Planning Preparation at www.japanese-home-gardens.com

Looking back, several separate strands of development in our home reading scheme seem very clear. It is easy to use hindsight to improve on reality but I will try to avoid it by reminding myself at the outset what exceedingly hard work the scheme was for everyone involved. It was not just in the planning preparation and preparation stages, not solely in the frantic exercise of the launch - a period of about three weeks - but in the continuous daily practice of monitoring, talking, recording, meeting, supporting and yet more planning preparation. Maintenance and revitalization were crucial factors from the first week of the scheme's operation. A few preliminary factors, I believe, are of overriding importance in the success of the first eighteen months.

We began nine weeks of planning preparation and preparation in which staff took part, shared in decision-making and moved on to the detailed, almost pernickety, development of strategies, materials and organization. And this painstaking approach was a most influential factor in die success of our scheme. Every imagined pitfall was sought out in advance, responses to probable questions and problems were prepared.

The real task of the planning preparation board therefore should be—and is, in those communities where planning preparation is taken seriously—to serve as a research arm to the executive. "Pure" planning preparation, planning preparation according to theory, is a practical impossibility, for every executive decision is weighted by many factors of politics, expediency, finance, and local pressure. A conscientious executive and legislative body, nevertheless, can be assisted greatly in making decisions, if presented with the full implications, city-wide, of the alternatives.