Planning for Leisure: The Commercial and Public Sectors

In this chapter we seek to identify key features of planning activity in both the public and commercial sectors of the leisure industries. Although there are distinctive literatures for planning in both sectors, clearly planning as an activity, and theories about planning as a process, enjoy common features. Planning is an activity which involves the attempt by an actor or actors to establish conditions which are likely to be favourable to the achievement of some desired outcome. This may involve providing a community with facilities and services through which some of its members can meet some of their wants or ‘needs’, or it may involve the development of strategies which allow a commercial organisation to exploit profit opportunities in certain market segments. In both cases there exists in the literature a range of material indicating how the planner should go about achieving those aims (though much of this is not specific to the leisure field). Such literature may be prescriptive, indicating how planners ought to plan, or it may be evaluative, analysing how in fact planners do go about developing plans. This review will draw on both types of literature, but the reader should bear in mind that evaluating these types of commentary involves the use of different criteria.