From the editor

Abstract

Why are there significantly fewer registered members at the South African Council for Planners or the South African Planning Institute than was the case a decade ago?No simple answer for this complex problem exists. Part of the problem however lies in the global change in the nature of the planning profession itself which has moved away from a process that exercises control over land in the public interest. Planning has transformed moving away from a physical approach in terms of which human beings and society are spatially arranged in a rational manner towards a more communicative role in which the “babblers” referred to in J.H. van den Berg’s Gedane Zaken (1977) are now setting the tone. And many of these “babblers” are positioned in the economic world since there is more money to be made there than in the public sector.