Metropolitan Transportation Planning: Lessons From the Past,Institutions for the Future

Problem, research strategy, and findings: There are more than 400 U.S. metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) overseeing multiple transportation projects totaling billions of dollars, yet these crucial organizations and their history and current role are generally unknown or confusing to many planning practitioners and scholars. MPOs face major challenges in developing meaningful long-range regional transportation plans, challenges rooted in their history that planners should understand as they grapple with metropolitan planning efforts. MPOs may approve projects and their funding, but disparate agencies and often competitive local governments control budgets and actually build projects. MPOs, moreover, do not fully represent all regional interests and have no control over the local land use decisions that would support less autocentric communities and human-powered modes. I provide a metareview of the history of regional transportation planning and the MPOs responsible for it, describing U.S. metropolitan transportation planning from the early 20th century. Federal legislation in the 1960s first suggested a regional forum for conversations about metropolitan transportation. Federal legislation in subsequent decades made incremental if incomplete progress toward creating a meaningful regional forum, adapting institutions and practices to increase stakeholder involvement as well as the scope of transport planning, yet MPOs have multiple limitations that planners can address.

Takeaway for practice: History suggests that MPOs can be a force for regional change. Planners and policymakers could anchor future reforms to MPOs’ existing legal and administrative frameworks. Planners should revisit the membership and voting structures of MPO boards to ensure better stakeholder representation and permit some MPOs to generate and direct transportation funds at the local level.     

Tracking Our Footsteps

Abstract

Problem, research strategy, and findings: We conduct a systematic reading of all articles published in the past 30?years in three U.S.-based general planning journals, Journal of the American Planning Association (JAPA), Journal of Planning Education and Research (JPER), and Journal of Planning Literature (JPL), using latent Dirichlet allocation, a text mining technique. We find that certain research themes remain important in the past 3 decades, such as planning process, planning methods, and land use/growth management, whereas others have lost their prominent status, such as planning theory and planning education. New fields such as food systems have emerged during the study period. Editorial regimes appear to be associated with theme dynamics.

Takeaway for practice: In this study we demonstrate a text mining method to effectively summarize a large amount of text data and track planning researchers’ footsteps in the study of planning issues reflected from published research articles. We identify past and emerging research trends in the studied journals that can help scholars situate their work in the literature and practitioners find collaboration opportunities. It also helps professional associations such as the American Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) and the APA open up new conference tracks and/or specialization groups/divisions so they can reflect the ever-changing interests of their memberships in a timely manner.     

Greening the Rust Belt: A Green Infrastructure Model for Right Sizing America's Shrinking Cities

Problem: Existing planning and redevelopment models do not offer a holistic approach for addressing the challenges vacant and abandoned properties create in America's older industrial cities, but these shrinking cities possess opportunities to undertake citywide greening strategies that convert such vacant properties to community assets.

Purpose: We define strategies shrinking cities can use to convert vacant properties to valuable green infrastructure to revitalize urban environments, empower community residents, and stabilize dysfunctional real estate markets. To do this we examine shrinking cities and their vacant property challenges; identify the benefits of urban greening; explore the policies, obstacles, and promise of a green infrastructure initiative; and discuss vacant property reclamation programs and policies that would form the nucleus of a model green infrastructure right-sizing initiative designed to stabilize the communities with the greatest level of abandonment.

Methods: We draw our conclusions based on fieldwork, practitioner interviews, and a review of the current literature.

Results and conclusions: We propose a new model to effectively right size shrinking cities by (a) instituting green infrastructure plans and programs, (b) creating land banks to manage the effort, and (c) building community consensus through collaborative neighborhood planning. Our model builds on lessons learned from successful vacant property and urban greening programs, including nonprofit leadership and empowerment of neighborhood residents, land banking, strategic neighborhood planning, targeted revitalization investments, and collaborative planning. It will require planners and policymakers to address challenges such as financing, displacement of local residents, and lack of legal authority.

Takeaway for practice: We conclude that academics, practitioners, and policymakers should collaborate to (a) explore alternative urban designs and innovative planning and zoning approaches to right sizing; (b) collect accurate data on the number and costs of vacant properties and potential savings of different right-sizing strategies; (c) craft statewide vacant property policy agendas; and (d) establish a policy network of shrinking cities to share information, collaboratively solve problems, and diffuse policy innovations.

Research support: Our field work was supported by technical assistance grants and contracts through the National Vacant Properties Campaign.     

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.     

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.     

The Successful Few: Healthy Downtowns of Small Metropolitan Regions

In the face of increasing suburbanization during the past half century, most downtowns have experienced decline, particularly those of small metropolitan regions. A survey of planners (both practitioners and academics) and other urban professionals has sought to identify small metropolitan regions considered to have successful downtowns and the factors associated with this success. Only a small number of such North American metropolitan regions were perceived as possessing a very successful or successful downtown. Factors that characterize such success are described. We conclude that revitalization policies should concentrate on niche markets that show little interest in homogenized suburban activities. More specifically, planners should focus on the retention and enhancement of the distinct physical characteristics that clearly distinguish downtowns from suburban environments.

More and more U.S. cities and towns are coming to realize the benefits of greater street connectivity: reduced traffic on arterial streets, more continuous and direct routes, better emergency vehicle access, and improved utility connections. Here is an excellent overview of recent efforts by communities across the U.S. to increase street connectivity. The authors look at the motivation behind such efforts, the wide variety of issues raised, and the different approaches taken to resolve them. Planners, decision makers, and neighborhood residents will gain a better understanding of the concept of connectivity and how it applies in their own communities.

Ideally, the jobs available in a community should match the labor force skills, and housing should be J. available at prices, sizes, and locations suited to the workers who wish to live in the area. Some argue that the market is the mechanism that will achieve a balance between jobs and housing. Jerry Weitz researched several types of jobs-housing imbalance and concluded that, in fact, the market failed to achieve such balance in three out of four scenarios. Weitz explains the details of jobs-housing balance– a planning tool that local governments can use to achieve a roughly equal number of jobs and housing units or households, resulting in overall community improvements.     

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.     

Urban Heat Management and the Legacy of Redlining

Abstract

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Historical patterns of discrimination and disinvestment have shaped the current landscape of vulnerability to heat in U.S. cities but are not explicitly considered by heat mitigation planning efforts. Drawing upon the equity planning framework and developing a broader conceptualization of what equity means can enhance urban heat management. Here I ask whether areas in Baltimore (MD), Dallas (TX), and Kansas City (MO) targeted for disinvestment in the past through practices like redlining are now more exposed to heat. I compare estimates of land surface temperature (LST) derived from satellite imagery across the four-category rating system used to guide lending practices in cities around the United States, summarize the demographic characteristics of current residents within each of these historical designations using U.S. Census data, and discuss the connection between systematic disinvestment and exposure to heat. LST and air temperatures are not equivalent, which makes it difficult to reconcile existing research on the human health impacts of heat exposure that rely on a sparse network of air temperature monitoring stations with more granular LST data. Areas of these cities that were targeted for systematic disinvestment in the past have higher mean land surface temperatures than those that received more favorable ratings. Poor and minority residents are also overrepresented in formerly redlined areas in each of the three study cities.

Takeaway for practice: By examining areas that have experienced sustained disinvestment, cities may be able to more quickly narrow the focus of heat mitigation planning efforts while furthering social equity. Efforts to mitigate the negative impacts of rising temperatures in U.S. cities must be tailored to the local climate, built environment, and sociodemographic history. Finally, geospatial data sets that document historical policies are useful for centering and redressing current inequalities when viewed through an equity planning lens.     

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     

Measuring Informal Housing Production in California Cities

Problem, research strategy, and ­findings: Planning scholars and practitioners once assumed informal housing was largely absent in the developed world; today they increasingly acknowledge its role in the United States. Recent evidence suggests that informal housing, or non-permitted construction, is a significant phenomenon inside incorporated cities, despite widespread regulations and code enforcement. Informal housing is a de facto source of otherwise scarce affordable housing in many locations, but also compromises health and safety and strains municipal infrastructure and fiscal health. Planners lack a means of measuring informal construction at the scale of individual cities. We propose such a method, and apply it to incorporated cities in California. Data limitations prevent us from precisely estimating the magnitude of non-permitted construction, but our findings suggest that informal channels are an important source of housing production, especially in the places where permitted construction is constrained.

Takeaway for practice: We urge planners to engage with informal housing issues, given the considerable importance of this hidden yet vital portion of the housing market as a means of providing living spaces amid tight housing market conditions. Our method for calculating the rate of informal housing addition is a useful tool for planners to gather basic facts about the informal housing market in their communities, a prerequisite for policy interventions.     

The Evolution of the Federal Role in Supporting Community Recovery After U.S. Disasters

Problem, research strategy, and findings: The process of long-term recovery, if done well, can minimize post-disaster disruption, address problems that existed before the disaster struck, and improve the future resilience of a community. The U.S. government, however, historically has lacked a systematic approach to supporting community recovery. This study describes the history of federal policies for supporting community recovery after disasters, with particular attention to the roles of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). We conclude by considering the new National Disaster Recovery Framework (NDRF). This historical review suggests that the federal government needs to emphasize the following: providing resources for community recovery planning; facilitating increased flows of information after disasters; streamlining FEMA assistance to public agencies; explicitly working to reduce the barriers between FEMA and HUD; and incorporating equity into recovery policies. Recovery policies also need to include incentives to achieve substantive goals of rebuilding in a way that is sustainable, equitable, cost-effective, and timely, and that reduces the chances of future disasters.

Takeaway for practice: Local community planners can draw several lessons from this historical account. First, they should become aware of the various post-disaster programs now, before disaster strikes. Second, knowledge of post-disaster policies and programs will enable planners to use them creatively and effectively if disaster strikes. Third, in the midst of reconstruction, planners need to continually seek opportunities to promote betterment and resilience to natural hazards.     

Managing change: Seattle’s 21st century urban renaissance

ABSTRACT

Evolution of the urban planning and historic preservation disciplines has resulted in an “uneasy alliance” in practice, one further complicated by the back-to-the-city movement and increased development pressure in older urban neighbourhoods. In Seattle, as in other U.S. cities, the pace, intensity and scale of redevelopment has caused dramatic spatial and social transformations. Although research has shown that older built fabric provides economic and social benefit for cities, neither regulations created by planners for guiding redevelopment nor strategies created by preservationists for retaining urban heritage have been successful in reconciling these different, yet interconnected, sets of values. We engage three Seattle neighbourhood case studies to clarify and evaluate policies, programs and strategies used by planners and preservationists for reimagining neighbourhood transformations. This work suggests a need for more creative, integrative collaboration between the two fields to simultaneously engage – and reconcile – social and economic tensions caused by urban redevelopment.     

Where Should We Have the Meeting?

Abstract

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Scholars and practitioners in the fields of planning, public participation, and consensus building have devised a variety of techniques for participatory decision making. Despite the ever-growing literatures on public participation, consensus building, and deliberative democracy, few scholars have studied perhaps the most elemental consideration in designing participatory processes: how to create physical environments for productive interactions and conversations. In this study, we address that gap in the scholarship on participatory decision making by answering two questions: What are planners are seeking to achieve when creating venues for engagement, participation, or collaboration? What are the tools at their disposal to do so? We interviewed practitioners with significant experience in the facilitation of planning processes, selected at random from the National Roster of Environmental Conflict Resolution Professionals, and developed a set of objectives and considerations for creating effective venues for participation and collaboration in planning. Based on our analysis, we find that venue creation involves three key dimensions: determining the appropriate venue-related process objectives, selecting a location, and arranging the chosen space.

Takeaway for practice: Combining insights from existing guidance in handbooks and reports with the findings from our interviews, we developed the Venue Creation Tool to support more informed discussions and choices related to venues for participation and collaboration in planning.     

Becoming Vulnerable to Flooding: An Urban Assemblage View of Flooding in an African City

ABSTRACT

Assemblage thinking has emerged over the last two decades as an important theoretical framework to interrogate emerging complex socio-material phenomenon in cities. This paper deploys the assemblage lens to unpack the vulnerability of informal communities to flood hazards in an African city. Focusing on Agbogbloshie and Old Fadama, the largest informal settlements in Accra, Ghana, this paper employs multiple methods including archival analysis, institutional surveys, focus group discussions, and mini-workshops to study the processes of exposure and vulnerability to flood hazards in these two communities. We find that being vulnerable to flood hazards in these informal settlements emerges from historically contingent, co-constitutive processes and actants: the city officials’ modernist imaginaries and socio-cultural identities of residents in informal settlements; the social material conditions experienced by residents in these settlements; and the translocal learning networks of government and non-government actors that simultaneously (re)produce oppressive urban planning policies and grassroots resistance to these policies. The paper concludes with a call to urban planners and allied built environment practitioners to understand flood vulnerability as both a process and product of these complex interactions.     

Towards Post-Anthropocentric Cities: Reconceptualizing Smart Cities to Evade Urban Ecocide

ABSTRACT

This short piece acts as a coda to this journal’s special issue on “Smart Cities and Innovative Technologies.” First, it provides a retrospective view of the origins of the smart city concept. The paper, secondly, presents the most recent perspectives on the new interpretations of the smart city notion. It then provides a commentary on the potential directions for a better reconceptualization of smart cities to evade a most likely urban ecocide. Lastly, the short communication concludes by asking two critical questions: (a) Will urban scholars, planners, designers, and activists be able to convince urban policymakers and the general public of the need for a post-anthropocentric urban turnaround? (b) How do the public, private, and academic sectors along with communities pave the way for post-anthropocentric cities and more-than-human futures?     

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.     

SYMPOSIUM: Putting the Future in Planning

Abstract

Tony de Carlo's image Amidst the Sprawl was created with the area just west of downtown Los Angeles in mind. It is one of the city's oldest neighborhoods and home to the artist, with older single-family homes giving way to freeways and the persistent inching westward of downtown. Its depiction of Latinos and mixed land uses brings to mind just some of the challenges and opportunities facing planners who try to put the future back into planning, as described in this issue's Longer View symposium.

The artist, a Los Angeles native, is the son of an artist mother and has been creating since childhood. A self-taught artist, he exhibits his work regularly throughout the U.S. More of his work can be viewed on his Web site at <http://www.tonydecarlo.com>.

The planning field has been criticized in recent years for neglecting time and the future in favor of present-focused decisions about space. How should planners proceed to put the future back in planning? Each of the four authors contributing to this symposium brings a different perspective to bear. Sam Cole reviews the contributions of contemporary work in the futures field and provides a helpful resource list. Martin Wachs discusses the similarities and differences between forecasting and envisioning, and he provides a commentary on what this means for the identity of planning. Dowell Myers presents a demographic futures perspective that emphasizes alternative interpretations of prospective demo-graphic trends. He illustrates this with regard to California's growing Latino population and the impacts it will have on building denser and more compact cities. Linda Dalton provides a commentary on the preceding papers and finds ample room for expanding planners' emphasis on the future, both in practice and in accredited planning education. Returning to an emphasis on the future could help to make planning seem more appealing and relevant to both citizens and decision makers.     

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.     

Explaining Progress in Climate Adaptation Planning Across 156 U.S. Municipalities

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Cities are increasingly experiencing the effects of climate change and taking steps to adapt to current and future natural hazard risks. Research on these efforts has identified numerous barriers to climate adaptation planning, but has not yet systematically evaluated the relative importance of different constraints for a large number of diverse cities. We draw on responses from 156 U.S. cities that participated in a 2011 global survey on local adaptation planning, 60% of which are planning for climate change. We use logistic regression analysis to assess the significance of 13 indicators measuring political leadership, fiscal and administrative resources, ability to obtain and communicate climate information, and state policies in predicting the status of adaptation planning. In keeping with the literature, we find that greater local elected officials’ commitment, higher municipal expenditures per capita, and an awareness that the climate is already changing are associated with cities engaging in adaptation planning. The presence of state policies on climate adaptation is surprisingly not a statistically significant predictor, suggesting that current policies are not yet strong enough to increase local adaptation planning. However, the model's sampling bias toward larger and more environmentally progressive cities may mask the predictive power of state policies and other indicators.

Takeaway for practice: State governments have an opportunity to increase local political commitment by integrating requirements for climate-risk evaluations into existing funding streams and investment plans. Regional planning entities also can help overcome the lack of local fiscal capacity and political support by facilitating the exchange of information, pooling and channeling resources, and providing technical assistance to local planners.     

School Siting

Problem: The United States is embarking on an unprecedented era of school construction even as debate continues over where schools should be located and how much land they should occupy.

Purpose: My three goals for this study were to trace the evolution of school siting standards, to explain the factors currently influencing school facility location decisions, and to identify what local and regional planners could contribute to school siting decisions.

Methods: I reviewed the land use planning and educational facilities literatures on school siting and conducted in-depth interviews with school facility planners from 10 counties in Maryland and northern Virginia to assess their perspectives on the school planning process.

Results and conclusions: I discovered that different groups use very different definitions of community school. Smart growth proponents advocate community schools that are small and intimately linked to neighborhoods, while school facility planners expect community schools to meet the needs of entire localities. I recommend that individual communities consider the tradeoffs associated with different school sizes and make choices that meet local preferences for locations within walking distance of students, potential for sports fields, school design, and connections to neighborhoods. State school construction and siting policies should support flexibility for localities.

Takeaway for practice: Local and regional planners should work with school facility planners to conduct exercises and charettes to help each community determine how to realize its own vision of community schools.

Research support: The School of Architecture at the University of Virginia and the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill supported this research.