Expert and experiential knowledge in planning

The issue of expert and experiential knowledge has received increasing attention in conjunction with the contemporary surge in interest in post-positivist approaches in planning and policy-making. So far, few concrete methods have been put forward on how to evaluate these two types of knowledge in specific policy-making situations and thereby achieve their balanced use.

This paper presents two approaches that can be used to derive expert and experiential knowledge. It describes their application to two case studies, one in Sweden and one in Italy, where expert and experiential knowledge were generated and used in urban development plans. It also proposes a method for evaluating and integrating the two types of knowledge.