The Deliberative Practitioner: Encouraging Participatory Planning Processes.

Working from accounts of practitioners in urban and rural settings, North and South, this text shows how skillful deliberative practices can facilitate practical and timely participatory planning processes. In so doing, it provides a window onto the wider world of democratic governance, participation and practical decision making. Integrating interpretation and theoretical insight with diverse accounts of practice, the work draws on political science, law, philosophy, literature and planning to explore the challenges and possibilities of deliberative practice.

John Forester is Professor and Chair in the Department of City and Regional Planning at Cornell University. He is the author of Planning in the Face of Power and Critical Theory, Public Policy, and Planning Practice and the editor of Critical Theory and Public Life (MIT Press, 1985).