Introduction

As has been argued by Grimm et al. (2000), the study of urban ecology can be divided into ecology in cities and ecology of cities. The former is studied by natural scientists and the latter by natural as well as social scientists. Many of the natural scientists have found that their scientific results and collected knowledge are only used to a small extent as underlying data in urban and land-use planning and design processes. The question is why?

For the integration of scientific results into the planning and design process, we have to know how those processes work. Over the past few centuries, planning processes have changed as society has developed. At the same time, the conceptualisation of planning processes has progressed. Here we are going to describe seven main modes of planning processes. The modes are: survey-analysis, rational, incrementalistic, mixed-scanning, stakeholder-driven, communicative, and strategic planning processes. On the one hand, we can see these different modes of planning as showing how planning has developed and changed over recent decades, and on the other hand, we can see the modes still working in parallel in different situations.

In what follows, partners involved in planning processes are separated into actors and stakeholders. By ‘stakeholders’ we mean those partners who have interests in the planning subject but are not necessarily as active in the process as the ‘actors’.