This article reviews the major approaches of program evaluation and evaluation in planning. The challenges to evaluating plans and planning are discussed, including the reliance on ex ante evaluations, a lack of outcome evaluation methodologies, the attribution gap, and institutional hurdles. Areas requiring further research are also highlighted, including the need to develop appropriate evaluation methodologies; creating stronger linkages between program evaluation and evaluation in planning; examining the institutional and political contexts guiding the use (and misuse) of evaluation in practice; and the importance of training and educating planners on evaluation.
New Urbanism (NU) is an urban planning movement that aims to curtail suburban sprawl. Critics argue that NU actually contributes to sprawl. However, such claims overlook the diverse ways in which NU is implemented. This article contributes to the study of suburban development by examining two different types of NU projects in suburban Minneapolis–St. Paul and comparing these with a control case. Using surveys of the projects’ built environments and residents’ travel behavior and attitudes toward neighbors, the article finds that the NU projects break away from the physical and functional dimensions of sprawl, yet reproduce the social dimensions.
In 2005 the Canadian federal government initiated a New Deal for Cities and Communities. The program, which involved bilateral agreements with provincial governments, promised substantial funding to municipalities to promote integrated community sustainability through capacity building and infrastructure renewal. We evaluate the content of sustainability plans and the processes that produced them in one region: Atlantic Canada. The findings suggest that although the state mandate and funding resources produced a large number of sustainability plans, changing national political priorities and local desperation for economic and population growth undermined the program’s initial commitment to and potential for environmental and social sustainability.
Current sources of data on rental housing—such as the census or commercial databases that focus on large apartment complexes—do not reflect recent market activity or the full scope of the US rental market. To address this gap, we collected, cleaned, analyzed, mapped, and visualized eleven million Craigslist rental housing listings. The data reveal fine-grained spatial and temporal patterns within and across metropolitan housing markets in the United States. We find that some metropolitan areas have only single-digit percentages of listings below fair market rent. Nontraditional sources of volunteered geographic information offer planners real-time, local-scale estimates of rent and housing characteristics currently lacking in alternative sources, such as census data.
Global climate change increases the necessity for mid-latitude cities to tackle urban heat. Climate change adaptation plans are common policy mechanisms to approach the issue. This paper studies the city climate development plan (StEP Klima) of Berlin, Germany, by using Constellation Analysis. We analyzed to what extent StEP Klima might trigger planning and governance processes for the implementation of heat stress measures. Berlin’s plan brought attention to the local risks of urban heat and possible strategies. To translate its aims into decision makers’ everyday governance and planning practice, institutionalized guidance and an activation of policy instruments is needed.
Urban security (or public safety), rather than a "social problem" tackled neutrally, is an issue of political contestation, owing to its threefold gist as right to not be victims of crime, policy goal, and social demand. This article, highlighting how planning research has neglected to engage with contemporary paradoxes of security, makes the case for a critical approach to crime prevention and explores the embeddedness of urban security in planning practice in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area. We debate the relations of urban security with changing planning paradigms and political approaches around the vertical (multilevel/multiscale) and horizontal distribution of planning practices.
This article examines the relationship between immigrants’ residence in an ethnic enclave and use of alternative modes of transportation. Ethnic enclaves may offer stronger social networks, which may affect mode choice. Using the 2012–2013 California Household Travel Survey, I find that immigrants residing in ethnic enclaves have higher rates of household-external carpooling for nonwork trip purposes than immigrants residing outside ethnic enclaves. I find no difference in the rate of transit use, once built environment characteristics are taken into account. External carpools require arrangements between people in different households, and thus may reflect the social network effect of ethnic enclaves.
In this article, we examine recent efforts by the federal government to promote regional planning that incorporates social equity into sustainability and livability principles through the Sustainable Communities Regional Planning Grant (SCRPG). We use a plan quality analysis framework to examine grant proposals from the 2010 awardees. The analysis asks whether these regional plan proposals represent a new equity planning or if regional-scale equity policy remains obscured in quality of life arguments. We conclude with respect to the Krumholz model that regional equity planning may signal commitment to equity policy, but that regional capacity to act for equity is lacking.
What methodologies do we write about, and what type of research do we actually conduct and build upon in planning? Since the 1980s, planners have argued for more qualitative research within an interpretative paradigm. A content analysis of articles in Journal of Planning Education and Research do show a majority of qualitative studies, but cast within a pragmatic rather than an interpretative paradigm. More recently, planners have reiterated the need for qualitative research, especially participatory and applied forms of research within a critical social science paradigm. Some recommendations for planning education and research are discussed.
This paper draws on data from the Montgomery County, Maryland, Moderately Priced Dwelling Unit (MPDU) program to analyze the effectiveness of inclusionary zoning as an affordable homeownership strategy. We find that the MPDU program has successfully produced a large number of affordable homeownership units since the program’s inception, particularly condominium and townhome units located in areas where new residential construction has occurred. While MPDU homes did not appreciate as rapidly as other market-rate housing during the housing boom, MPDUs realized significant equity gains and saw smaller price declines during the housing bust.
This article provides an overview of the types of educational goals, pedagogical approaches, and substantive topics in planning education related to issues of diversity and social justice. The study is based on a content analysis of one hundred syllabi collected from more than seventy instructors from North American planning schools during 2012–2013. It presents a synthetic summary of the range of educational goals and pedagogical approaches. It describes the curricular content in the form of substantive topics. The article is intended to support efforts to incorporate issues of diversity and social justice in planning education.
Residential relocation choice is affected by numerous factors, but gasoline prices as a potential factor have not been investigated. This study examines gasoline price changes and residential relocation choice using 1996–2008 American Housing Survey data. We found higher gasoline prices are associated with a higher percentage of movers choosing locations closer to workplaces. The findings have implications for addressing the impacts of volatile gasoline prices on land use planning and policies; resilient "smart cities or communities" are one possible solution.
The Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact (SFRCCC) has been highlighted as a regional climate change governance exemplar for land use planning. After six years, we find the compact has given momentum to local climate change planning through the Regional Climate Action Plan and provides a foundation for adaptive governance for climate change adaptation. We also find aspects of the compact lacking in terms of representation, decision making, learning, and problem responsiveness. Efforts are now needed to scale down implementation and scale up governance and planning more systematically to address climate change adaptation needs at multiple levels.
The research examines the shift from flood-resistant policies and plans to flood resilience. We use a case study of New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina to illustrate this unfolding process and the emergence of a "living with water" approach to green infrastructure. The article highlights the challenges of this shifting policy landscape through the case of the Lafitte Greenway, a green infrastructure project that transformed a three-mile corridor of underutilized public land into a linear park running through flood-prone neighborhoods. Through the experience of creating this greenway, planners in New Orleans learned valuable lessons about US disaster rebuilding policies and how to implement green infrastructure in urban neighborhoods.
Sea-level rise (SLR) presents risks to communities and ecosystems because of hazards like coastal erosion. In order to adapt, planners and the public seek estimates of shoreline change with high confidence and accuracy. The complexity of shorelines produces considerable uncertainty in the timing, location and magnitude of change. We present and discuss a probabilistic shoreline model for SLR planning. Using the coast of Maui as an illustrative case, we compare this model to a common deterministic model. We discuss the advantages of a probability-based model for SLR adaptation, including for prioritizing actions, phasing, visualizing risk and uncertainty, and improving adaptive management.
Subdivision control has long been a central pillar of planning. Nonetheless, many American states statutorily exempt entire classes of land division from local subdivision control. This legal analysis therefore asks the following: Which land divisions are localities actually enabled by statute to regulate as "subdivisions"? Which are exempted from subdivision control? What are the implications for development and planning, particularly at the exurban fringe? This fifty-state review reveals diverse ways subdivisions are defined and particular divisions—involving no new streets, large parcels, or small numbers of lots—commonly exempted from regulation, and possible consequences for managing rural sprawl.
Rural regions and their communities are principal locations for a range of crucial planning issues, yet the practice of rural planning has remained at the margins. In response to growing interest, we explored the current state and future possibilities of rural planning by conducting interviews with ten highly experienced US and Canadian rural specialists. Inductive analysis of their responses, which we supplemented with relevant literature, yielded contemporary definitions of "rural" and "rural planning and development." The study highlights the major rural planning challenges, and opportunities in terms of "context-appropriate" practices attuned to rural communities and regions, globalization, and multilevel governance.
How and why small municipalities promote sustainability through planning efforts is poorly understood. We analyzed ordinances in 451 Maine municipalities and tested theories of policy adoption using regression analysis.We found that smaller communities do adopt programs that contribute to sustainability relevant to their scale and context. In line with the political market theory, we found that municipalities with strong environmental interests, higher growth, and more formal governments were more likely to adopt these policies. Consideration of context and capacity in planning for sustainability will help planners better identify and benefit from collaboration, training, and outreach opportunities.
This paper investigates a common mode of visual communication in planning practice, the use of maps to regulate urban development. Holding equal legal status with the text, the zoning map was invented in the early twentieth century as a tool for implementing municipal policy and, although debated, modified, and sometimes repurposed over the past nine decades, it remains standard. Mundane and largely taken for granted, the zoning map itself has aroused little scholarly interest. However, as an image of the city and as a graphic intermediary used in administrative processes, it reveals how planning thought is embedded in planning tools.
Using the Fremont Unified School District in Fremont, California, as the study area, this study estimates the impact of school quality on house prices and finds that a one-standard-deviation increase in the quality of elementary, middle, and high schools significantly increases house prices—by 20 percent for an average-priced house. I urge urban planners and policy makers to explicitly recognize the impact of schools on residential segregation, to consider access to high-quality K–12 education when developing plans and policies, to collaborate with school districts to improve educational quality, and to provide incentives for the construction of affordable housing in neighborhoods with high-quality schools.
How has the diversity of post-1965 immigration to the United States influenced newcomers’ housing experiences and civil society’s housing support systems? Planning scholars have shown immigration’s role in revitalizing cities and housing markets, but we have done less to parse the variety of housing problems that immigrants experience and the ways civil society addresses them. This article examines the recent history of civil society organizations’ housing support strategies in Chinese, Southeast Asian, and African communities in Philadelphia. We find that the diversity within and between groups has shaped largely distinct "institutional ecosystems" and approaches to housing support.
State funds for surface transportation are not only key for roadway investments but generally instrumental for transportation planning at all levels. State fuel taxes still represent a major revenue source of transportation funds. This paper makes two contributions. First, we seek to identify a revenue-optimizing gas tax rate. We find that there is considerable room for the majority of states to increase tax rates before reaching the fiscally optimal gas tax rate. Second, the road to maximizing transportation funds through gas tax hikes is bumpy with multiple countervailing forces that may undermine the revenue-enhancing capacity of the tax increases.
Are young Americans embracing a mix of travel modes? This article identifies four types of travelers to answer that question. Drivers travel almost exclusively by automobile; Long-distance Trekkers drive great distances; Multimodals use a mix of modes; and the Car-less rely on nonautomobile modes and make very few trips. Multimodals were exceedingly rare and eight in ten Millennials used an automobile for nearly every trip as a Driver or Long-distance Trekker. By incorporating multiple facets of travel into a single variable, this research provides valuable information for addressing twenty-first-century policy challenges such as encouraging multimodality and alleviating transportation disadvantage.
Many cities have two serious problems: overcrowded on-street parking and undersupplied public services. This article examines a policy to address both problems: charge market prices to manage on-street parking and use the revenue to finance local public services. Our case study of a pilot program for alley improvements in Beijing finds that the estimated payback period for the investments in sanitation, security, landscaping, and parking is less than three years. Only 35 percent of households in the pilot program own a car and the average income of car-owning households is almost three times the income of carless households.
More effective methods are needed to meet the Planning Accreditation Board’s requirement to teach all master’s students about the "global dimensions of planning." Our survey of accredited US planning programs confirms that field-based courses, traditionally the most effective option, are costly and time-consuming and are therefore occasional, rather than regular, options for exposing students to international planning practice. Based on active learning theories, we suggest that a deliberative learning, case-based approach can facilitate many of the learning outcomes that make travel courses so attractive while also making internationally oriented pedagogies available to a wider range of students and programs.
Sea level rise is one of the climate change effects most amenable to adaptation planning as the impacts are familiar and the nature of the phenomenon is unambiguous. Yet, significant uncertainties remain. Using a normative framework of adaptive management and natural hazards planning, we examine how coastal communities in Florida are planning in the face of accelerating sea level rise through analysis of planning documents and interviews with planners. We clarify that communities are taking a low-regrets incremental approach with increasingly progressive measures motivated by confidence in planning intelligence and direct experience with impacts attributable to sea level rise.
One potential consequence of suburbanization is weaker social connectedness. Based on data from the 2003 to 2013 American Time Use Surveys, this research uses difference of means t-tests, propensity score matching, and Tobit regression to assess whether suburban living is associated with less socializing than city living in mid-to-large American metropolitan areas. After controlling for personal characteristics, we find no meaningful difference in suburbanites’ and city dwellers’ time spent socializing across a wide range of social activities. Further, suburbanites and city dwellers spend a very similar amount of time traveling, and more time spent traveling is associated with more socializing, not less.
Planning studios, through learning by doing, introduce students to relevant practical skills. The problem is that not all students, especially in the first-year, spend the required time on task, so they fall behind and fail to catch up. The article is based on the Community of Inquiry framework and proposes an online assessment to ensure that teaching, social, and cognitive elements are present when there is no face-to-face contact between the teaching team and students. The article follows a planning cohort across their first two studios that adopted the online assessment, and it provides an opportunity to evaluate the impact on the first-year experience.
A growing number of cities are preparing for climate change impacts by developing adaptation plans. However, little is known about how these plans and their implementation affect the vulnerability of the urban poor. We critically assess initiatives in eight cities worldwide and find that land use planning for climate adaptation can exacerbate socio-spatial inequalities across diverse developmental and environmental conditions. We argue that urban adaptation injustices fall into two categories: acts of commission, when interventions negatively affect or displace poor communities, and acts of omission, when they protect and prioritize elite groups at the expense of the urban poor.
While recent research has recognized the importance of considering social vulnerability, the changing patterns of social vulnerability within cities and the climate adaptation challenges these shifts pose have yet to receive much attention. In this article, we evaluate the changing patterns of social vulnerability in three coastal cities (Houston, New Orleans, and Tampa) over a thirty-year time period (1980–2010) and integrate neighborhood change theories with theories of social vulnerability to explain those patterns. Through this analysis, we highlight emerging dimensions of vulnerability that warrant attention in the future adaptation efforts of these cities.
Using a national survey of U.S. local governments, we explore the drivers of planning and service delivery for older adults. Our regression models find that planning for aging and elder engagement are the most influential factors explaining the level of community services for elders. Services are lower in less dense suburban and rural communities, and market-based services are lower in communities with more senior poverty. This creates two challenges for planners: to help generate a market response for aging services, and to articulate the link between the built environment and services so communities that lack supportive physical environments can become better places to age.
The promotion of sense of community has been a significant element of the spatial planning agenda of planners in recent years. This paper aims to explore the combined influence of typological characteristics of urban neighborhoods, as well as, social and cultural components. This empirical study was conducted in Beer Sheva, the largest city in southern Israel. This paper concludes that in addition to typological components, sociocultural perceptions have a significant impact on sense of community. Furthermore, planners should therefore remain critical and highly circumspect of acts of physical planning meant to impact the social aspects of a community.
The planning industry expects that tertiary planning education will prepare graduating planners with practical planning skills, applicable in an increasingly complex world. However, planning schools are not required to systematically include practice or experiential learning in curriculum. In this article, we explore the benefits of experiential learning, highlight gaps in application of the concept, and present a framework for integrating experiential learning in planning education at a tertiary level. The framework comprises core principles, applied to a range of experiential activities, scaffolded across an undergraduate planning program to provide increasing engagement in practice.
Communities are sorted through differencing, the social construction of distinction. This, in turn, enables what we term social rendering: erasure of existing community and reimagination of an alternative one. This practice is founded upon an evolutionary notion of development as ecological succession, involving the intersectionality of race, class, and other markers. Such social genotyping leads to a genitocracy built around systems of differences. We examine the effect of present-day redevelopment practice on the Southern California community of Santa Ana. We illustrate how the processes of differencing and rendering undermine the sociocultural fabric of authentic community life.
Transportation enables low-income individuals to find and travel to employment. This article analyzes the relationship between access to automobiles and public transit and employment outcomes of low-income households. We use longitudinal survey data from participants in the Welfare to Work Voucher Program, which was conducted in five US metropolitan areas between 1999 and 2005. Multinomial logistic regression shows that baseline access to automobiles has a strong positive relationship to follow-up employment but public transit access and receipt of housing assistance do not. Our findings suggest that enhancing car access will notably improve employment outcomes among very-low-income adults, but other assistance will have, at best, marginal effects.
This article provides a citation analysis for faculty from Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) member schools. The article argues that Google Scholar data is a particularly valuable source of citation data for urban planning because its coverage extends beyond traditional peer-reviewed publications. The analysis reports the level of scholarly activity within the urban planning discipline. The results show citation patterns for planning faculty, departments, and universities along with discussing the distribution of citation activity across the discipline. The article concludes by encouraging planning scholars and administrators to undertake more analysis of planning scholarship to understand scholarly performance and impact.
This article has three objectives. It first examines whether the latest version of SimCity can achieve learning objectives related to systems thinking, problem solving, creativity, and regional understanding in the classroom. Second, it examines whether the game influences student interest in planning. Third, it considers whether the game impacts students’ perception of the discipline. Using instructor observation, students’ game creations, and surveys, we find that the game can achieve the aforementioned learning objectives, increase student interest, and increase the perception of planning as being creative and fun. The results have implications for instruction, student recruitment, and perceptions of the field.
High-quality hazard mitigation plans may improve postdisaster outcomes in many ways, including establishing a community fact base and providing rationales for protective policies and actions. Hazard mitigation plans in eighty-four rural counties in the Southeastern United States were scored using an established protocol. To supplement quantitative data, twenty-one key informant interviews were conducted in a subsample of seven counties. While overall plan quality was poor, informants identified areas for improvement. Understanding potential shortcomings of rural hazard mitigation plans can help communities identify areas to direct limited resources to improve plans, particularly in communities that self-identify as highly vulnerable to disasters.
Air transportation is a mode of transportation that provides planning students an arena in which to tackle wicked, cross-specialization planning challenges that span geographies from local to global. A synthesis of syllabi and instructor surveys of thirty-seven graduate planning programs found that nine programs cover air transportation in a partial or full lecture in their introductory transportation planning courses and less than half mention it briefly. I provide linkages between air transportation planning and the most commonly covered planning topics so that professors of transportation planning—and possibly other specializations—can use these linkages to enrich topics in existing courses.
The promises of land reform have always been as seductive as they are elusive. Bolivia’s experience is no different, but one forgotten case may still offer lessons today: a land distribution project initiated in San Julian in 1972. Through archival research and interviews, I argue that several understudied elements of the San Julian project—its spatial design, settler orientation program and implementation process—offer lessons about the role planners can play in structuring more successful land reform. Revisiting the lessons of past exemplars like San Julian is critical given renewed land reform efforts that appear to be replicating past failures.
Little is known about the factors influencing the skills that planners utilize in practice. This study draws upon national survey data to identify the factors influencing skill acquisition and use, paying particular attention to the role of graduate planning education. The results of the analysis suggest that those holding a Planning Accreditation Board–accredited planning degree utilize a larger number of skills in practice, particularly skills pertaining to the core domains of planning knowledge. These findings suggest that PAB accreditation plays an important role in shaping the types of planners sought by employers.
"Indigenous planning" is an emergent paradigm to reclaim historic, contemporary, and future-oriented planning approaches of Indigenous communities across western settler states. This article examines a community planning pilot project in eleven First Nation reserves in Saskatchewan, Canada. Qualitative analysis of interviews undertaken with thirty-six participants found that the pilot project cultivated the terrain for advancing Indigenous planning by First Nations, but also reproduced settler planning processes, authority, and control. Results point to the value of visioning Indigenous futures, Indigenous leadership and authority, and the need for institutional development.
Given the importance of the media in 21st-century western liberal democracies, planning actors that seek media attention may do so for multiple ends, such as to dampen controversy and increase their status as "stars" in their professions through media branding. We develop a case study of the Woodrow Wilson Bridge project, along with expert interviews with public relations specialists, journalists, editors, producers, and scientists. We find that development professionals, including scientists, adopted mediatized behaviors, such as filming themselves, while working so that audiences might witness experts’ actions and successes. The stories and ideas that reached broad audiences concerned experts’ stories rather than those of a broad array of stakeholders.
This research assesses how professional expertise is constructed and deployed by public and private sector practitioners. In-depth case studies of urban design projects in two cities with differing local government capacities are used to critically examine professional expertise. The study finds that the expertise of consultants was portrayed as more creative and innovative, less constrained by bureaucratic and political contexts, and more knowledgeable of market conditions. In contrast, descriptions of public employee expertise often focused on regulatory knowledge. This study analyzes the relationship between limited public sector capacity and these constructions of expertise—and the implications for professional practices.
This article examines the evolution of planning education in China in response to rapid social and economic changes, the growth of planning schools and students, and curriculum design development in various planning schools. It argues that the legacy of the planned economy still influences planning education, which means top–down, elite-driven, and blueprint-style planning that lacks a wide social foundation. With the advent of rapid urbanization and explosive economic growth, further changes to planning education in terms of values, approaches, and targets will be needed in the future.
Public transit users are expected to have higher levels of active transportation (AT, walking and bicycling) because they often need to walk to and from transit. Surveys in Baltimore and Seattle (n = 1,622) revealed that transit users performed more AT than nonusers, especially when dependent on transit. Health benefits and impacts of their limited travel options are discussed. Choice transit riders, who use transit and have a car, and dependent transit riders, who are limited to transit use, are compared for differences in AT and leisure physical activity time (LPA). Less LPA is explored as a consequence of the additional AT.
This study explores the impacts of school siting and surrounding built environments on rates of motorist and pedestrian crashes around public schools in the Austin Independent School District, Texas, by using log-linear regressions. The results show that a higher sidewalk coverage and a higher percentage of local roads reduce pedestrian crashes around schools, while higher percentages of highways and commercial uses and higher transit stop densities increase motorist and pedestrian crashes. It is desirable to locate schools in areas with higher percentages of local roads and lower percentages of highways and commercial uses.
Through a review of long-range transportation plans and interviews with planners, this article examines how large metropolitan planning organizations are preparing for autonomous vehicles. In just a few years, the prospect of commercially available self-driving cars and trucks has gone from a futurist fantasy to a likely near-term reality. However, uncertainties about the new technology and its relationship to daily investment decisions have kept mention of self-driving cars out of nearly all long-range transportation plans. Nevertheless, interviewees are keeping a close watch on the new technology and actively looking to understand and plan for future impacts.
Despite regulatory efforts in Texas aimed at preventing the spread of "colonias"—self-help settlements with inadequate water and wastewater infrastructure—since the early 1990s hundreds of new self-help "model subdivisions" have formed throughout the state. Using aerial photography and parcel-level property records, I provide the first systematic analysis of these subdivisions. Their proliferation poses considerable challenges for local planners, and although most model subdivisions appear to have basic infrastructure, housing conditions are exceedingly poor because of the protracted nature of the self-help process. The study highlights the need for renewed attention by scholars, policymakers, and planners toward self-help settlements in Texas.
The experience of American Indian communities is an interesting lens through which to explore the ongoing conversation regarding the purpose and processes of development planning. This article draws on the development literature to identify and explore factors particularly relevant to the development issues faced by Indian communities. It then examines two cases in the U.S. West, the Tlingit community of Kake in Southeast Alaska and the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Reservation in Northeast Oregon. Finally, it draws on the results of the cases to offer some reflections on development theory and practice.
Indigenous open-air markets in Ghana’s urban areas generate significant quantities of market waste, which the present "collect and dispose" system is unable to handle. Waste accumulates in markets, which degrades the market environment and creates health hazards. Waste management planners in Ghana have failed to adopt a participatory and an inclusive approach to managing waste in open air markets in Ghanaian cities by overlooking the potential role of indigenous institutions and networks in the management of waste. This research found that networks of market stakeholders can effectively manage market waste when empowered to do so.
Development of a comprehensive historical archive of regional real-time multimodal multiagency transportation system data makes possible more detailed study of impacts of major transport investments on travel and system performance. We illustrate with a case study of a new light rail transit line. We use transit, freeway, and arterial data of high spatial and temporal resolution to examine transportation system performance impacts of the Exposition (Expo) light rail line (Phase 1) in Los Angeles. Using a quasi-experimental research design, we explore the impact of the Expo Line on transit ridership, freeway traffic, and arterial traffic within the corridor it serves. Our results suggest a net increase in transit ridership, but few effects on roadway traffic system performance. Given the latent travel demand in this heavily congested corridor, results are consistent with expectations. The benefits of rail transit investments are in increasing transit accessibility and person throughput within high-demand corridors; effects on roadway traffic are small and localized.
To determine whether Tax Increment Financing (TIF) triggers or captures growth, we examine the relationship between expenditures and property value change in Chicago’s TIF districts. A regression model relates spending type, which varies from infrastructure to developer subsidies, to a district’s property value growth between 2002 and 2012. Results show variation in the impact of spending, with subsidies for commercial development having the clearest positive relationship while infrastructure spending has a negative effect. Although trends are less clear over the long run, these differences underscore how the effectiveness of TIF cannot be surmised without accounting for variations in spending.
Increasing interest in fostering resilient communities requires a more comprehensive approach to hazard mitigation planning that overcomes the limitations of traditional hazard assessments, notably the failure to explicitly incorporate an analysis of social vulnerability. We statistically analyzed a random sample of 1500 damage assessments of single-family homes collected following Hurricane Ike to assess the contributions of hazard exposure, structural vulnerability, and social vulnerability. The results indicate that hazard exposure, structural characteristics, and socioeconomic characteristics are significant predictors of structural damage. The implications suggest that comprehensive hazard assessments can provide additional insights for mitigation planning and community resiliency.
More than twenty years of case study research have produced a rich theoretical framework for understanding the outcomes that can be achieved through effective collaborative planning and the starting conditions, process characteristics, and participant attributes and behaviors that can facilitate achieving those outcomes. Multivariate modeling of collaborative development of draft long-range transportation plans by the technical advisory committees of 88 U.S. metropolitan planning organizations supports nearly all of the hypotheses that have emerged from this case study literature. In this context, however, while consensus building best practices contribute significantly to success, formal consensus-based decision making emerges as not critical.
We investigate the extent to which different forms of community participation explain variation in handpump sustainability using data collected from 200 rural communities in Ghana. Data sources include household surveys, engineering assessments of water points, and interviews with water committees and village leaders. The depth of community members’ involvement in project planning is positively associated with handpump sustainability, whereas the breadth of community participation is not. All else held constant, handpump sustainability is enhanced by household members’ involvement in management-related decisions, but is compromised when households are responsible for technical decisions.
The study empirically estimates the effects of four types of impact fees (road, school, park, and fire protection impact fees) on new and existing housing, as well as the fees’ differential effects on price as determined by housing quality. The results indicate that impact fees generally raise the price of new housing. Further, the magnitude and the direction of the housing price effect of individual impact fees vary substantially. For example, the park impact fee increases the price of new and existing housing, whereas the fire protection impact fee has no effect or has a negative effect on housing prices.
This paper explores the emergence of zoning in early twentieth-century America against the background of zoning in two European countries: Germany and England. The common interpretation is that zoning was first used in these countries and then imported to America. But this interpretation neglects the extent to which American zoning began to deviate from European traditions early on. Based on primary and secondary archival sources, this paper tells a story about two aspects of zoning that set U.S. practice apart from that in Europe. The first is the purely residential district and the second is the purely single-family residential district. The European–American comparison helps highlight the distinct nature of U.S. land-use regulation.
This paper describes a classroom exercise in which students apply negotiation and project finance skills in a simulated economic development negotiation. The goal of the exercise is that students’ experience of negotiating a deal will lead them to constructively explore concepts of "good process" and "just outcomes." Public–private development dominates redevelopment practice, and its vocabulary—that of negotiation and contracting—has gained ascendance in the field. Trends in planning pedagogy reflect this phenomenon, but training for professional planners also needs to encompass their future roles as exercisers of situated ethical judgment.
This essay examines the Promenade Plantée in the context of the broader effort to remake Paris for a Postindustrial Age. It traces the political, social, and economic forces that shaped the Promenade’s architectonic form over time, from the production of a national rail system in the nineteenth century to the decline and dereliction of rail lines after World War II, to the reformatting of disused infrastructure in the 1970s and 1980s. Finally, the essay considers the mix of public and private interests that shaped the project’s design, adaptation, and use within the large-scale redevelopment of Eastern Paris.
Accurate population estimates are critical to effective planning and policy. This study evaluates county population estimates using three different approaches to estimate domestic migration—typically the most volatile component of population change. Using the 2010 Census as a benchmark, it compares the standard net-migration approach to two gross migration approaches—a biregional approach and a multiregional approach that models migration between county pairs. The biregional model produces the lowest average error and is a good choice when producing estimates for a large number of diverse areas. The multiregional model works well for many counties, but is prone to extreme errors.
The article first estimates models of mode choice and average trip length for 239 diverse mixed-use developments in six diverse regions. It then applies these models to twelve Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for Neighborhood Development (LEED-ND) pilot projects to predict approximate vehicle miles of travel (VMT) per person trip. Finally, it compares LEED-ND values to regional average values from the National Household Travel Survey. The VMT per person trip, for LEED-ND projects, ranges from 24 to 60 percent of the respective regional averages. The most urban and centrally located projects tended to achieve the highest alternative mode shares and the lowest private vehicle trip lengths.
Notwithstanding the trend toward increased citizen participation in planning, many city governments, even those led by avowedly progressive regimes, are ambivalent about popular empowerment in practice. This case study of waterfront planning in Philadelphia explores how a progressive administration responded to earlier initiatives to expand participatory planning by scaling back outreach efforts, co-opting citizen advocacy, and managing public forums in ways that dampened critical reflection and deliberation. The article documents the limitations of relying on the good intentions of progressive administrations and the need for firm rules and mandates for citizen participation through the duration of a planning process.