Planning and the Intelligence of Institutions : Interactive Approaches Between Institutional Design and Institution Building

The role of social interaction and of its institutional patterns in realizing an effective linkage between knowledge and action is a classic issue of planning theory. As such, it is also linked to shifting conceptions of the effectiveness of planning and of its normative aims. This study of insitution design and building attempts to address the subject from an interactive and action-oriented perspective, as an invitation to think of planning - in an attitude of critical pragmatism - not merely, or primarily, as an institutionalized practice, as a function of institutions, but as a factor of institutionalization: as a form of generative action, constitutive of forms of institutionalization of social practices and, as such, of potential resources for their experimentation.