Characteristics of local development planning from the perspective of planning documents referring to selected tourist communes Local development planning (including the preparation of planning documents) as well as undertaking initiatives and tasks supporting local development (resulting from planning documents) play the key role in local development steering process. The objective of the hereby paper is to analyze planning documents prepared for the selected territorial self-government units (four tourism oriented communes located in Lower Silesia region) in relation to strategic planning qualities identification in particular communes and referring these qualities to the conditions of effective strategic planning (discussed in literature on public management). The conducted research results confirm that many strategic planning qualities, in the selected communes, may be responsible for lowering its effectiveness. The ones, which are mainly responsible for counteracting effective planning, are as follow: reducing SWOT analysis to just the method for listing strengths and weaknesses of communal development potential, as well as presenting only the opportunities and threats; the absence of new management tools and techniques application, including the scenario oriented method; uncritical transfer of patterns from strategies prepared for other communes and referring to planning documents more as the condition for obtaining external financing sources rather than an actual programme facilitating the accomplishment of developmental goals. In spite of the above, the improvement of planning process has been observed in communes, which in consequence should result in higher level of local development programmes practical usefulness.