Planning, economic development and the spatial outcomes of market liberalisation

The shift of urban governance to neoliberalism raises questions for the role of planning in economic development. Local plans may need to be overruled, but this creates potential contradictions. Local context is critical in this process. In Sydney, planning has been subordinate to economic development under market liberalisation since the late 1970s.     

Adaptation to Climate Change

Problem: Even if significant reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions are achieved, some amount of climate change appears to be inevitable. Local, regional, state, and federal planning and regulation should begin to address how to adapt to these changes.

Purpose: This article presents a policy synthesis of adaptation planning issues, using California as a case study. We examine the institutional and regulatory challenges and tradeoffs that climate change poses in six particularly vulnerable areas: water resources, electricity, coastal resources, air quality, public health, and ecosystem resources. We discuss obstacles to adaptation planning and successes overcoming these barriers, and suggest how planning can incorporate adaptation.

Methods: This article presents a policy synthesis of adaptation planning issues, drawing on our recent research on California's experience and related literature. We summarize the results of six studies that draw on quantitative and qualitative information gathered through surveys, interviews, and literature review.

Results and conclusions: Planners should use forward-looking climate data that include higher water and air temperatures, sea-level rise, and increased numbers of extreme events like heat waves, floods, and wildfires when making decisions about future development, infrastructure investments, open-space protection, and disaster preparedness. Climate change will exacerbate conflicts between goals for economic development, habitat protection, and public safety, requiring stronger interagency coordination and new laws and regulations.

Takeaway for practice: Local and regional planners can help society adapt to a changing climate by using the best available science, deciding on goals and early actions, locating relevant partners, identifying and eliminating regulatory barriers, and encouraging the introduction of new state mandates and guidelines.

Research support: Partial support for this research was provided by Pacific Gas and Electric, The Nature Conservancy, and Next 10.     

Framing the Future: On Local Planning Cultures and Legacies

ABSTRACT

This paper considers the influence of established local planning cultures and legacies on the trajectory of contemporary local development policies. Local and sub-regional planning cultures are interpreted as overall ‘developmental frames’ which set the context for local planning approaches both through more concrete territorial, developmental and policy forms and through cognitive structures, assumptions and values. These frames then exert significant influence on how planning policy is conceived and enacted, with potentially major implications for local development outcomes. Three illustrative case studies are presented from sub-regional growth areas in the South East of England.     

Co-opting the Night: The Entrepreneurial Shift and Economic Imperative in NTE Planning

The City of Sydney Council has presented their night-time economy plan (NTE) – Open, Future directions for Sydney at night – as a unique and substantial contribution to global city planning literature. This paper critiques the plan and demonstrates how Open is strongly aligned with, and constrained by the neoliberal-inspired cultural-economy framework of the Council’s overarching policy vision: Sustainable Sydney 2030. Such co-opting of policy evinces an entrepreneurial shift in NTE planning where economic interests procure substantial voice in the consultation, and eventual policy directions of changing the nightscape. The paper explicates the economic imperative(s) of Open within the context of one inner city Sydney suburb, Surry Hills.     

From Local to Global: One Hundred Years of Neighborhood Planning

Problem: Over the past 100 years, city planners have used neighborhood planning to address a variety of vexing social problems such as community disintegration, economic marginalization, and environmental degradation. To date, there has been no comprehensive review and critique of these planning initiatives and how they have influenced the profession.

Purpose: This article traces the history of neighborhood planning in the United States to learn from past experience and to identify its contributions to the planning profession.

Methods: I review the literature on the various forms of neighborhood planning, which I define as planning initiatives that focus on altering the physical environment of one or more neighborhoods in pursuit of larger social objectives.

Results and conclusions: Each of the six forms of neighborhood planning discussed in this article has made important contributions to the planning profession. Perry's neighborhood unit formula provided planners with a template for good neighborhood design and introduced the idea that neighborhood design could affect the sense of community. Urban renewal taught the profession about the limits of physical solutions to social problems, the precious nature of neighborhood social networks and the importance of involving citizens. The community action programs created a new norm for citizen participation and showed its limits, as well as introducing truly comprehensive redevelopment planning. Community economic development showed that some planning and implementation activities can be successfully delegated to community-based organizations. Municipal neighborhood planning provided a mechanism for ongoing citizen involvement. The most recent forms of neighborhood planning create neighborhoods that encourage walking, use of mass transit, social interaction, and a sense of community.

Takeaway for practice: Neighborhood planning programs have made a number of important contributions to the planning profession, including focusing attention on how neighborhood design influences urban livability and social behaviors, institutionalizing citizen participation in plan making, and going beyond physical development to address social, economic, political, and environmental issues. Neighborhood planning is currently more important than ever, as it now addresses global issues such as energy conservation and greenhouse gas emissions in addition to its historic focus on social equity issues such as poverty and social alienation.

Research support: None.     

Sustaining Sydney: The ‘Green Olympics’ from a global perspective

Abstract

This paper grapples with the question of whether globalisation and sustainable development are at odds or can be mutually supportive, through a case study of Sydney and its successful bid for the 2000 Olympics. The systemic context for urbanisation in the global economy and recent policy developments and physical change in Sydney are discussed in light of the competing cities phenomenon. The potential of the ‘Green Games’ to enhance urban sustainability is then considered. Positive aspects identified included the development of new environmental benchmarks, the potential for changed business attitudes and increased consumer awareness, as well as NGO participation (particularly the IOC) in a decentralised global environmental governance regime. However, evaluated in light of the pressures imposed by a globalised economic system, their effective adoption appears to be constrained. While it remains to be seen whether Sydney's Green Games will lead to more than tokenistic changes, this paper contends that, although market based environmentalism is a good first step forward, public sector commitment will be required if strong sustainable development is to be achieved.     

The Migrant Metropolis and American Planning

Problem: Immigration poses various problems for U.S. cities and regions, and the roles planners should play in migrant communities are not clear.

Purpose: I consider how practitioners and scholars have understood and addressed the planning challenges and opportunities presented by the major migrations of ethnic minorities to U.S. cities and regions over the past century.

Methods: I trace discussions of planning and migration at professional planning conferences over the past century and survey planning scholarship and practice related to immigration and migrant communities in three principal eras: early 20th century southern and eastern European immigration; the mid-century internal migrations of African Americans and Puerto Ricans; and immigration in the late 20th and early 21st century.

Results and conclusions: Over the past century, immigration has had physical, economic, and social effects on people and places that are legitimate concerns of urban planners. Yet, the planning profession has had an ambiguous and often ambivalent relationship with migrant communities and has struggled to define specific roles for planners within those communities while social workers and other community and economic development practitioners played larger roles. Planning scholars have not paid as much attention to migrants' adaptation and mobility in U.S. society or their impacts on receiving communities, labor markets, housing, and congestion as have other scholars and urbanists.

Takeaway for practice: Planners have engaged with migrants in a variety of ways. Understanding this history provides context for contemporary debates about immigration and helps frame challenges and opportunities in migrant and receiving communities as planning problems.

Research support: None.     

Adaptive Planning for Disaster Recovery and Resiliency: An Evaluation of 87 Local Recovery Plans in Eight States

Problem, research strategy and findings: A pre-disaster recovery plan that considers how a community should be redeveloped is a logical first step to support resiliency during high uncertainty and rapid change, yet limited attention has been given to recovery plans. In this study, we evaluate local disaster recovery planning in eight southeastern states and find that such planning receives limited public support: Less than one-third of vulnerable local jurisdictions had a recovery plan, and those plans received low plan quality scores. Unfunded state mandates produce weaker plans than plans in other states without mandates. We find that a collaborative network of stakeholders initially intent on reordering priorities results in stronger plans.

Takeaway for practice: Local recovery planning should be designed to operate under conditions of high uncertainty. Local jurisdictions can choose plan design options that reflect how they build capability for recovery planning: 1) standalone community-wide recovery plan; 2) comprehensive land use plan; 3) emergency management plan; and 4) small area recovery plan. Because recovery planning lacks a public constituency, and is new to most local jurisdictions, the stand-alone community-wide recovery plan design option is the most effective at building local commitment. This option involves a plan-making process that concentrates time, effort, and resources focused on a building a network of stakeholders who likely have the greatest responsibility in rebuilding efforts because they care most about the impacts of a disaster.     

Do Industrial Preservation Policies Protect and Promote Urban Industrial Activity?

Abstract

Problem, research strategy, and findings: In recent years, several major cities have implemented industrial preservation policies to attract and retain industrial uses after facing acute pressures to rezone often centrally located industrial land to “higher and better” uses. Minimal research to date, however, has examined how effective industrial preservation policies have been at protecting and promoting urban industrial activity. In this study, we ask how New York City’s (NY) Industrial Business Zone (IBZ) program affected four measures of urban industrial activity—industrial business registrations, industrial employment, industrial building permits, and industrial land—in IBZs in New York City. We benchmark our results against a comparison group established using propensity score matching. We find that the IBZ program had a significant impact on retaining industrial land in IBZs but that it did not have a significant impact on promoting new industrial business registrations, employment, or building permits in IBZs.

Takeaway for practice: Our research provides evidence of how various measures of urban industrial activity change following the designation of an industrial preservation policy. This research suggests that industrial preservation policies can be an effective tool to stem urban industrial land losses in cities facing land use conversion pressures, but that such policies need to create more robust linkages with economic development planning objectives. In the interest of continuing to protect middle-class industrial job opportunities in central cities, planners and practitioners should consider how to strengthen ties between physical land use planning and economic development planning.     

Bedouin Communities in the Negev

Problem: Conflict roils around recognition, planning, and appropriate municipal frameworks for Israel's 194,000 Negev Bedouin, especially the 45,000 Bedouin living in dispersed, unauthorized settlements, housed in tents and cinderblock shacks, lacking municipal water, sewage, or electricity, and accessible only by dirt tracks.

Purpose: We examine both the universal (indigenous peoples) and unique (to the Bedouin) aspects of the land claims and planning challenges facing the Israeli Bedouin of the Negev. We seek to shift the focus of land disputes to planning paradigms that facilitate negotiated agreements, which may overcome the impasse between the Bedouin (struggling for land, municipal recognition, and equal economic opportunities) and the Israeli government that perceives the Bedouin as a growing demographic threat and a potential fifth column. We develop a model that builds on the convergence of spatial and socioeconomic forces, reflecting the interplay between Bedouin traditionalism and modernization in developing planning frameworks, and creating an arena of negotiation that balances the interests of the contending stakeholders.

Methods: Our methodology is multifaceted: Over a three-year period we conducted in-depth interviews, workshops, and observations, and engaged in a review of the planning literature in indigenous societies, Negev Bedouin society, municipal reforms, societies undergoing modernization through urbanization, and relevant master and statutory plans.

Results and conclusions: The universal phenomenon of the clash between traditional cultures and modernization has sharpened with the spread of urbanization into rural areas, presenting a challenge to centralized planning processes. The planning model presents a range of planning options that simplify complex conflicts of interests, needs and goals between the Bedouin and the national and local Israeli governments. Results suggest that diametrically opposite positions may be reconciled by identifying an arena of negotiations within which planning options can be developed through discourse, rather than imposing centrally developed plans that might trigger strong, if not volatile, opposition.

Takeaway for practice: While this research deals with conflict over land between traditional and modern societies in Israel, the planning paradigms have international applicability. Forces for economic development and urbanization often compete with environmentalists or indigenous groups clinging to their land to maintain their ways of life. Culturally adaptive versions of collaborative planning are crucial to successful dispute resolution.

Research support: None.     

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.     

State of the Art in Planning for College and University Campuses: Site Planning and Beyond

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Colleges and universities have been planning their campuses for centuries, yet scholars have conducted little empirical research regarding the nature of campus planning in the United States. We review recent scholarship on campus planning, discovering that it is dominated by case studies (sometimes in edited collections) and some comparative studies. In this review we organize the literature into 3 geographic scales: the campus per se (or campus park), the campus–­community interface, and the larger campus district. The literature addresses 5 topics: land use, design, sustainability, economic development, and collaboration. Most of the studies focus on research-oriented universities in metropolitan locations. The literature emphasizes how campus master planning can support student learning, how design and building guidelines can make a campus more cohesive, and how campuses are adopting sustainable development and operations. At the campus–­community interface, the research documents how some colleges and universities have expanded beyond their traditional boundaries, invested in local economic development, and worked with their communities to improve transportation and reduce environmental impacts. Studies of campus district planning emphasize community adoption of development regulations and code enforcement procedures to reduce the impact of students living in nearby neighborhoods. The literature stresses the importance of partnerships, collaboration, and enhanced communications between the university and the community.

Takeaway for practice: University planners should continue to focus on site design that reinforces student learning and environmental sustainability and on community interface planning that supports economic development and reduces environmental impacts. City planners should expand campus district planning to address a broad array of issues and opportunities. Both university and city planners should facilitate collaboration between their institutions. Scholars should study a wide range of colleges and universities, including 2-year as well as 4-year institutions and those in nonurban settings.     

How Art and Culture Happen in New York

Problem: In the last two decades, urban economic development has shifted its focus from industrial recruitment to talent and human capital, including art and culture. Many have argued that talented people are drawn to artistic and cultural amenities, but few have examined art and culture as a production system and drawn meaningful insights for urban planning and economic development based on understanding its inner workings.

Purpose: This article looks closely at the mechanisms that structure and drive the cultural economy and suggests possible avenues for cultural economic development and policymaking based on these mechanisms. I focus on the ways cultural producers obtain jobs, advance their careers, gain value for their goods and services, and interact with each other.

Methods: I conducted 80 interviews with cultural producers, cultural gatekeepers, and owners and managers of entertainment venues these groups frequent.

Results and conclusions: I find that not only are artistic and cultural producers densely agglomerated, but that key social mechanisms structure and inform this clustered production system. These industries depend on unique kinds of social interaction, from nightlife to gallery openings, to thrive. This is more than just fun and games, and is critical to the operation of this economic sector.

Takeaway for practice: Cultural producers rely heavily on their social lives to advance their careers, obtain jobs, and generate value for their goods, so that the local arts social milieu is critical to the cultural economy. Cultural producers also tend to cross-fertilize, collaborating to create goods and services, review each other's products, and establish new careers, meaning the ability to live and work in close proximity to one another is important. Finally, a large concentration of creative people and an active cultural milieu has made New York culture a known brand. While New York is unique, the cultural life of other cities and regions can also be economic development assets. Places can strategically cultivate the social milieus that are most conducive to the production of art and culture.     

Peripheral Small Town Development: Senqu Municipality,Eastern Cape Province,South Africa

Many small towns in South Africa are experiencing decline and in search of bases for economic revival. Local economic development (LED) planning is providing an impetus for reversing economic decline in some small towns. This article provides a case study of planning for pro-poor LED in Senqu municipality, Eastern Cape Province, one of South Africa’s poorest regions.     

Limitations of Technical Approaches to Transport Planning Practice in Two Cases: Social Issues as a Critical Component of Urban Projects

ABSTRACT

Technical transport models are commonly relied upon in planning practice for the development of urban rail infrastructure projects. By considering the assessment and management of social impacts in the planning and decision-making of two rail megaprojects (the North-South Metro line in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and the Parramatta Rail Link in Sydney, Australia), we found that technical approaches continued to overlook social impacts, and had an overemphasis on economic and engineering considerations. We conclude that good practice Social Impact Assessment (SIA) offers opportunities to better consider social issues as a critical component of transport projects.     

HOUSING POLICY GOALS AND THE TURNOVER OF HOUSING

Problem: Congestion pricing and land use planning have been proposed as two promising strategies to reduce the externalities associated with driving, including traffic congestion, air pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions. However, they are often viewed by their proponents as substitutive instead of complementary to each other.

Purpose: Using data from a pilot mileage fee program run in Portland, OR, we explored whether congestion pricing and land use planning were mutually supportive in terms of vehicle miles traveled (VMT) reduction. We examined whether effective land use planning could reinforce the benefit of congestion pricing, and whether congestion pricing could strengthen the role of land use planning in encouraging travelers to reduce driving.

Methods: VMT data were collected over 10 months from 130 households, which were divided into two groups: those who paid a mileage charge with rates that varied by congestion level (i.e., congestion pricing) and those who paid a mileage charge with a flat structure. Using regression models to compare the two groups, we tested the effect of congestion pricing on VMT reduction across different land use patterns, and the effect of land use on VMT reduction with and without congestion pricing.

Results and conclusions: With congestion pricing, the VMT reduction is greater in traditional (dense and mixed-use) neighborhoods than in suburban (single-use, low-density) neighborhoods, probably because of the availability of travel alternatives in the former. Under the same land use pattern, land use attributes explain more variance of household VMT when congestion pricing is implemented, suggesting that this form of mileage fee could make land use planning a more effective mechanism to reduce VMT. In summary, land use planning and congestion pricing appear to be mutually supportive.

Takeaway for practice: For policymakers considering mileage pricing, land use planning affects not only the economic viability but also the political feasibility of a pricing scheme. For urban planners, congestion pricing provides both opportunities and challenges to crafting land use policies that will reduce VMT. For example, a pricing zone that overlaps with dense, mixed-use and transit-accessible development, can reinforce the benefits of these development patterns and encourage greater behavioral changes.

Research support: This project was supported by the Mineta Transportation Institute, where the authors are research associates.     

Shifts in rural planning in the US and India

ABSTRACT

The premise that rural planning is place specific is demonstrated in this paper by tracing the changing emphasis of rural planning in the US and India. Approaches to rural development in the two countries, particularly as pertinent to the agriculture sector, intersected following Indian independence in 1947. Indian planners drew on the experience of the US at inducing changes in agriculture based on scientific experimentation and a government-financed extension system for dissemination and adoption and developed similar systems for India. Salient aspects of rural planning in the two countries are delineated including historical settlement, modern farms, corporate farms, globalization, rural services, poverty alleviation, equity, access, and environmental, economic and social sustainability. Their two trajectories illustrate how the emphasis of rural planning in each country is shaped by the complex specificities of rural places. The current convergence in the US and India on environmental sustainability, communications systems, housing, education, job training, and areas of inequity reflect global trends in rural planning.     

Group Title Subdivision: The Application of the Cluster Concept to Queensland,Australia

Abstract

Economic arguments presented by the Victoria Grants Commission and the Local Government Commission to justify the restructuring of local government in Victoria are evaluated. A number of limitations are found in the economic case of the two agencies which seriously weaken the (now abandoned) case for re-drawing local government boundaries in Victoria.     

The effect of proposed district centres on Melbourne's central business district

Abstract

Concerns have been expressed that the designation of the 14 district centres in the MMBW's proposed Amendment 150 will have an adverse effect on the Central Business District. This paper analyses these claims and contends that there is little threat from the district centres themselves. Because the planning concepts espoused in Amendment 150 and the Melbourne LDS are not sufficiently related to the economic development processes occurring in the city, they will have limited success in other than physical enhancement terms. The opportunity to develop an alternative economic role for the CBD has been overlooked.