All rights reservedWagner, Magdalena2023-11-142023-11-142017978-989-99801-3-6 (E-Book)https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14235/952Book of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Spaces of Dialog for Places of Dignity, Lisbon, 11-14th July, 2017How to take into account various players’ values? How to balance interests of various parties engaged in city development? How to divide resources between various groups? How to prepare city strategies so that no one feels omitted? Urban planners face these questions all the time during their work. It is a challenge to meet the needs of several groups: developers, local authorities, lobbyists, environmental activists, and – last but not least - citizens. These are just few groups whose interests shall be considered and taken into account while preparing new plans and strategies. The purpose of the paper is to encourage a discussion on possible solutions and answers to the questions listed above. An overall description of the Polish spatial planning law is followed by presentation of methods derived from operational research as it seems that multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) might serve urban planners with several promising tools. Methods such as Analytic Hierarchy Process or PROMETHEE Group Decision Support System could aid the planning process at local or regional level. The paper offers a brief description of these methods and discusses examples of how to use them in everyday work of urban planners in order to make the policy making process more transparent and objective.EnglishopenAccessconferenceObject2571-2577