The limits of planning for equity emerge from institutional emphases on certainty, which are often antithetical to the social and economic variables that surround land-use. This is evident in plans and processes that operate within the status quo of existing power structures. The result is a fundamental disagreement in planning on what it is that is equitable—outcomes, processes, or power? On the one hand, communicative theorists prescribe participatory processes that allow diverse interests to compete equally using rational deliberation. On the other hand, Foucauldians question whether any process is meaningful under the dominating power of the growth coalition.

Given the deep tension between the primacy of process and the primacy of power, the theoretical question raised is—do participatory processes balance the power of the growth coalition in planning for equity? The associated question for advocacy planning practice is—what is the appropriate role for participatory processes in planning for equity? These questions lead us the extent to which plans should address the equity impacts of large-scale development, and the limits of plans and planning processes.

The solution presented in this dissertation is to allow the disempowered objects of planning to become the subjects of a power-process within a social movement. The power wielded by the dominant growth coalition is balanced by uncertainty in the plural planning processes. Thus the role of planning is to explicitly determine the limits of a plan within outcomes that are determinable with relative degree of certainty, and beyond these limits, to subject outcome uncertainty to proportional process uncertainty.

The "Community Benefits Agreement" is a development agreement between a public or private developer and a community coalition. Two case studies, the expansion of LAX in Los Angeles, and the Ballpark Villages in San Diego, are models of participatory deliberation that is empowering to stakeholder groups. Unlike individual and discursive forms of empowerment that dissipate when a project is approved, the community coalition approach aims at long-term redistribution of power.