===================== HES POSTING ===================== 
 
As a  former national/regional planner, I'm puzzled by the 
disappearance of national planning from the Economics 
and International Development Studies agenda since 1980.  In the 
1970s, I avidly read and quoted the writing on planning by such great 
economists as W. Arthur Lewis, Jan Tinbergen, Raul Prebisch, Albert 
Waterston, and Keith Griffin  (and also the work of such Public 
Administration Profs. as Aaron Wildavsky, Luther Gulick, and 
Bertram Gross). 
 
Around 1980 I disappeared from the world of national/regional 
planning,  and I have spent most 
of the last 16 years doing local-level land-use planning, urban 
design, and employment promotion, and also exploring urban 
planning history.   Recently I have been looking at the works of such 
New Deal proponents of national planning as Rexford Tugwell, Stuart 
Chase, Lewis Lorwin, and Lauchlin Currie. 
 
What happened to national planning?   W. Arthur Lewis, Tinbergen, 
Prebisch, and many other great crusaders have passed away, many 
national planning institutions have shrunk or disappeared, and the 
whole field seems to have "faded quietly."  Symbolically, on February 
1st this year, after 62 years with its old name, the National Planning 
Association in Washington DC changed its name to the National 
Policy Association. 
 
 Rather naively, I would like to ask "HOW DO YOU INTERPRET 
 THIS?" 
 
*   Has national planning really faded in most parts of the world? 
*   If so, why did it rise and why has it fallen? 
*   What are the best writings by economists and historians of economics 
     which might help me to interpret the fate of national planning? 
*   Is the fate of broad-scale regional planning somehow tied to that 
     of national economic and social planning? 
 
As you might guess, I can think of some possible explanations (Hayek, 
Thatcher, Reagan, the fall of the Soviet Union etc.), but none seem 
to counter the common-sense (and clearly anti-Soviet) logic of W. 
Arthur Lewis, Tinbergen etc.  What did I miss?  Who stuck the knife 
in so deep and so effectively?  I'd greatly welcome the chance to dialog 
with others on this topic. 
 
Ray Bromley 
Dept. of Geography & Planning 
The University at Albany - SUNY 
 
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