are themselves coherent entities composed of interconnected and interdependent parts. A city can in this way be conceptualised as a system with interrelated parts of different land uses, connected by transport and other communications. The aim of urban planning thereby becomes that of planning and controlling the system. Similar ideas had been put forward by Geddes, who had seen cities and their regions as analogous to organisms, though they did not receive much attention while planning was dominated by architects. The idea of the city as a system meant that it became critical for planners to understand how cities functioned. It also meant that a change to one part in a city would have effects on others parts as well. There were also doubts raised about the goal of producing detailed blueprints of how cities should look like in the end, instead suggesting the need for more flexible plans with trajectories instead of fixed futures. Planning should also be an ongoing process of monitoring and taking action in the city, rather than just producing the blueprint at one time. The systems approach also necessitated taking into account the economic and social aspects of cities, beyond just the aesthetic and physical ones. Rational process approach The focus on the procedural aspect of planning had already been pioneered by Geddes in his Survey-Analysis-Plan approach. However, this approach had several shortfalls. It did not consider the reasons for doing a survey in the first place. It also suggested that there should be simply a single plan to be considered. Finally, it did not take into account the implementation stage of the plan. There should also be further action in monitoring the outcomes of the plan after that. The rational process, in contrast, identified five different stages: (1) the definition of problems and aims; (2) the identification of alternatives; (3) the evaluation of alternatives; (4) implementation: (5) monitoring. This new approach represented a rejection of blueprint planning. Incrementalism Beginning in the late 1950s and early 1960s, critiques of the rational paradigm began to emerge and formed into several different schools of planning thought. The first of these schools is Lindblom's incrementalism. Lindblom describes planning as "muddling through" and thought that practical planning required decisions to be made incrementally. This incremental approach meant choosing from small number of policy approaches that can only have a small number consequences and are firmly bounded by reality, constantly