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Issues and Developments in Planning in Wales Edited by P. N. COOKE Lecturer in Town Planning, U. W.I.S. T., Cardiff Ongoing Welsh planning research The brief papers comprising this edition of "Issues and Develop- ments in Planning in Wales" mark a new departure for this section of "Cambria" which, it is hoped, can become rather more than an occasional feature. The papers report ongoing academic research in the field of planning. In this instance all the research is based in U.W.I.S.T. Town Planning department, but it is anticipated that other researchers within and beyond Wales are working on what can broadly be termed "planning research", and it is hoped that this section can become something of a forum for this work. The aims of the "ongoing research" theme are simply: (i) to provide an outlet for researchers who wish to clarify ideas or communicate results of relevance to Welsh planning in the form of brief research notes, (ii) to enable researchers to communicate their work to coll- eagues who, unbeknown to them, may be interested or work- ing in similar areas, (iii) to encourage the development of planning-orientated research in the Welsh context. The papers which follow divide equally between rural and urban focii. Davies writes about the problems of data collection and analysis in attempting to explain the processes of second-home development in a part of Dyfed and offers a critical guide to the available literature. Bracken is concerned with the problems and opportunities provided by Census data for the classification of settle- ment types according to their socio-economic attributes, using multivariate methods. This approach, while common for urban areas, is relatively untried for a rural are a such as Powys about which he writes. In the urban context, Rees reports on a study of migration patterns at both aggregate and disaggregate levels in an economically declining area of industrial South Wales, and offers some preliminary explanations of the behaviour of returning in- migrants. Cooke's paper is mainly theoretical and poses questions about the nature, extent and direction of the power relations of planning authorities and briefly examines possible explanations for the collapse of recent planning proposals in Cardiff.