Planning Solutions Aided by Management and Systems Technology

Urban change is an extreme example of the proverbial product of a committee—most of the changes cannot be attributed to formal or organized planning. Planners who are trying to introduce a more orderly future, to correct present problems, and minimize future ones, must call upon all the skills of man—and perhaps, more—and it is unfortunate that planners are divided, in C. P. Snow's sense, into two cultures which little understand one another. The contribution of technology to planning solutions has its greatest potential and its severest limitations in the emphasis upon formal models, and analysis and evaluation based largely on quantitative techniques. The understanding of these methods, and the combining of them with other methods of planning, will provide the "optimal" solution.