Planning,Policy and the Public Interest: Planning Regimes and Planners' Ethics and Practices

A substantive Public Interest criterion promotes planning area residents' welfare, absent countervailing public policy considerations. This criterion is applied to appraise planning practices in two planning regimes in the West Bank of Palestine: the British Mandate and the Israeli occupation. Detailed analysis of these planning systems' institutions, land policies, statutory plans and development control shows that planners in both regimes acted in the Public Interest as they saw it. But under the British Mandate there was no conflict between the two considerations, while the Israeli occupation policy promoting Israeli interests overrides the welfare of the Palestinian population. This conclusion invites reflection on the interaction between planning regimes and the ethics of planners' practices.