Planning is a process of helping a community identify its problems and its central values, formulating goals and alternative approaches to achieving community objectives, and avoiding undesired consequences of change. This process of planning results in frameworks for coping with change. Some are physical elements such as streets, roads, and sewer lines. Some are concepts that serve as guides to action, such as the goal of becoming a major distribution center or of encouraging investment in the core of the city. Some are regulatory, reflecting the desires of the community to encourage good development and discourage bad development.
Planners recognize the complexity of communities.
As with natural environments, human communities are strengthened by diversity. One task is to help communities become even more diverse, broadening the variety of employment, educational, cultural, entertainment, shopping, and housing opportunities and promoting a broad range of land uses, income levels, and types of people. Another task is to help communities deal with the clashes of interest produced by such variety and turn these differences into a positive force for constructive change. Planners share a concern about the future, a belief that something can be done about bettering our human-made and natural environments, and the recognition that planning, with relevant implementing tools, is the best method available for communities to achieve this.