The planning theory literature, whilst engaging with the challenges that participation presents, has extolled the potential value of public participation. Advocates of participatory planning have argued that: ‘From our modernist reliance on state-directed futures and top-down processes, we have to move to more community-based planning, from the ground up, geared to community empowerment’ (Sandercock, 1998: 30). Incorporating the views of members of the public into planning decisions is seen to give greater legitimacy to those decisions (Buchy & Hoverman, 2000). ‘Collaborative planning’ has come to be something of a buzz word since the mid-1990s (Healey, 2003) and it has been contended that: ‘The participatory approach in the public planning domain has become institutionalized as a method of good planning practice’ and that ‘democratic principles and public participation have become increasingly accepted as means for balancing and rationalizing multiple interests and preferences’ (Kaza, 2006: 256). Within planning theory there is said to be a ‘new orthodoxy [which] clusters around the idea that the core of planning should be an engagement with a range of stakeholders, giving them voice and seeking to achieve planning consensus’ (Rydin, 2007: 54, see also Masuda et al., 2008).