The article seeks to elaborate on Forester's notion of planner as a 'deliberative practitioner', aiming to add sensitivity to the institutional conditions of planning, focusing especially on Finland. In terms of trust, the concept of deliberative practitioner mostly focuses on interpersonal trust as a planner's resource in mediating particular interests. Thereby, when applied to the Finnish context, institutional trust may be undermined as a key resource for the Finnish planner's jurisdiction, justifying his/her proactive role and authority in bringing broader concerns to the planning agenda. This undermining prevents the acknowledgement of important institutional resources that the Finnish planner has in coping with the tensions between communicative ideals and the neoliberal realities. A more context-sensitive and institutionally responsive theory of communicative planning is needed, to help the planning professionals and other stakeholders conceive the deliberative ideals as supportive for the planners' institutionally strong agency. Hence the notion of "deliberative bureaucrat." The article seeks to develop an outline for such a theory by drawing on studies on legal culture, sociology of professions, deliberative democracy theory and the concept of trust.

During the past decades, the concept of public interest has been severely criticized. It nevertheless remains to be a key normative reference point against which public planning may be evaluated and justified. The article claims that there are multiple conceptions of public interest that coexist in everyday planning practice. These conceptions are grounded in the age-old debate on the duties of the State. In the article, four different approaches to public interest were recognized on the basis of two dimensions of the concept. These dimensions are individual/collective and regulation/non-regulation. The theoretical assumptions were tested with interview data of Finnish planning professionals. The coexistence of multiple conceptions of public interest was revealed. This ambiguity makes public interest dubious as a rhetorical tool. Without the explication of the discursive context, the concept is largely devoid of meaning. Thus, when truly seeking justification to planning decisions, with reference to "public interest", the explication of the context and the discursive framework applied is necessary.

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This briefing describes the research project The Future Concepts of Urban Housing (Urba), which was initiated in 2007 to develop new ideas, concepts and cooperative practices for Urban housing in the Helsinki metropolitan area. The area suffers from Urban sprawl, soaring prices and a lack of feasible and attractive housing alternatives as a result of the narrow and inflexible housing market. Moreover, the housing sector suffers from a lack of cooperation. Urba is a multi-disciplinary research project that brings together a wide range of stakeholders and actors in the housing sector. The first phase of the project has produced an initial selection of promising Urban housing concepts that will serve as the basis for the development phase. The development phase is structured in the form of a collective learning and invention process that involves a wide group of participants from the housing sector.

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