Abstract

Planning can be seen as an essentially political activity that involves contestation of outcomes. At its simplest, this involves a contest between property rights and the public interest, but at a more complex and nuanced level it incorporates competition between different planning discourses and different motives underlying support for each discourse. This chapter argues that an understanding of these motives, in the form of the doctrines and habitus of protagonists, can provide deeper insights into the basic forces shaping planning conflicts.