Vision and Visioning in Planning: What do these Terms Really Mean?

The word vision and other related terms have become common in planning discourse. Most planning theorists, researchers, and practitioners have used them as though their meanings were self-evident and clearly agreed upon. A careful examination of ten to fifteen years of planning literature and related texts reveals not one clear meaning but as many as twenty different and distinct meanings. In this study we use some techniques of content analysis to group the various meanings of vision and visioning into two major categories, substantive and procedural. Examples of all the different uses are drawn from a variety of writing in the planning field and elsewhere. Though the use of the terms vision and visioning may not continue as they have in the past, there are two important points to this study that go beyond the words themselves. First, the concepts implied by the words remain very central to planning and therefore need to be clearly understood. Second, the approaches used in this investigation can be applied critically to the use of any popular language and terminology that enters the planning lexicon.