Affirming new directions in planning theory: Comanagement of protected areas

In recent years the conservation management literature has seen many, calls for comanagement of parks and protected areas. The rationale for this approach to protected area management has come from the experience of park, managers struggling to integrate the protected area with the socioeconomic fabric of the surrounding region. This rich experience informs calls for comanagement. A theoretical rationale for and explanation of comanagement, however, have been slow in coming. This article considers the trajectory of change in planning theory over the past 50 years and demonstrates that planning theorists have converged on similar ground to managers of protected areas. Developing cooperative relationships with local stakeholders and sharing the burden of management responsibilities have emerged as a potential new paradigm in natural resource planning. Protected areas therefore provide a context in which many of the ideas and concepts, much debated among scholars of planning, have been empirically tested.