From the late 1980s, planning theorists including John Forester and Patsy Healey reframed planning as a communicative and deliberative process rather than a technical exercise in producing plans. Drawing on Jurgen Habermas's theory of communicative action, they argued that good planning works through inclusive dialogue, negotiation and the building of shared understanding among stakeholders. Healey's Collaborative Planning (1997) set out how institutions could be designed to support such reasoning across diverse interests. The approach put process, fairness and the management of conflict at the centre of practice.
It became the dominant theory of planning practice in the 1990s, recasting the planner as a facilitator of deliberation among stakeholders. Communicative planning shaped participatory procedures, consultation requirements and consensus-building methods.