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This book's title betrays at once that it belongs in the forecast
literature. Peering into the future is a notoriously treacherous
venture. Nevertheless, it has become a prac tice endemic to the
business and government worlds as well as to academia, especially
economics. We like to be lieve that the enormous growth of
forecasting in the face of some disappointments reflects real needs
of decision makers (as well as the general public's well-warranted
curiosity about the future). Fashion alone could hardly explain the
sustained increase in the market for forecast services during the
past few decades. Some professionals insist on fine distinctions be
tween the forecast, the projection, the prediction-and the
prophecy. The differences are more semantic than real, as the
mandatory resort to Webster confirms. The entry "forecast" includes
references to prediction and prophecy without differentiation,
while "projection" is defined, among other things, as prediction or
"advance estimate." We use mainly the term projections because v
PREFACE vi much of our statistical research is based on forward es
timates of population and households by the U.S. Bu reau of the
Census which the bureau itself, the greatest fountain of data in
the world, records as projections."
The work of Harvey S. Perloff stands as a landmark in the evolution
of Anglo American planning doctrine. It is impossible to fully
capture the essence of the published work in a paragraph, page, or
even an entire essay. Yet its highpoints can be identified. His
work was innovative, reformist, comprehensive, and ori ented toward
the future. In emphasizing the greater importance of people com
pared to things, Perloff repeatedly prodded planners to be
concerned with human needs and values. He was critical of the past.
But inasmuch as he de voted more effort to envisioning what could
lie ahead than in recalling the past, his work was markedly
optimistic. He once admitted in writing to his "built-in weakness
for expecting rational, socially oriented solutions ultimately to
win out, no matter what the objective situation seems to be. " To
some the expecta tion may be seen as naive; to others, as a faith
in the wisdom of humankind to take the best course. However
received, Perloff's optimism served as a powerful stimulant to keep
moving ahead for the best that would come of it. Institutions and
the ways they should be shaped and reshaped were of central
concern, for institutions (though he rarely used the term) were the
in struments through which "knowledge was translated into action."
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