Planning with complexity - Judith Eleanor Innes

Analyzing emerging practices of collaboration in planning and public policy to overcome the challenges complexity, fragmentation and uncertainty, the authors present a new theory of collaborative rationality, to help make sense of the new practices. They enquire in detail into how collaborative rationality works, the theories that inform it, and the potential and pitfalls for democracy in thetwenty-first century. Representing the authors' collective experience based upon overthirty years of research and practice, this is insightful reading for students, educators, scholars, and reflective practitioners in the fields of urban planning, public policy, political science and public administration.

Judith E. Innes is Professor in theDepartment of City and Regional Planning at theUniversity of California, Berkeley, USA.

David E. Booher is Senior Policy Advisor and Adjunct Professorat theCenter for Collaborative Policy, California State University, Sacramento, USA.

"Anyone who works in the public policy arena needs to know what Innes and Booher have to say about collaborative rationality." -Professor Lawrence Susskind, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology www.theconsensusbuildingapproach.blogspot.com

"...a wonderful bringing together of 15 years work... the best thing tocome out in our field in the past decade" - Professor Leonie Sandercock, School of Community and Regional Planning, The University of British Columbia

"'[this] book captures the theory and practice of collaborative governance in an accessible way that students can relate to and helps them to begin to reflect on how to incorporate some of this wisdom into their own thinking, practice, and research.'" - Professor Will Butler, Florida State University

"They illustrate [their theory of collaborative rationality] primarily with reference to six diverse case studies of attempts at collaborative planning approaches across the United States. These case studies cover issues relating to water resources, community policing, decommissioning of military sites, comprehensive planning at state level, and growth management, and are discussed in a sequence that flows from the most to the least successful, allowing the authors to develop some key theoretical and practical insights into what works and what does not." - Environment and Planning

"Innes and Booher have provided an important book for those interested generally in the design and practice of policymaking processes, which gives particular attention to the microdynamics of the interactive practices of policy making. It should help those many researchers who are examining particular instances of collaborative policy making, to help them position their work as a contribution to advancing understanding of such processes. And it should be required reading for all those in the planning theory field interested in the debates surrounding communicative planning theory and collaborative planning." - Patsy Healey, Journal of Planning Theory & Practice

"It is not often that one can describe a planning book as really imparting wisdom, but Planning with Complexity is an exception to the rule... This book not only contributes to contemporary planning theory - by grounding it in practice evidence - but also is highly relevant to work on environmental justice and on science and environmental planning more generally. It is to be profoundly hoped that it will be taken up across disciplines to get its message across."- Yvonne Rydin, Journal of Planning Education and Research