Before PPPs – Strategic Planning

2.1 What are the objectives of strategic planning?

Strategic planning helps to ensure that PPPs are formulated in relation to the wider urban management function, with a focus placed on specific goals:

• to ensure that all options are explored – not just the PPP option – and that the most appropriate option is selected; and
• to ensure that the PPP is not developed as an isolated entity.

Ensuring that the partnership emerges from a strategic planning process is obvious and par for the course in some contexts, but not all. In some municipalities, strategic planning is neglected in the heat of the moment. Municipal decision-makers may be so keen to solve the problems by delegation that they fail to consider demand for services, service priorities, impacts and implications of their choices on city management and governance.