Showing papers in "Journal of The American Planning Association in 1999"

Consensus Building and Complex Adaptive Systems

Abstract: Consensus building and other forms of collaborative planning are increasingly used for dealing with social and political fragmentation, shared power, and conflicting values. The authors contend that to evaluate this emergent set of practices, a new framework is required modeled on a view of self-organizing, complex adaptive systems rather than on a mechanical Newtonian world. Consensus building processes are not only about producing agreements and plans but also about experimentation, learning, change, and building shared meaning. This article, based on our empirical research and practice in a wide range of consensus building cases, proposes that consensus building processes be evaluated in the light of principles of complexity science and communicative rationality, which are both congruent with professional practice. It offers principles for evaluation and a set of process and outcome criteria.

Consensus Building as Role Playing and Bricolage: Toward a Theory of Collaborative Planning

Abstract: This article makes the case, based on the authors' observation of and participation in stakeholder-based consensus building, that processes that succeed in producing breakthroughs and innovative ways of resolving policy conflict proceed de facto through role playing in which participants play out scenarios and take on different roles. This approach, which is much like the cooperative role-playing games that have recently gained worldwide popularity, allows participants seeking consensus to consider strategies that are not normally acceptable to their agencies and constituencies and to cooperate in a way that is stimulating and encourages their genuine engagement. Participants create packages of recommended actions not through goal-directed analysis, tradeoffs, weighing competing evidence, or taking moral positions, but through collaborative bricolage or tinkering. That is, participants bring to the dialogue the experiences, ideas, methods, and scenarios that they can imagine and then jointly piec...

The Connection Between Public Transit and Employment

Abstract: Urban transit systems in most American cities…have become a genuine civil rights issue-and a valid one-because the layout of rapid-transit systems determines the accessibility of jobs to the Black community. If transportation systems in American cities could be laid out so as to provide an opportunity for poor people to get meaningful employment, then they could begin to move into the mainstream of American life. A good example of this problem is my home city of Atlanta, where the rapid-transit system has been laid out for the convenience of the white upper-middle-class suburbanites who commute to their jobs downtown. The system has virtually no consideration for connecting the poor people with their jobs. There is only one possible explanation for this situation, and that is the racist blindness of city planners. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1986, pp. 325-326) Much attention is being paid to the role of public transit in employment-related mobility for urban residents, yet there is very little evide...

Hot Spots of Bus Stop Crime

Abstract: This study focused on bus stop crime and sought to identify the environmental attributes that can affect the bus rider's security while at the bus stop. Following the argument of criminologists that certain place characteristics can affect the incidence of crime, the study used direct observation, mapping, interviews, and surveys to examine the physical and social environment around the 10 most crime-ridden bus stops in Los Angeles during 1994 and 1995. It found an abundance of “negative” environmental attributes and a general lack of “defensible space” elements. It also found that different types of crime tend to occur under different environmental conditions. The use of four control cases of low-crime bus stops in matched pairs with four high-crime bus stops in close proximity showed that the low-crime bus stops typically lacked “negative” environmental attributes, while offering better surveillance opportunities from surrounding establishments. The article discusses design responses as an appr...

Unleashing the Power of Planning to Create Disaster-Resistant Communities

Abstract: Artist Vita Marie Lovett's art quilt Toto, I've a Feeling We're Not in Miami Anymore includes debris found in her south Florida yard after Hurricane Andrew struck in 1994. She describes it as a “photo documentary of Hurricane Andrew's destruction whirling against a background of broken fabric roof trusses and window frames.” It is dedicated to her friend Jackie Parker Koger who lost her life as a result of the storm, which was the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history to that time. After the hurricane, Lovett relocated to Marietta, Georgia, where she creates art quilts with architectural themes from her home studio. Human suffering and losses of lives and property in natural disasters can be reduced with appropriate planning for hazardous areas. Federal policies addressing these problems, however, have yet to recognize the importance of planning as the cornerstone of effective local hazard mitigation. In fact, federal programs make planning more difficult because they encourage the intensive...

Field Evaluation of Permeable Pavement Systems for Improved Stormwater Management

Abstract: The contribution of impervious surfaces to the disrupted runoff processes in an urban watershed is overwhelming. Nearly all the problems ultimately result from the loss of the water-retaining function of the soil in the urban landscape. Traditional solutions for storm water management have not been widely successful; in contrast, permeable pavements can be one element of a more promising alternative approach to reduce the downstream consequences of urban development. We report on a constructed experimental facility for measuring water quantity and water quality from four different permeable parking surfaces. Preliminary results demonstrate similar runoff performances of the surfaces relative to each other, and significant attenuation of runoff relative to traditional asphalt.

Urban Spatial Structure in a Transitional Economy: The Case of Guangzhou, China

Abstract: The urban spatial structure of Chinese cities has been changing since the post-Mao economic reform in 1978. More dramatic changes have occurred since the housing reform in 1982 and land reform in 1987. This article examines the transformation of urban spatial structure in China in the context of a transitional economy and its underlying dynamics. The land use changes in Guangzhou are used for a case study. The major findings are rapid decentralization through leapfrog developments in peripheral areas and the re-emergence of business and service areas in the city centre. The authors present a model of a new urban spatial structure and discuss its implications for urban planning.

Can Small-City Downtowns Remain Viable?: A National Study of Development Issues and Strategies

Abstract: A healthy downtown is an essential element of the prosperity of most non-suburban small cities (25,000 to 50,000 population). Unfortunately, the professional and scholarly literature has focused primarily on downtown development in large cities. Based on a national survey of 57 small American cities and case studies of Auburn, New York; Bangor, Maine; Carson City, Nevada; Texarkana, Texas/Arkansas; and Wausau, Wisconsin, this article explores the key problems confronting small-city downtowns and the revitalization strategies employed to try to overcome them. Significant differences between downtown development in small and large cities are presented throughout the article, as well as the importance of a sense of place.

Environmental Justice in Transportation Planning

Abstract: Environmental justice is a public policy goal of ensuring that the adverse human health or environmental effects of government activities do not fall disproportionately upon minority populations or low-income populations. This article presents a practical approach to measure the extent to which the air quality or noise consequences of a transportation system change would disproportionately affect those populations. The approach applies a geographic information system (GIS) to blend U.S. Census data with the results from emission and dispersion models of vehicle-generated pollutants, and from noise propagation models. Air pollution and noise contours can thus be overlaid upon data representing race and income levels, to discern whether disproportionate effects would occur.

Transit-oriented development in san diego county: the incremental implementation of a planning idea

Abstract: Although transit-oriented development (TOD) has become an increasingly popular planning idea, very few studies have examined how localities plan for and implement transit-oriented projects. This article helps fill that gap by studying the TOD implementation process near stations on the oldest of the current generation of light rail lines in the United States—the San Diego Trolley. Some parts of the San Diego Trolley have been in operation since 1981, but there are still only a few projects that both incorporate TOD concepts and were built after planning for the nearby rail line began. TOD projects were pursued most aggressively in the City of La Mesa, largely because TOD was consistent with local goals that went beyond transportation. Elsewhere in the San Diego region, several barriers have limited TOD implementation. Overall, the cities along trolley routes, though sympathetic to regional rail objectives, have approached TOD from a perspective of local goals, opportunities, and constraints. The ...

Livable streets revisited

Abstract: This article evaluates the livability of residential boulevards, a type of street that has center lanes for through traffic and local access lanes separated from the center lanes by landscaped “malls.” Three boulevards were studied. All three carried high traffic volumes but were rated as more livable than neighboring, conventionally designed streets with medium traffic volumes. The study concludes that boulevards with a side median design successfully mitigate the adverse impacts of heavy traffic. The research methods used for this study were based on the well-known 1969 “Livable Streets” project by Donald Appleyard and Mark Lintell. Like the original study, it compared the responses of residents on streets with high, medium, and low traffic volumes and measured the effects of traffic on social interaction, perceptions of home territory, and the comfort of people's daily lives. The new study shows trends similar to those found in the original one and adds information about boulevards, which were...

Willingness to Pay for Urban Greenway Projects

Abstract: This article reports the results of an experiment to estimate the value of an urban greenway and to test the validity of contingent valuation (CV), and discusses the implications of the results for greenway planning. The experiment concerned people's willingness to pay (WTP) for greenway projects in a publicly designated greenway in Indianapolis, Indiana, that is mostly in private ownership. In the summer of 1997, a CV survey and an actual solicitation for funds were mailed simultaneously to split samples of greenway property owners, greenway renters, and county residents. The survey and the solicitation asked about WTP for educational, cleanup, and other projects by the White River Greenways Foundation related to management of the Crooked Creek Greenway. The proportion of respondents willing to pay was much higher in response to the survey than the actual solicitation, and hypothetical mean WTP was much greater than the actual contributions. The results suggest that people value greenways, but t...

Getting Past Yes: From Capital Creation to Action

Abstract: Collaboration is increasingly being advocated as a more effective approach to planning and management, especially for complex topics such as the environment. Research in the U.S. and Australia revealed that stakeholders are reaching consensus on problems and objectives, but having difficulty implementing this consensus. In this article, the author identifies several implementation weaknesses associated with collaboration, including lack of strategic direction, limited public participation, and lack of stakeholder commitment to implementation. Stakeholders often compound these weaknesses by failing to clearly identify an approach to implementing their objectives, and failing to recognize that many objectives require joint decision making during implementation.

Putting Industrial Ecology into Place Evolving Roles for Planners

Abstract: Industrial ecology is an evocative metaphor that has evolved into a new paradigm for environmental management. It locates human activity in a larger, environmental context and uses the natural world as a model for organizing industrial activities. To date the concepts of place and jurisdiction have been missing from industrial ecology, even though many important environmental decisions are made within local political boundaries. Planners are uniquely equipped to advance this field because they (a) study locally-open systems such as economies, and (b) link big-picture ideas to incremental decisions. In return, industrial ecology offers planners an integrative framework for describing, explaining, and solving environmental problems.

Incentive Property Taxation

Abstract: In their efforts to find more effective policies and mechanisms for urban growth management, planners have yet to step off the regulatory plateau and discover new approaches elsewhere. The subject of this study undertaken in Vancouver, WA and Seattle is “incentive” property taxation linked to growth management. Using county property assessment files, hypothetical tax applications were performed on classes of land use. Simulating a heavy tax on land values and light tax on improvement values demonstrated the shifting of tax burden onto the land-extensive uses associated with urban sprawl, such as parking lots, and the reduction of tax burden on land-intensive uses such as apartments and office buildings. The study suggests that property owners might respond to tax-based financial inducements to reduce the ratio of land-to-improvements value by building more intensively on underutilized sites. Prospects for infill development and the appropriation of speculative gain are also examined.

Communities Not Fazed

Abstract: Predictions that military base closures will be catastrophic to communities have generally been exaggerated. While many communities face periods of decline after a base closure or fail to grow as rapidly as they might have otherwise, initial impacts on the community are often surprisingly milder than expected considering the numbers of employees and the size of base budgets. This study of the closure of Castle Air Force Base in Merced County, California, explains why the effects of base closures are generally not catastrophic. When the base closed, many compensating factors softened the impact on local markets: military retirees' spending shifted from the base commissary to local stores, purchases made by the base were primarily nonlocal anyway, toxic cleanup replaced construction expenditures on the base, housing construction continued, and military retirees' health care became privatized. These factors helped limit decreases in employment; in addition, many jobs held by departing military spous...

Fighting Over Land

Abstract: Charles Schridde chose the subject of his painting The Fence to represent the state of Texas, which, in his own words, “seems to go on forever.” The land and the fence dividing it near Clifton, Texas, also represent the pervasiveness of the need throughout our nation's history to separate private land from public, to claim a piece of property as one's own. The history and future of conflicts arising from the needs, on the one hand, to have and control private property, and on the other, to limit and regulate land use for the good of the community as a whole, are discussed in Harvey Jacobs' Longer View. The artist, who concentrates on painting landscapes and figures of the American West, works out of his studio in San Juan Capistrano, California (www.schriddestudios.com).

African American Entrepreneurship in the Suburbs

Abstract: This article presents the results of a systematic, national comparison of business performance among African American entrepreneurs located in cities and in suburbs. The data show that African American entrepreneurs conducting business outside the ghetto's protected market consistently outperform their counterparts doing business within it. With minor exceptions, the findings suggest strongly that African American entrepreneurs would be wiser to orient their business activities outside rather than inside the ethnic enclave. The implications of these findings for economic development planners are discussed and elaborated. Special attention is given to the limits that appear inherent in community-based economic development initiatives.

Design Review Reviewed

Abstract: Most American cities use design review to improve the visual quality and compatibility of ordinary nonhistoric projects. They often use a discretionary design review process. How well does discretionary design review improve community appearance by keeping building projects compatible with their surroundings? This article presents a two-part study aimed at answering this question. For a neighborhood in Columbus, Ohio, our research team did a physical inventory of the compatibility of 96 projects that underwent discretionary design review and 68 that did not. The latter projects met less restrictive administrative appearance controls present in the zoning ordinance. The team also surveyed 39 residents for their opinions on a subset of projects built according to either the discretionary review of the design or the administrative controls. The results indicate that discretionary design review is not demonstrably better than administrative review. Communities can use methods like the ones discussed ...

A Vision of Green

Abstract: Portland provides the reigning model for growth management in the United States. While a political culture conducive to regional planning arose a generation ago, the urban vision that Portland is now approaching was articulated decades earlier. This article examines Lewis Mumford's Regional Planning in the Northwest, a work activists used to promote and eventually create a Metropolitan Greenspace System. This plan was one of two that Mum-ford authored, and while little more than a visionary guide, it provides insight into both the peculiar nature of the Portland planning system and the planning philosophy of America's most renowned urbanist.

Concepts for alternative suburban planning in the northern phoenix area

Abstract: As part of ongoing cooperation between the City of Phoenix and Arizona State University, a charrette was organized. Planners, landscape architects, environmental scientists, and architects explored concepts for development within a 110-square-mile (285-km2) portion of Phoenix. The charrette was the summation of over a year of environment studies of the planning area. This part of northern Phoenix occupies a largely undeveloped upper Sonoran desert landscape experiencing intense development pressure. Four charrette teams addressed desert preservation, rural desert development, suburban desert development, and growth corridors. This article focuses on some of the strategies proposed by the suburban desert development team. One of these called for an alternative pattern of development aligned with natural drainage corridors. Several concepts from the charrette and findings from the environmental research were adopted by the City in the revised general plan for the area.

Assessing James Rouse's Role in American City Planning

Abstract: Throughout a long and productive career, developer James Rouse brought a distinctive vision to a variety of planning issues. While his involvement in commercial real estate set him apart from professional planners, he nonetheless drew widely on Garden City and neighborhood planning concepts to pioneer strategies for using physical design to enhance civic life. Alternating his energies between his native Baltimore and the national arena, he greatly influenced trends in modern housing, shopping centers, and philanthropy. Impelled as much by moral as material concerns, his innovations in urban policy mark important trends for the last half of the 20th century. This article examines his role in American city planning.

The Evolution of American Nongovernmental Land Use Planning Organizations

Abstract: Chester Arnold's oil painting The Onerous Developments of April 15, 1994 can be read as a metaphor for the kinds of land use mishaps that watchdog organizations strive to prevent. With most of the nearby trees cut down, the path from the cabin's front door no longer leading anywhere, and the landscape literally falling out from under foot, the figure peering over the edge may be contemplating why no one prevented him from developing in such an unstable area. And to make matters worse, taxes are due. The artist, who lives and works in the San Francisco Bay area, has been examining the tenuous relationship between people and their environment in large-scale works in oil for the past two decades. Thanks to the Elizabeth Leach Gallery in Portland, Oregon, for their help in securing use of this image. Nongovernmental land use planning organizations have emerged and evolved in the United States throughout the last few decades of the 20th century to assume a variety of roles in public planning processes...