Do Plans Get Implemented? A Review of Evaluation in Planning

Abstract

The planning community has shown a curious lack of interest in developing methods to evaluate how successfully plans are implemented. Evaluation in planning has centered primarily on methods of comparing the impacts of alternative proposed plans. The methodological problems with evaluating implementation success are many, but they are not insurmountable. A typology of planning evaluation is offered here. The need to establish a separate, distinctive form of planning evaluation focused exclusively on evaluating the implementation success of plans is discussed. This call to develop and refine methods to evaluate plan implementation success coincides with the call by many theorists to develop better theories of planning based on a keener understanding of the realities of planning practice.