New Zealand’s Resource Management Act (RMA) was hailed as a radical new approach to planning that would both achieve better environmental outcomes and benefit developers by working rapidly and more efficiently. This book examines the lessons that can be learned by planning practitioners across the world. It focuses on the realities of implementing the RMA for the planning profession, the community and the political system within which planning must always operate. Offering a practitioner’s insight, the book looks at those strategies and techniques that have proved successful, and spells out what can be applied to the planning systems of other countries.