing of obscure concepts from more respectable scientific
disciplines, from mathematics to philosophy and from physics to
economics, human geography and sociology. He or she probably
observed that there is a growing interest in theoretical approaches
from the viewpoint of the so-called "Global South". The author of
the present book has for many decades faced the impasse of
attempting to transplant theories founded on the experience of the
North-West to countries with a totally different historical,
political, social and geographical background. He learned that the
reality that planners face is unpredictable, patchy, and responsive
to social processes, frequently of a very pedestrian nature.
Planning strives to deal with private interests which planners are
keen to envelop in a single "public interest", which is extremely
hard to define. The behaviour of the average citizen, far from
being that of the neoclassical model of the homo economicus, is
that of an individual, a kind of homo individualis, who interacts
with the state and the public administration within a complex web
of mutual dependence and negotiation. The state and its
administrative apparatus, i.e., the key-determinants and fixers of
urban and regional planning policy, bargain with this individual,
offer inducements, exemptions, derogations and privileges, deviate
unhesitatingly from their grand policy pronouncements, but still
defend the rationality and comprehensiveness of the planning system
they have legislated and operationalized. It is by and large a
successful modus vivendi, but only thanks to a constant practice of
compromise. Hence, the term compromise planning, which the author
coined as an alternative to all the existing theoretical forms of
planning. This is the sort of planning, and of the accompanying
theory, with which he deals in this book. It is the outcome of
experience and knowledge accumulated in a long personal journey of
academic teaching in England and Greece, research, and professional
involvement.
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