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.     

Urban Entrepreneurialism and Sustainable Development: A Comparative Analysis of Chinese Eco-Developments

ABSTRACT

In recent years, state entrepreneurialism and the notion of (urban) sustainability have become ever more closely intertwined in China and there has been a proliferation of eco-/low-carbon and other similar sustainability-themed urban initiatives that have helped local states to achieve a favorable position in city competitions. Nevertheless, existing studies do not explain why Chinese sustainability projects are planned/implemented with divergent emphases and different development trajectories. Through three Chinese flagship projects, the real-estate-centric Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City (SSTEC), the environmental-construction-led Chongming Eco-Islands (CEIs), and the industrial development-focused Shenzhen International Low-Carbon City (ILCC), we argue that the formulation and implementation of urban sustainable developments are subject to local particularities and different extra-local political-economic contexts. We highlight how both vertical administrative governance and horizontal coordination between territorial jurisdictions underlie the Chinese entrepreneurial planning system, which results in different types of urban entrepreneurships: (1) scalable startup urban entrepreneurship (SSTEC); (2) asset-replacement urban entrepreneurship (CEIs); and (3) urban expansion entrepreneurship (ILCC). This study also reveals that all three cases experience a development paradox as they strive to reconcile mutually competing economic and environmental imperatives.     

Planning Particularities: Reinterpreting Urban Planning in China with the Case of Chengdu

ABSTRACT

The concept of neoliberalisation is increasingly applied to China to explain its unprecedented urban transformation. This paper argues against fitting China into a prototype neoliberal model. Instead it proposes a fresh interpretation of its urban planning particularities within a continuity-contestation framework, embodied in the context, governance and practice of planning. Chengdu, the gateway in West China, is chosen as a case study to illustrate this framework. Analysing the successive city Master Plans of Chengdu, it was found that there was a strong path dependency in Chengdu’s plan-making process. Yet contestations from the planning context and planning practice pressured for planning transformation. Interestingly, inconsistencies within its Master Plans sometimes worked in line with the market and mediated the conflicts between plan-led and market-led development logics.     

The concept and planning of public native housing estates in Nairobi/Kenya, 1918–1948

ABSTRACT

Interwar public housing estates for native citizens in Sub-Sahara African cities, represent hybrids of global and local urban concepts, housing typologies and dwelling habits.

The authors explain such hybrids via exploratory research note as a result of transmutation processes, marked by various (non)human actors. To categorize and compare them, Actor Network Theory (ANT) is applied and tested within an architecture historical framework. Nairobi/Kenya functions as pars pro toto with its Kariakor and Kaloleni estates as exemplary cases. Their different network-outcomes underpin the supposition that actor-oriented research can help to unravel a most essential, though neglected part of international town planning history.     

Planning transport infrastructure: examining the politics of transport planning in Melbourne,Sydney and Perth

Abstract

Australian cities have observed a “consensus turn” expressed as broad public support of greater accessibility and public transport provision as revealed in metropolitan strategic plans. In contrast large-scale road projects proposed to traverse the inner-city of three major Australian cities reveals an ongoing and deep-seated attachment by some to car-based travel in Australian urban transport planning. Comparative case studies of these three road projects in Melbourne, Sydney and Perth explores the impact that an antagonistic relationship between the state and community has on the culture of transport planning. Through observational insights, policy and media analysis and interviews with community groups, we show that this antagonistic planning culture arises when there is a fracture between metropolitan strategic plan-making and project planning, and when clear channels of communication and deliberation are undermined.     

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.     

Regional cities: international references in Brazilian regional planning in the 1950s and 1960s

ABSTRACT

A new stage of urban planning emerged in Brazil in the 1950s, with the region as the object of planning. Planners began to recognize the international contribution to the institutionalization of planning and to the development of proposals for Brazilian cities, as well as the connection between planning and urban decentralization ideas. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to delineate the city model that was being proposed within regional scale plans as the result of international urban practices and ideas. Two examples of such plans are presented in this paper: the Regional Plan of Santos (1950) and the Basic Regional Plan for the Coastline of Parana State (1966). As a result of the international references incorporated into these plans, a mixture of urban principles can be identified in these territorial proposals. The regional city model is the predominant principle arising from these plans, derived from the association of two planning scales: urban and regional.     

Unimaginable Change

Problem: Planning aspires to intervene and make positive change. However, our ideas about how to create institutional reform need to be revisited because they do not fully account for the changes we have witnessed.

Purpose: This article assesses the state of our knowledge about institutions and of how we construct and change them. It identifies the major deficiencies in new institutionalism in planning theory and searches for ideas about how to influence positive institutional change.

Methods: I analyzed over 90 publications in the planning literature and other social sciences that discussed “institutions,” and identified the varying definitions and underlying epistemologies and philosophies that are at odds with each other. I then examined empirical studies of successful economic development cases in order to critically appraise the efficacy of different theories to account for the observed changes.

Results and conclusions: Disparate new institutionalism theories in the social sciences have been starting to converge by focusing on social cognition. The unimaginable, fundamental changes that have occurred in our lifetimes have not been the result of rational state planning, manipulation by political elites, or activist organizations. A society-wide process of tacit learning from peers and exemplars built new paradigms and practices, ultimately normalizing new realities.

Takeaway for practice: Planning practice that aims toward large institutional changes rather than incremental ones should incorporate the empirical lessons of contemporary history and the latest findings in cognitive science. Knowing more about the social cognition process can help planners to more effectively engage in fundamental change. Furthermore, if it retains its strengths in empirical research and multiscalar, interdisciplinary analysis, planning practice and research can make policy-relevant contributions to our understanding of social cognition change.

Research support: None.     

Planning for the Disposal of the Dead

Problem: Concurrent with the dramatic increase in the nation's elderly population expected in coming decades will be a need to dispose of larger numbers of our dead. This issue has religious, cultural, and economic salience, but is not typically considered a planning problem. Although cremation rates are rising, burial is projected to remain the preferred alternative for the majority of the U.S. population, and urban space for cemeteries is limited in many communities.

Purpose: We outline issues related to cemeteries and burial, describe a number of alternatives to traditional cemeteries, and explain how planners might usefully contribute.

Methods: This work is based on a literature review.

Results and conclusions: Alternatives to the cemetery are emerging, but remain limited. Some require changes to laws or public perceptions. Planning practice could be advanced by case studies showing how to integrate burial grounds into existing communities and how to alter public policy to permit alternatives to burial.

Takeaway for practice: As population demographics change, environmental concerns intensify, and demand for urban space grows, future land use decisions will have to balance a diverse set of social, cultural, and environmental expectations, including taking into account burial practices. There are only a handful of alternatives to traditional burial in a cemetery: burial in a multiple-use cemetery; natural burial; entombment in a mausoleum; cremation, with the ashes preserved in a columbarium or scattered elsewhere; and burial in a grave that will be reused in the future. This article provides planners with information about each of these alternatives, examples of how the planning process can address disposal of the dead, suggestions for avoiding environmental externalities, and ideas for better integrating the landscapes of death into community life.

Research support: None     

A Data-Driven Approach to Exploring Future Land Use and Transport Scenarios: The Online What If? Tool

ABSTRACT

In an era of rapid urbanization, there is a need for data-driven tools to guide long-term strategic planning. Online What If? (OWI) is a planning support system (PSS) that helps inform strategic planners about the impact of population growth and other socioeconomic factors will have on the future growth of cities. This research presents its application in metropolitan Perth with a two-part case study, demonstrating a first comprehensive application of the tool. First, OWI tests five scenarios for urban growth through the year 2050, allocating residential land use. Next, OWI alters land use allocations to align residential development with high frequency public transit, while also allocating commercial land use to support higher residential densities. Together, these data-driven scenarios inform city planners and policy makers in guiding the long-term, sustainable growth of Perth. The paper concludes with a review of OWI’s strengths, weaknesses and possibilities for continual development.     

The urban grid and entangled planning cultures in Senegal

ABSTRACT

In Western (Eurocentric) research traditions of urban and planning histories, sub-Saharan Africa is generally denied an urban past, an urban settlement design culture, and especially an indigenous practice of grid planning. It is against this historiographic background that indigenous grid pattern settlements in Senegal are analysed, with relation to the gridded tradition of colonial settlement design. In light of both cultural sensitivities inherited in African studies and the diffusionist paradigm which seeks a supposed singular ‘origin’ for the grid plan – it is demonstrated that urban grid planning emerges independently in Senegal, before European colonization. In shifting the discussion from morphological essentialism regarding the genealogy of the grid towards a more interactive and processual approach of ‘entangled histories’, this article also provides insights into the dynamic criss-crossings between top-down and bottom-up cultures of urban planning. This Western-cum-indigenous formalistic entanglement is exemplified by analysing how such important contemporary Senegalese cities as Dakar, Touba, and Diourbel have been built. On the methodological level, we utilize a variety of secondary and primary sources, including archival material, an analysis of recent maps, satellite imagery, and direct observation.     

The Point is to Change It

ABSTRACT

This paper explores how planning practices contribute to the reification of the ‘state’ through the case of Singapore’s new urban waterfront, Marina Bay. Instead of assuming Singapore’s state-led planning model as inherently ‘top-down’ and ‘long-term’, it disaggregates the planning process into three specific modes of abstraction – calculation, historicity and imagination – and analyzes the role of each in reifying the ‘state’ as the singular author of history and development. The case contributes to the literature by illuminating how ‘states’ can appear to have different forms, spatialities, agencies and ultimately consequences, without compartmentalizing planning models based primarily on ideological or geopolitical divisions.     

Whiteness and Urban Planning

Abstract

Problem, research strategy, and findings: The ability of planning to address America’s urban problems of inequality, crime, housing, education, and segregation is hampered by a relative neglect of Whiteness and its role in shaping urban outcomes. We offer a justification for centering Whiteness within urban planning scholarship and practice that would examine its role shaping and perpetuating regional and racial injustices in the American city. The focus of planners, scholars, and public discourse on the “dysfunctions” of communities of color, notably poverty, high levels of segregation, and isolation, diverts attention from the structural systems that produce and reproduce the advantages of affluent and White neighborhoods. Planners and planning scholars frequently invoke a “legacy of injustice” with regard to concentrated poverty and disadvantage but not in regard to neighborhoods of White affluence. One is segregated and problematized and the other is idealized.

Takeaway for practice: Planners and planning scholars need to understand the role of Whiteness, in particular White affluence, to assess the potential impacts of planning interventions. Doing so will inform a wider range of planning approaches to problems of racial and spatial equity.     

Regulatory Practices of Urban Agriculture: A Connection to Planning and Policy

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Municipalities across the United States are gradually recognizing urban agriculture as an integral part of planning, land use, and zoning ordinances. We review the literature on the regulation of urban agriculture at a moment when policy and regulatory vacuums exist and the acceptance and integration of urban agriculture is uneven. We review the current regulatory practices of 40 metropolitan and 40 micropolitan municipalities in the 4 U.S. Census regions. We find that municipalities are filling policy vacuums by adopting enabling ordinances (zoning ordinances, land use designations, resolutions), regulations on urban agriculture production (backyard animals, built structures, practitioner responsibility), and fiscal policy instruments (restrictions on sales of agricultural products, tax abatement, urban agriculture fees). Our findings support local planning practitioners in filling regulatory gaps, practitioners of urban agriculture in seeking how it’s done elsewhere, and researchers in discerning new applied and basic research projects. We identify 3 principal knowledge gaps: Planners need a complete typology of regulatory possibilities; a better understanding of how local, state, and federal legislations constrain or enable urban agriculture; and empirical evidence of the economic, social, and environmental impacts of urban agriculture.

Takeaway for practice: Planners should assess existing urban agricultural practices and consider which regulatory frameworks best support multiple local goals, incorporating a concern with urban agriculture into ongoing activities, deploying existing or innovative land use tools, facilitating institutional cooperation, and promoting inclusive decision making and community engagement.     

Scenario Planning for Urban Planners: Toward a Practitioner's Guide

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Scenario planning has promise as a planning tool when compared with more common approaches, yet planners have had limited success with scenario planning in part because of the complexities of the scenario-planning process itself. We address these issues by constructing the key building blocks of a scenario process for public sector planners. We review and synthesize 63 articles and 25 projects from 2004 to 2014 to construct a planning typology with nine components that capture the important variations in scenario projects, such as the project scope, desired outcomes, and the types of scenario construction and evaluation tools used by planners. Although the typology is based only on a select set of projects from the industrialized world in English, we nevertheless further use our review and synthesis to characterize the key subcomponents or possibilities within each component and discuss the overlaps and connections among them. We then use the typology to code a subset of the reviewed projects to identify the associations among the subcomponents of different components and to explore whether planners should promote or avoid these associations. Finally, we offer some instructions on how planners may use the typology to create a better scenario–planning process.

Takeaway for practice: Our typology illustrates the combination of variables that comprise a scenario-planning process and the tradeoffs planners make when choosing one set of factors over another. Planners can use our typology to construct a variety of scenario processes that are participatory, transparent, and future oriented and are an improvement over traditional planning approaches.     

Expanding the Scope and Impact of Collaborative Planning

Problem: As planners grow increasingly confident that they have settled on the right concepts and methods to conduct stakeholder-based collaboration, they are not considering what can be achieved through other collaborative approaches.

Purpose: We aimed to explore how creating a network of place- and stakeholder-based collaboratives using communities of practice could strengthen individual collaboratives and achieve network synergies.

Methods: Using a case study approach, we draw out lessons for collaborative planning from our research on the U.S. Fire Learning Network (FLN), a collaborative initiative to restore ecosystems that depend on fire. We analyzed data from over 140 interviews, hundreds of documents including restoration plans, newsletters, meeting summaries, maps, and various other reports, and observations at more than a dozen regional and national meetings.

Results and conclusions: We conclude that the FLN nurtures expertise in ecological fire restoration and collaborative planning by linking multi-stakeholder collaboratives to regional communities of practice. Moreover, this linkage creates and sustains a network of collaboratives that amplify the potential for fundamental change in the culture and practice of fire management.

Takeaway for practice: A community of practice is an effective approach to collaboration in situations where the purpose is to expand expertise rather than to resolve conflict and reach consensus. Moreover, a community of practice can link stakeholder-based collaboratives to create a whole greater than the sum of its parts. Realizing this potential requires questioning the universality of some of the core principles of stakeholder-based collaborative planning and diversifying the collaborative planning toolkit.

Research support: This research was supported by the Northern Research Station of the U. S. Forest Service and The Nature Conservancy.     

海绵城市建设融入国土空间规划体系的路径与方法研究

海绵城市是城市开发建设的新模式,是未来城市转型发展的新趋势,将海绵城市建设融入国土空间规划体系,是优化自然资源资产配置、提高城市发展质量的迫切需求.文章首先对海绵城市和国土空间规划体系的概念进行了界定;其次根据一定的选择原则,形成了总体规划和详细规划落实海绵城市建设的内容体系;最后对每项海绵城市建设的规划内容给出了在具...     

The natural environment in socialist modernity: three case studies of new urban areas in Czechoslovakia (1966–1991)

ABSTRACT

This article presents three case studies of projects to construct new urban areas situated around the capital city of Prague. These urban areas were among the largest Czechoslovak urban planning projects and were intended as comprehensive environmental planning. Indeed, all of these projects included a formal declaration of the importance of protecting the existing environment while also creating a new environment for socialist people. The first of these case studies is the unrealized project of the city of Etarea (1967) planned for 135.000 inhabitants and based on an eco-friendly systems approach. The two other case studies represent implemented projects: Ji?ní Město (South City) which was, in 1971 planned for 64.000 inhabitants (then in the 1980s for more than 100.000 inhabitants) and Jihozápadní Město (Southwest City) which was, in 1968 planned for 80.000 inhabitants (then in the 1980s for more than 147.000 inhabitants).     

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.