The Renaissance of Comprehensive Planning: The Oregon Case

During the last decade, a popular pastime among planners and others has been to discredit the comprehensive plan and the process by which such plans are developed. Advocacy planning, strategic planning, policy planning, social planning, etc., were suggested alternatives to the traditional focus of planning-the comprehensive plan, The reasons for criticism were varied, but basically they boiled down to the fact that plans often ended up on shelves collecting dust. Plans failed as continuing guides to a wide variety of decisions since they were static end-state conceptions a supposedly better world. Plans and their associated regulatory devices were found inadequate to control or limit the effects of the market-plans were simply ineffective tools. So the searcH began for alternatives or modifications to the comprehensive plan.     

Is foreign direct investment good for the poor? A review and stocktake

Few issues in the development process raise as much heat as the role of the international private sector in the form of transnational corporations (TNCs) and foreign direct investment (FDI). This article reviews the most recent research on the impact of FDI on economic growth and poverty reduction in developing countries. A brief history of FDI is given. This is followed by discussion of the conceptual transmission mechanisms linking FDI, growth, and poverty. The available empirical evidence is then discussed. It is argued that it is not a question of whether FDI is good or bad for social and economic development, but that its impact is determined by the terms upon which FDI is accepted. Although overall the evidence on FDI, growth, and poverty is not conclusive, research has had a tendency to suggest that the benefits of FDI are linked to the FDI policy regime; and that the current orthodoxy of maintaining a highly liberal FDI policy regime leads to a situation whereby developing countries have a precarious trade-off to make between attracting FDI and maintaining policy instruments to extract the benefits of any inflows.