Development planning, as practised over the last 25 years, has been technocratic, politically isolated and naive. Planners have entered a blind alley, described as ‘narrow‐planning’, where professionalisation and division of labour have led to a concentration on documents rather than real‐world changes. Narrow‐planning is contrasted with ‘broad‐planning’, where data collection, the consultation of relevant interest groups, forecasting, the definition of objectives, plan construction, authorisation, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation, are linked, providing a model of a continuous, integrated planning process. The preconditions for the success of this model are discussed, and it is emphasised that planning is essentially a political process.