INTRODUCTION Planning is a decision making process that aims to controls development, design the environment, and site communication network and other facilities to ensure a livable workable and conducive community. The sole purpose of planning as a profession is to improve the communities we live in. The concerns of planners are not only for the present condition of the community but also for the future.
Professional planners facilitate decision making by creating the process by which residents, managers, public officials and city council members, and advocates work together to create a vision for the community, the goals the community wishes to achieve for itself, and the actions it will take to reach the goals (APA, 2008). The role of planners is to coordinate information and create a logical decision making process.
Planners identify and attempt to solve community environmental problems. They do this in collaboration with different agencies and diverse interest groups. Some other activities of a professional planner are urban design, research and analysis, public consultation, policy recommendations, implementation and management (Wikipedia, 2009)
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