| To better understand why planners choose to practice the way they do, I examined what practicing planners and planning academics believe constitutes effective planning practice and what approaches they believe result in more effective practice as they define it.; I oriented the study within extant theory and research using a typology of planning that emphasized skills, activities, and roles representing technical, political, participatory, and adaptive approaches to practice. I used the input, process, output, outcome, and feedback phases of planning to organize criteria planners may use to judge the effectiveness of practice.; I distributed parallel mail and Internet surveys to random samples of 294 planners practicing in Wisconsin who were members of the Wisconsin Chapter of the American Planning Association (WAPA) and 210 planning academics who specialized in planning practice, planning theory, or both. Based on returns from 61% of the practicing planners and 50% of the planning academics, I found broad similarities and small deviations among and between the two groups.; The planners believed that more effective practice requires listening above all else. They also believed it requires skilled observation and analysis of the situation, adaptive action, skilled formulation and evaluation of solutions, data collection, writing reports, and skilled management and facilitation of participatory group processes. They believed that a mix of skills and activities representing all four approaches contribute to making planning practice more effective, but that skills, activities, and roles representing a political approach contribute least, overall, to effective planning practice.; The results argue for revising the four-approach typology of planning used in this study. Planners appear to use variations and combinations of eight, more nuanced approaches to practice. New understanding may be gained from future studies of practice based on the revised typology.; The results provide some insight that may help raise planners' awareness of what they believe constitutes and leads to more effective planning practice. Only when these beliefs are part of the consciousness of practicing planners, their supervisors, educators, and theorists alike will it be possible for their beliefs and affected behaviors to be acknowledged, challenged, and thereby reinforced or revised. |
