Change is inevitable in all communities: they both grow and decline. Planning is a means by which we have sought to manage this change. It has not always succeeded in providing the types of settlements and environments which many residents and others want, either because it is operating with the wrong policies or because it is failing to ensure that the right policies are effectively implemented. These failings have opened planning to criticism by a dominant neoliberal orthodoxy which shapes an increasingly difficult environment in which planning has to operate.

Change is inevitable in all communities: they both grow and decline. Planning is a means by which we have sought to manage this change. Planning has not always succeeded in providing the types of settlements and environments which many residents and others want, either because it is operating with the wrong policies or it is failing to ensure that the right policies are effectively implemented. These failings have opened planning to criticism by a dominant neoliberal orthodoxy which shapes an increasingly difficult environment in which planning has to operate.