Planning. Planning is important, but not as important as everything associated with implementation.

Planning is usually top-down. When planning is top-down, there is usually ... almost always ... significant resistance to the implementation. This may or may not be justified, but it must be taken into consideration.

My experience has been that most development planning is poor ... with planners not taking fully into consideration the key constraints and issues that will impede success. In my view too much work goes into planning and far too little into the management and oversight of implementation. Good implementation can compensate for poor planning, but good planning cannot solve the problem of poor implementation. But it is worse. There are no money flows of significance in planning, but there are major money flows in implementation, and these money flows need to be accounted for and managed in an appropriate way and not left open for all sorts of corruption in inappropriate behavior.

Planning and goals. The goals of progress should be to build benefit for the community ... to benefit people in the place. Most planning is done for the benefit of people other than the community ... it can be politicians or corporate investors. If the outside interests get enough benefit, the interest of the local community is going to be ignored, especially when the planning only has a focus on the money profit aspect of the economic activity.