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Functionally, planning is a human process, composed of many steps and techniques, that links goals and knowledge to desired action and outcomes.

[Big Yawn Here!]

That tedious, technocratic and superficial definition of planning would not attract many to the profession. What makes planning intellectually exciting and socially compelling is its inherent multi-disciplinary deep dive into the makeup of those goals, the etymology and completeness of our individual and collective knowledge, the history and aims of those “desired” actions, the measure (or mis-measure) of the purported outcomes, and the engagement and governance structures that serve to invite, corral or inhibit civic discourse about the commons, about our lives here together.

Planning is a “helping profession”…

Planning is a “helping profession” and it is typically (under)paid and (under)valued accordingly. At their best, planners serve society by acting as the adult on the planet, providing access to a more connected mind, heart and stomach, allowing us to create, preserve and digest experience in order to develop the systems and infrastructure needed to serve billions of people who may have to focus more directly on survival.

Planning is an essentially human endeavor. It’s action-oriented, and can easily be perverted by an Apollonian view of the possibilities of the human project under the direction of human egos. So, that continuum that is my logo is also razor sharp, threatening those who tread upon it.

My view of planning, and of the reality it’s nestled in, is best captured by the holographic universe that cascades down, fractal by fractal, from the most unconditioned state (termed the Godhead by most religions) to the most limited forms—rocks, perhaps, and to a lesser extent, people, when they are prisoners of their own patterns). My understanding of planning is informed, infused and inspired by my experience of livingness that animates everything in the shimmering suchness of this crazyfunny reality. I’m not claiming to live up to the standards implied by such a view; just that it’s there, in the background, felt in my body as knowingness.

Planning is an essentially human endeavor.

The way we do anything is the way we do everything. Various formulations of this observation of the need to attend to all matters, at all scales, have appeared in recent decades, often connected to meditation or therapy. In a grander view, the Navajo “beauty way” entreats us to walk in beauty on the way to beauty.

In planning, this applies to the need to model the society we want to be, even as we are in the mud trying to create the bricks for its foundation. It means paying attention (maybe more attention) to the present, as we work on remodeling the “future.” Too often I’ve seen even progressive institutions treat their own workforce, and by extension their various publics, shabbily, even in the pursuit of green, social justice goals. Careerism, fear, institutionalized deadness, pride, arrogance, greed – coming from the top, pinned into position by middle management satraps, infiltrating the ranks and poisoning the fruits of what could be. Or at the very least, dampening and delaying the benefits that could have been realized, by preventing them from emerging and ripening in the planning process itself.

May we all be nourished on the path.