...the problems that planners must deal with are wicked and incorrigible ones, for they defy the efforts to delineate their boundaries and to identify their causes, and thus to expose their problematic nature. The planner who works with open systems is caught up in the ambiguity of their causal webs. Moreover, his would-be solutions are confounded by a still further set of dilemmas posed by the growing pluralism of the contemporary publics whose valuations of his proposals are judged against an array of different and contradicting scales.
-- Horst W. J. Rittel & Melvin M. Webber,
"Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning"
Policy Sciences 4 (1973) 167.
RETURN
edited 5/19/18
The links below connect to project proposals that have been developed by professional practitioners working with the following assumptions:
1. All proposals make a claim on resources.
2. These resources have generally already been allocated - in the minds of others, at least.
Consequently,
3. A new proposal has to persuade others that the reallocation of resources away from their own projects to the proposed one provides benefits to them that outweigh the costs.
4. The perspective from which a program proposal is viewed affects how the elements of that proposal are seen to function.
5. To any function of a program element can be associated typical justifications and criticisms.
Furthermore, it is assumed that
6. Proposals perceived to pursue commonly agreed upon values are enhanced by that perception; also,
7. Proposals constructed taking into account the cultural practices of the institution for which it is be proposed are enhanced by that consideration.*
For more on the theory underlying the construction of these projects see: