The term ‘planning’ is used in so many different ways that there is often confusion about what people actually mean when they talk about planning or when they use words such as ‘plans’ and ‘planners’. Moreover, many of its uses are so broad that the basic elements of planning are difficult to identify and it cannot easily be distinguished from related activities, such as policy-making or plan implementation. It was partly this confusion over the use of the term planning which led one writer on the subject to call his article ‘If planning is everything, maybe it’s nothing’ (Wildavsky, 1973).