Introduction
Today planning and especially national planning face a rather important dilemma. It has been a fact that in recent past, there is a loss in the interest on the quantitative methods and analysis and increasing popularity of soft techniques, parallel to the use of limited quantitative analysis. In this change, the shift from comprehensive and rational planning to communicative planning has been very important. The planning under the communicative rationality, focused on building frameworks that aimed consensus generation process depending on socially constructed priorities, paid limited attention to problem solving and identifying quantitative definite targets. However, in the contemporary period, planners are increasingly becoming unsatisfied on the outcomes and looking for new alternative approaches. Why did the quantitative analysis, which had the prime importance in planning in 1950s and 1960s, loose its importance in the post 1980s period?
Why today there is increasing criticisms on the decreasing importance of quantitative models in regional planning? What is current role of quantitative methods in planning? First, the changing rationality in which the planning is based upon; second, the changes in growth theories and third, the changes in spatial/regional development theories. These three streams of theoretical debates are very much interconnected and constitute the different segments of economic and political regime in a certain period. The brief analysis on these theoretical concerns introduced in the paper clearly shows why we have the problems of quantitative methods in the recent past and explains the current approach to quantitative models.
Quantitative techniques and it contribution to national planning and development
While the contemporary idea of planning is rooted in the Enlightenment tradition of modernity, in the 20th century