Planning Under Pressure: The Strategic Choice Approach

...this is an authorative text, on the ideas behind, and the application of strategic choice, based on twenty years' accumulated experience of two authors who were centrally concerned with the development of this unique approach to practical planning problems...it is exemplary in its use of examples throughout the book and thus recommended as a text book for students on all levels.
Professor Andreas Faludi, Professor of Planning, Universiteit Van Amsterdam
...offers a range of practical, effective methods which will enable people to analyze interconnected problems and work adaptively towards decisions.
Bibliographia
Planning under Pressure confronts the realities which planners must face when tackling complex decisions in a strategic way: uncertainty, shortage of time, limited resources and conflicting interests and demands. It offers a range of practical, effective methods which will enable people to analyze interconnected problems and work adaptively towards decisions...especially useful in stimulating collaboration between people of different disciplines, outlooks and skills.
Bibliographia
An excellent book, admirably updating the earlier book by Friend and Jessop. This will be the main 'rational methodology' text for the next 2 years at least.
Mr T B Smith, Department of Urban Planning, Leeds Polytechnic
What is original about this book is that it provides an elegant and coherent framework for working in this mode in a way that turns out to be both rigorous and flexible... Planning under pressure is both a clear introduction and an authoritative manual. In addition to informing and guiding, it may well play a third and equally important role: that of provoking... the authors challenge educators to design appropriate learning programs based on the philosophy and methods of strategic choice. I believe that this book provides ample stimulation for such a response. If it serves also to provoke re-appraisal of the ways in which many planning teams currently operate, and of the ways in which decision-making is currently taught, Planning under Pressure will be successful beyond its stated aims.
Urban Policy and Research
...inspection of the text does reveal not only a logic,but a rich experience of hundreds of talkshops in which real-world planning problems are subjected to an operations research,managerial treatment.
Environment and Planning A
This book represents a milestone in the history of an approach to decision aiding which is now over 20 years old... The book gives a clear impression of how strategic choice works and the types of situations in which it has been used by its proponents... There are many ideas and observations in the 300 pages of this book, which many readers of this journal will find valuable and interesting... There is a complete discussion of earlier literature at the end of the book and selected readings drawn from this will enable any reader to become fully aware of the history, theory, practice, and potential of an example of systems practice.
SYSTEMS PRACTICE
The strength of this book is that it gives a systematic exposition of the whole approach: the better known parts are placed in the whole. And the skill with which this is done cannot be too highly praised. The book is long, but clearly and logically structured. The text is easy to read and the meaning never obscure.
Town Planning Review.
There is little doubt that this is an important book, and a welcome one too: for it motivates, describes and illustrates the strategic-choice approach. It will undoubtedly become a classic of operational research, a constant source of reference for those working with and facilitating groups of strategic decision-makers. It is a book full of ideas and suggestions to enable decision-makers to identify, focus upon and think constructively about aspects of the issue before them... It has many subtitles, bit its strength derives, in the main, from the marvellously direct way in which the many diagrams it uses relate complex concepts to the issues at hand... I welcome and value this book. It is well written, and full of sound advice and experiences. It deserves a wide readership.
The Journal of the Operational Research Society. VOL 39 (1988)
It is of course nothing new to have the members of planning teams out of their chairs and working with newsprint and gusto. What is original about this book is that it provides an elegant and coherent framework for working in this mode in a way turns out to be both rigorous and flexible... Planning under Pressure is both a clear introduction and an author-itative manual. In addition to informing and guiding, it may well play a third and equally important role: that of provoking... The authors challenge educators to design appropriate learning programs based on the philosophy and methods of strategic choice. I believe that this book provides ample stimulation for such a response. If it serves also to provoke a re-appraisal of the ways in which many planning teams currently operate, and of the ways in which decision-making successful beyond its stated aims.
Urban Policy and Research. VOL 6 NO 3.
John Friend's contribution to the study of public policy has never been as fully acknowledged in either the academic world or the world of practice as the quality of that work would lead one to expect... This book, with his colleague Alan Hickling who has worked with John Friend on many projects, is the latest product of that work. It is designed as an 'introductory guide and a quick reference hand book' to the strategic choice approach. It is very much a practical guide. Well-presented, the text is supplemented with 89 full-page diagrams spread through the book, summarizing and illustrating the approach. The book is clear, easily followed and readily understood... For the very real merits of this work, its clarity of exposition and the importance of ideas suggests that an exposition of the relevance of the approach in other fields (for which some of the basic work has been done, as references in the book show) would bring rich dividends.
Public Administration.
Inspection of the text does reveal not only a logic, but a rich experience of hundreds of talkshops in which real-world planning problems are subjected to an operations research, managerial treatment.
Environment and Planning A, VOL 21 PAGES 549-566 1989