How does the way that those involved in policy planning talk affect environmental planning? Can negotiation be turned into consensus-building and deliberation? How do planners legitimate their activities through discourse, and what are the prospects of a rationality of sustainable development? Using a new institutionalist, theoretical framework, Yvonne Rydin tackles these key questions.

• 1: Environmental Planning: Introducing the Discourse Approach


• 2: Discourse and Environmental Planning


• 3: Discourses, Communication, and Discursive Strategies within Institutions


• 4: Conflict and Consensus in Environmental Planning


• 5: Rationalizing the Environmental Policy Process


• 6: Discourses of Environmental Rationality: Three Rationalities


• 7: Air Pollution Control and Air Quality Management


• 8: Housing Land Policy


• 9: Local Agenda 21


• 10: The Prospects for a Sustainable Development Rationality


• Appendix