Spatial and environmental planning has long been an essentialfeature of all but the simplest societies. Its form, role, and theprinciples on which it should be based, however, have becomeincreasingly contested and controversial issues. This partly stems fromgrowing concern with global and local environments. It also reflectsthe fact that most planning systems were originally designed to copewith urban expansion in regions and cities conceived as relativelyself-contained, not the open, diverse and globally reachingrelationships which characterise most localities today. The figure of'the planner' has become both an object of blame and hostility,and also the subject of our hopes for effective community regulation.Planners are loaded with new responsibilities and are at the receivingend of criticism whether for allowing something to happen or forstopping it.In this important new book Patsy Healey draws on a very wide rangeof developments in social, political and spatial thought to propose anew framework for planning which is rooted in the institutionalrealities of the emerging world of the twenty-first century.International in scope and comprehensive in its range, it points a wayforward for spatial planning activity, from a narrow technical andprocedural focus towards a communicative and collaborative model forachieving common purposes in the shared spaces of our fragmentedsocieties.