Integrated Development Planning (IDP) has been characterized "as an approach to planning that involves the entire municipality and its citizens in finding the best solutions to achieve good long-term development" ("Integrated Development Planning..." 1). The South African system of IDP is a process by means of which municipalities prepare five year strategic plans reviewed annually in consultation with communities and stakeholders. Such plans seek "to promote integration by balancing social, economic, and ecological pillars of sustainability without compromising the institutional capacity required in the implementation, and by coordinating actions across sectors and spheres of development" (Coetzee 1). These IDPs are increasingly recognized in South Africa and elsewhere as having the capacity to achieve government priorities via strategic budgeting, priority setting, stakeholder participation, and ongoing sustainable development activities.
IDP is further recognized as particularly beneficial in enhancing the role of local governments through a methodology that is consultative, strategic, integrative, and implementation oriented. The IDP methodology uses four means to make the complexity of IDP manageable. It involves an event-centered approach in which planning is recognized as a sequence of organizational events rather than a sequence of planning tools. It differentiates between a generic IDP approach and specific planning tools and techniques. It aims at a user friendly language by avoiding planners' jargon. Finally, it unpacks the overall processes into five sequenced phases and related planning activities (Rauch 3-4).
The phases of the event centered IDP approach include analysis, strategy development, formulation of project proposals, screening and agreeing on project proposals, and approval. Planning events within this process are usually meetings or workshops in which specific outputs are achieved (Rauch 4)...