The Goals of Comprehensive Planning

Abstract Comprehensive planning requires of planners that they understand the overall goals of their communities. Truly comprehensive goals tend, however, to be too general to provide a basis for evaluating concrete alternatives. Consequently, it is difficult to stir political interest in them, and politicians are rarely willing to commit themselves to let general and long-range goal statements guide their considerations of lower-level alternatives. Many planners have themselves abandoned the comprehensive planning ideal in favor of the ideal of middle-range planning. Middle-range planners pursue operational, though still relatively general, goals. The middle-range planning ideal has much to recommend it. It provides no basis, however, for planners to claim to understand overall community goals. With it as a guide, therefore, the fundamental distinction between planning and other specialities is lively to become progressively more blurred.