Planning for complex metropolitan regions: A better future or a more certain one?

Issues, organizations and plans interact in complex ways in metropolitan regions. Planning seeks to influence this interaction to produce a better future: But there are tensions between seeking a better future and a more certain one. The concept of planning as managing uncertainties is used to explore these tensions in two examples: the 1929 Regional Plan of New York and the SEQ 2001 Project in Australia. The article explores how uncertainties, the intentions and plans of organizations, and processes of agreement interact to affect the efforts of planners, visionary individuals, and governments to deliver plans for a better future