CC BY 4.0Tulumello, SimoneHealy, Patsy2024-01-312024-01-3120162468-064810.24306/plnxt.2016.03.001https://doi.org/10.24306/plnxt.2016.03.001https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14235/1313plaNext-Next Generation Planning Vol. 3 (2016): Questioning planning, connecting places and times, page 7-15Let us open this editorial introduction in an unusual way, made possible by plaNext’s innovative approach to peer-review. Let us quote a paragraph from one of the reviews to the articles of this issue, namely the review by Marco Allegra to Ignacio Castillo Ulloa’s article. One might suspect that this is a simplistic account of the functioning of the planning process: planners, after all, might be creative in their work; take risks (or not); simply rely on their professional expertise, but also use it in a strategic way to negotiate their role in the policy process; display a number of alternative, ‘non-planning strategies’; follow a private, particularistic or political agenda (rather than planning handbooks) in doing their job; cheat, lie, manipulate their clients, colleagues or the stakeholders in general. In sum, what the author presents as a dispute between two irreconcilable logics – between the rational, positivistic planner and the hysteric residents – might be part of a broader interaction between a ‘planner- actor’ and all the other participants to the planning processenopenaccesseditorial7-15