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Why Cities Need Strategic Planning Essay

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Strategic planning is concerned with the formulation and evaluation of urban development policies and the mechanisms put in place in for implementing those policies, whilst strategic planning in urban development is generally referred to as a process that allows the articulation of the initiatives of public and private stakeholders which seek synergies for the development of a city (Steinberg, 2003). The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of strategic planning for government administration and discuss the importance of strategic planning in cities. Strategic plans are typically long term plans that consider different scenarios in order to test assumption, set specific goals, investigate strengths and examine weaknesses. Derived …show more content…

36). Today, the increased attention for strategic planning is a response to rapid and extensive changes in society such as the introduction of market economies and privatization, increasing environmental awareness, more attention for sustainable development, decentralisation issues and structural adjustments in public spending (Davidson, 1996).

Moreover, strategic planning is long term planning, usually for the next three to five years at the minimum. Therefore it is a continuous process of making present tactical decisions systematically and with the greatest knowledge of their futurity, at the same time organising the efforts needed to carry out these decisions against the expectations through organised systematic feedback (Bryson, 2004). Strategic management must rely on long run forecasts and predications, thus a sizeable amount of uncertainty is always present. For this reason, it is a critical task for planners to recognize and address uncertainties, and to tailor the planning processes to meet particular problem conditions (Halla, 2002). Strategic activities will support government administration in dealing with their political and operational environments by helping them focus on specific goals and objectives that stem from both political mandates as well as operational management geared towards efficiency and effectiveness (Moore 1995). In other words by conducting strategic planning it will help city officials to mitigate the

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