Visioning in strategic planning, theory, practice and evaluation

Abstract

"Vision" is a term that has been increasing found in planning documents during the late 1980s and 1990s. "Visioning" is the name given to a number of techniques that have come into use in connection with strategic planning during the same period. A fair amount has been written about how to do visioning and how to create visions but almost nothing has been undertaken in terms of a critical analysis. This research began with a thorough examination of available literature on vision and visioning both within planning and beyond. The principal methodological approach to the literature involved content analysis. A survey of municipalities in the Province of Ontario was conducted to determine how widespread the practice of visioning has been and what was the nature of the plans produced. Forty-four case studies are cited. In depth interviews were conducted with a dozen key informants. These were public and private sector practitioners who had conducted visioning exercises. A pluralistic methodology was used which involved program evaluation, emergent evaluation and naturalistic approaches. Initially it was discovered that there is not one meaning of the terms vision and visioning but as many as twenty different meanings. It was found that while present proponents of visioning claim to be part of a long tradition, there is little similarity between what was done in the past and what is being done today. There is little or no commonality in the various forms of visioning techniques. While it was found that practitioners of visioning often possess good intuitions about their work, the underlying philosophy on which the practice of visioning is based is seldom articulated and not at all well understood by professional planners of by the public. Some of the assumptions made by proponents of visioning can be substantiated by independent research. Many of these assumptions, however, are either contradictory, unfounded and/or unprovable. The effective planning use of the vision concept, that is of having a clear picture of the future, depends on achieving a much better understanding of the theory behind the approach and of having a much better understanding of the meanings of the terms in use than is presently evident in the planning profession.