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

The master plan at one time was considered the main objective of city planning. It is now not so regarded. Many cities in the past acquired a plan, and there the planning ended. Present practice tends to view the master plan as only a preliminary step toward planning. It is a highly necessary step, because it gives the present picture and the objectives to be attained as of the present. Planning, however, is a dynamic process ; the city grows and changes, and every municipal action has far-reaching consequences.

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 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. 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.

Stavanger calls itself, and has been called above, a New Gateway to Norway, and as such it should come into consideration in your preliminary planning. You may now fly directly from New York to Stavanger, or from London to Stavanger, by SAS and you will find the city ready for you with at least two new hotels of high grade, the Atlantic and the Alstor.