Abstract
The article examines whether community planners in Beijing can act as third-party mediators within a hierarchical planning system. A structure–agency framework is used to distinguish planners’ values, knowledge, and skills from the formal and informal institutions shaping their actions. The findings reveal substantial variation in practice: community planners often facilitate policy implementation and conflict mitigation on behalf of government, while only occasionally approximating the autonomous intermediary roles anticipated by communicative and collaborative planning theory.