La Planificación y desarrollo en América Latina y el Caribe

Abstract

When speaking about planning public policy for sustainable development in Latin America and the Caribbean, Social Work is one of the professional disciplines that, since the twentieth century, has significantly contributed to the understanding, analysis, and implementation of planning processes in the region.

Considering the actual historic moment, it is appropriate to resume the theoretical and methodological analysis about planning. Therefore, this article´s objective is to describe and analyze the origin and reproduction of the planning processes in the twentieth and twenty first centuries, using a socio historic perspective.

In a nutshell, the twentieth century was characterized by planning from the outside, with an emphasis on the economy, and therefore a prevalence of the traditional and strategic-situational planning. There is a departure from this focus in the first two decades of the twenty first century, and now planning is oriented towards sustainable development, inclusion, and social equality, with a coexistence of normative planning, situational planning, strategic planning, and prospective planning with public value.