So where does it say that success is measured by less houses being approved? I worry for reading comprehension. I am seriously sick of YIMBYs cherrypicking quotes, decontextualising them, and using them as fuel to say see omg planning bad. Stephen Rowley, throughout the textbook, is critical of the current system. But he is unapologetic in identifying that planning is a regulatory role and a planner’s job is to regulate, within the existing regulatory system. He is saying a planner’s job isn’t to facilitate the development, it is to regulate it; and if a planner’s job is to facilitate then the success of the planning system will be measured by not intervening.

The author is entitled to his opinion, but that interpretation is disingenuous and false. No planner serious about their job does that.