Read Now Strategic Planning and Decision: Modeling and Intuition (Applied Research Series (Center of Excellence in Planning) Book 1) DOC
BOOK DESCRIPTIONThe twenty-year international work in the development world in projects financed by the World Bank, USAID, DFID and JICA taught me the importance of experience and intuition, without which quantitative analysis and mathematical modeling have quite limited value. It confronted me with the harsh realities of data quality (or lack of), with conceptual dilemmas, such as decentralization versus de-concentration, as well as the brutal world of local and national politics in all those countries where I played the part of the “enlightened and enlightening guru” with a laptop in his hand.I hope and I pray that this book does not create the illusion that, once the quantitative techniques and procedures are mastered, one can solve any spatial, social and planning problem with a set of decently reliable data. What I hope is that, by reading it, and by playing with the preset databases and available software (MapDecision), one realizes the value of combining, as creatively as possible, the mathematical modeling with experience and intuition, in a group setting, in addressing these complex and stubborn problems. THE AUTHOR - M.Enache
