Ecologically sustainable local area planning: A framework to enhance integration of community workers and environmental planners

Recent case study research in local government authorities in northern Australia illustrated that ecological sustainability in land use planning is difficult to address while community work and environmental planning, as central ecological sustainability components, are marginalised in the planning process. Emanating from that study, the framework proposed in this paper advocates a planning approach that is inclusive, participatory and discursive and recognises the diverse knowledge and skills of all local government practitioners.     

A Trail Across Time: American Environmental Planning From City Beautiful to Sustainability

Problem: It would be useful to identify and connect the major ideas of American environmental planning from the late 19th century up to today, to show its evolution over time and anticipate its potential future direction.

Purpose: I aim to tie together the major ideas of American environmental planning, showing how they have evolved, and suggest what additional changes will be required to progress further toward sustainability.

Methods: I review the literature, defining five time periods that are useful for understanding and analyzing environmental planning successes and shortcomings.

Results and conclusions: Environmental planning has its roots in the physical design of cities and the tension between conserving natural resources for human use and protecting wilderness. In the 1920s, regional environmental planning emerged. Federal environmental impact statements were first required in the 1970s, along with efforts to clean up and prevent pollution. A backlash against government command and control began in the 1980s, leading governments to use incentives to address environmental problems. The current era makes sustainability the goal, tying together the ideas and practices of the previous eras and blending regulation and financial incentives to address national and global environmental problems, such as climate change. To reduce carbon footprints and increase water and energy conservation in the face of significant population growth in the United States will require making environmental planning a political priority, with the goals of curbing sprawling land development, and changing lifestyles and business practices.

Takeaway for practice: Environmental planning ideas have been around for the past century and underlie the currently popular concept of planning for sustainability. However, environmental planning has been only modestly effective at influencing business practices and lifestyles. To change this, federal and local governments will have to lead by example, pursuing environmental sustainability as seriously as they pursue economic growth.

Research support: None.     

When Do Plans Matter?

Abstract

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Plans often sit on the shelf and fail to promote action. This raises the question of how and when plans matter. This is especially important in sustainability planning where local governments are more likely to take actions with short-term benefits that are easy to adopt. How can planners promote more sustainability actions, especially those with longer term benefits? In this study we examine factors influencing local sustainability actions by tracking 651?U.S. local governments’ adoption of 34 sustainability actions from 2010 to 2015. We differentiate places that recently adopted a sustainability plan from those that have had a plan for a longer period and those that have never adopted a sustainability plan. We use difference-in-difference (DID) modeling to assess what effect plans have on the level of sustainability actions. We find a plan may have its greatest effect in motivating actions when it is newly created. Places that adopted a plan between 2010 and 2015 exhibited a significant increase in sustainability actions during those same years. By contrast, places that already had a plan in 2010 showed higher initial levels of sustainability actions but did not show a higher level of growth in the number of actions adopted compared with places without plans. In general, we find local governments with higher levels of sustainability actions articulate social equity goals, devote staff and budget resources to the effort, engage the public, and promote interdepartmental coordination. Local governments under Republican control enact fewer sustainability actions.

Takeaway for practice: Sustainability plans are most effective in spurring local sustainability actions when they are newly created. However, this initiation impact in motivating actions wanes over time. Promoting continued adoption of sustainability actions requires a comprehensive approach with attention to political support, public participation, social equity, interdepartmental coordination, and local capacity.     

Planning Consultants and Local Planning

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Planning consultants are a vital part of the local government planning process. We explore who hires consultants, the types of tasks that they typically perform, and differences in the values of planning consultants and their clients. We conduct parallel surveys of planning consultants and local government officials, and find that the use of consultants is widespread: They are hired primarily to reduce the costs of maintaining in-house planning staff and to provide as-needed technical expertise. Both planning officials and consultants agree on the priority given to well–accepted planning principles, even though each group thinks they hold planning principles in higher esteem than the other. Yet, we find that the actual differences between the self-professed values of the two groups are negligible.

Takeaway for practice: This study suggests that both consultants and their clients believe that the advantages of hiring consultants, including supplementing in-house staff, providing workforce flexibility, and offering technical expertise, outweigh the disadvantages of possibly higher costs and lack of local knowledge. The study provides reasons for optimism that outsourcing planning work does not change the underlying planning values of the agencies employing the consultants, or the goals and objectives of the planning work.

Research support: Wayne State University College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.     

The Actions of Discontent: Tea Party and Property Rights Activists Pushing Back Against Regional Planning

Problem, research strategy, and findings: The Tea Party's effects on local and regional planning efforts, given the movement's fierce support of property rights and equally fierce opposition to sustainability goals in regional planning efforts, have received little study. I wanted to understand how Tea Party and fellow property rights advocates became involved in regional planning efforts in the San Francisco Bay Area and Atlanta, GA, and how planners perceived and dealt with their objections and tactics. Interactions between the two groups were marked by philosophical differences over the role of government and the necessity and value of regional planning. However, these actors were also deeply divided on plan content and the authenticity of the public outreach process. Tea Party and property rights activists were not the only ones with substantive and procedural concerns about regional planning efforts; tactical -coalitions of unexpected allies emerged, aligning on plan viability, finance methods and funding, project costs, impacts, and process. My research shows that common ground can be negotiated between -opposing groups on matters of content and process. The concerns of the various stakeholders involved parallel questions often addressed by scholarly planning research, providing evidence of continuing challenges and flaws in planning.

Takeaway for practice: The planning community should not dismiss the opposition of Tea Party and property rights advocates; these activists could catalyze new coalitions of opponents if planners do not attend to the substantive and procedural concerns of participants.     

Barriers to GIS Use in Planning

Problem: Despite the widespread availability of geographic information systems (GIS) in local government, there is some evidence that the potential of GIS as a planning tool is not being fully exploited. While obstacles to GIS implementation in local government have been investigated, most of these investigations are either dated or do not focus on planning applications.

Purpose: We aim to add to the limited literature on the current barriers hindering GIS use in public planning agencies. We also offer some insights into how to mitigate these barriers and help planning agencies move beyond using GIS simply for routine tasks of data access and mapmaking.

Methods: We analyzed responses to a 2007 web-based survey of 265 practitioners in Wisconsin's public planning agencies and follow-up interviews with 20 practitioners we conducted in 2008.

Results and conclusions: Planning departments still face a range of technological, organizational, and institutional barriers in using GIS. Training, funding, and data issues appear to be the most significant barriers preventing greater use of GIS for planning purposes, suggesting that organizational and institutional issues are more pertinent than technological barriers. Our literature review indicates that the barriers to GIS use in local government are similar to those of the past, but not identical. Furthermore, our observations indicate that, in general, practitioners are not aware of the full potential of GIS and planning support systems (PSS).

Takeaway for practice: Increased funding alone is not likely to move a planning agency beyond routine applications of GIS. Improved access to training that is geared toward the planning process and planning applications may help alleviate many barriers planners face in using GIS in general and in incorporating more sophisticated GIS functions in their work.

Research support: This work was supported in part by the Consortium for Rural Geospatial Innovations, funded by the Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Services of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and in part by the University of Wisconsin–Madison College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the University of Wisconsin–Extension.     

Developing local government policy and processes for community consultation and participation

Abstract

This paper documents the development of a local government community consultation and capacity building vision and strategy. A central argument is that traditional government perspectives on community consultation must be reconsidered to include greater opportunities for informed community participation in planning and decision making processes for a sustainable community.     

Towards democratic planning? Negotiating change in St Kilda,Melbourne

Are planners ‘dealmakers’ caught up in selling urban areas to the highest bidder, or are they negotiators concerned to maintain democratic planning and social diversity in areas that are subject to gentrification? This paper explores this question through the example of two sites in St Kilda, Melbourne. The sites highlight planning strategies used at the local government level by planners who are attempting to negotiate change and to maintain the social and cultural diversity of the area. The first example illustrates the processes of ‘democratic planning’ where planners question what is ‘legitimate’ and draw on discourses of local need. The second example illustrates the problems of co‐opting local culture within a process of democratic planning that is based on community consultation. Together, the examples illustrate the need for tighter local government policies, including stricter policies about the use of developer contributions, and a closer and more critical focus on the term ‘community consultation’, if democratic planning is to be achieved.     

Planning Our Future: Institutionalizing Youth Participation in Local Government Planning Efforts

ABSTRACT

There is a growing recognition globally that young people are under-represented or excluded from planning processes, and that this exclusion could have lasting impacts on their development as citizens and their interaction with the built environment. This article focuses on the extent to which youth participation is institutionalized in local government planning efforts in the United States and what explains this institutionalization. Consequently, what are the barriers and local attitudes towards youth participation? The primary data collection for this study is through an online survey that was sent to the census of California local governments. Results show that institutionalization of youth participation in local governance, through local prioritization of youth participation and emphasis of such participation in master plans, is low. Multiple linear regression is used to isolate the factors affecting institutionalization. Anticipated benefits are many, and barriers are primarily capacity related.     

Towards sustainable cities

Abstract

Sustainability has interconnected economic, social and ecological aspects. Spatial restructuring could make a significant contribution. Key public policies include transport, land‐use planning, housing, infrastructure, and the redistribution of work and incomes. Australia has the opportunity to be an international exemplar in addressing the challenge of sustainability. Existing economic structures, spatial inertia and the lack of political will are significant obstacles.     

Managing Complex Spatial Planning Processes

This article surveys the way in which the idea of sustainable development is integrated into current spatial planning practice by Swedish local authorities. The Brundtland Report's definition of sustainable development calls for all dimensions of sustainability to be considered. Given that today's planning processes deal with large volumes of basic data where epistemological and technical knowledge must be co-ordinated with the actors' values and views of society, this makes spatial planning a very complex process for local planning authorities. The question is whether these ideals of sustainability are manageable in a complex planning situation. Case histories of the implementation process in Sweden indicate that local authorities seek to limit this complexity by dividing the main topics, i.e. ecological, social and economic, into separate planning processes and planning documents. Furthermore, each of the sustainability dimensions seems to be strengthened by social discourses, which can be recognised in the visions of the local plans. The various modes of planning correspond to and are strengthened by these discourses.     

Neighborhood Planning as Collaborative Democratic Design

Problem: Historically, neighborhood participation has lapsed into NIMBYism or has not been especially effective at long-term, inclusive, and integrative planning.

Purpose: I aim to describe and analyze an example of how local governments can function as civic enablers and capacity builders for collaborative and accountable planning among neighborhood stakeholders and city government.

Methods: This is a case study of Seattle's neighborhood planning approach in the 1990s based on semistructured interviews with 33 current and former planners, other officials, and neighborhood activists, and review of a broad selection of neighborhood plans and other planning documents and newspaper coverage of the planning process.

Results and conclusions: The city of Seattle developed a set of tools and resources to empower local citizens in the planning process while also holding them accountable for actions consistent with specified broad values and planning targets. This, together with the city's substantial investment in neighborhood planning staff, who served as relational organizers and intermediaries of trust, was critical to the success of neighborhood planning and to the emergence of a collaborative governance culture among highly diverse and often contentious community associations, business interests, city departments, and the city council.

Takeaway for practice: Diverse neighborhoods can find common ground and make positive progress on planning to address shared citywide concerns. However, they need staff assistance to do this. Neighborhood planners can play this role, but only if cities fund them to do this time-consuming work and provide institutional support and guidance.     

Planning in the age of sustainability

The vital role of land‐use planning in the quest for sustainability has been recognised only very recently. Yet real confusion still exists on what ‘sustainability’ means and whether or not it refers principally to sustainable development. This paper traces the origins of the concept in the destructive power of population growth and the expansion of economic activity since the mid‐eighteenth century, a secular phenomenon which has led to the rise of the environmentalist movements, particularly since the mid‐1960s. It is argued that the key mother‐concept is that of a sustainable society. Within that context a number of reasons are given for the protagonistic role of planning in achieving sustainability. A sustainability principle is proposed comprising five fields of action for land‐use planning and the paper concludes by arguing that planning has entered a new age in the responsibilities which confront it.     

Club Goods and Local Government

Problem: Private approaches to urban service provision are becoming more popular. Some argue these approaches are more efficient and more democratic than government provision because they are voluntary. While these club approaches can shift the burden of infrastructure finance to direct groups of users, they can also fragment urban service delivery and justify unevenness in service quality across the city.

Purpose: This article explores examples of club goods, that is, common interest developments (CIDS) for housing, business improvement districts (BIDs) for commercial areas, and economic development zones (EDZs) for commercial and industrial areas, and assesses their implications for local government. Emphasis is given to how clubs internalize benefits to members of the club but shed externalities onto the broader local government system. A critical governance concern is the impact on the long-term ability of local government to coordinate across disparate elements and interests in the community.

Methods: I discuss three types of clubs ranging from totally private common interest developments (home owners associations), to partially private business improvement districts, to totally public economic development zones. These club types are analyzed in terms of economic benefits, externalities, governance structure, and broader concerns with equity and sustainability.

Results and conclusions: Club good approaches to urban infrastructure delivery enhance private investment and reduce costs to cities, but they also shed externalities onto the broader city. Although these clubs are often private associations, this article shows how they are critically supported by government, beyond the property rights requirement assumed by most theorists. A further concern is that club approaches may undermine support for equity and redistribution at the broader city level.

Takeaway for practice: Local governments are under pressure to provide public goods efficiently and engage private voluntary approaches whenever possible. The efficiency and popularity of club approaches derives in part from their ability to capture the benefits of increased investment for internal benefit. However, local government managers also must manage diversity and build public support for investment to ensure equity across the urban territory. Balancing the benefits of club goods with the need for broader urban integration is a key challenge for planners and urban managers.

Research support: None.     

Housing Recovery Lessons From Chile

Problem, research strategy and findings: The 8.8 magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami that struck south-central Chile on February 27, 2010, affected 75% of the country's population and damaged or destroyed 370,000 housing units (about 10% of the housing in six regions). Within six months, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development published a plan to repair or rebuild 220,000 units of low- and middle-income housing with government assistance within four years. By February 2014, 94% of the housing was complete. The successful rebuilding effort had strong leadership at the national and local levels and used existing programs and institutions. The management staff adapted programs over time to meet the needs of local conditions. When compared with housing recovery programs in other countries, Chile's program stands out, combining national government management with local citizen input. The reconstruction plan also included updated zoning plans, road and infrastructure improvements, heritage recovery, and new master plans for affected cities. Going forward, the earthquake created an opportunity for Chile to use the recovery planning to expand national urban policy and to develop a framework for citizen participation at the local level.

Takeaway for practice: Successful planning in disaster recovery involves strong government leadership and coordination together with the engagement of local government and the participation of citizens.     

Victoria's Kennett government: Its impact on urban and regional planning

Abstract

Each of our three contributors feels that the 1990s Kennett government massively changed the way that planning is performed within Victoria. Michael Buxton argues that the planning system we have had since this era is worse than the system it replaced. Trevor Budge then shows how the Kennett initiatives damaged the rural electorate's trust of conservative parties, driving regional Victoria closer towards alternative parties and independent members. Finally, Ray Boyle explains how the sacking of so many local government planners caused a huge loss of corporate memory within the sector. These are important lessons that all readers should at least consider.     

The good,the bad and the peculiar: Cultures and policies of urban planning and development on the Gold Coast

As one of the fastest growing regions in Australia, the Gold Coast offers a profusion of competing values, perceptions and interests in the construction of its urban forms and identities. Amidst the profusion and confusion, there are signs that local government is attempting —however falteringly — to move beyond regional stereotypes towards a new paradigm for planning and imagining the Gold Coast.     

Are Cities Prepared for Autonomous Vehicles?

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Local government policies could affect how autonomous vehicle (AV) technology is deployed. In this study we examine how municipalities are planning for AVs, identify local characteristics that are associated with preparation, and describe what effects bureaucrats expect from the vehicles. We review existing plans of the 25 largest U.S. cities and survey transportation and planning officials from 120 cities, representative of all municipalities with populations larger than 100,000. First, we find that few local governments have begun planning for AVs. Second, cities with larger populations and higher population growth are more likely to be prepared. Third, although local officials are optimistic about the technology and its potential to increase safety while reducing congestion, costs, and pollution, more than a third of respondents worried about AVs increasing vehicle miles traveled and sprawl while reducing transit ridership and local revenues. Those concerns are associated with greater willingness to implement AV regulations, but there is variation among responses depending on political ideology, per capita government expenditures, and population density.

Takeaway for practice: Municipal governments’ future approaches to AV preparation will likely depend on the characteristics of city residents and local resources. Planners can maximize policy advancement if they work with officials in other cities to develop best practices and articulate strategies that overlap with existing priorities, such as reducing pollution and single-occupancy commuting.     

The “Xochimilco model” for managing irregular settlements in conservation land in Mexico City

Mexico City has long been known as one of the world’s largest mega-cities. Although, the city’s growth rates have slowed since the 1980s, this process is not manifested evenly in spatial terms. Peripheral municipalities continue to grow at higher rates, including those municipalities in the southern part of the Federal District that contain its remaining conservation land. This growth is largely, but not exclusively, driven by the ongoing search for housing among lower-income households in the form of irregular settlement. Over time, this incremental pattern of settlement expansion has fragmented conservation land and impaired its ecological functioning. Given their role in land use planning with the reintroduction of elected local governments in the Federal District in 1997, this situation has placed municipalities quite literally at the “frontlines” of this planning and sustainability challenge. This paper examines the approach for managing land use regularization processes related to irregular settlement in conservation land adopted by the municipality of Xochimilco in its 2005 urban development plan, with reference to the experience of a specific case study community. Based on a series of interviews with residents and planning officials, the paper documents the highly-negotiated nature of “normative” planning that focuses on mitigating the impact of settlement in the conservation zone rather than stopping it completely. Given the enormous social pressures to access land for housing, the paper concludes that realistic efforts to preserve the remaining conservation land must involve a more comprehensive approach that better integrates environmental and social equity issues within and among municipal and upper-levels of government.     

From the design of green buildings to resilience management of building stocks

ABSTRACT

The green and the subsequent sustainable building movements have been framed by changing societal contexts. Their main focus has been on the design of new buildings. However, these movements have neglected the life span of existing buildings and the long-term management of building stocks. The reasons why are considered: the changing interpretations of sustainability, the evolution of different forms of tacit knowledge, lack of a metabolic framework covering the built environment and lack of a consistent multi-scale building information modelling (BIM). The transition toward a ‘risk society’, with an increasing diversity and frequency of threats, challenges the current optimistic definition of sustainability. Resilience addresses fast- and slow-moving threats that can lead to unknown consequences and new risks. Alternative planning approaches (e.g. scenario planning, adaptive change and resilience heuristics) are discussed. The differences between anticipation- and resilience-based strategies are considered. Possible heuristics can be found in social–ecological systems, in resilience engineering and in the historic evolution of the built environment. Resilient solutions generally lead to a higher level of complexity and carry additional environmental costs. In the creation of resilience capacity, new knowledge will be co-produced through transdisciplinary research, scenario planning and design experiments under conditions of uncertainty.