Response: What Works Best? Reflections on the Role of Theory in Planning

In this commentary, the author considers how theory helps one understand the development process and how it helps situate the role of planning as an agent of change in society. The problem is not that there is no theory of economic development but that there is too much and that there is little unity to this theory. Theory is also by construction about "what is, "whereas planning is about "what should be. "Planning is socially constituted and is, therefore, contingent on ideology, history, and politics. Similarly, planning initiatives reverberate through a region's historic, geographic, economic, social, and political fabric. It is the artificial separation of theory and planning that is at the heart of both "the problem with planning" and the "problem with theory."