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Essential Methods for Planning Practitioners: Skills and

Techniques for Data Analysis, Visualization, and Communication
Laxmi Ramasubramanian
CUNY Hunter College

Jochen Albrecht
CUNY Hunter College

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The Urban Book Series

Laxmi Ramasubramanian
Jochen Albrecht
Foreword by Mike Batty

Essential
Methods for
Planning
Practitioners
Skills and Techniques for Data Analysis,
Visualization, and Communication
The Urban Book Series

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Aims and Scope

The Urban Book Series is a resource for urban studies and geography research
worldwide. It provides a unique and innovative resource for the latest developments
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urban studies, urban geography, planning and regional development.
The series publishes peer-reviewed volumes related to urbanization, sustain-
ability, urban environments, sustainable urbanism, governance, globalization, urban
and sustainable development, spatial and area studies, urban management, urban
infrastructure, urban dynamics, green cities and urban landscapes. It also invites
research which documents urbanization processes and urban dynamics on a national,
regional and local level, welcoming case studies, as well as comparative and applied
research.
The series will appeal to urbanists, geographers, planners, engineers, architects,
policy makers, and to all of those interested in a wide-ranging overview of contem-
porary urban studies and innovations in the field. It accepts monographs, edited
volumes and textbooks.

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/14773

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Laxmi Ramasubramanian • Jochen Albrecht

Essential Methods
for Planning Practitioners
Skills and Techniques for Data Analysis,
Visualization, and Communication

Foreword by Mike Batty

[email protected]
Laxmi Ramasubramanian Jochen Albrecht
Department of Urban Policy and Planning Department of Geography
Hunter College Hunter College
New York, NY, USA New York, NY, USA

ISSN 2365-757X ISSN 2365-7588 (electronic)

The Urban Book Series
ISBN 978-3-319-68040-8 ISBN 978-3-319-68041-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-68041-5

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017954945

© Springer International Publishing AG 2018

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Foreword

Just over one hundred years ago, the great American architect and city planner, Daniel
Burnham, said: “Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood and prob-
ably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work,
remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die …” His phrase
has been quoted and re-quoted many times throughout the last century but slowly and
surely, the idea of big plans has fallen off our agenda. When you examine the kinds of
plans that practitioners routinely work with now, you realize that they are much more
modest than the grandiose master plans of the last century. There are many, many small
plans compared to big ones. Many are individual projects that planners then have to be
able to integrate into the wider scene, and they often consist of small-scale changes,
sometimes leading to much bigger changes, that have to be anticipated by the planner.
To an extent, this has always been the case, but as we have begun to realize the com-
plexity of the planning task before us, we have begun to focus our attention on finer and
finer details right down to the most basic elements in the community. This has re-ori-
entated our field to the local, the small scale, and the individual.
This is in my view entirely what the focus of planning should be about. We
must work with the small scale, for that is where urban change has the most
impact on peoples’ lives and on their quality of life. Moreover, this is where we
can engage best with those whose lives are most affected by the pressures for
urban change, by the imposition of plans, and by the inevitable conflicts that
occur over the use and allocation of scarce resources, particularly land. What
Dr. Ramasubramanian and Dr. Albrecht do in this book is to pose questions as to
how one might best use and apply the many tools and techniques available for
planning preparation and community participation in the planning process that
have been developed over the last fifty years. They articulate how we might best
embed these in processes of community and citizen engagement that infuse the
search for good plans with the most useful ways of researching and communicat-
ing these ideas to a wider constituency.
This is not a book that is fashioned as a step-by-step account of how these tech-
niques and tools are structured. It is not a technical book, nor is it a manual for
enabling the reader to construct techniques from scratch. It is a book that takes the

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vi Foreword

planning practitioner to be the heart of the process of planning and to inform those
processes with the kinds of methods that will help the professional engage best with
his or her wider constituency in the search for the best plan. This is a very brave way
of introducing planning methods. For many years, there has been a key schism
between those developing methods and those seeking to use them, and it is rare to
find good discussions of the perils of such integration. Even rarer are examples that
actually demonstrate this. This book advocates a point of view rather than a mani-
festo for action, and it argues that the best way of integrating methods into planning
is through active planning applications that engage the community and imbue the
citizenry with the power to use these new tools and develop them for their own spe-
cific ends.
The authors provide what they term a “ready-to-use guidebook” based on a “cus-
tomized and curated compendium of methods and techniques”. This compendium
can be used as a handy reference source for a series of tools and techniques that
almost act by way of a checklist, a kind of backcloth for a wide range of community
planning projects. To tell their story, however, they identify three key issues that most
of us, if not all of us, would agree to be the most important issues of the twenty-first
century: namely, urbanization, demographic shifts, and climate change. In essence,
the world’s population may stabilize this coming century, and certainly overall
growth will fall while at the same time the inexorable drift to cities will continue. By
the end of this century, the world will be largely urbanized, and the consequences for
planning are thus enormous. Demographic change, of course, will be confounded by
an aging society with substantial advances in medicine, and life expectancy will be
prolonged as much by surgical intervention as by diet, lifestyle, and the elimination
of disease using pharmaceuticals. All of this will be set against a background of cli-
mate change, and as more than half the world’s cities lie in coastal areas, sea-level
rise will be a major issue. The impacts of these key forces on urban sprawl, smart
growth, diversity in cities, environmental quality, issues of resilience, and on how
communities will participate in the processes designed to tackle these major issues
can best be handled using the tools and methods that the authors identify and demon-
strate in the various chapters of this book. Again, all this is set against a background
of continuing technological change that is foisting a digital revolution on the way we
will live in cities during this century and beyond.
As Dr. Ramasubramanian and Dr. Albrecht argue, “planning can only be success-
ful if it is adapted to the situational context”, and they develop this theme early in
their exposition using two case studies from New York City. The first is a small area
of some 2–3 square kms in the South Bronx at Hunts Point. This is a very mixed
low-income and de-industrialized community that shows all the scars of contempo-
rary big city living where poverty is never far away, where the local environment is
polluted and dirty, and where access to transportation is not as good as most other
places in the metropolis. Their second case study is Roosevelt Island which has
quite different problems. It is richer and is being gentrified quite rapidly as well as
being a recipient for new high-tech industries and science research centers in the
City. These case studies set the context for the introduction of methods that are out-
lined after the case studies have identified key issues in terms of urban change that

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Foreword vii

the planning processes assumed here are focused upon. The way the authors
continually refer to them in guiding their use of methods in practice is extremely
effective.
It is worth making a distinction between the somewhat heavier, more scientific
explanatory methods useful for planning and the lighter, more future-based tools
that are much more appropriate for planning processes that involve wide and deep
dialogues with the affected communities. It is these future-based methods such as
Delphi, the Futures Wheel, and Forecasting methods such as those in transportation
planning that the authors argue are key to those that practitioners should invoke in
their analysis and scenario writing. It is here that the more local focus reasserts itself
and the development of a variety of crowdsourcing, sensing, behavioral mapping,
participant observation, ethnographic analyses, including GIS, spatial analytical
tools and new approaches such as geo-design, are central to these processes.
When these methods are considered collectively, then the focus on planning and
civic engagement with such methods being key to this is developed. To an extent,
the entire book is orientated to this kind of engagement, which moves beyond public
participation per se to processes that “support and inform …. day-to-day work” of
the planning professionals and their involved communities. The rationale for the
way the authors develop their thesis becomes apparent as they develop this argu-
ment. They argue “… that all planners have a responsibility, an obligation and the
skills to support and nurture civic engagement…” and in this, they conclude that
planning expertise is as much a part of the local community as it is a part of the
training and professional skills of the planner. In this, planners are agents of change,
they are part of the transformational process that turns the present into the future,
and the logic of this book is that the tools and methods identified are necessary but
also subservient to the wider dictates of the community development process. What
is worth taking from this book is that these transformational processes must be part
of a dialogue between planners and their communities. This, of course, is being
massively enhanced by the new digital world of data and participation that is based
on the idea of “digital storytelling”, an idea that they discuss throughout their book.
The notions of planning as dialogue, as mediation, as storytelling, as agenda
setting, and as turning knowledge into action are all key to the way Dr.
Ramasubramanian and Dr. Albrecht develop their argument. This is an innova-
tive and unusual way of introducing methods and it is convincing in that it weaves
the notions of a methodologically explicit form of planning into a context which
is highly applicable to smaller scale, intensive kinds of projects that now charac-
terize planning in many places around the globe. They provide key messages for
how we should develop planning in a future consistent with the digital world we
have now entered. The messages in this book are important and relevant to the
physical and social development of our cities in the twenty-first century.
Read on and enjoy!

University College London, London, UK Michael Batty

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Preface

This is a book for planning practitioners – for those aspiring to become planners,
new graduates, practitioners changing careers, and anyone who is interested in
understanding what planners do. This is also a book about planning methods and
techniques. As coauthors, we have expertise and experience in architecture, geogra-
phy, urban planning, and Geographic Information Science; we set out to write a
book that organizes planning methods and techniques within a theoretical context
and describe the use of the methods in the context of undertaking conventional
planning activities.
Planning practitioners all over the world, particularly those working for local
governments, encounter complex challenges in their everyday work. They combat a
weary societal cynicism that dismisses planning as ineffective or irrelevant while
simultaneously chafing at perceived overreach that undermines self-determination.
Planning offices are under-resourced and planners often struggle as they strive to
speak truth to power. Nevertheless, they persist!
We have both been fortunate to have worked with talented planning practitioners
who demonstrated how to craft powerful and engaging narratives to capture the
hearts and minds of different stakeholders, stories that wove a tapestry linking
the experiential knowledge of diverse stakeholders with appropriate analysis and
data-driven evidence to create transformational change. These successful practitio-
ners have honed their craft over time, learning how to exercise practical judgment to
solve complex problems.
For recent graduates and newly employed planners, especially for women and
people of color, understanding and practicing the craft is not easy. There is seldom
time to reflect about why and how certain actions and decisions were taken and why
certain methods were used – much is lost in the everyday urgency to get work
completed. At the same time, new planners are more likely to get siloed, working on
one aspect of planning, and not get to experience the big picture. Our book provides
some guidance to ease some of these anxieties. It also challenges planners to think dif-
ferently about their work.

ix

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x Preface

We are grateful to our friends and family from around the world who accepted
that we were unavailable to them while we worked on this project. They sent support
from afar and accepted our strange preoccupation with good grace. We also wish to
thank our professional colleagues and our students who have helped to sharpen our
thinking about many of the issues we discuss in the book. We are grateful to Judy
Colby-George and Anna Slatinsky who read and commented on the draft and
provided us with useful feedback.
We were truly lucky to be able to work with a talented architect-planner Mr.
Marco Castro in organizing the graphics for this book. What began as a routine task
to create maps and drawings transformed into an interesting and engaging collabo-
ration about data visualization, cartography, and information communication.
As we develop a digital presence for this book, we are excited to continue our col-
laboration with him. Look for us online at allthingsplanning.org.
As professors engaged in the business of preparing practitioners, we constantly
balance our desire to retreat into the wonky and analytical world of academic schol-
arship with our urge to solve practical problems. This book is our way of achieving
that balance – bringing theory to practitioners to encourage a more reflective and
politically engaged practice. We wrote this book because we care deeply about the
field and the profession. In our view, the field and profession can be strong only
when its practitioners feel empowered. We sincerely hope that familiarity with the
methods and techniques discussed in the book supports that process.

New York, NY, USA Laxmi Ramasubramanian

Jochen Albrecht

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Contents

1 Planning as Storytelling ........................................................................... 1

1.1 Introduction ....................................................................................... 1
1.2 Scope and Purpose ............................................................................. 2
1.3 What Do Planners Do? ...................................................................... 3
1.4 Future-Oriented Problem Solving: The Climate Change
Imbroglio ........................................................................................... 4
1.5 Why This Book, Why Now?.............................................................. 6
1.6 Overview of Upcoming Chapters ...................................................... 7
1.6.1 Chapter 2: Planning Challenges and the Challenges
of Planning............................................................................. 8
1.6.2 Chapter 3: Case Studies ......................................................... 8
1.6.3 Chapter 4: Planning Grand .................................................... 8
1.6.4 Chapter 5: Placemaking: Why Everything Is Local .............. 9
1.6.5 Chapter 6: Civic Engagement ................................................ 9
1.6.6 Chapter 7: Implementation and Sustainability ...................... 10
1.6.7 Chapter 8: Epilogue ............................................................... 11
References .................................................................................................. 11
2 Planning Challenges and the Challenges of Planning .......................... 15
2.1 Introduction ....................................................................................... 15
2.1.1 Making the Simple Complex ................................................. 15
2.1.2 Data, Historical Trends, and Best Practices........................... 16
2.2 Planning Through the Ages ............................................................... 17
2.2.1 Twentieth-Century Settlement Patterns
in the United States ................................................................ 18
2.2.2 Changing Morphologies, Urban Sprawl,
and New Urbanism ................................................................ 19
2.3 Planning Challenges .......................................................................... 21
2.3.1 Urbanization .......................................................................... 21
2.3.2 Demography .......................................................................... 22
2.3.3 Climate .................................................................................. 22

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xii Contents

2.4 Impacts and Consequences ................................................................ 22

2.4.1 Combat and Manage Sprawl.................................................. 23
2.4.2 Create and Maintain Infrastructure and Transportation
Systems .................................................................................. 25
2.4.3 Plan for an Aging Society...................................................... 26
2.4.4 Serve Diverse Populations ..................................................... 26
2.4.5 Address Environmental Quality ............................................ 28
2.4.6 Design for Climate Resilience ............................................... 28
2.5 Challenges of Planning ...................................................................... 29
2.5.1 The Death of Expertise .......................................................... 29
2.5.2 Planning with Diverse Populations........................................ 30
2.5.3 The Future of Participation .................................................... 30
2.6 Technologies and Planning Practices ................................................ 31
2.6.1 Planning as a Science ............................................................ 31
2.6.2 Planning Support Systems ..................................................... 32
2.6.3 Participatory Planning Technologies ..................................... 33
2.6.4 Big Data, Social Media, and Planning Apps ......................... 35
2.7 Concluding Comments ...................................................................... 35
References .................................................................................................. 36
3 Case Studies .............................................................................................. 39
3.1 Introduction ....................................................................................... 39
3.2 Hunts Point ........................................................................................ 40
3.2.1 History ................................................................................... 42
3.2.2 Demographics ........................................................................ 45
3.2.3 Community Burdens .............................................................. 47
3.2.4 Community Resources........................................................... 49
3.2.5 Planning Challenges .............................................................. 51
3.2.6 Planning Opportunities .......................................................... 55
3.3 Roosevelt Island................................................................................. 59
3.3.1 History ................................................................................... 60
3.3.2 Demographics ........................................................................ 62
3.3.3 Community Burdens .............................................................. 64
3.3.4 Community Resources........................................................... 66
3.3.5 Planning Challenges .............................................................. 69
3.3.6 Planning Opportunities .......................................................... 72
3.4 Concluding Comments ...................................................................... 76
References .................................................................................................. 77
4 Planning Grand ........................................................................................ 79
4.1 Projecting into the Future .................................................................. 79
4.2 Delphi ................................................................................................ 80
4.3 Futures Wheel .................................................................................... 81
4.4 Scenario Planning .............................................................................. 82
4.5 Forecasting......................................................................................... 83

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Contents xiii

4.6 Simulations and Gaming ................................................................... 84

4.7 Dealing with Bias .............................................................................. 84
References .................................................................................................. 85
5 Placemaking: Why Everything Is Local ................................................. 87
5.1 Understanding Demographic Profiles ............................................... 87
5.2 Crowdsourcing .................................................................................. 89
5.3 Sensor Networks ............................................................................... 91
5.4 Understanding What People Do by Observing Their Actions
and Behaviors .................................................................................... 91
5.4.1 Behavior Maps ...................................................................... 92
5.4.2 Sensors/Trackers ................................................................... 92
5.4.3 Participant Observation ......................................................... 93
5.4.4 Ethnographic Research.......................................................... 93
5.5 Understanding People by Asking Them............................................ 94
5.5.1 Perceptual Mapping .............................................................. 94
5.5.2 Key Informant Interviews ..................................................... 94
5.5.3 Annotated Online Maps ........................................................ 95
5.5.4 Surveys .................................................................................. 95
5.6 Understanding Local Environmental Conditions .............................. 96
5.7 GIS ................................................................................................... 97
5.7.1 Determining Data Needs ....................................................... 97
5.7.2 Organizing Spatial Data ........................................................ 98
5.8 Spatial Analysis ................................................................................. 99
5.8.1 Vector GIS ............................................................................. 100
5.8.2 Network GIS ......................................................................... 100
5.8.3 Raster GIS ............................................................................. 101
5.8.4 Visualization Versus Analysis ............................................... 102
5.9 Geodesign.......................................................................................... 102
5.9.1 3D .......................................................................................... 103
5.9.2 Visualization.......................................................................... 103
5.9.3 Simulation ............................................................................. 103
5.9.4 Participation .......................................................................... 103
5.9.5 Geography ............................................................................. 103
5.9.6 Sustainability ......................................................................... 104
5.9.7 Resources .............................................................................. 104
5.10 Planning in a Brave New World: Reflecting on Data Junk
and Other Thoughts on Planning....................................................... 104
5.11 Experts Versus Non-experts .............................................................. 105
5.12 Geographic Constraints ..................................................................... 105
5.12.1 Reporting Unit Mismatch...................................................... 106
5.12.2 Coordinate System Mismatch ............................................... 106
5.12.3 Lying with Maps ................................................................... 107
5.12.4 Limitations of a Data-Driven Approach ................................ 107
5.13 Concluding Comments...................................................................... 108
References .................................................................................................. 109

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xiv Contents

6 Civic Engagement .................................................................................... 111

6.1 What Is Civic Engagement? .............................................................. 111
6.2 Origins of Modern Civic Engagement............................................... 113
6.2.1 Davidoff and the Advocacy Planning Model ........................ 115
6.2.2 Arnstein and the Ladder of Citizen Participation .................. 116
6.2.3 Discussion and Critique ......................................................... 117
6.3 Managing Change .............................................................................. 118
6.4 A Framework for Twenty-First Century Civic Engagement ............. 120
6.4.1 Understand the Rich Diversity of the Community ................ 120
6.4.2 Promise to Engage the Whole Community and Keep
Your Promise ......................................................................... 121
6.4.3 Develop Civic Engagement Principles .................................. 122
6.4.4 Design an Inclusive Community Outreach Strategy ............. 123
6.5 Closing Comments About Engagement............................................. 127
6.6 Social Media ...................................................................................... 127
6.7 Conclusions ....................................................................................... 128
References .................................................................................................. 128
7 Implementation ........................................................................................ 129
7.1 Moving from Ideas to Action ............................................................ 129
7.2 Understanding Implementation Cycles ............................................. 130
7.3 Digital Storytelling ............................................................................ 132
7.4 Understanding the Governance Landscape ....................................... 134
7.5 Understanding Policymaking Frameworks........................................ 136
7.6 Agenda Setting and the Role of Social Media................................... 137
7.7 A Brief Comment About Budgets ..................................................... 139
7.8 Ethics ................................................................................................. 140
7.9 Conclusion ......................................................................................... 140
References .................................................................................................. 141
8 Epilogue .................................................................................................... 143
8.1 Introduction ....................................................................................... 143
8.2 Planning Skills ................................................................................... 144
8.2.1 Written Communication Skills .............................................. 144
8.2.2 Graphical Communication Skills .......................................... 145
8.2.3 Public Presentation Skills ...................................................... 146
8.2.4 Consensus Building Skills ..................................................... 146
8.2.5 Social Communication Skills ................................................ 146
8.3 Planning in the Twenty-First Century ............................................... 147
8.4 Twenty-First-Century Planners.......................................................... 149
References .................................................................................................. 150

Index ................................................................................................................ 153

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List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Springtime temperatures are predicted to increase

significantly ..................................................................................... 23
Fig. 2.2 Planning challenges and impacts .................................................... 24
Fig. 2.3 An aging society. The percentages refer to percent
of county population age 65 years or older ..................................... 27
Fig. 3.1 Geographical setting of the two study areas ................................... 40
Fig. 3.2 The two study areas and their corresponding neighborhood
boundaries ....................................................................................... 41
Fig. 3.3 Private land holders in 1868............................................................ 43
Fig. 3.4 Sanborn map from 1921 depicting relationship among
historic features ............................................................................... 43
Fig. 3.5 Hunts Point plan from 1885 overlaid on current geography ........... 44
Fig. 3.6 Land use in Hunts Point in 1957 ..................................................... 45
Fig. 3.7 The dominance of the regional food distribution
centers in Hunts Point ..................................................................... 46
Fig. 3.8 Building foot prints at Hunts Point ................................................. 47
Fig. 3.9 Current land use in Hunts Points, NY............................................. 48
Fig. 3.10 Where Hunts Point residents commute to....................................... 49
Fig. 3.11 Hunts Point’s New York City-wide rank for selected
community losses. The value 10 stands for the tenth or worst
decile; so, for example, school closings are not an issue in Hunts
Point but foster care and foreclosures are ....................................... 50
Fig. 3.12 Community organizing activities .................................................... 50
Fig. 3.13 Idling refuse trucks lined up in Hunts Point ................................... 52
Fig. 3.14 Hunts Point is a center for waste management ............................... 52
Fig. 3.15 Truck route buffers cover almost all of the study area .................... 53
Fig. 3.16 Scarce and isolated green spaces in Hunts Point ............................ 54
Fig. 3.17 Hunts Point is increasingly prone to be flooded ............................. 55
Fig. 3.18 Local food-related retail .................................................................. 56
Fig. 3.19 Food distributors in Hunts Point ..................................................... 57

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xvi List of Figures

Fig. 3.20 Wikimap of community likes and dislikes ...................................... 58

Fig. 3.21 A typical community consultation during the Hunts
Point studio ..................................................................................... 58
Fig. 3.22 Improving accessibility within Hunts Point .................................... 60
Fig. 3.23 Land use on Roosevelt Island Roosevelt Island .............................. 61
Fig. 3.24 Building footprints over time Roosevelt Island .............................. 62
Fig. 3.25 Population map of Roosevelt Island ............................................... 64
Fig. 3.26 Transit options................................................................................. 65
Fig. 3.27 Distances from Roosevelt Island subway station ............................ 66
Fig. 3.28 Places of work for Roosevelt Island residents ................................ 67
Fig. 3.29 Economic, education, and health needs in New York City
neighborhoods ................................................................................. 68
Fig. 3.30 Noise levels on Roosevelt Island .................................................... 69
Fig. 3.31 Perception of overall quality of commercial services ..................... 70
Fig. 3.32 Drab view of Main Street ................................................................ 71
Fig. 3.33 Rendering of a bike share station to be located at the tram station ..... 72
Fig. 3.34 Locations for suggested bike sharing stations ................................ 73
Fig. 3.35 Suggested locations for ferry landings on Roosevelt Island ........... 74
Fig. 3.36 Phase 1 of the new Cornell campus ................................................ 75
Fig. 3.37 Increase of vehicular traffic off the island caused
by the new Cornell campus ............................................................. 76
Fig. 4.1 An example of a futures wheel ....................................................... 81
Fig. 4.2 Wilson’s matrix ............................................................................... 83
Fig. 5.1 Space-time path............................................................................... 93
Fig. 5.2 Sample code for a geographic feature ............................................. 99
Fig. 5.3 Example for the modifiable area unit problem ............................... 106
Fig. 5.4 Coordinate system mismatch .......................................................... 107

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List of Tables

Table 3.1 Historical land use of the two case study areas ............................ 40
Table 3.2 Roosevelt Island in US Census Figures........................................ 63
Table 3.3 First phase of campus build-out ................................................... 75
Table 5.1 Data sources ................................................................................. 89
Table 5.2 Locational references.................................................................... 98
Table 7.1 Strengths and limitations of digital storytelling ........................... 133

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Chapter 1
Planning as Storytelling

1.1 Introduction

Planning, in essence, is a set of future-oriented activities where individuals and

groups organize their current understandings of their circumstances to be better
prepared for the future (Wildavsky 1973; Alexander 1981). Whether we are aware
of it or not, all of us plan constantly. Planning is not a set of activities that is
related to one’s chronological age or activities. We could say that planning is
hardwired into our psyche. Yet, in the United States, there is considerable skepti-
cism and wariness about the role of planning in/for the public realm; many people
believe that planning infringes on individual property rights while others believe
that planning creates new and onerous regulations that inhibit growth and devel-
opment. In resource-poor communities, planning is viewed as an enterprise that
only serves the interests of the wealthy and powerful. When elected officials
engage in conversations about planning, they are often feted by some sections of
the electorate while being simultaneously vilified by others. It is this challenging
context for the professional planner at the beginning of her career that motivates
us to write this book.
Our society’s ambivalence toward planning places limits on the kinds of projects,
programs, and policies that local governments can pursue. In the United States, the
ambitious and visionary planning projects that were popular in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries now seem like fantasies. As a matter of fact, one of our
case study examples in Chapter 3, Roosevelt Island, may be one of the last examples
for such grand plans. Local government planning has become a tedious, time-
consuming, bureaucratic, and regulatory process. Innovation and creativity are
sometimes stifled by budgetary realities or to avoid litigation. Daniel Burnham’s
extortion to make big plans is often ignored. Nevertheless, planners are engaged in
shaping our built environment in myriad ways; our streets, our parks and public

© Springer International Publishing AG 2018 1

L. Ramasubramanian, J. Albrecht, Essential Methods for Planning Practitioners,
The Urban Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68041-5_1

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2 1 Planning as Storytelling

places, our transit stations, and our airports are in a process of transformation to
address present-day urban problems and challenges.

1.2 Scope and Purpose

In this book, we celebrate the integrative and syncretic qualities of planning prac-
tice. This is brought home by reserving a whole chapter on two case studies, where
we provide an in-depth description of the situational complexities of real-world
planning projects. The everyday practice of planning, in our view, is a craft. Like all
crafts, it is honed over time. Good planners are not technocrats, although they use
their technical expertise to make compelling arguments; good planners are not dem-
agogues, although they create coherent narratives to convince even the most hostile
naysayers; they are not politicians, although they are persuasive and convincing in
advocating particular courses of action. Good planners work with the public, view-
ing them as allies in their efforts to solve complex problems. In this book, we put
forward a visionary and perhaps radical approach, a way to reimagine how the field
and the profession can engage with citizens from all walks of life, embracing diver-
sity and complexity as part of the process and in the creation of the final product. We
suggest that planners and citizens can work together, collaboratively, creatively, and
proactively, focusing on problem solving rather than creating distinct spheres of
engagement, territories, and spaces where disagreements are played out.
In our work as planning educators and practitioners for over 20 years, we have
found that good planners are able to construct accurate and dynamic socio-spatial
narratives that provide some rich understanding of places and their experience. In
our book, we describe tools, methods, and techniques that will enable aspiring plan-
ners and planning professionals to become better at their craft – in other words, to
become better planners.
Our book, “Essential Methods for Planning Practitioners” is written for individu-
als who are planning to enter the planning profession, as graduate students or those
who are in search of that all-important first planning job, armed with a graduate
degree in planning or a related field and some internship experience. The book can
be a very useful and handy desk reference for anyone who is working in business,
government, or nonprofit sector, undertaking the many different types of work asso-
ciated with “doing planning.” A junior planner can be called upon to review and
synthesize relevant literature, design and conduct a survey, develop a community
engagement plan, analyze data from a variety of sources, create maps and other
spatial analyses to support particular policy positions, and/or manage a project.
Many of these topics have received book-length treatment and are often covered in
one or more required “methods” classes that every student must take during their
academic career. As scholars and educators, we have read many of these books and
assigned them as readings in our graduate classes. In this book, we take a different
approach – we discuss the applications of different methods in their social and insti-
tutional contexts with the goal of future-oriented problem solving.

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1.3 What Do Planners Do? 3

1.3 What Do Planners Do?

The role of the professional planner, particularly in the United States, has changed
quite dramatically over the last 50 years, as exemplified in Table 3.1, where we
juxtapose the five consecutive planning paradigms of our case study areas.
Contemporary urban planners confront problems across many spatial scales (see,
e.g., the conflict between the regional and local interests in our Hunts Point case
study), addressing hyper-local neighborhood issues as well as city-wide and regional
concerns. As the field of planning has become more complex, a high degree of spe-
cialization and differentiation has occurred. Planners now work alongside other pro-
fessionals such as architects, cartographers, demographers, engineers, landscape
architects, urban designers, statisticians, public health and social media experts. In
this context, how and why should planning professionals engage in participatory
planning and design in the twenty-first century? In the last 50 years, planning and
design professionals have accepted the idea that the public must be consulted about
important decisions affecting their neighborhoods and communities. However, the
methods and approaches used to engage the public and communicate with them
remain rooted in the fractious 1960s. Our book assembles and organizes a selected
range of methods and techniques that every planning practitioner should know. Our
book is unique because it is not a methods textbook or even a reference book but one
that links different aspects of the planning/policymaking enterprise with the appro-
priate methods and approaches – thus contextualizing the use of specific methods
and techniques within a sociopolitical and ethical framing. Planners, especially
those who are on the front lines, often feel anxious and underprepared for the
demands of their job. As new entrants into the profession, they are often confronted
with a data deluge (see the range of datasets underlying our case studies that can be
found on the website accompanying our book, allthingsplanning.org) and a data-
base of methods and techniques without specific guidance that helps them assess the
value of effectiveness of one over another. At the same time, because technologies,
data, and consequently analytical techniques tend to change rapidly, it is better to
provide practitioners with a guide of how to select and deploy methods and tech-
niques, rather than attempt to provide an inventory which would become obsolete
quickly. These challenges are well known to seasoned leaders and managers;
namely, the context (the nature of the problem) should determine the choice of
appropriate methods and techniques. At the same time, practical considerations, like
available expertise, allocated budget, and time available, should also reasonably
influence these choices.
In the present milieu, there is often some confusion about the role or roles that
planners are expected to play: Are planners responsible for spatial planning and land
use? Are they the experts who ensure compliance with zoning laws and height
restrictions? Are planners facilitators who mediate between experts and everyday
citizens? Do planners address quality-of-life issues related to traffic, air quality, and
noise? Are planners technicians? Do they set policy? As we will illuminate in the
following chapter, the answer is yes to all of the above, and it is this diversity and

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4 1 Planning as Storytelling

breadth that makes a planner’s job exciting, interesting, and sometimes frustrating
(Hoch 2011). According to the American Planning Association, “professional plan-
ners help create a broad vision for the community. They also research, design, and
develop programs; lead public processes; effect social change; perform technical
analyses; manage; and educate. Some planners focus on just some of these roles,
such as transportation planning, but most will work at many kinds of planning
throughout their careers” (American Planning Association 2017). As future-oriented
and pragmatic decision-makers, planners are required to concern themselves with
larger concerns such as public health, natural resource management, and climate
change, phenomena that, as our case studies exemplify, have socio-spatial conse-
quences in the neighborhoods and communities where they work. Planners often
find that the problem they are trying to address has its origins within a different
locus of authority, complicating and confounding traditional decision-making pro-
cesses. The geographic scale at which planners work continues to be dynamic. The
institutional contexts within which they work are as varied.

1.4 Future-Oriented Problem Solving: The Climate Change

Imbroglio

Let’s briefly examine the complex issue of climate change. That the earth’s climate
is changing is beyond doubt. There is a scientific consensus that human actions are
one of the major drivers of this change and that human activities, particularly in the
last 100 years or so, have exacerbated the situation (IPCC 2001). Data and evidence
are all around us, in the scientific literature and the popular press. However, even
after setting aside the minority view that denies any notion of climate change, there
is a surprising lack of consensus about scale, scope, and impacts of this phenome-
non. Bench scientists, who have the luxury to do so, advocate for additional research
(Wilby and Wigley 1997). They are often unable to issue precise or specific guid-
ance about how to advise the public in everyday situations – can I build or, better
yet, should I build in this location? Scientists are also unwilling to advise elected
officials about the ethics of relocating an entire residential community permanently
to protect against future deleterious climate change impacts such as sea-level rise
(Stern and Taylor 2007). They prefer to provide the data to end users who must
interpret and use that data to make difficult decisions.
In the meantime, alarmists, as well as anxiety-prone activists, criticize interna-
tional treaties and agreements related to climate mitigation. These groups some-
times consider the processes of setting emissions targets through a political
consensus process as privileging politics over science. Activist groups are more
likely to call for government interventions in the form of regulations and mandates.
They propose that governments should use a heavy hand and regulate the behavior
and actions of present generations to protect the planet for future generations
(Gillard et al. 2016). The hardships such regulations may impose on present genera-
tions are outweighed by the long-term environmental benefits to humankind.

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1.4 Future-Oriented Problem Solving: The Climate Change Imbroglio 5

The public, as individuals, is often paralyzed by the volume of information that

comes their way, and they tend to ignore most of it (NORC 2016). A variety of inter-
est groups – research centers, advocacy organizations, and self-help groups – medi-
ate the relationship between these two extreme positions. Depending on the
specialized focus of each group, they put forward, discuss, and debate a range of
policy positions and highlight different aspects of the climate change challenge.
One group might highlight the concerns of homeowners while another might
emphasize the challenges of renters; still others might discuss the impacts of cli-
mate change mitigation/adaptation measures on economic prosperity and so on. In
this context, planners serve as educators and facilitators – explaining the short- and
long-term consequences of human-induced climate change to multiple publics
(Ramasubramanian 2016). They also provide guidance (outside of regulations and
mandates) about how to balance between and among competing interests to create
a viable set of actions to prepare and plan for climate change impacts.
Climate change mitigation and adaption planning cannot be standardized across
the globe. A climate change plan for a city or region is meaningless if it cannot
accommodate the particularities of geography, the type and quality of the transpor-
tation infrastructure and housing stock, as well as the area’s population density
(Otto-Zimmermann 2011). Planners thus have to acquire additional expertise in dif-
ferent subjects to make meaningful and viable conclusions for the community/
region they serve (Campbell-Lendrum and Corvalán 2007). Many additional factors
are often considered to develop planning guidelines or more restrictive zoning ordi-
nances. Accordingly, a planner’s role is circumscribed within the institutional con-
text where they choose to work, because planners seldom work in isolation as
individual practitioners. Planners work in community-based organizations, as part
of research groups, as educators, as activists, and as public servants, and across all
levels of government (APA 2017). Government agencies are, by and large, the most
significant employers of planning professionals (BLS 2016). As representatives of
government, planners become responsible for translating the best scientific knowl-
edge about human-induced climate change to a skeptical public. Planners develop
reasonable and practical guidelines for mitigating and adapting to climate change to
ensure stricter guidelines related to public safety (Showstack 2014). To fulfill their
obligations, planners use a variety of analytical research methods. The information
they assemble can be used to develop programs and projects. Planners become col-
lectively responsible for protecting the public interest. In this context, the authors
argue that planners have an additional and overarching mandate to protect the inter-
est of those who cannot advocate for themselves, children, elderly, and other vulner-
able populations as well as future generations who are not yet present (Hurlimann
and March 2012).
Over the last 50 years, we have come to realize that planning is a transformative
set of actions (Friedmann 1987) that require the involvement of a variety of types of
expertise (Sarkissian et al. 2010). Many young professionals do not hold the title
“planner,” belying the actual work that they do (O*NET 2017). Furthermore,
planners now seldom work alone – they work alongside elected officials, leaders of
nongovernmental organizations, community activists, and members of the general

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6 1 Planning as Storytelling

public. Engagement with stakeholders and the public is now an essential ingredient
in any planning process (Geertman and Stillwell 2009). Digital technologies have
grown and evolved and now influence and impact every aspect of the planning
enterprise (Batty et al. 2000; Couclelis 2004; Aurigi 2007; Mandarano et al. 2011).
Contemporary planners, especially the ones who are successful, are attuned to the
complexities of city and regional politics, particularly in how powerful interests can
steer important conversations about social issues, and have had to become adept in
using persuasion rather than enforcement authority to achieve change. Preparing
urban planners to work in these challenging contexts is daunting and requires fresh
educational and assessment approaches. This book will help prepare planners for a
new and challenging role – as educators and guides in helping to create usable and
useful knowledge that can be translated into implementable actions, in other words,
to become digital storytellers.

1.5 Why This Book, Why Now?

As educators, we looked for a book to assign to our classes – but we could not find
one despite our best efforts, so we decided to write one ourselves. Planning educa-
tion is lagging behind the profession and has been slow to adapt to the changing
environment of the workplace – planners, especially those in the early stages of
their career, need to be familiar with a diverse range of methods, techniques, and
skills and be prepared to deploy them thoughtfully by paying careful attention to the
sociopolitical contexts within which they are deployed. Our book draws on tools,
methods, and techniques from different but related academic disciplines, including
behavioral geography, urban design, geographic information science, and public
policy analysis.
Our book is a customized and curated compendium of methods and techniques –
in other words, one book that will be on the bookshelf of every planning practitioner
as a go-to methods guide for every planning practitioner and a starting point for
reliable information and assistance in accomplishing their particular tasks. As long-
time educators, familiar with the American higher education system, we have spe-
cific target audiences for this book. This book is intended for planning
practitioners – our primary target audience is the newly minted planning graduate
who is in the first 5 years of their career. These new practitioners are employed in
all levels of government, in community-based organizations, and in the industry. In
many instances, they have not yet cultivated relationships with supervisors, nor have
they found mentors who will help them navigate life within their organization. Their
responsibilities require them to have a wide range of expertise and to demonstrate
great flexibility and ingenuity – they may be asked to design a survey during the first
week, conduct a land-use survey in another week, or run GIS analyses during the
third week. While each of them may have learned how to undertake each of these
tasks during their student days, their work was conducted in a “safe” environment,
with detailed guidance from the instructor. They probably had clearly defined objec-

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1.6 Overview of Upcoming Chapters 7

tives, clean data sets, and established analysis parameters. In a typical real-world
context, such safety protections disappear, leaving many planners in a state of inse-
curity, which in turn limits their ability to act with confidence. Our ready-to-use
guidebook provides curated content about methods and techniques to allow them to
proceed with their work competently and confidently.
Both authors grew up with a generation of the Sage “little green books on
research methods”, which came in very handy when working on our dissertations or
subsequently on research projects. These books inspired us to think about this par-
ticular book project. Rather than develop one little book per method or technique,
we decided to build a compendium of methods curated and linked together by a
narrative arc that addresses societal considerations related to access, equity, trans-
parency, engagement, and accountability.
Presently, individuals with limited knowledge and understanding of planning
principles or planning history are engaged in shaping the conversation about plan-
ning and policymaking (McArthur 2017). Often, these individuals are motivated
with a commitment to their ideals. They advance a variety of causes such as mitigat-
ing climate change, creating transparency and accountability in government, or
developing better transportation alternatives. We argue that these individuals will
benefit from learning about a variety of research methods that will help inform and
support their advocacy efforts. It may also limit inappropriate and nonproductive
applications of statistical and mapping techniques, thereby improving the public
policy discourse in our society.

1.6 Overview of Upcoming Chapters

Thus far, we have described our intended audience and discussed our motivation in
writing this book. Our book is written for individuals entering the planning profes-
sion, graduate students, or those who are in search of that all-important first plan-
ning job, armed with a graduate degree in planning or a related field and some
internship experience. We then outline our planning philosophy (planning for peo-
ple), aiming to shatter the boundary line between the expert and the public. Our
book assembles and organizes a selected range of methods and techniques that
every planning practitioner should know, yet it is not a methods book in the tradi-
tional sense, where each is introduced in the abstract. Instead, we observe that the
real-world planner always encounters interdependencies and that their recognition
is crucial to successful planning. It is in this context that we then offer strategies,
tactics, and modalities to the novice planner. The companion website allthingsplan-
ning.org is intended to be filled with real-world examples (vignettes) and constantly
updated to reflect the state of the art. Eventually, this website might develop a life of
its own, where readers share experiences and contribute beyond what has been cov-
ered in this book. This chapter ends with an overview of the remaining parts of the
book – basically the collection of the paragraphs that make up this annotated table
of contents.

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8 1 Planning as Storytelling

1.6.1 Chapter 2: Planning Challenges and the Challenges

of Planning

The world of planning has drastically changed over the past few years. Understanding
this change requires to briefly revisit the historic roots of planning and geography. Little
has prepared the profession for the brave new data world though where data is confused
with information (Cohen 2002; Kerski and Clark 2012). We juxtapose the current situa-
tion, where everybody thinks they are planners with traditional planning models, and
prepare the reader to acknowledge people’s experience while defending her expertise. In
our conceptualization of planning, this is not a compromise position but a worldview.
This chapter provides some answers to the questions that are often foremost in practitio-
ners’ minds – Why is any discussion of change so “political”? We argue that practitioners
should understand the strengths and limits of planning (from the past) to plan more effec-
tively in the future. In the second half of this chapter, we argue that each planning prob-
lem, regardless of whether it is simple or complex, large or small in scale, requires its own
set of appropriate tools and recipes and illustrate this by outlining a framework of future
planning challenges. In addition to climate change, the future long-term societal chal-
lenges we highlight are changing population characteristics, urbanization and migration,
immigration, environmental quality and human health, and safety and security. The
description of these tools and recipes forms the bulk of the remaining chapters.

1.6.2 Chapter 3: Case Studies

We would, however, fall into the same trap as traditional textbooks if we were to intro-
duce these building blocks without context and, therefore, devote a whole chapter on
two real-world planning situations (Roosevelt Island and Hunts Point, both in New York
City). They follow a common workflow starting with a historic and geographic setting
and a description of the people that live in or use the study area. This is followed by an
analysis of the local needs and resources, which finally translate into planning chal-
lenges and opportunities. For the planning challenges, we follow the framework given
in Chapter 2. Our case studies can be read by themselves as vignettes. Their main pur-
pose, however, is to serve as a backdrop to the discussion of the other chapters, where
we will make frequent references to the case studies. Throughout the book, we empha-
size the need for a comprehensive and synthetic perspective; the methods described in
Chapters 4 and 5, for instance, should not be applied out of context.

1.6.3 Chapter 4: Planning Grand

The first “methods” chapter discusses approaches that are related to the earliest
stages of the planning process. As we stress the importance of communication, we
start with the Delphi method as a precursor to e-democracy efforts (Rotondo 2012).

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1.6 Overview of Upcoming Chapters 9

Traditionally, the domain of expert plan making and forecasting, the Delphi method
can now be seen as bridging the gap between experts and non-experts. This natu-
rally leads to a discussion of top-down vs. bottom-up approaches and the role of
bias dealing with either community. While there still is a place for analog and face-
to-face techniques, contemporary planning takes place in a new media landscape
and with a citizenry of variable digital competency (ICTA 2005). In this context, the
bulk of our envisioning techniques deals with larger and often incoherent groups. In
our attempt to incorporate as many different perspectives as possible, we reflect on
citizen science, crowdsourcing, and participatory mapping. Individual perspectives
can be captured through digital storytelling and photovoice, both of which can be
used in framing the research question as well as plan implementation (Chapter 7).

1.6.4 Chapter 5: Placemaking: Why Everything Is Local

Our fifth chapter can be considered our “data and needs assessment” chapter. Data,
in all its diversity and messiness, helps us from making the mistake of relying com-
pletely on our instincts. Instincts can be good but can sometimes lead us astray. We
deal with the myriads of ways we can get hold of the data that underlies every ratio-
nal planning process. We juxtapose traditional (though sometimes altered in their
character by the surprising variety of provenance) outsider perspectives like demo-
graphic profiles with various community-based techniques such as behavior maps,
participant observation, sensor, perceptional mapping, or modern survey techniques.
Regardless of how all this data is generated, it then needs to be critically assessed to
be used in scenarios or simulations. We outline the opportunities afforded by these
techniques but also provide cautionary notes on their constraints and reflect on the
role of planners in a world where technically skilled but nonprofessional citizens are
confounding officials with their data wizardry.

1.6.5 Chapter 6: Civic Engagement

This chapter argues that contemporary planning has to go beyond public outreach or
even public participation and introduces civic engagement as the third phase after
advocacy planning and citizen participation (Holman et al. 2007; Healey et al.
2008). We propose four principles of civic engagement that serve as measures of
successful community involvement and place a range of techniques into a matrix of
stakeholder involvement. Many of the strategies presented here have been field
tested over the past decade, working with a range of special populations. We sum-
marize this chapter with reflections on the interplay of techniques and the need for
planners to creatively combine them as the situation demands.
Chapter 6 focuses exclusively on the complexities of civic engagement. Most
planning projects or policies engage a range of state and non-state actors, and it is
useful to acknowledge that all projects are highly reliant on successful engagement

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10 1 Planning as Storytelling

with a variety of stakeholders. Civic engagement can influence a project or pro-

gram’s success or failure – and in the twenty-first century, it is a truism to observe
that good projects and ideas can sometimes be derailed because of poorly managed
civic engagement processes (Malik and Wagle 2002).
Civic engagement is simultaneously a philosophy, a core value, an approach, and
a set of methods that includes measurable indicators and outcomes (Hawkes 2001;
Madera 2010; Gough 2015). It exemplifies the complexity of the planner’s role in
society, regardless of the particular job title or function she performs. For this rea-
son, we treat civic engagement as a stand-alone chapter because the various meth-
ods discussed in Chapters 4 and 5 may have to be put through a civic engagement
“test” in order to determine how these methods and approaches can and should be
used within a planning process.
Note the use of the phrase “civic engagement” in this book rather than commonly
used terms such as public outreach, public involvement, or public participation.
These terms are used interchangeably in mainstream planning discourse, but they
do not mean the same thing. In this book and chapter, the authors emphasize civic
engagement – a term that connotes a genuine commitment to informed and rea-
soned deliberation and debate about a wide variety of planning issues over an
extended time period. Shifting the conversations from public involvement to civic
engagement is one of the true lessons a successful planning practitioner must learn
in order to be effective in his or her job. It is impossible to be a leader in the field
without mastering the art and science of civic engagement.

1.6.6 Chapter 7: Implementation and Sustainability

We emphasized in Chapter 4 the importance of communication and revisit the topic

now from a different perspective. People make decisions. Decisions are shaped by
ideologies and political agendas. This is a point we make early in the book. However,
in this penultimate chapter, we want to emphasize the role of policy in driving good
implementation and securing it for future generations, in other words making it
sustainable. Therefore, we will discuss the interplay between planning and policy-
making here, focusing on how to identify and assess different policy options. Once
identified, they have to be formally accepted through legislation, regulation, or
larger structural societal transformations. In our media-driven age, this means that
we have to pull out all stops to assure project-internal communication as well as
getting the word out via Web-based tools, meetups, and hackathons or engaging
civic-minded people. We need to fund our plans, find allies, and, if necessary, create
them by educating our clientele about modern planning practices and more gener-
ally how government works. Part of this includes not just the data fluency advocated
for in Chapters 4 and 5 but also communication with data to reach different audi-
ences and maintain a sustainable planning environment, as highlighted particularly
in the Roosevelt Island case study. Arguably, this reaches into the realm of senior

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References 11

planning management, but it is never too early to learn about institutional constraints
to turn them around into opportunities.
This chapter will allow planning students and practitioners to understand the dif-
ferences between process-oriented policymaking, analysis-centric policymaking,
and macroscale policymaking. It discusses how to identify and assess different poli-
cies and their intended effects on different population groups (equity considerations)
as well as how to avoid unintended consequences. Often planning students, espe-
cially those trained in the technical fields like engineering and architecture, believe
that their work ends when they present the technical studies and reports to their
“bosses.” The bosses are often elected officials who have earned the right to repre-
sent the public, whereas the planners or practitioners are considered unelected
decision-makers. However, the planners/practitioners may likely be the individuals
who provide continuity for projects and programs that are multi-year investments
from the public purse. Constantly undertaking research or planning studies that do
not result in tangible outcomes is costly in more ways than the obvious – it has the
potential to undermine the public’s trust in research.

1.6.7 Chapter 8: Epilogue

This concluding chapter provides a discussion about how the methods and tech-
niques described in the book can collectively be used to create transformational and
meaningful interventions. It begins with a discussion of individual skills that a plan-
ner ought to cultivate to be more effective in their chosen profession. Planners must
hone their craft, like artists, but be attentive to the societal, institutional, and politi-
cal frameworks that bound their work. The twenty-first-century planning must rec-
ognize the three major global planning challenges, urbanization, demography, and
climate change, and how these challenges affect their everyday work. The chapter
concludes by encouraging planners to create a balance between technical expertise,
political nous, and ethical actions in order to create a more lasting and sustainable
neighborhoods and communities. We realize that a book like this one is virtually
outdated by the time it is published, which is why we will use the companion web-
site allthingsplanning.org.

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Clim Change 3:477–488. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.183
Information and Communications Technology Authority (ICTA) (2005) e-Government master
plan in Mongolia. New York: United Nations Public Administration Network. Online resource,
http://workspace.unpan.org/sites/internet/Documents/UNPAN042821.pdf. Last accessed
5/7/2017
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (2001) Climate change 2001: the scientific
basis. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Kerski J, Clark J (2012) The GIS guide to public domain data. ESRI Press, Redlands
Madera C (2010) Creating a culture of civic engagement. The transportation politic. Next City.
Online resource, https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/creating-a-culture-of-civic-engagement. Last
accessed 5/7/2017
Malik K, Wagle S (2002) Civic engagement and development. In: Fukuda-Parr S, Lopes C, Malik K
(eds) Capacity for development. New solutions to old problems. United Nations Development
Programme, New York, pp 85–100
Mandarano L, Meenar M, Steins C (2011) Building social capital in the digital age of civic engage-
ment. J Plan Lit 25(2):123–135. https://doi.org/10.1177/0885412210394102
McArthur J (2017) Sidelining planners makes for poorer urban policy, and future generations will
pay the price. The Conversation. Online resource, https://theconversation.com/sidelining-plan-
ners-makes-for-poorer-urban-policy-and-future-generations-will-pay-the-price-73186. Last
accessed 5/7/2017. Also available from https://phys.org/news/2017-03-sidelining-planners-
poorer-urban-policy.html
NORC (2016) Investigating how Americans navigate the modern information environment. NORC
at the University of Chicago, Chicago

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O*NET (2017) Quick search for urban planning. U.S. Department of Labor, Employment & Training
Administration, Online resource, https://www.onetonline.org/find/quick?s=urban+planning.
Last accessed 5/7/2017
Otto-Zimmermann K (2011) Embarking on global environmental governance. International
Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI), Bonn
Ramasubramanian L et.al (2016) Neighborhood and community perspectives of resilience in the
Jamaica Bay watershed. In: Sanderson E, Solecki W, Waldman J, Parris A (eds) Prospects
for resilience: insights from New York City’s Jamaica Bay. Island Press, Washington, DC,
pp 117–137
Rotondo F (2012) The U-City paradigm: opportunities and risks for E-democracy in collaborative
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Sarkissian W, Hurford D, Wenman C (2010) Creative community planning. Earthscan, Washington,
DC
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Stern N, Taylor C (2007) Climate change: risk, ethics, and the stern review. Science 317(5835):203–
204. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1142920
Wilby R, Wigley T (1997) Downscaling general circulation model output: a review of methods and
limitations. Prog Phys Geogr 21(4):530–548. https://doi.org/10.1177/030913339702100403
Wildavsky A (1973) If planning is everything, maybe it’s nothing. Policy Sci 4(2):127–153

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Chapter 2
Planning Challenges and the Challenges
of Planning

2.1 Introduction

This chapter begins to articulate some answers to the question that is foremost in the
minds of planning students and new practitioners: Why is planning such a hot button
issue? For those of us who hold a worldview that is sympathetic to the benefits and
advantages of planning in our day-to-day lives (and that probably includes you,
because you picked up this book), it is often hard to understand why anyone or any
group would think unfavorably about planning. This schism exists because planning
for ourselves and our families is quite different from planning in the public realm.
Planning with and for the public requires people with very different world views to
work together to make decisions about the future. In this chapter, we look at the
multifaceted nature of planning in the public realm, the substantive societal chal-
lenges that planners are confronted with in making specific decisions, as well as the
challenges associated with the process of planning, affecting instrumental actions.

2.1.1 Making the Simple Complex

In the abstract, it is quite easy to say that we all, as human beings, want the same
things – good jobs, clean water, safe streets, and so on. Politicians of all stripes are
adept at speaking to these universal yearnings. Yet, public planners concern them-
selves about moving away from the abstract language of political slogans to address
tangible concerns. Thus, a planner might ask, “how does one define a good job?”
Surprisingly, there is more than one way to answer this question. One could argue
that good jobs that those that pay a living wage, while another may propose that a
good job is ideally one that provides a living wage and also includes guaranteed
health care and other societal benefits. Others may add additional dimensions

© Springer International Publishing AG 2018 15

L. Ramasubramanian, J. Albrecht, Essential Methods for Planning Practitioners,
The Urban Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68041-5_2

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16 2 Planning Challenges and the Challenges of Planning

stating that a good job is one that also provides flex time and respects diversity in
the workplace. The list can go on.
Undoubtedly, there are basic needs – many, especially those without work, would
claim that having a job without health benefits is better than not having a job at all.
So, for the sake of continuing this discussion and elucidating this argument, let’s
simply agree that a good job is one that provides a safe workplace, offers a livable
wage, and provides some guarantees like paid sick leave. Having settled on the defi-
nition of a good job, a planner may ask another question; “how many of these “good
jobs” are needed?” They may follow up with other, more complex questions, includ-
ing trying to understand if the educational and skill levels of workers match the
needs and expectations of prospective employers in a specific geographic area. They
may try to assess if there is buildable land available nearby to situate a factory or an
office building and whether there is supporting infrastructure to accommodate work-
ers’ families, schools for the workers’ children, and hospitals to care for the workers
and their families when they are ill. Thus, what began as a simple question becomes
more complex and multilayered as planners get involved in the conversations.
Rightly so. This is because of considerations of cost, specifically, the cost to the
public purse. The public is supportive of almost all initiatives until they start to con-
sider the thorny question, “How much is this all going to cost us?” We will return to
the issue of cost and expenditure in a moment, but first, let’s spend a little time think-
ing about how planners answer their detailed questions they pose to the public.

2.1.2 Data, Historical Trends, and Best Practices

Unlike conventional scientists and researchers, planners, whether they work for the
government, consulting companies, or nonprofits, are always working against exter-
nally imposed deadlines. The cadence of decision-making is unpredictable, and
often, there is an illusion that every decision is time-sensitive and urgent. Eventually,
planners learn about project management, time budgeting, and prioritization, topics
discussed in Chapter 7, but it’s safe to say that time is always in short supply. In this
situation, planners rely on data (about places or peoples), historical trends, and/or
best practices (planning interventions that have worked effectively in similar social
or geographical contexts) to arrive at some recommended action steps. We argue
that practitioners should understand the strengths and limits of planning (from the
past) so that they can plan more effectively for the future. Therefore, we briefly trace
the planning shifts that have occurred in the past few decades as well as those demo-
graphic and societal challenges that are anticipated in the next two to three decades
to provide practitioners with specific strategies to navigate the contemporary plan-
ning landscape. Section 2.2 focuses on some of these broad global historical and
social trends. These trends will manifest differently across different geographical
regions, states, communities, and neighborhoods. We anticipate that thoughtful
planners will carefully link the trends we describe in Chapter 2 to the particularities
of the situational contexts within which they work. To better understand our

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2.2 Planning Through the Ages 17

approach, it may be useful to spend some time reviewing the material we have pro-
vided about our two case study neighborhoods in New York, discussed in Chapter 3,
which discuss the role of data and best practices in their situational context.

2.2 Planning Through the Ages

Planning and the development of cities/regions are interlinked; planning became nec-
essary about the time when humans started to create permanent settlements (Mumford
1961). These settlement patterns were defined by many variables, such as the physical
geography of the area, its climatic conditions, the materials that were available for
construction, the origins of the people, and perhaps more importantly, the overarching
purpose or need that guided the creation of a settlement. Different types of settlement
patterns emerged and evolved over centuries. Even a cursory survey of human settle-
ments worldwide will identify distinct typologies such as religious centers and temple
towns, centers of power or capital cities, fortified cities, military encampments, cities
for pleasure or recreation, and so on (Kostoff 1991). Early settlement patterns were
usually self-contained and compact. There are many international examples of unique
building typologies in these settlements (Cole 2002).
Most cultures/faiths used formal and informal and sometimes “religious” rules to
organize their villages, towns, and cities, from the early civilizations of Mohenjo-Daro
and Harappa (Lynch 1981). Typically, these settlements emphasized socio-spatial hier-
archies and relationships. Of relevance to the today’s planning practitioner is to note that
in each of these settlement patterns, architects and planners used the technologies of
their time to create “aesthetically pleasing” spatial arrangements (layouts) that fulfilled
a variety of practical needs (Rapoport 1969). However, the variability of these spatial
arrangements suggests that ideologies related to culture, power, and faith also shaped the
physical form of these settlements. The manipulation of individual buildings through
their size, scale, proportion, and massing, as well as the use of materials, colors, and
textures, provided a nonverbal communication of the dominant social order (Brown
1942; Kostoff 2010). The relationship of buildings to one another, along with the rela-
tionship of buildings to pathways and byways that connect them, communicate a great
deal of information about the dominant social structure and functions of a society at any
given time during its development. Additionally, there is a recursive relationship that
settlement patterns, once established, continue to perpetuate thereby reifying prevalent
patterns of social hierarchies and interactions. Changes in the morphology of human
settlements can also communicate information about how/where the town expanded and
perhaps yield clues to why the expansion followed specific pathways (Knox 2014). In
cities across the world, architects, urban designers, and planners, either working alone or
with the support and encouragement of civic/religious leaders, have articulated a social
order that was clearly legible in the spatial order (organization) of the settlement (Bacon
1976; Kostoff 1991).
While there are some similarities, there are also sharp differences in settlement
patterns in different countries. For the most part, this chapter and the book focus on

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18 2 Planning Challenges and the Challenges of Planning

the development of settlements in the United States. However, it is important to note

that these US settlement forms discussed in the next few sections have been
“exported” to many other countries. Non-Western social and cultural milieus in
some of the most populated areas of the world like India and China continue to cre-
ate “globalized” planning visions in the development of their own cities using plan-
ning ideas developed in the west (Planning Commission, Government of India
2013; Wu 2015).

2.2.1 Twentieth-Century Settlement Patterns in the United

States

In the United States, as in much of Western Europe, early twentieth-century cities

responded to the challenges of early industrialization. Early settlements included mer-
cantile and port cities, industrial company towns, state capitals, and new frontier
towns (Hall 1988). While early industrialization created many challenges to human
health and well-being, the development of new materials and construction techniques
established new building forms and styles that we still recognize today (Miller 1996;
Larson 2003). Settlements created for one reason or another evolved, expanding and
adapting to demographic growth and change (Davis 1965). Transportation and avail-
able transportation technologies circumscribed and limited the expansion and growth
of early settlements, benefiting the growth of some cities while inhibiting others (e.g.,
Gurda 1999). However, the advent of the automobile and the growth of robust road
networks created new patterns of development soon after World War II (Taylor 1998).
The expansion of compact urban settlements, spurred by investments in new
transportation infrastructure, facilitated and expanded suburbanization. Much has
been written about suburbanization in the United States and its consequent impacts
on urban development (see, e.g., Jackson 1985; Hayden 2003). Suburban develop-
ment was characterized by neighborhoods comprising of spacious single-family
homes that included private open spaces and created a sense of security through the
layout and arrangement of individual homes along streets (cul-de-sacs). Private
automobile ownership and transportation connectivity also determined the individ-
ual house form (prominent garage/driveway). The hetero-normative household
dominated the social order. The prevailing societal attitudes assumed that heads of
households (usually men) commuted between work (in the city) and home (in the
suburb) (Gans 1969; Stimpson et al. 1981). Larger structural forces also shaped the
vision of a new social order during this time.
The planning field has always been a multidisciplinary community that includes
architects, landscape architects, engineers, and social scientists. Planning practitio-
ners organized themselves as early as 1917 as the American City Planning Institute.
The American Institute of Planners (the precursor to the present-day American
Planning Association) was established in 1939.1 Dominant planning trends have

1
American Planning Association: History. Available at: https://www.planning.org/apaataglance/
history.htm. Retrieved March 1, 2017.

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2.2 Planning Through the Ages 19

always been shaped by technological and political developments. Different ideas

about planning have been put forward over the last 100 years, reflecting the diver-
sity of thought and intellect of the times. These divergent philosophies continue to
evolve. There can be no objective retracing of the evolution of American planning
practice. Suffice it to say that a wide range of political and social ideologies have
always been embedded in planning practices, then, and now.
One of the recurrent themes that dominate international planning practice is the
desire to create a settlement from a clean slate – a tabula rasa. In so far, that it is an
impossible aspiration, it is also a planning ideal.2 Historically, architects and plan-
ners have always proposed “ideal” settlements or “planned communities.”3 Examples
abound of such visionary initiatives, including a case study that we include in
Chapter 3 – Roosevelt Island.

2.2.2 Changing Morphologies, Urban Sprawl, and New

Urbanism

The suburban form that was established in the 1950s and 1960s has continued to
grow and expand, and, at least, two different orders of suburban development can be
distinguished; an earlier modestly scaled type of suburban development has given
way to newer developments that are oversized with an added emphasis on exclusiv-
ity, achieved through the creation of gated communities (Blakeley and Snyder 1997;
Low 2003). The 1980s also saw the emergence of Edge Cities (Garreau 1991) that
helped reduce the prominence of a traditional central city. Edge cities provide city-
like amenities (offices, retail environments, hotels), direct connections to suburban
residential zones, as well as access to a major airport, allowing residents to avoid the
central city altogether. Edge cities are known to have a distinct (named) identity that
identifies it as a business center.
Despite planners’ affection and continued interest in living and working in the
traditional city, we encourage young planning professionals to critically examine
suburbanization trends in the United States as well as other parts of the world.4
American suburbs deserve to be examined and studied with the same enthusiasm
that is typically reserved for cities. About half of all Americans live in a suburban
community, and we can speculate that they live there by choice (albeit balancing
trade-offs associated with housing prices, commuting costs, and other variables).5

2
Beijing’s new annex: A plan to build a city from scratch that will dwarf New York, The Economist,
April 6, 2017, Available at: http://www.economist.com/news/china/21720318-will-xi-jinpings-
dream-come-true-plan-build-city-scratch-will-dwarf-new-york. Retrieved April 6, 2017.
3
Don, K. 2010. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Utopian Dystopia, April 8, 2010, Available at: https://nextc-
ity.org/daily/entry/frank-lloyd-wrights-utopian-dystopia. Retrieved Feb 2, 2017.
4
The Economist Essay: A Planet of Suburbs Not Dated. Available at: http://www.economist.com/
suburbs. Retrieved March 2, 2017.
5
US Census Bureau, 2002. Demographic Trends in the Twentieth Century, Census 2000 Special

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20 2 Planning Challenges and the Challenges of Planning

Yet, American suburbs vary greatly in their economic viability – pockets of poverty,
deteriorating housing stock, and high incidences of crime are the hallmarks of some
suburban communities. Progressive planners should pay attention to the challenges
facing the ring of older suburbs that are in the immediate periphery of older cities in
the Northeast and the Midwest.6 Immediately following the financial crisis of 2008,
some new planned suburban communities were transformed into a desolate land-
scape of suburban blight7 almost overnight. By 2017 that trend seems to be revers-
ing itself.8
A countervailing trend of planned urban development (that attempts to bridge the
city-suburb divide) is the creation of neighborhoods based on new urbanist princi-
ples – i.e., principles of traditional neighborhood design, a settlement form that was
prevalent before the rise of the automobile (Duany et al. 2000). The development of
New Urbanism as a planning framework has forced American urban planning prac-
titioners to consider the physical form of buildings, turning the old dictum – form
follows function9 – on its head. New urbanist principles include a vision of walk-
able, pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods that provide many opportunities for social
interaction (Duany and Plater-Zyberk 2003). New Urbanism also emphasizes the
creation of a legible neighborhood with a clear “center and an edge” that is no more
than a 10-min walk away. Within these legible (easy to navigate) neighborhoods, a
variety of residential and compatible nonresidential uses are encouraged. New
urbanists pay attention to the placement of buildings and the relationships of build-
ings to the street, scaling buildings to human scale and minimizing the importance
given to the private automobile.
Some academic scholars observe that New Urbanism is neither new nor urban,10
reminding us that many new urbanist principles harken back to the settlement pat-
terns of small villages and country towns in a pre-automobile era. Others point out
that most tangible applications of the concept can be observed in planned residential
settlements. Still others label it social engineering. New urbanist theories and meth-
ods received political support when the US Department of Housing and Urban
Development under the leadership of Henry Cisneros accepted new urbanist ideals

Reports. Available at: https://www.census.gov/history/pdf/1970suburbs.pdf. Retrieved March 2,

2017.
6
Puentes, R. and D. Warren, 2006. One-Fifth of America: A Comprehensive Guide to America’s
First Suburbs. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Survey Series Available at: https://www.
brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/20060215_FirstSuburbs.pdf. Retrieved March 2,
2017.
7
Kilston, L. 2013. Economic collapse seen through aerial photos of abandoned mansions. Available
at: https://www.wired.com/2013/09/michael-light-aerial-photos/. Retrieved March 2, 2017.
8
Cox, W. 2017. Flight from urban cores accelerates: 2016 census metropolitan area estimates.
Available at: http://www.newgeography.com/content/005570-flight-urban-cores-accelerates-
2016-census-metropolitan-area-estimates. Retrieved on March 26, 2017.
9
Attributed to American architect, Louis Sullivan.
10
Dunham-Jones, E. 1998. Academics take a hard look at the New Urbanism, Public Square,
November 1, 1998. Available at: https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/academics-take-hard-look-
new-urbanism. Retrieved March 1, 2017.

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2.3 Planning Challenges 21

in the planning and revitalization of inner-city communities in the early 1990s to

address some of the endemic problems associated with public housing develop-
ments (Cisneros and Engdahl 2009). Despite the fact that the theory has some
detractors, it is useful to note that no “new” or “radical” theories or principles of
physical planning have been put forward to pragmatically guide urban settlement
development since the emergence and growth of New Urbanism.

2.3 Planning Challenges

When we plan for a short time frame, there is a high level of predictability and reli-
ability in the success of the plan. However, there is no real benefit in planning for
the next hour or next day in a very high degree of detail except for certain special-
ized situations such as disaster response and recovery. Yet, when we increase the
time horizon for planning to attempt to anticipate problems that may occur in the
next 50 or 100 years, we must cope with a great deal of ambiguity. However, prac-
ticing planners must recognize that the following three major future trends will
impact almost every aspect of their work. They include urbanization, demography,
and climate change. Each element creates a transformation – changes in the physi-
cal landscape, changes in the population, and changes in the environment.
Collectively, these changes create new realities on the ground that should be
included in the planning and management of any program, project, or policy.

2.3.1 Urbanization

Urbanization, in planning terms, reflects the reallocation of land to urban uses like
housing, infrastructure, and transportation as opposed to non-urban uses such as
farming or leaving land in its natural state. Urbanization results from population
growth through natural cycles of reproduction and/or the migration of populations
from rural to urban areas. Cities are growing worldwide, and new megacities (cities
with ten million or more in population) have increased from 10 cities in 1990 to 28
cities in 2014.11 Growth is not restricted to megacities – smaller towns and cities are
also growing and urbanizing steadily.12 The United States is likely to follow global
urbanization patterns removing conventionally understood distinctions between cit-
ies and suburbs.13

11
World Urbanization Prospects 2014 Revision, United Nations. Available at: https://esa.un.org/
unpd/wup/publications/files/wup2014-highlights.Pdf. Retrieved on February 1, 2017.
12
The World’s Cities in 2016. Data Booklet, United Nations. Available at: http://www.un.org/en/
development/desa/population/publications/pdf/urbanization/the_worlds_cities_in_2016_data_
booklet.pdf. Retrieved on February 1, 2017.
13
Berube, A. 2011. The State of Metropolitan America: Suburbs and the 2010 Census. Available at:

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22 2 Planning Challenges and the Challenges of Planning

2.3.2 Demography

The American population is growing steadily, and the country is projected to have
over 400 million people by 2051.14 While the birth rate has been declining since the
1950s, Americans are living longer. At the same time, it appears that many young
Americans are delaying marriage and parenthood.15 These trends are expected to
continue. America is also becoming a more diverse country, with millennials, young
adults between the ages of 18–34, accounting for much of this diversity. By 2050,
America is likely to become a “majority-minority” nation.16

2.3.3 Climate

Most scientists agree that the earth’s climate is changing rapidly17,18 (see Fig. 2.1).
Naturally occurring fluctuations have accelerated and increased by orders of magni-
tude because of human interventions such as population growth, urban development,
and environmental degradation. The impacts of human-induced climate change are
likely to be highly variable and have localized and disparate consequences; for
example, coastal areas are likely to be severely affected by flooding because of ris-
ing sea levels (Rosenzweig and Solecki 2015).

2.4 Impacts and Consequences

As a planning professional, it is important to consider aforementioned global trends

and understand how they are likely to impact planning initiatives or actions within
the geographical region where you work. Some general impacts and consequences

https://www.brookings.edu/on-the-record/the-state-of-metropolitan-america-suburbs-and-the-
2010-census/. Retrieved on June 1, 2016.
14
Colby, S and J. M. Ortman, 2015. Projections of the Size and Composition of the U.S > Population:
2014 to 2060. Available at: https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publica-
tions/2015/demo/p25-1143.pdf. Retrieved on June 1, 2016.
15
Vespa, J. 2017. The Changing Economics and Demographics of Young Adulthood: 1975-2016.
Available at: https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2017/demo/p20-
579.pdf. Retrieved on April 15, 2017.
16
Colby, S and J. M. Ortman, 2015. Projections of the Size and Composition of the U.S > Population:
2014 to 2060. Available at: https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publica-
tions/2015/demo/p25-1143.pdf. Retrieved on June 1, 2016.
17
Global Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet. Available at: https://climate.nasa.gov/evi-
dence/. Retrieved on May 1, 2017.
18
IPCC, 2014: Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and
III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Core
Writing Team, R.K. Pachauri and L.A. Meyer (eds.)]. IPCC, Geneva, Switzerland, 151 pp. http://
www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/syr/. Retrieved on January 2, 2016.

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2.4 Impacts and Consequences 23

Springtime Average Temperature (° C)

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14

Fig. 2.1 Springtime temperatures are predicted to increase significantly (Image credit: NASA)

of urban growth, demographic change, and climate change are discussed below and
depicted in Fig. 2.2 to help jump-start your reflections. These considerations should
influence the specifics of the design, planning, and management of programs,
projects, or policies.

2.4.1 Combat and Manage Sprawl

One of the main planning challenges of urban development in the United States
is sprawl (Gillham 2002). Sprawl, concisely defined, is the rapid growth of low-
rise, single-family housing developments. Conservatives and liberals debate the
causes, extent, and the problems of sprawl (Bruegmann 2005; Squires 2002).

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24 2 Planning Challenges and the Challenges of Planning

Fig. 2.2 Planning challenges and impacts

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2.4 Impacts and Consequences 25

Even those who want to limit and curb sprawl are divided about to achieve their
objectives.19 Policy and design solutions have been put forward, but the skepti-
cism of the public toward growth management through regulations prevents
these methods and approaches from being implemented on a grand scale (Downs
2005; Knapp and Talen 2005). Smart growth principles, conceptualized as an
antidote to sprawl, encourage the provision of better public transportation
options, new zoning regulations to increase density where possible, as well as
investments in mixed-use town centers as a part of residential developments.
Other smart growth principles create disincentives to sprawl by transferring
some of the costs of infrastructure development (road networks, water and sewer
connections, etc.) to the end users and by imposing more stringent development
protocols (Ingram and Hong 2009).

2.4.2 Create and Maintain Infrastructure and Transportation

Systems

Another challenge for planners is the need to manage America’s crumbling urban
infrastructure that is dire need of maintenance and upgrades.20 Infrastructure is the
generic term given to road and rail networks, bridges, drinking water and sewer
systems, flood management systems like dams and levees, as well as facilities that
are necessary for a vibrant and thriving economy such as aviation terminals and
ports. Public facilities like schools, hospitals, parks, and playgrounds are also part
of the urban infrastructure. As public infrastructure ages, various systems break
down or are closed voluntarily to address safety concerns. In addition to the serious
cost of lost human lives, productivity declines. Economic growth can be stalled
because of the infrastructure crisis. Some argue that the country’s older cities and
neighborhoods are worst affected21 although the challenges faced by smaller
communities do not gain visibility until the situation reaches crisis proportions.22
The management of urban infrastructure is complicated by the fact that much of it
is invisible (consider water, sewer, and utility lines) and/or falls under different
jurisdictional authorities (consider rail networks).

19
Gordon, P & H.W. Richardson,1998. Prove It: The Costs and Benefits of Sprawl. Brookings
Review, Fall 1998, Available at: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/gor-
don2.pdf. Retrieved on June 12, 2016.
20
2017 Infrastructure Report Card, American Society of Civil Engineers, Available at: http://www.
infrastructurereportcard.org/. Retrieved April 2, 2017.
21
Fishbein, R. 2014. NYC Infrastructure is crumbling, March 12th, 2014, Gothamist Available at:
http://gothamist.com/2014/03/12/nyc_infrastructure_rip.php. Retrieved September 1, 2016.
22
Dixon, J. How Flint’s water crisis unfolded. Detroit Free Press. Available at: http://www.freep.
com/pages/interactives/flint-water-crisis-timeline/. Retrieved on April 30, 2017.

[email protected]
26 2 Planning Challenges and the Challenges of Planning

2.4.3 Plan for an Aging Society

One of the biggest impacts of the demographic shifts sweeping the country relates
to the “graying” of America with the population of people 65 years and over pro-
jected to become about 98 million by the year 2060.23 As the proportion of the
elderly population continues to increase, planners will need to develop and cultivate
expertise on a variety of topics24 related to aging in place. Some of these topics
include housing for aging populations, including the retrofitting and adaption of
existing housing stock to accommodate elderly homeowners and home buyers;25
transportation services, including the management of private transportation services
for individuals and small groups, particularly in low-density neighborhoods (Wachs
1979); and the development and maintenance of residential health-care facilities
and ancillary nonresidential options such as elder day-care26 (see also Fig. 2.3).

2.4.4 Serve Diverse Populations

Diversity often references racial and ethnic differences, but it should consider much
more, including age, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, and different physi-
cal and mental abilities. For example, considering the lifestyle choices and needs of
young adults can have additional impacts of urban settlement patterns; young adults
seem to prefer compact living arrangements in urban areas where they continue to
seek out a range of entertainment, retail, and dining options.27 They are more likely
to put off making major purchases like a car or their first home, thereby forcing
planners to examine the benefits and consequences of an expanding rental housing
market and expanding public transportation infrastructure. Planners must consider
the complexity of planning and designing for diversity to ensure that our physical
fabric is accessible and inclusive.28

23
United States Department of Health and Human Services, 2016. A Profile of Older Americans:
2016. Washington, D.C: Administration for Community Living Available at: https://aoa.acl.gov/
Aging_Statistics/Profile/index.aspx). Retrieved April 15, 2017.
24
American Planning Association: Aging in Community Policy Guide. Available at: https://www.
planning.org/policy/guides/adopted/agingincommunity.htm. Retrieved on March 12, 2017.
25
Aging in Place: facilitating choice and independence https://www.huduser.gov/portal/periodi-
cals/em/fall13/highlight1.html.
26
Ball, M.S. not dated. Aging in Place: A Toolkit for Local Governments. Available at: http://www.
aarp.org/content/dam/aarp/livable-communities/plan/planning/aging-in-place-a-toolkit-for-local-
governments-aarp.pdf. Retrieved on May 10, 2016.
27
Vespa, J. 2017. The Changing Economics and Demographics of Young Adulthood: 1975-2016.
Available at: https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2017/demo/p20-
579.pdf. Retrieved on April 15, 2017.
28
Winograd, M & M. Hais. 2014. Howe Millennials could upend Wall Street and corporate
America. May 28th, 2014. Available at: https://www.brookings.edu/research/how-millennials-
could-upend-wall-street-and-corporate-america/. Retrieved on September 30, 2016.

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2.4 Impacts and Consequences 27

Fig. 2.3 An aging society. The percentages refer to percent of county population age 65 years or
older

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28 2 Planning Challenges and the Challenges of Planning

2.4.5 Address Environmental Quality

According to many governmental and non-governmental agencies around the world,

the quality of the Earth’s water, air, and soils is increasingly compromised because of
previous human actions on a global scale. For example, the air quality of many world
cities is compromised because of the presence of particulate matter, ozone, and other
global greenhouse gases such as methane, nitrous oxide, and chlorofluorocarbons.29
Water quality of lakes, rivers, and streams is affected by agricultural runoff that is
loaded with chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Massive storms and heavy rainfall
result in sewer overflows that contaminate the environment. Soils can also be contami-
nated because of different types of extractive activities such as mining or drilling that
generate polluting by-products. Illegal dumping of wastes can further contaminate the
soil. Pollutants can work their way through the soil and contaminate groundwater
sources as well. Practitioners should prepare themselves by learning different strate-
gies of ensuring environmental quality, particularly to identify strategies to increase
the public trust that the environment is safe for human habitation.30

2.4.6 Design for Climate Resilience

Planners do not have the luxury of ignoring climate change and must prepare
to develop and support climate resilient neighborhoods, cities, and regions (Bicknell,
et.al 2009). The impacts of climate change are highly localized. Disparate impacts
create “winners” and “losers” in the short term. Developing plans for climate resil-
iency requires planners to understand and interpret the science behind climate data
to advocate for practical solutions that can protect private housing stock and public
facilities, including transportation infrastructure.31 These are not limited to physical
interventions – planners must also consider policies such as overhauling city and
state zoning codes. Planners must also develop response strategies to prepare and
manage the immediate and long-term impacts of extreme weather events that are
likely to occur more frequently in the next 50–100 years.32

29
IPCC, 2014: Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and
III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Core
Writing Team, R.K. Pachauri and L.A. Meyer (eds.)]. IPCC, Geneva, Switzerland, 151 pp. http://
www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/syr/. Retrieved on January 2, 2016.
30
Flint Water Crisis Fast Facts. Available athttp://www.cnn.com/2016/03/04/us/flint-water-crisis-
fast-facts/. Retrieved April 30, 2017.
31
Jarvis, B. 2017. When Rising Seas Transform Risk into Certainty, The New York Times
Magazine, April 18, 2017. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/18/magazine/when-
rising-seas-transform-risk-into-certainty.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSourc
e=story-heading&module=photo-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=1.
Retrieved on April 20, 2017.
32
Rice, A. 2016. This is New York in the not-so-distant future, September 5th, 2016, The New York
Magazine, Available at: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/09/new-york-future-flooding-
climate-change.html. Retrieved on January 30, 2017.

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2.5 Challenges of Planning 29

2.5 Challenges of Planning

Section 2.3 discussed three global trends, urbanization, demography, and climate
change, and Sect. 2.4 presented six planning challenges that can arise as a result. In
most democratic societies, planning is a social and political activity that engages a
variety of stakeholder groups. When planners engage the public to develop plans,
proposals, and policies, they encounter a different set of challenges. We refer to
them in this book as the challenges of planning,33 in other words, process-oriented
challenges that are different from the planning challenges described in Sect. 2.4.

2.5.1 The Death of Expertise34

Planners are professionals. Most planners would claim that they are “experts” in
that they are armed with technocratic knowledge about how to create and manage
different aspects of our society. Planning education and planning practice are spe-
cialized in several ways. For example, a planner may develop expertise in hous-
ing, economic development, or transportation. They could further be an expert in
housing design, transportation modelling, or the use of tax policy to spur eco-
nomic development. While individual expertise is cultivated over time, it is usu-
ally informed through rigorous and systematic study of the subject matter and
informed with on-the-job experience that is gathered through fieldwork place-
ments or internships. Yet, our society has changed in dramatic ways – the democ-
ratization of information, spurred by digital technologies and the Internet, have
allowed everyday people to gain expertise and knowledge quickly, often without
following the traditional pathways of a rigorous planning education. Planners
engaging with the public often find their own expertise challenged by laypeople
(and politicians) who want quick fixes to pressing urban problems. Planners often
advocate reasoned and thoughtful responses to situations and ask a lot of ques-
tions (see Sect. 2.1 of this chapter). They often encounter resistance from the
public who may view delays as stalling or a desire to avoid decision-making. This
is a complex challenge for planners who want to be participatory and be engaged
with their publics and yet carve a role that they can play. Are planners merely
highly paid facilitators of public dialogue? What exactly is their contribution in
shaping the physical and social fabric of our cities and towns? This is a question
that we will return to, in subsequent chapters.

33
These ideas were first publicly presented by Dr. Laxmi Ramasubramanian at a seminar at Virigina
Tech in February 2017.
34
We encountered this idea explored in a different context in Tom Nichols blog post in The Federalist.
Available at http://thefederalist.com/2014/01/17/the-death-of-expertise/. Retrieved on June 25,
2016.

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30 2 Planning Challenges and the Challenges of Planning

2.5.2 Planning with Diverse Populations

Planning has always been a blend of the technical and the political. Planning visions
are crafted by the political power elite from time immemorial and continues to the
present day. Planning in many societies is managed in a top-down hierarchical fash-
ion, and the citizens and the public acquiesce or accommodate these imposed views.
Planning implementation – the aspect of planning that is most visible in the public
realm – is streamlined. Words and phrases like “efficient,” “quick,” and “completed
on time and under budget” signify an orderly, rational, technocratic process that
serves all people equally. This vision of planning is only an illusion, particularly in
democratic and open societies. Planning is accountable to, and serves many interest
groups who compete and jockey for power and influence over the decision-making
process, and the final outcomes. Clear mandates seldom emerge and planners nego-
tiate between and among competing interest to advance projects or policies. In their
day-to-day work, planners often develop proposals or recommend outcomes that
can satisfy the needs of a considerable majority of the residents in a neighborhood
or city. They strive to build compromise to encourage public engagement, commit-
ment, and support of their initiatives. These efforts are more successful when there
is broad agreement about what is practical and feasible. Yet, our society has become
hyper-diverse, not simply in racial or ethnic terms but in every aspect of life. In fact,
being different is valued more than conformity. This is not inherently a problem, but
it makes consensus building harder. In a community that includes homeowners,
renters, business people, young and old, and rich and poor, it is harder to arrive at an
agreement about what is the most appropriate way forward. This is a good problem
to have, for planners – but still a problem that must be confronted head on. Practicing
planners that work in neighborhoods or cities with large immigrant populations
should anticipate that they will work on a range of issues related to social services
provisions, education, housing, as well as economic development. For instance,
ensuring that information is available in languages other than English, many eventu-
ally become necessary in many communities.

2.5.3 The Future of Participation

For the last 50 years, planners have strenuously supported the ideal of planning
with, rather than for, the public. An important ingredient in planning processes is the
attention given to public participation. Participation is embedded into the institu-
tional fabric of planning initiated by the federal government, and to the extent that
federal dollars’ flow into states and local communities, stringent participation
guidelines often follow. In addition, most states and localities encourage some form
of democratic participation through information sharing or community consulta-
tions. Academic planners have debated and reflected on the nature of public partici-
pation in public planning for many decades. A plethora of best practices to facilitate

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2.6 Technologies and Planning Practices 31

and manage participation has been assembled over this time. Yet, many would argue
that public participation processes have not always improved the quality of the out-
comes, contribute to project delays, and are often used as political theater. Planners
of the future should engage critically with the question: What forms of public par-
ticipation are necessary to address the challenges of the future? What forms of com-
munity engagement are necessary to invite and engage individuals and groups who
are perpetually left out of decision-making loops? How can a broadly consultative
and collaborative planning process become sustainable financially and avoid burn
out among planners and the public alike? Some of these questions are discussed at
length in Chapter 6.

2.6 Technologies and Planning Practices

The development of planning practices in the United States after World War II was
strongly influenced by a sense of optimism and grounded in the ideals of technology-
driven progress. Nowhere have these impacts been more visible and more conten-
tious than in land use and transportation planning (Plummer undated, modified
2007), although it has affected many other sectors including housing, economic
development, and public health. The use of quantitative data and mathematical
models to explain and predict human behavior and the use of statistically significant
analyses have been an integral part of American and Western planning since the end
of World War II (Barnes 2003). The advent of the computers sped up this trend.

2.6.1 Planning as a Science

During the 1950s and 1960s, federal, state, and local government agencies empha-
sized large-scale, comprehensive planning projects. In order to plan and manage for
rapid urban growth, planners amassed and analyzed a large volume of data about
historical and current land use and transportation trends which they then used to
forecast future patterns of growth. For example, travel demand forecasting, devel-
oped by the Chicago Area Transportation Study, used systematic procedures to
compute trip generation, the modal split, trip distribution, and mode assignment
(Black 1990). The planning goals identified by the agency, in consultation with
community leaders, emphasized speed and efficiency. Then computerized and auto-
mated methods optimized route selection between destinations to identify the short-
est travel paths with minimum impedances. The computationally intensive
approaches served their purpose in some ways but neglected to consider the quality
of the travel experience, the impacts on neighborhoods and communities that were
not along the connected nodes of a regional network of expansion and development,
and the concerns about sprawl that were discussed earlier.

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32 2 Planning Challenges and the Challenges of Planning

Computational advancements and modeling techniques made it possible for

practitioners to think and plan at the scale of the region. Planners, at the time,
also made assumptions about societal and economic trends which influenced the
identification of planning goals. For example, the locus of economic opportu-
nity was situated as a fixed zone in the central city; thus, an important planning
goal was to reduce the commute time between the residential suburb and the
central business district (CBD). The prevailing vision and value system – work-
ing men, stay-at-home women, a nuclear family as a unit of social interactions
that occurred in the private sphere, workplaces situated in the central city, the
utility, convenience, and status of owning a private automobile – contributed to
the land-use patterns that emerged. These patterns were supported by financial
incentives through mortgage programs provided by the government that encour-
aged homeownership as a pathway to opportunity, a continuing meme in
American society that persists even today. While many of these projects and
plans were initially seen as very successful, a more nuanced assessment is nec-
essary. We propose that many of these comprehensive planning projects helped
to create and support a new American middle class. However, these plans and
policies also sowed the roots of income inequality and racial disparity that
would explode in the 1960s across the United States.
The idea that planning was a science became gradually discredited by the late
1970s (Friedmann 1987; Taylor 1998). One can speculate that academics and
practitioners began to recognize that plans they had developed using highly com-
putationally intensive models and projections had helped create hardships and
harm. Specifically, the development of highways and freeways (designed to speed
up travel) and mega-development projects tore through urban neighborhoods
where poor people and people of color lived. The argument that some people
would inevitably have to make sacrifices for the greater benefits to the region
failed to gain traction as the numbers of those displaced grew, and patterns of
displacement began to become more visible. Across the country – Boston,
New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, to mention a few cities – active resistance
to expert-driven planning and/or top-down planning broke out (e.g., King 1981;
Mollenkopf 1983).

2.6.2 Planning Support Systems

The development of personal computers and geographic information systems (GIS)

re-energized spatial planning. Although tracing the history of GIS is beyond the
scope of this chapter, it is important to note that parallel developments in fields
allied with planning specifically, landscape architecture, and cartography helped to
create principles, methods, and techniques for creating digital maps using locational
(latitude, longitude) information during the 1960s and 1970s. As GIS technologies
evolved, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and the United States Census
Bureau created first the standards of digital cartographic data and then used those

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2.6 Technologies and Planning Practices 33

standards to create digital geographic base maps.35,36 During the 1980s, the process
of analog to digital conversion of maps began, and maps were stored as digital data
files. The creation of relational databases with location identifiers allowed different
types of end users to use a locational reference such as a street address to connect
different types of information that were available about a unique address regardless
of which agency/group had been involved in collecting that information.
While paper maps have always been used for planning purposes, computerized
mapping “disrupted” the status quo in planning agencies. There is a robust literature
from planning practice that documents how different types of planning agencies
adopted and adapted the newly emerging GIS technologies to support and advance
their work (Huxhold 1991; Campbell and Masser 1995). City planners found that
with the help of GIS, they could use the information that was generated by other city
departments to improve efficiencies in routine tasks, make better management deci-
sions, and create better policies. Many progressive outcomes resulted from the use
of GIS in government, including a more equitable allocation of resources and ser-
vices that were more appropriate to the needs of one particular community. GIS has
also been used to identify instances of disproportionate burdens experienced by
people of color because maps made using GIS could demonstrate that locally
unwanted land uses (LULUs) had been placed in poor or minority neighborhoods
by overlaying sociodemographic information with land use and facilities informa-
tion (Ramasubramanian 2009).
Many nontechnical users are fascinated by the visual map displays made possi-
ble through GIS – while conventional paper maps are static, GIS software facilitates
the creation of dynamic maps that allow for display, toggling on/off different types
of information and features of a landscape, as well as showing changes that occur
over time. It soon became apparent that planning departments and agencies that had
access to GIS could make crisper and better-formed arguments to support their
claims. As the “official” use of GIS expanded, non-governmental organizations and
activists’ groups began to take note (Ramasubramanian 2009).

2.6.3 Participatory Planning Technologies

A countermovement to “democratize” GIS began in the mid-1990s as the technol-

ogy became popular, in part, through the efforts of a major software developer37
who thoughtfully and consciously engaged universities, colleges, and schools.
Partnerships with universities and community-based organizations allowed for a

35
Dual Independent Map Coding Available at: https://www.census.gov/history/www/innovations/
technology/dual_independent_map_encoding.html. Retrieved on April 3, 2017.
36
TIGER = Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing Available at: https://
www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/data/tiger.html. Retrieved on April 3, 2017.
37
Jack Dangermond, UCGIS Fellow Citation. Available at: http://www.ucgis.org/jack-danger-
mond. Retrieved on April 9, 2017.

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34 2 Planning Challenges and the Challenges of Planning

wide range of community-university partnership projects to use GIS tools and pub-
licly available census data to ask more place-specific and issue-specific questions.
In the 1990s, as the hardware and software became more affordable and user-
friendly, the challenge that slowed everyone down was the lack of access to useful
data. Undoubtedly the census provided a great deal of useful information, but the
more interesting data sets that were useful to planners such as land-use information,
property ownership information, and other business information were collected by
different entities at different times and not generally available for use to the public.
Collecting and assembling data were a big stumbling block for geographic infor-
mation systems to become community information systems. The push to create a
National Spatial Data Infrastructure, along with a National Geospatial Data
Clearinghouse, came as early as 1994 (Federal Geographic Data Committee 1994).
The development and rapid growth of the World Wide Web in the mid-1990s added
a new dimension to the adoption and use of GIS. As part of the development of the
NSDI, government data and data collections held in public and university libraries
and other locations became accessible through the creation of powerful map and
data servers. In some instances, even if the actual data was not downloadable, non-
technical users could search metadata (data about data) to identify useful and rele-
vant information for their own specific needs. GIS adoption and use in government,
business, nonprofits, and academia have continued to grow rapidly. We argue that a
new wave of technical-rational planning was reestablished in the mid-1990s,
although it was disconnected from a robust theoretical or ideological framing.
The Obama Administration’s open data policies established in 2009 and further
expanded in 2012 explicitly made open and machine-readable data the new default
for government information.38 The federal push to make data available and accessible
as a new kind of infrastructure to the tech sector (application developers, civic hack-
ers, and the like) has expanded to state and local governments.
Participatory GIS methodologies also benefited from the development of cloud-
based computing services that moved the analysis away from desktops into virtual
data servers and portals. Generally, tedious routines previously necessary to execute
simple analyses have been replaced by a push-button interface design that makes the
computation “invisible” focusing instead on the “visualization” of the results. For
example, the advantages of Web interfaces that provide real-time traffic information
allow users to make decisions and change their routes while in transit. The real-time
information is generated in a variety of ways, most significantly through crowd-
sourcing, where individual “smart” phones with location identifiers passively trans-
mit data to a centralized server. An entire industry has emerged around
“location-based” services that are available to end users for free or at very low cost.

38
Obama Administration Executive Order – Making Open and Machine Readable the new default
for government information, Available at: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-
office/2013/05/09/executive-order-making-open-and-machine-readable-new-default-govern-
ment-. Retrieved on April 10, 2017.

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2.6 Technologies and Planning Practices 35

2.6.4 Big Data, Social Media, and Planning Apps

“Big Data” is a phrase that speaks to the large volume and variety of data that is
available in real-time or nearly close to real-time. Big data is the by-product of the
popularity of powerful mobile phones throughout the world, supported by powerful
data servers that can store and disseminate large volumes of information to indi-
vidual users (Kitchen and McArdle 2016). The data is generated from users’ actions
that are recorded automatically or manually logged through a computer or mobile
phone. The emergence and rapid growth of social media platforms like Facebook
(launched 2004), Twitter (launched 2006), and FourSquare (launched 2009) have
contributed to the growth of applications “apps” that rely on user-generated location
information. Combined with other variables, it is possible to quickly generate data-
driven decisions. In other words, quantitative data is now used to support a variety
of mundane and strategic decisions by everyday people.
Planners have traditionally gathered data about planning problems and issues
and solicited feedback about planning proposals through formal and informal con-
sultations. Some of this work is now conducted electronically by using social media
platforms. A cottage industry of “app” developers now serve planning profession-
als39; they facilitate the collection and linking of user data with publicly available
data to draw conclusions about people’s behaviors and aspirational goals, thereby
providing practical guidance for individualized decision-making. At the same time,
planners should remember that urban management functions like crowd control are
greatly facilitated by the range of new technologies and data streams that are avail-
able to planners and to law enforcement.40

2.7 Concluding Comments

American society is deeply polarized politically and socially. In part, this polariza-
tion is an outgrowth of great income and social inequality.41 Poverty can no longer
be an inner-city phenomenon because more than half of the country’s poor people
live in suburban environments (Kneebone and Berube 2013). Addressing suburban
poverty will create new planning and design challenges for planning practitioners
across the country. Planners must address the need for safe and affordable housing
for home buyers and renters, the provision of adequate public transportation options
for low-income people as well as social services like child care and professional

39
Evans-Cowley, J. 2017. The Best Planning Apps for 2017, January 4, 2017. Available at: https://
www.planetizen.com/node/90507/best-planning-apps-2017. Retrieved on January 16, 2017.
40
Police to use LSE crowd control app, London School of Economics and Political Science,
Available at: http://www.lse.ac.uk/website-archive/newsAndMedia/newsArchives/2012/07/
crowd-control-app.aspx. Retrieved on March 7, 2017.
41
Income Inequality. Available at: https://www.census.gov/topics/income-poverty/income-
inequality.html. Retrieved on April 25, 2017

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36 2 Planning Challenges and the Challenges of Planning

development services for those individuals who are reentering the workforce. These
challenges may be further complicated because of suburban dwellers’ real and per-
ceived anxieties about crime. In many suburbs, the discussion about these anxieties
is likely to evoke racial and ethnic tensions that must be carefully defused. At the
same time, natural calamities, human-made disasters, as well as foreign and domes-
tic terror attacks have become a part of contemporary life, and this trend is likely to
continue for the foreseeable future. Threats can emerge from almost anywhere and
manifest in many ways. Planners and practitioners must develop new skills to sup-
port civic education, emergency preparedness, response training, and planning in/
for post-disaster situations.

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Press, New York
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teristics of 26 datasets. Big Data Soc 3(1):1–10
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Sci Rev 28(2):107–118
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Chapter 3
Case Studies

3.1 Introduction

Our two case studies both represent “islands” with well-demarcated boundaries: in
case of Roosevelt Island because it is indeed a true island in New York City’s East
River and in case of Hunts Point because it forms a peninsula that is separated from
the rest of the Bronx by an imposing freeway (see Fig. 3.1). Located within the five
boroughs of New York City, both case study areas have a long history of multiple
phases of stable land use that are punctuated by dramatic changes (see Table 3.1).
New York City has a long history of using islands for undesirable uses (Rikers,
prison; Hart, cemetery; North Brother, quarantine hospital, then drug addiction
treatment center; Randall, all previous uses and now a sewage treatment plant).
Compared to that, our case study neighborhoods represent more common uses,
especially during the last century.
In spite of the initial attraction of working with islands, data does often not con-
form to such natural boundaries. Census data is still quite often available at the
census tract level, of which there are three in Hunts Point and two on Roosevelt
Island. But virtually all other data holdings, from police precincts to neighborhood
tabulation areas, community board, or school districts, capture a much larger area
and do not allow for downscaling.
For both case studies, we have been relying on a multitude of local sources from
blogs and Web pages to self-published monographs. We cannot stress enough how
important it is to peruse such unofficial data. Facts need to be checked, of course,
but it is relatively easy to learn what sources can be trusted. In particular, we would
like to acknowledge the archival work of Paul DeRienzo, an independent investiga-
tive reporter who collated virtually all maps and photographs about Hunts Point that
are accessible via the Internet.
This chapter is annotated with a good number of figures and photos but far fewer
than fit into a printed volume. Our book website contains many more illustrations
that describe the planning context for both case study areas.

© Springer International Publishing AG 2018 39

L. Ramasubramanian, J. Albrecht, Essential Methods for Planning Practitioners,
The Urban Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68041-5_3

[email protected]
40 3 Case Studies

Fig. 3.1 Geographical setting of the two study areas

Table 3.1 Historical land use of the two case study areas
Phase Hunts Point Roosevelt Island
1650–1850 Farm land Farm land
1850–1910 Mansions Prison and mental asylum
1910–1970 Residential/industrial Quarantine zone and hospital
1970–2010 Commercial/residential Residential
2010– Environmental resilience and regional Residential/university/high tech
service center industry

3.2 Hunts Point

The Hunts Point peninsula, our study area, is part of the South Bronx (Bronx
Community District 2) and bounded by the East River and the Bronx River. The
peninsula is isolated from the rest of the city by the Bruckner Expressway.
Community District 2 extends further west for several blocks that includes a large
swath of residential land use (see Fig. 3.2). The peninsula itself has a residential

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3.2 Hunts Point 41

Fig. 3.2 The two study areas and their corresponding neighborhood boundaries

core, surrounded by a variety of industrial and manufacturing uses. Access to the

waterfront is largely blocked by the Hunts Point Terminal Produce Market, the
Hunts Point Meat Market, and the New Fulton Fish Market at Hunts Point.
Collectively, these cooperative markets form the largest food distribution center in
the world and occupy about half the land in the Hunts Point peninsula (about 320
acres). According to the NYC Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC), the
residential core of the Hunts Point peninsula is home to about 12,000 residents,
although Community District 2 itself has a total population of 52,246 residents
according to the 2010 census.1
Hunts Point, like many marginalized communities, has been overstudied. The
2005 Hunts Point Vision Plan identified (1) optimizing land use including creating
a special district rezoning to expand industrial and large retail uses and creating/
strengthening a buffer between residential and noxious industrial uses, (2) imple-
menting workforce solutions, (3) creating connections including improving
waterfront access and pedestrian safety improvements, and (4) improving traffic
safety and efficiency for the approximately 15,000 trucks that access the food

1
NYCDCP Bronx District 2 http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/neigh_info/bx02_info.shtml.

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42 3 Case Studies

distribution center every day.2 A portion of the peninsula was rezoned, and a special
Hunts Point District was created in 2008. Recent studies include the DCP Sheridan
Expressway Study, $20M in funding for demonstration projects related to resilience,3
and some support for a new Metro North station at Hunts Point linking it to Penn
Station in Manhattan.4 The challenge in Hunts Point is not the lack of plans and
visions but the lack of a coherent strategy that puts neighborhood residents first.
Residents face a range of cumulative negative health impacts including high rates of
asthma and other health problems, lack of green space, high incidence of pedestrian
injuries and fatalities, and a high unemployment rate.
The purpose of this case study is to provide a deep and coherent analytical frame-
work that can be used to make site-specific interventions and policy recommenda-
tions to foster community resilience and environmental justice.

3.2.1 History

Hunts Point is a peninsula located at the confluence of the Bronx River and the East
River, which is actually a tidal strait connecting Upper New York Bay to the Long
Island Sound. The total land area is approximately 690 acres (2.8 km2). The study
area was called Quinnahung (long high place) by the Lenape (American Indians)
who settled here before the age of Henry Hudson’s European exploration of the
area. This name refers to the spine of an otherwise flood-prone peninsula, which
now forms its residential core. The Indians sold the land in 1663, which was subdi-
vided into a dozen farms known as the West Farms (west of the Bronx River).
Original European settlements were right on the waterfront (The Grange) at the
southernmost end of Hunts Point Avenue, Leggett’s mansion at Oak Point. The first
land holdings were rather large and transitioned between 1850 and 1900 into a
home and vacation spot of New York City’s elite with large country estates and
meadow lands (see Fig. 3.3). The large houses were abandoned toward the end of
the nineteenth century and were demolished one by one between 1900 and 1910,
although Oak Point and Barretto Point remained meadows and a resort area with
boat houses and an amusement park (see Fig. 3.5). Oak Point was bought in 1905
by a railway line for the establishment of a large railyard. Once a railway stop was
built on Bruckner Boulevard, developers embarked on significant apartment build-
ing projects on both sides of the boulevard. A subway line followed suit in the
1920s, although most residential building activity remained to the northwest of our
study area in what is known as Longwood – the other part of Bronx Community
Board 2 (see Figs. 3.2 and 3.4).

2
NYCEDC Hunts Point Peninsula http://www.nycedc.com/project/hunts-point-peninsula.
3
Hunts Point Rebuild By Design Proposal http://www.rebuildbydesign.org/our-work/all-propos-
als/winning-projects/hunts-point-lifelines.
4
Metro North Stations in Bronx http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/09/nyregion/cuomo-supports-
metro-northexpansion-in-the-bronx.html.

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3.2 Hunts Point 43

Fig. 3.3 Private land holders in 1868

Fig. 3.4 Sanborn map from 1921 depicting relationship among historic features

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44 3 Case Studies

Fig. 3.5 Hunts Point plan from 1885 overlaid on current geography

The railway line also provided ready access for burgeoning industrial and
commercial activity. The American Bank Note Company opened in 1911 and
employed for many decades some 2000 people (Fig. 3.5). ConEd, a gas and
electricity company, bought practically the eastern half of the peninsula and
built a gas holder that remained in place until the late 1960s, when New York
City’s produce market moved from southern Manhattan to make use of the
vicinity’s access to railways, the freeway, and potentially sea-based transport
(see Fig. 3.6). The location turned out to be perfect to combine several whole-
sale markets, prompting the regional meat market to move here in 1974 and the
New Fulton Fish Market in 2005. Figure 3.7 shows the location and impact of
the 670 businesses with some 13,785 employees in the commercial zone of
Hunts Point that serve the metro New York region with an annual payroll of
three fourths of a billion dollars and a total revenue of over $3 billion (US
Census 2016). Approximately, 3800 trucks travel to the market each day, with
many additional trucks also serving other enterprises in the vicinity, an impor-
tant employment cluster (PlaNYC 2011).
While most of the land area in Hunts Point is dominated by industry (see
Fig. 3.9), there is a small but dense residential pocket that occupies the high ground
in the northern half of the peninsula bounded by Garrison Avenue and Randall
Avenue on the north and south and Longfellow and Tiffany streets on the east and
west (see Fig. 3.8). It consists primarily of pre-World War I apartment buildings
with a smaller number of semidetached multiunit row houses. There is one public
housing project on Hunts Point Avenue built in 1965 that contains 13 apartment
buildings that were 4- and 5-stories high (Fig. 3.9).

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3.2 Hunts Point 45

Fig. 3.6 Land use in Hunts Point in 1957

On the south shore of the study area lies an 800-bed jail barge to serve as over-
flow facility for medium to high security prisoners from Rikers Island just south of
Hunts Point.

3.2.2 Demographics

Parallel to the historic phases described in the previous section, the demographics of
Hunts Point changed in ethnicity and wealth. After the wealthy farmers and estate
owners of British origin, the area saw an influx of middle-income Irish and Italian
Catholics and central European Jews. Until the 1950s, the residential community on
the peninsula was predominantly Jewish. The change in population began in the
1940s when Puerto Rican families began to leave East Harlem and by 1960 formed

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46 3 Case Studies

Fig. 3.7 The dominance of the regional food distribution centers in Hunts Point

the majority of the residents in Hunts Point. Related to that change, the relative
wealth of the residents dropped from slightly above city-wide average to the lowest
decile with an average adjusted gross income in 2014 of a mere $25,500. The num-
ber of residents, some 13,000 according to latest census figures, has not changed
significantly over the past 100 years though. A third of the population now is
foreign-born, with a significant number hailing from Dominica, Africa, and Central
America. Altogether, the rate of neighborhood change has dropped significantly;
some 67% of the residents lived at the same address 5 years ago.
Although there are approximately the same number of working-age people and
jobs in Hunts Point, only about a quarter of the resident workforce has found

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3.2 Hunts Point 47

Fig. 3.8 Building foot prints at Hunts Point

employment within the case study area. Three quarters of the people working in
Hunts Point hail from throughout the city and the neighboring Westchester County.
On top of the significant burden of truck traffic to the wholesale markets (see
Fig. 3.13), this compounds the traffic problem by adding another approximately
15,000 commuters, who are fairly equally divided into car and public transit pas-
sengers (see Fig. 3.10).

3.2.3 Community Burdens

In 2015 (the latest year for which figures were available at the time of writing), the
unemployment rate in Hunts Point was almost 14%, compared to about 6% for
New York City as a whole. Hunts Point is the worst-ranking NYC neighborhood
with respect to opioid-involved hospitalizations (NY State 2015). It is also in the top

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48 3 Case Studies

Fig. 3.9 Current land use in Hunts Points, NY

tier for STD infections, single mothers, and teen mothers (NY State 2015). The ratio
of registered sex offender to residents is five times as high as in the city as a whole
(NY State 2015). The overall crime rate, while below the national average is among
the highest in New York City; although due to the relatively small residential com-
munity, these numbers are easily skewed. Unusual for the poorer neighborhoods in
the Bronx, Hunts Point has very few community gardens; it does, however, have its
own farmers market. Figure 3.11 depicts Hunts Point’s poor ranking among
New York City neighborhoods (calculations by the authors).

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3.2 Hunts Point 49

Fig. 3.10 Where Hunts Point residents commute to

3.2.4 Community Resources

It is important to note that every community, no matter how burdened it looks, also
has indigenous resources. In case of Hunts Point, there are many community-based
organizations (CBOs), each addressing a different type of community need. Back in
the 1960s, New York City’s Council Against Poverty (CAP) joined forces with fed-
eral programs to set up financially support community corporations. This purely
economics-oriented organization was de facto replaced by an environmental justice-
oriented organization called Sustainable South Bronx (SSBx). While SSBx is a

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50 3 Case Studies

Fig. 3.11 Hunts Point’s New York City-wide rank for selected community losses. The value 10
stands for the tenth or worst decile; so, for example, school closings are not an issue in Hunts Point
but foster care and foreclosures are

Fig. 3.12 Community organizing activities (Image courtesy: Rebuild by Design)

conventional nonprofit organization, the City has been sponsoring considerable out-
reach efforts as part of its larger redevelopment initiatives surrounding the fish, meat,
and produce distribution centers. The City’s economic development corporation is
financing a neighborhood outreach team,5 which in turn runs a series of community
workshops and community building activities like an annual summer festival (see

5
See https://medium.com/hunts-point-resiliency/were-hiring-join-our-neighborhood-outreach-team-
b29fc72a8f76?mc_cid=075886a680&mc_eid=%5BUNIQID%5D.

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3.2 Hunts Point 51

Fig. 3.12) and a blog called Connection Stories.6 Together with local schools, and
their parent-teacher associations, every residential neighborhood will always have
some resources that can be tapped in order to turn planning challenges into planning
opportunities. The following are organizations identified as key stakeholders in this
neighborhood of a mere 12,000 residents: the BLK Projek, GRID Alternatives,
Hunts Point Economic Development Corporation, Mothers on the Move, The Point
Community Development Corporation, Rocking the Boat, SoBro, Sustainable South
Bronx, Urban Health Plan, and Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice.

3.2.5 Planning Challenges

3.2.5.1 Nuisance Land Uses

It is evident from the introduction that the Hunts Point area has been accumulating
a number of NIMBY land uses, from smelly fish to the world’s largest floating
prison. For example, Fig. 3.14 shows the distribution of noisy and smelly waste
management sites. While it could be a point of discussion whether these best out of
one’s sight facilities are indeed best to be concentrated in a few isolated places, the
matter of fact is that Hunts Point is home to some 13,000 residents who are clearly
suffering from a concentration of environmental justice issues.

3.2.5.2 Truck Traffic

The Hunts Point Food Distribution Center generates approximately 27,400 tons of
waste per year, roughly 75% of which is organic and all of which is being hauled
away in trucks for disposal (see Figs. 3.13, 3.14, and 3.15).
Another attractor for a large number of trucks is the cluster of waste transfer sta-
tions, prompting the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council to conduct a
feasibility study for truck ferry access to the Hunts Point fish market.

3.2.5.3 Declining Residential Quality

While the residential cluster has been very stable over the past 100 years, the hous-
ing stock has started to deteriorate, and the residents willing to put up with poor
housing and the environmental nuisances have become increasingly poorer.
Arguably, there has been a long-term disinvestment in the housing stock as well as
in amenities for residents. Hunts Point has a dearth of green space. Figure 3.16
shows the small percentage and isolation of green areas, some of which, like the

6
See https://medium.com/hunts-point-resiliency/hunts-point-resiliency-connection-stories-
85635940b662.

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52 3 Case Studies

Fig. 3.13 Idling refuse trucks lined up in Hunts Point (Image courtesy: Hunts Point Studio at
Hunter College)

Fig. 3.14 Hunts Point is a center for waste management

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3.2 Hunts Point 53

Fig. 3.15 Truck route buffers cover almost all of the study area

playground immediately west of the residential area, are not actually green but bare
courts.
Due to the high level of poverty, many residents of Hunts Point are going hungry
and malnutrition is a constant threat. There lies some considerable irony in the fact
that right next to heaps of food for the region, the local population is served by only
a single grocery store and a number of delis (the term delicatessen is a New York
City euphemism for small neighborhood-based outlets that often serve limited
healthy food options in resource-poor neighborhoods). Figures 3.18 and 3.19 juxta-
pose the spread of food distributors with the scarcity of local retail.

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54 3 Case Studies

Fig. 3.16 Scarce and isolated green spaces in Hunts Point

3.2.5.4 Environmental Sustainability

The distribution center would be an ideal candidate for an on-site organics recovery
operation. Such a facility could lower waste disposal costs, generate a clean source
of energy, reduce truck traffic and related impacts both locally and regionally,
decrease congestion, and reduce air pollution.

3.2.5.5 Design for Climate Resilience

As can be seen in Figs. 3.4 and 3.5, much of Hunts Point used to be a tidal swamp
that is still prone to flooding, especially in light of predicted sea level rises due to
global climate change. Figure 3.17 depicts the impact that various levels of inunda-
tion have on the area. While the residential core in the north will remain unaffected,
virtually the whole economic base of the study area will face an increasing number
of shutdowns due to flooding.

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3.2 Hunts Point 55

Fig. 3.17 Hunts Point is increasingly prone to be flooded

3.2.6 Planning Opportunities

3.2.6.1 Field Observations and Community Conversations

In Sect. 3.2.4, we pointed to the community resources that every planning profes-
sional should capitalize on. In Chapter 4, we are going to discuss methods that assist
in envisioning the future. While we encourage every planner to explore her study
area personally and on foot, it is important to connect with and engage local resi-
dents. The first step is a series of field observations, both by the planning

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56 3 Case Studies

Fig. 3.18 Local food-related retail

professional but then enriched by local residents. An example can be found on this
WikiMaps page,7 where residents map the places they like or dislike (see Fig. 3.20).
This form of primary data collection forms the basis for community conversa-
tions (see Fig. 3.21), which in turn help to build trust. In the course of such recon-
naissance, the planning professional will learn about all stakeholders and would be
well advised to engage them all. This process has been mirrored by the authors, one
of whom directed a planning studio for graduate students at Hunter College. The
introduction to this case study described the goal of the studio to provide both policy
recommendations and specific urban design interventions to help foster community
resilience and address environmental and economic injustice in this community. As
is common in real-world planning projects, such goals morph as the project pro-
gresses and new insights are gained by all participants. In case of the studio project,
one tangible outcome was a set of recommendations to improve accessibility to
green spaces and thereby improve the living conditions of the residents.

7
See http://wikimapping.com/wikimap/HuntsPointCommunityMap.html.

[email protected]
3.2 Hunts Point 57

Fig. 3.19 Food distributors in Hunts Point

3.2.6.2 Improving Accessibility

If Hunts Point were in Manhattan or Brooklyn, then the large amount of waterfront
would suggest a real estate boom. Similarly, most of the shoreline of neighboring
Manhattan either has greenways or is in the process of building them, even in light
of prior highway construction along what was perceived to be peripheral areas in the
1960s. One major initiative that is supported by many of the CBOs listed in Sect.
3.2.4 is the greening of the waterfront area. This still leaves the problem that these
new potential recreational areas are if not far away then difficult to access by the
residents in the northern part of Hunts Point (see Fig. 3.22). The closest access to
small slivers of green space along the waterfront is more than half a mile away and
requires facing relentless truck traffic.
The conflict between demands of residential versus commercial land use is not
going to be decided in favor of one or the other. The solution space will therefore
have to improve the living conditions of existing and future residents (the City just
announced project called The Peninsula, a mixed use “campus” with some 740 units
of affordable housing replacing the juvenile detention center on Spofford Ave),
while separating and minimizing the effects of the distribution centers. One way of

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58 3 Case Studies

Fig. 3.20 Wikimap of community likes and dislikes (Image courtesy: The Hunts Point Studio at
Hunter College)

Fig. 3.21 A typical community consultation (Image courtesy: Hunts Point Studio at Hunter
College)

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3.3 Roosevelt Island 59

doing that is to provide a free shuttle circulating from the residential area to Barretto
Point Park. A temporary trolley that is currently in use during the annual Fish Parade
serves as an example.
As we will see in the following case study on Roosevelt Island, the term “acces-
sibility” has a wide range of connotations. Hunts Point residents, in their asset map-
ping exercise, criticized the lack of fresh food in the neighborhood. The farmers
market, financially supported by the City, is supposed to ameliorate this but an obvi-
ous further reaching option would be the development of community gardens, simi-
lar to the developments in many other parts of the Bronx. One of the reasons this has
not occurred yet is the unknown quality of the ground, given that much of Hunts
Point is effectively a brownfield. Raised beds and the application of some urban
farming techniques would go a long way to overcome the problems of disconnected
youth in Hunts Point (CSS 2008).

3.3 Roosevelt Island

Roosevelt Island, located on the East River (the branch of the Hudson River that
separates Manhattan from Queens on Long Island), is approximately 2 miles long
and 800 feet wide (see Figs. 3.2 and 3.23). Commercial and residential buildings are
concentrated in the center of the island. For many decades, the Coler Hospital cam-
pus occupied the northern and the Goldwater hospital the southern tip of the island.
Although the Queensboro Bridge (connecting Manhattan with Queens) crosses the
island, there is no access to the island from that bridge. The only other bridge, the
Roosevelt Island Bridge, provides access to Queens. The island is currently served
by a subway stop and a tram. Roosevelt Island is owned by New York City, but the
Urban Development Corporation (UDC) took a 99-year lease on the island in 1969.
The island has been a residential area only since the early 1970s, when the UDC
created a planned community here. The island is governed by the Roosevelt Island
Operating Corporation (RIOC).
The area of the former Goldwater hospital is being redeveloped to become an
applied science and engineering campus (see Sect. 3.3.6). Further north, there are
seven residential building complexes, a public library, and two schools, a public
elementary school, and a private school for children with developmental disabili-
ties. There are six historical landmarks on the island: the Smallpox Hospital
(Renwick Ruins), the Strecker Memorial Laboratory, Blackwell House, the Chapel
of the Good Shepherd, the Octagon Tower, and the Lighthouse. The local commu-
nity is served by one Catholic church, several protestant churches, and one Jewish
synagogue. The residential core is complemented by a large parking garage,
Motorgate, and a small group of retail stores, which enjoy a cornered market on the
island. There is one supermarket, which has a restrictive lease which stipulates that
no other supermarkets be permitted on the island, a fact that many residents are dis-
satisfied with. There is, however, a popular farmer’s market every Saturday, located
beneath the Roosevelt Island Bridge access.

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60 3 Case Studies

Fig. 3.22 Improving accessibility within Hunts Point

3.3.1 History

Formerly known as Blackwell’s Island, it was a Blackwell family property until

1828 when it was sold to the City. Until the late 1960s, 90 of the total land area of
147 acres were unused and with the exception of a few caretakers, the majority of
the then 3400 inhabitants were chronic care patients. In 1968, Mayor John Lindsay
put together a committee to develop Welfare Island. Ed Logue, who was president
of the UDC, chose architects Philip Johnson and John Burgee to produce a General
Development Plan, completed in 1969, a modernist design calling for some 5000
units. Ed Logue’s vision was to create a mixed-income community (30% low

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3.3 Roosevelt Island 61

Fig. 3.23 Land use on Roosevelt Island Roosevelt Island, Manhattan:history

income, 45% middle income, and 25% luxury apartments), with special attention on
providing housing for the elderly, disabled, and for employees of the hospital cam-
puses on the island. Subsidized housing faced Queens, while market rate housing
faced Manhattan. Roosevelt Island was originally designed to be pedestrian, served
by an electric railway. Vehicle access was to be strictly limited to facilitate safe
bicycle and pedestrian access for families. Private cars would be left at a 2000-car
garage near the bridge to Queens. The community was planned to be self-contained,
providing an elementary school, grocery store, cafes, post office, and other standard
municipal services, as well as two pools, and a 300-room hotel. Logue also wanted
his community to include plenty of open spaces for family sports and recreation,
and community vegetable gardens, which were an unusual feature at the time in

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62 3 Case Studies

Fig. 3.24 Building footprints over time Roosevelt Island, Manhattan:history

overcrowded New York City (see Fig. 3.24). The island was also a site for innova-
tive technology: the automated vacuum collection (AVAC) garbage control system,
which functions via subsurface pneumatic tubes, is still highly efficient and is still
studied around the world.

3.3.2 Demographics

Roosevelt Island has undergone some significant demographic changes. During its
days as Blackwell’s and Welfare Island, it was predominantly white. After the
implementation of the General Development Plan, the Island approached a demo-
graphic mix comparable to the metropolitan region as a whole. Many residents work
for the United Nations, located just across the river, and the local elementary and
middle school contains a high proportion of international students. With approxi-
mately $68,000 in 2016, the median income is about 30% higher than that of
New York City. The unemployment rate of 3.5% is considerably below New York
City average. The United Nations Development Corporation issued a report in 1989
that led to an amendment in the Roosevelt Island General Development Plan, open-
ing the door for higher income developments like The Octagon and Riverwalk. This
second building boom between 2000 and 2009 (with some 1887 new units con-
structed during this period) resulted in a significant shift toward higher income
occupants. Eastwood, designed specifically to house disabled, elderly, and hospital
employees, has left the Mitchell-Lama Housing Program (a New York affordable
housing program that funded over 100,000 units between the mid-1950 and 1970s)
and is privatizing its units as current residents vacate. Three other subsidized build-
ings are moving toward privatization as well, although current residents are still
protected (Table 3.2).

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 3.3
Roosevelt Island
Table 3.2 Roosevelt Island in US Census Figures
Year 1910 1920 1930 1950 1960 1980 1990 2000 2010 2013
Total population 6990 5378 7591 5424 3626 6960 8190 9520 11,661 11,783
Housing units 2894 3252 4328 4056
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Elderly 54.1% 19.6% 20% 17.7% 15.0% 18.7%

In poverty 20% 13.2% 12.2% 9.4%
Poor elderly 3% 1.7% 3.8% 1.9%
Rent burdened 18% 42.2% 34.2% 32.7%
Disabled 26.8% N/A 14.3%
White 96.2% 95.3% 87.9% 86.4% 77.4% 71.6% 62.8% 49.2% 51% 53.1%
African- 3.7% 4.7% 11.6% 12.8% 22.6% 20.5% 26.5% 27.2% 21.3% 14.4%
American
Asian 0.1% 0.5% 0.9% 3.8% 6.4% 10.7% 18.2% 24.6%
Other 3.1% 4.3% 12.9% 9.5% 7.9%
Hispanic 14.4% 14.9% 14.6%

63
64 3 Case Studies

Fig. 3.25 Population map of Roosevelt Island

Together with the new Cornell University campus and its associated faculty
housing, this will undoubtedly lead to a gentrification of the island (see Figs. 3.24
and 3.25).

3.3.3 Community Burdens

Roosevelt Island is served by several options for public transit. The Red Bus service
consists of hybrid-electric buses that shuttle residents to on-island locations. They
are ADA accessible and free to use. The MTA Q102 bus line connects Roosevelt
Island with Astoria in Queens. The Roosevelt Island Tramway was constructed in
1976 along the Queensboro Bridge and provides access to Manhattan. In 1989, the
New York City Subway created a station on Roosevelt along the F line. The
Roosevelt Island subway station is one of the deepest in the metropolitan area, lying
100 feet underground (see Figs. 3.26 and 3.27).

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3.3 Roosevelt Island 65

Fig. 3.26 Transit options

Pedestrian access is in high demand and has been increasingly marginalized by

vehicular circulation. Additionally, many sidewalks and portions of the prome-
nade do not meet ADA requirements, a fact that merits special attention in the
Roosevelt Island community. Residents do not find Main Street as pleasant to
walk due to lack of greenery and to the dark, canyon-like quality created by the
high street side buildings. Bicycle circulation is impeded along the northern
Queens-side promenade.
Some 75% of residents commute by subway. Figure 3.28 shows that most resi-
dents have a relative short commute to work, mostly in midtown Manhattan.

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66 3 Case Studies

Fig. 3.27 Distances from Roosevelt Island subway station

3.3.4 Community Resources

Roosevelt Island is a very safe space for pedestrians and bicyclists. During a 4-year
study period by the NYC Department of Transportation, no accidents for those two
modes of transportation were recorded. A total of 5 intersections (out of a total of 24
on the Island) experienced vehicular accidents resulting in 17 injuries but no
fatality.
Roosevelt Island is a comparatively healthy neighborhood by New York City
standards. Figure 3.29 depicts the island community as being at the lowest needs
rank, measured in terms of (i) poverty, (ii) unemployment, (iii) median household

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3.3 Roosevelt Island 67

Fig. 3.28 Places of work for Roosevelt Island residents

income, (iv) educational attainment, and (v) infant mortality rate. Sheltered in the
middle of a river and with relatively small amounts of vehicular traffic, Roosevelt
Island seems like an oasis in the noise of New York City (See Fig. 3.30).
The average monthly rent on the Island is approximately $2200 – a bargain
when compared to the equally small apartments on Manhattan’s Upper East Side
just a stone throw away. This level of affordability is due to the large percentage
of rent-stabilized housing (see Demographics section above), resulting in the low-
est bracket of rent as percentage of income in the whole city. RIOC also is a good
landlord: no other NYC neighborhood has a lower 311 building maintenance

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68 3 Case Studies

Fig. 3.29 Economic, education, and health needs in New York City neighborhoods

complaint volume. As a matter of fact, during the 7 years of recorded data, per
capita call volume to 311 has been only 1/10 that of New York City overall,
whereas back in the Hunts Point case study, the per capita call volume was 60%
higher than in New York City.
In spite of resident’s complaints about the scarcity of shopping options, Roosevelt
Island ranks high in regard to per capita business openings (see Fig. 3.31).

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3.3 Roosevelt Island 69

Fig. 3.30 Noise levels on Roosevelt Island (the Queensboro Bridge is clearly visible)

3.3.5 Planning Challenges

A unique planning challenge of Roosevelt Island is its political structure. Being on

lease to RIOC is somewhat similar, though not the same as what planners encounter
with gated communities elsewhere in the United States. Political representation is
limited to the State capital in Albany – by New York City standards almost as far
away as Canada. The City is expected to provide services but the planning rules of
the City do not apply. Residents feel left out of many planning decisions, which is
exacerbated by the fact that they often moved here because of the progressive

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70 3 Case Studies

Fig. 3.31 Perception of Excellent 2% Good 3%

overall quality of
commercial services

Satisfactory
14%
Poor
52% Below
Expectations
29%

underlying the General Development Plan of 1969. Meeting with the public can
therefore be quite contentious.
As an island in the middle of the East River, this low-lying study area (90% of
the island is 10 feet or less above sea level) is theoretically prone to flooding. Yet,
during superstorm Sandy, only the southern-most tip (Four Freedoms Park) was
flooded. In addition, one ConEd pump at the northern end was destroyed but alto-
gether, the damage was much less than expected. This is due to the sheer discharge
volume of the Hudson River, whose level in its lower reaches fluctuates only mini-
mally; yet Roosevelt Island is far enough away from the open sea to be beyond the
reach of the storm swell there. This contrasts with the situation at the Hunts Point
study area, which, lying on the Long Island Sound, did indeed experience higher
flood levels.
Locally, there are no sources of air pollution, although the study area is close
enough to old and polluting heating units on Manhattan’s Upper East Side as well
as to the stacks of the Ravenswood power plant less than one third of a mile away in
Queens to be affected by either easterly or westerly wind. The 2480 MW Ravenswood
station is the state’s most excessive carbon polluter. Independent of this regional
supplier, an innovative project to supply emission-free electricity to the Island using
tidal energy is expected to be expanded further.
On the demographic side, Roosevelt Island is rejuvenating. Being as close to
densely populated Manhattan as one could possibly get, residents are used to and
even welcome high-density, urban environments, especially since the housing stock
itself is relatively new and hence easy to maintain. At the same time, some residents
are concerned about the loss of intimacy, diversity, and its unique social history that
contributed to making Roosevelt Island an attractive place to live. There is a strong
sense of pride in the green spaces that the island provides, and the availability of
waterfront views, even from within a high-rise unit, only adds to the attraction of the
study area. Given the relative youth of the facilities, the infrastructure is in good

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3.3 Roosevelt Island 71

shape, as evidenced by the low call volume to 311 (NYC 311 2017). The main issue,
similar to the Hunts Point study area, although for very different reasons, is the
question of transportation access.
The authors conducted a planning studio with students from the Hunter College
Department for Urban Affairs and Planning in 2009. In spite of the subway stop, the
tram to Manhattan, and the bus line to Queens, residents felt (and feel) cut off by the
lack of a fixed bridge to Manhattan. In addition, they have expressed frustration
with Main Street and its rather small town feel. The studio identified four categories
of access-related issues: placemaking, revitalization, infrastructure, and
governance.
As mentioned above, the islanders have a strong sense of place but are dissatis-
fied with the visual character of their community. Landscape elements from
improved seating and greenspaces to orientation aids in the labyrinth of the building
footprints (see Fig. 3.24) are relatively easy ways to address this issue. Revitalization
pertains mainly to the drab look of Main Street (see Fig. 3.32). While it was men-
tioned above that Roosevelt Island enjoys a surprisingly large number of business
openings, this can also be interpreted as a large amount of turnover – few businesses
survive. The island’s landlord is too bureaucratic and aloof to facilitate a market-
oriented exchange of supply and demand of services. The infrastructure of the island
was built for no more than 10,000 residents and is operating at or beyond capacity.
Traditional forms of expansion by spreading into the neighborhood are not possible
on an island, so improvements have to occur in situ. The governance problems are

Fig. 3.32 Drab view of Main Street (Image courtesy: Roosevelt Island Studio at Hunter College)

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72 3 Case Studies

the hardest to overcome, especially as traditional forms of improving transparency

and community involvement are either not used (311 system) or difficult to formal-
ize in the context of traditional local representation. A prime example for the latter
is the lack of participation in the planning process of the Cornell campus discussed
in the following section. It does not help that the territory of the state senator repre-
senting Roosevelt Island encompasses geographically, socially, and ethnically com-
pletely different parts of New York City, namely, Spanish Harlem and the South
Bronx.

3.3.6 Planning Opportunities

3.3.6.1 Transportation Improvements

The extended shape of the island causes some local connections to be unusually
long. Getting from the tram station to the Octagon with its 500 rental units takes
5 min on a bicycle, 15 min with an average wait time of 3.5 min on the Red Bus, and
22 min to walk. The obvious solution is a local bike share system, analog to the very
successful Citi Bike system in Manhattan (see Figs. 3.26, 3.33 and 3.34).

Fig. 3.33 Rendering of a bike share station to be located at the tram station (Concept and Image
courtesy: Roosevelt Island Studio at Hunter College)

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3.3 Roosevelt Island 73

Fig. 3.34 Locations for suggested bike sharing stations

In spite of the extra subway stop on the island, and in light of the extra-long com-
mutes on the island itself, residents were interested in a set of ferry services, each one
providing one stop access to Manhattan (see Fig. 3.35). In a happy coincidence, this
wish matches the Mayor’s Office plans for increased ferry services throughout the city.

3.3.6.2 Cornell Campus

The City of New York effectively closed the Coler-Goldwater Hospital in 2011 and
invited for bids to reuse the area for an international applied sciences campus.
Cornell University, in collaboration with Tel Aviv Technion, won the competition to

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74 3 Case Studies

Fig. 3.35 Suggested locations for ferry landings on Roosevelt Island

build a non-biological applied sciences and engineering campus for graduate-level

education that serves approximately 800 faculty and students and some 550 workers
mainly in colocated businesses and a hotel.
The southern half of the project area is reserved for further development in the
2020s or 2030s and in the interim is planned as an open space with a nursery and a
meadow (see Fig. 3.20). If fully developed, the figures in Table 3.3 would more than
double. In an attempt to fulfill anticipated sustainability demands, the plans include
heavy use of photovoltaic panels and geothermal wells. Although the academic
component of the build-out is expected to be energy-neutral, an additional local gas
plant is supposed to serve the other campus units (Fig. 3.36).

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3.3 Roosevelt Island 75

Table 3.3 First phase of campus build-out

Use Square footage Units Stories
Academic 200,000 4
Residential housing 31
Faculty housing 104
Student housing 338
Residential total 300,000 442
Businesses 100,000 5
Executive education center 170,000 225 13
Utility plant 20,000
Parking 250
Total 790,000

Fig. 3.36 Phase 1 of the new Cornell campus

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76 3 Case Studies

Fig. 3.37 Increase of vehicular traffic off the island caused by the new Cornell campus

One of the biggest impacts of the new campus would not as much be on the
Island itself but in neighboring Queens, where the combination of local densifica-
tion and the added demand by workers and students exceeds the capacity of the
existing road network (see Fig. 3.37).

3.4 Concluding Comments

We believe that every plan, big or small, is as unique as is the place where it is
applied to. We spent so much space on the description of our two case studies
because it helps us to put the methods that we are re-familiarizing the reader with in

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References 77

the following two chapters into context. One of the major drawbacks of academic
learning is just that, that it is academic. A good graduate program will teach students
to learn techniques using real-world (messy) data, including collecting such data
from scratch. But by necessity of the teaching environment, each method is going to
be taught in isolation.
Once a planner works in an agency or as a consultant, the situation is suddenly
not as pedagogically clear anymore and she will have to deal with conflicting inter-
ests at all levels. In a first step, she will have to get a lay of the land, similar to the
introduction to our case studies but now on her own. Chapter 4 introduces a set of
methods with occasional references to the case studies we just visited. Using either
one of these case studies, the reader is invited to ponder which of the “planning
grand” techniques would be applicable for Hunts Point or Roosevelt Island. Chapter
5 (while the two chapters can be read independently, they complement each other
and should be read as one) will then delve deep into exploring the planning task-
based on data-intensive methods. As we have shown here, it is very hard to get to
know a place without some reliance on data, and it is virtually impossible to plan for
the future without playing through some scenarios. While this is not a traditional
methods book, we believe that every planner ought to have an overview of the meth-
ods discussed in the following chapters. At the same time, every tool in the planner’s
tool chest has to fit the purpose of the task at hand and be appropriate to the situa-
tional context as exemplified by our case studies here.

References

CSS (2008) Community Service Society 2008. Mapping Poverty in New York City. Pinpointing
the impact of poverty, community by community. New York, NY
NYC 311 (2017) 311 Service requests. New York City Open Data. Online resource, https://
nycopendata.socrata.com/Social-Services/311-Service-Requests-from-2010-to-Present/erm2-
nwe9. Last accessed 5/7/2017
NY State (2015) Opiod hospitalizations. Statewide Planning and research Cooperative System
(SPARCS), Albany. Online resource, https://www.health.ny.gov/statistics/sparcs/. Last
accessed 5/7/2017
PlaNYC (2011). PlaNYC: A Greener, Greater New York. New York City: The Mayor’s Office
US Census (2016). ZIP Code Business Statistics, Part of 2015 Business Patterns, Table
CB1500CZ11. Available at American FactFinder (Census Bureau), http://factfinder.census.gov

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Chapter 4
Planning Grand

4.1 Projecting into the Future

Regional-scale research methods concerned with long-range forecasting typically

have time horizons of 25–50 years. This chapter covers a range of qualitative and
quantitative research methods that can be classified as either descriptive or prescrip-
tive approaches. Descriptive or extrapolative methods seek to describe objectively
what the future will be or could be. Prescriptive methods adopt a more normative
approach and are concerned with how the future should be. Pesonen et al. (2000)
identify six categories:
1. Extrapolative methods such as trend analysis, time series, regression, economet-
rics, and simulation modeling are based on the notion that the future represents
a logical extension of the past.
2. Exploratory methods typically use qualitative methods to structure possible
futures, e.g., morphological analysis, relevance trees, mind mapping, and futures
wheels.
3. Modeling approaches seek to describe the future by identifying the determining
mechanisms of past events and how these influence the future. Examples include
analogy analysis, technological sequence analysis, stakeholder analysis, and
structural analysis.
4. Scenarios start with the basic premise that the future is unpredictable and, as a
result, modeling will not lead to one future but to many different futures, each of
which can be described in the form of a scenario.
5. Participatory methods such as cross-impact analysis, focus groups, and the
Delphi technique rely on expert and stakeholder opinions and their insights
about the future.
6. Normative methods investigate what the future should be and what steps are
necessary to get to that future (backcasting).

© Springer International Publishing AG 2018 79

L. Ramasubramanian, J. Albrecht, Essential Methods for Planning Practitioners,
The Urban Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68041-5_4

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80 4 Planning Grand

These six categories are by no means exclusive and a number of researchers

advocate a multi-method approach when exploring the future.

4.2 Delphi

The Delphi technique was developed at the RAND Corporation in the 1950s and
1960s to improve the forecasts of a group of experts (Murnighan 1981). Although
improved on in subsequent years and now in existence in many variations, the original
Delphi technique is based on the three characteristics, anonymity, iteration, and feed-
back. The meeting of the experts is virtual, and the conversation is moderated. In an
initial round, the experts are asked to identify the main criteria and give an estimate as
to when they would be met. The moderator compiles these, anonymizing the responses
and then shares them with the group. In a second round, participants are then asked to
provide arguments for their forecasts. Here, it is important that the participants can see
how their original opinion fits within the range of group opinions, which may alter
their perspective and influence the arguments they make. Participants are asked to be
as specific as possible so that moderators can develop a table of quantitative measures.
In any (small) number of iterations, moderators then provide not just that table but
also individual measures of deviation from the group consensus. The goal is to arrive
at a group consensus within a relatively small amount of time.
The Delphi technique per se says nothing about the expert selection process.
Experience tells us that the number of iterations should be kept to a minimum as
even experts get easily bored by the process. The feedback is important but usually
leads to the reigning in of outside opinions rather than to majorities changing their
view based on the weight of the argument. As such, this method typically arrives at
the statistical median of the original opinion – a fact that can be used to shortcut the
whole procedure. Another benefit of the Delphi technique is that it is usually very
hard to reach consensus among a group of experts. The anonymity and moderated
feedback have proven to be a very efficient tool for reigning in people, who are not
used be second guessed.
The Delphi technique is a nice mix of quantitative and qualitative aspects. The
questions of the first round are typically on a nominal or rank scale, such as what the
main drivers of future developments are or how desirable a particular development
might be. As participants are asked to substantiate their claims, the method moves
into the quantitative realm that is necessary to provide the statistical feedback. The
moderators play an important role; not only do they anonymize the answers and
compile the tabular feedback, but they must also rephrase individual contributions
in such a way that they are unambiguous to the other participants. Experience in
survey design, normalizing the topics so that there are no overlapping categories
and, of course, the selection of appropriate experts can be quite challenging.
A relatively recent review of the Delphi technique, including a case study exam-
ple, can be found in Gordon’s (2009) chapter for the Futures Research Methodology
compendium.

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4.3 Futures Wheel 81

4.3 Futures Wheel

The futures wheel is a graphical decision-making tool that is aimed at identifying all
conceivable impacts. It is particularly useful in the brainstorming stage of impact
analysis but also serves for risk analysis on a qualitative level and could be catego-
rized as a particular form of mind mapping. It was developed by Glenn (1972) and
has been adopted by corporate planners and public policymakers to identify poten-
tial problems and opportunities, new markets, products, and services and to assess
alternative tactics and strategies (Fig. 4.1).

Fig. 4.1 An example of a futures wheel as part of a brainstorming exercise about how to increase
digital access of senior citizens in secluded areas (From: Hwang 2016)

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82 4 Planning Grand

4.4 Scenario Planning

Scenario planning is a methodology employed to examine plausible, divergent

futures based on uncertainty about drivers of change. This examination allows indi-
viduals and organizations to develop their capability and capacity to make robust
decisions. Scenario planning is grounded in a qualitative approach that stands in
contrast to quantitative forecasting tools that consider predicted futures. The key
strength of the methodology lies in the discovery of potential or possible futures,
including how decisions today could play out in years ahead. The ultimate goal of
scenario planning should, therefore, be to build flexibility into decision-making.
Scenario studies have two principal purposes (van Notten 2003): exploration and
pre-policy research. Exploration scenarios are primarily concerned with “learning,
awareness-raising, the stimulation of creative thinking and investigating the interac-
tion of societal processes” (van Notten 2003, p. 5). Meanwhile, pre-policy research
“may propose concrete options for strategic decision-making and it is common in
pre-policy research scenario exercises to offer implicit policy recommendations”
(van Notten 2003, p. 5).
Pre-policy scenarios involve an extensive dialog with key stakeholders that
become the focus of strategic responses. Scenario narratives can be used to identify
common trends or themes that are consistent across different scenarios and so
enable an organization to prepare its future by building flexibility into decision-
making. Backcasting is a method often used in these types of scenario exercises to
identify how the trends or themes play out over time to get to where they are in the
scenarios. Backcasting can help organizations identify signals or “seeds” that indi-
cate progression toward a scenario from the present, or it can help to identify a
desirable position to aspire to and the steps needed to get there.
The World Economic Forum’s (2014) Scenarios for Mongolia is an excellent
example for such scenario planning, providing three different directions for the
country given its mineral wealth and geographic position between Russia and
China. The World Economic Forum used the scenarios to develop “common policy
options” that would be robust under all scenarios and policy options specific to each
of the scenarios. The scenario exercise stimulated strategic discussions among the
country’s leaders and was designed to be a continuing point of discussion into the
future. In this way, the World Economic Forum’s scenario exercise had the dual
purpose of stimulating strategic thinking and discussion while at the same time
identifying common responses to the scenario pathways.
Bishop, Hines, and Collins (2007) provide an excellent overview of eight catego-
ries of scenario-building techniques: judgment, baseline/expected, elaboration,
event sequences, backcasting, dimensions of uncertainty, and cross-impact analysis
and modeling. The latter two categories are encapsulated in Wilson’s matrix
(Fig. 4.2). “High-impact/low-uncertainty” forces are the relative certainties for
which planning must prepare. “High-impact/high-uncertainty” forces are the poten-

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4.5 Forecasting 83

High impact / High impact /

High Low High
uncertainty uncertainty

Level of impact
Medium

Low Impact / Low Impact /

Low Low High
uncertainty uncertainty

Low Medium High

Degree of Uncertainty
Fig. 4.2 Wilson’s matrix

tial shapers of different futures (scenarios) for which planning should prepare. A
state-of-the-art implementation of scenario planning is the program CommunityViz.1

4.5 Forecasting

A particularly important component of scenario building is forecasting, the model-

ing category of Bishop et al. above. The term is used in urban planning slightly
differently from traditional science or engineering disciplines where the goal is to
make predictions based on a trend. Forecasting in urban planning is more postmod-
ern in that it involves the development of different models such as demand models,
social and/or environmental impact analyses, as well as cost-benefit analyses of
each scenario (Waddell et al. 2007).
A famous example is the four-step model in transportation planning, first devel-
oped in the 1950s for the metropolitan areas of Chicago and Detroit (Mitchell and
Rapkin 1954). Based on land-use forecasting models of their own, the four steps in
this urban transportation planning procedure each are made up of their own models
for:

1
http://communityviz.city-explained.com/

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84 4 Planning Grand

• Trip generation
• Trip distribution
• Mode choice
• Route assignment
Although still heavily used in metropolitan planning agencies, the four-step
model is increasingly replaced by more individual-based activity models that lead
naturally to the next category of simulation games.

4.6 Simulations and Gaming

An almost infamous example for the blurring of the lines between entertainment,
education, and what-if scenario playing is the SimCity2™ series. Simulations are
based on models that represent the key characteristics or behaviors/functions of the
selected physical or abstract system or process. The model represents the system
itself, whereas the simulation represents the operation of the system over time. By
changing variables in the simulation, predictions may be made about the behavior
of the system. It is a tool to virtually investigate the behavior of the system under
study. A classic example would be a traffic simulation that helps to discern how
behavior will change according to the set of initial parameters assumed for the
environment.
Urban planning simulations are often based on agent-based modeling environ-
ments with explicit representations for land use and transportation. UrbanSim3 and
LEAM4 are examples of large-scale urban simulation models that are used by met-
ropolitan planning agencies for land-use and transportation planning. Academic
journals like Simulation & Gaming,5 published since 1970, and a set of publications
by the National Academy of Sciences (CMSG 2010; Honey and Hilton 2011) illus-
trate how simulations and games can be used as an outreach tool (see Chapter 6).

4.7 Dealing with Bias

All of the above may sound very scientific and, hence, ring true. However, it is
important that the planner, as well as participating citizens, is aware of the potential
bias that can creep in at every stage. A planner, especially one with lots of experi-
ence, has through her personal history acquired a position on every subject matter.
Experts, invited to participate in a Delphi study, are even supposed to have their

2
http://www.simcity.com/.
3
https://github.com/UDST/urbansim.
4
http://www.leam.illinois.edu/leam.
5
http://sag.sagepub.com/.

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References 85

individual biases; a problem arises when they do not represent the full range of pos-
sible expert opinions. Communities have their own agendas, especially in the case
of NIMBY issues.
Bias can also be hidden in the very method that is supposed to avoid all of the
above examples of bias. Web surveys, for example, are prone to self-selection and
hence a skew. Poor survey design may lead to unacceptable non-response rates
either for the whole survey or for a subset of the questions (Pearson et al. 2010).
In his groundbreaking article on behavioral economics, Nobel laureate
Kahnemann (1994) proved the inane cognitive bias in all forms of human forecast-
ing. His and related research prompted the American Planning Association in 2005
to endorse reference forecasting to reduce inaccuracy and bias in forecasts. The
method requires taking an “outside view” on the project being forecasted by exam-
ining similar projects, creating a distribution of outcomes for the reference class,
and then positioning the project within that distribution (APA 2005).
This outside perspective, i.e., the inclusion of other similar projects in one’s esti-
mate of likely outcomes, also curbs what psychologists call the planning fallacy and
optimism bias. In the grip of the planning fallacy, planners and project promoters
make decisions based on delusional optimism rather than on a rational weighting of
gains, losses, and probabilities. They overestimate benefits and underestimate costs,
and thus planners and promoters pursue initiatives that are unlikely to come in on
budget or on time, or to ever deliver the expected returns.

References

APA (2005) JAPA article calls on planners to help end inaccuracies in public project revenue fore-
casting. APA Press release on 7 April 2005, originally published at http://www.planning.org/
newsreleases/2005/ftp040705.htm
Bishop P, Hines A, Collins T (2007) The current state of scenario development: an overview of
techniques. Foresight 9(1):5–25
CMSG (Committee on Modeling, Simulation, and Games) (2010) The rise of games and
high-performance computing for modeling and simulation. National Academies Press,
Washington, DC
Glenn JC (1972) Futurizing teaching vs futures courses. Soc Sci Record 9(3)
Gordon T (2009) Chapter 4: The Delphi method. In: Glenn J, Gordon T (eds) Futures research
methodology, vol 3. The Millennium Project, Washington, DC. Online resource, http://millen-
nium-project.org/FRMv3_0/04-Delphi.pdf. Last accessed 1/2/16
Honey M, Hilton M (eds) (2011) Learning science through computer games and simulations.
National Academies Press, Washington, DC
Hwang V (2016) Side-effect & side-shows: seniors and digitizing world. Vicky Hwang Lab Blog.
Online resource, https://medium.com/vhlab/side-effects-side-shows-seniors-and-digitalizing-
world-6834b2991e93. Last accessed 5/7/2017
Kahnemann D (1994) New challenges to the rationality assumption. J Inst Theor Econ 150(1):18–44
Mitchell R, Rapkin C (1954) Urban traffic: a function of land use. Columbia University Press,
New York
Murnighan J (1981) Group decision making: what strategies should you use? Manag Rev
70(2):55–62

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86 4 Planning Grand

Pearson D, Hard E, Farnsworth S, Forrest T, Spillane D, Ojah M, Wojak K, Boxill S, Lewis C

(2010) Improving accuracy in household and external travel surveys, Report 0–5711-1. Texas
Transportation Institute, College Station
Pesonen H, Ekvall T, Fleischer G, Huppes G, Jahn C, Klos Z, Rebitzer G, Sonnemann G, Tintinelli
A, Weidema B, Wenzel H (2000) Framework for scenario development in LCA. Int J Life
Cycle Assess 5(1):21–30
Van Notten P (2003) Scenario development: a typology of approaches. Retrieved from http://www.
oecd.org
Waddell P, Ulfarsson G, Franklin J, Lobb J (2007) Incorporating land use in metropolitan transpor-
tation planning. Transp Res A 41(5):382–410. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tra.2006.09.008
World Economic Forum (2014) Scenarios for Mongolia. Retrieved from http://www.weforum.org/
issues/scenariosmongolia

[email protected]
Chapter 5
Placemaking: Why Everything Is Local

5.1 Understanding Demographic Profiles

This section is about empirical work in support of the specific planning question.
The increase in usefulness and specificity comes at a high price: each of the tasks
described here is very labor-intensive; they cost a lot of time, and hence money and
planners usually will have to scrutinize carefully whether the effort is warranted. On
the other hand, it can be argued that plan making without any of the following is
likely to be superficial and prone to limited acceptance by those we plan for.
We understand planning as an activity for and by people with “space” being the
object rather than the subject of planning. If we want to understand whom the plans
are for, then we need to know who the people are. Eventually, this will involve actu-
ally talking to and planning with the people we are trying to serve. And ideally, we
know the area and their residents well enough to not have to go through preliminary
surveys. The first step is often to look at the (recent) past as it is captured by either
an official census or a large-scale public or private survey. Table 3.2 in Chapter 3 is
an example for such a quick look at demographic trends.
In most countries, the main source for demographic data is the respective census
department. Depending on the scale (of geographic extent and spatial resolution) of
the area to be planned for, local authorities and/or private (both commercial and
non-for-profit) organizations may have more appropriate or more up-to-date data.
We use the term demographic in a rather expansive sense, i.e., any kind of data that
helps us to understand, judge, and work for the populations we are trying to serve.
We distinguish this from environmental data that describes the not person-specific
conditions people live in/under (discussed in more depth in Sect. 5.3).
Demographic data then describes study populations as a whole and helps us to
identify subgroups. At this stage, the goal is never to pinpoint individuals but generic
characteristics of the populations we are dealing with. Basic and hence ubiquitously
used examples include age, income levels and sources, educational attainment, eth-
nicity, and language spoken. Less common, not always available, but important for

© Springer International Publishing AG 2018 87

L. Ramasubramanian, J. Albrecht, Essential Methods for Planning Practitioners,
The Urban Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68041-5_5

[email protected]
88 5 Placemaking: Why Everything Is Local

certain types of planning are disabilities, religion, family status, and race. The latter
is a hot-button issue, starting with those who correctly deny the physical (genetic)
existence of race, moving to those who believe that racial differences are an issue of
the past, and ending with proponents who also correctly observe that regardless of
what racial classification we use, the conditions of certain groups of people with the
same color of skin and the same set of discriminatory experiences have objectively
not changed much over the past so many decades. This is not the place to discuss the
issue of race in detail; however, we encourage the reader to peruse de Souza Briggs
(2005), Sugrue (2005), and Gillette (2006) in the reference section of this chapter.
We would like to provide a special plug for the Integrated Public Use Microdata
Series1 (IPUMS) database at the Minnesota Population Center. This is the one-stop
place to search for national and international demographic, health, and education
data, in some cases going back for the last 200 years. We are using their National
Historical GIS (NHGIS) on an almost daily basis (but the reader should browse their
environmental or time use databases as well). While the US Census Bureau has
already ceased to provide access to the decennial census of 2000, NHGIS not only
has all the data but even aligns it to several previous generations of census geome-
tries – thereby preventing major headaches for everyone who wants to study trends.
We are discussing demographic data here rather than in the previous chapter
because the majority of planners work at the neighborhood level. Unfortunately,
only a few variables are made available at the neighborhood or census tract level
(with the exception of densely populated areas like our two case study areas in
Chapter 3, census tracts usually are the size of neighborhoods). Most interesting
variable combinations, as well as transportation or land-use-related data, are only
made available at the coarser PUMA or county level. PUMAs or Public Use
Microdata Areas are despite their name not really micro in nature, as they are
required to have at least 100,000 people living in them (2015 average is 130,000) –
far bigger than what we understand neighborhoods to be. The second caveat work-
ing with this kind of data is that it is usually quite old. The next two sections will
deal with attempts to overcome the problem, but in general, when we work with
(public) demographic data, we pay either on the spatial resolution side or on the
temporal one. In other words, the more detailed we want our geography to be, the
more averaged out over time will the data be. And many compilations, such as the
extremely insightful Census Transportation Planning Package (CTTP) that we
used for the determination of places of work for our Hunts Point and Roosevelt
Island residents, are often 10 years old (AASHTO 2017). This is why planners
have to increasingly resort to other Web-based data sources. Here, we need to dis-
tinguish (a) by price and arguably quality and (b) by accessibility. All the govern-
ment and research-oriented websites offer data for free. In most instances, access
to private/company websites is free only for sample data sets or a limited time – an
attempt to lure the potential customer into a purchase. Often, the “free data” is
formatted in such a way that it takes considerable effort to clean it for further use.
Increasingly, rather than actually downloading all the data, data providers offer

1
https://www.ipums.org/.

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5.2 Crowdsourcing 89

Table 5.1 Data sources

Organization URL Free API Comments
US Census Bureau census.gov Y Y
Federal agency consortium webferret.com Y N
University of Minnesota nhgis.org Y N NSF-funded long-term project
Investigative Reporters census.ire.org Y Y Other data for sale
Advameg Inc. city-data.com Y N Difficult to machine access
Datarealm zipwho.com Y N Difficult to machine access
The Nielsen Company claritas.com N N Market analysis specialist
ESRI esri.com/bao N Y See also their community tapestry

access via an application programmer interface (API). This sounds more compli-
cated than it is; the skills to create customized access to such data from within a
GIS can be acquired in a day and every planner should learn how to do that. See
our book website,2 for examples (Table 5.1).

5.2 Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing is an alternative to data compiled by others. It has the potential to be

more detailed and more up-to-date than the data sources we discussed in the previ-
ous section. The higher degree of detail is achieved through the inclusion of local
knowledge. In addition to the filter of life experiences, such local knowledge incor-
porates specific circumstances, events, and relationships that are not available
through official data collection. In that sense, crowds can be experts, albeit more of
locality than of academic subject matter. An example of such official data augmen-
tation is the AirCasting project3 in Hunts Point. A whole issue of the Urban Science
journal was devoted to examples of crowdsourcing urban data (Wentz et al. 2018).
One advantage of crowdsourcing is that the data is extremely current. As such,
planners may want to use crowdsourced data to extend the lifespan of the more
traditional data sources discussed in Sect. 5.1. With that, we are now able to create
a trend that takes us from the past to the present. The methods described in Chapter 4
then take us into the future. Another advantage is that crowdsourcing broadens the
realm from which ideas can be collected. New Web-based forms of outreach allow
for the inclusion of ideas that would never have been presented at a face-to-face
public hearing. Virtual meetings that are disconnected in space and time empower
voices to contribute (Starhawk 2011).
So what does a planner need to know about crowdsourcing, i.e., how is it done?
The prime example for a well-established crowdsourcing platforms that every

2
http://allthingsplanning.org/.
3
http://brie.hunter.cuny.edu/hpe/2014/12/22/study-aims-to-determine-whats-in-the-air/.

[email protected]
90 5 Placemaking: Why Everything Is Local

planner should know about is OpenStreetMap4 or, short, OSM. Former debates
about the accuracy of that data source have been addressed by a myriad of published
studies, and increasingly, official agencies from Berlin to New York City have
adopted it for their own work and are sharing their latest updates with OSM (Haklay
et al. 2014; ArrivingInBerlin 2017).
A nice example for how OSM data can, in turn, be used to provide the base for
client/citizen suggestions is the “Suggest a location” page5 of the bike sharing pro-
gram Divvy in Chicago. A page like this one can now be cobbled together in an hour
with readily available open source or enterprise tools (such as ArcGIS Online). A
planner interested in serving this same community might then also avail herself of
the publicly available data from Strava (2017). Originally a manufacturer of exer-
cise equipment, the company compiles heatmaps6 and provides an application pro-
grammers interface (API) to access data on aggregated pedestrian and bicyclists’
travel patterns.
An example for a most basic yet core planning application is the Detroit-based
but now nationwide operating platform makeloveland.com.7 This kind of parcel-
level data collection can realistically only be achieved by incorporating the public.
In this case, the benefit for the local contributors are immediate, but crowdsourcing
can also be successfully deployed to get free labor as for a good deed as the
New York Public Library shows with their Emigrant City,8 Building Inspector,9 oral
history,10 and Map Warper11 projects. Planners, who would like to get started truly
at point zero, will find introductory tutorials on the geographical open data kit web-
site.12 Applications like Map Your World,13 where children and young adults are
collecting data show that this is not rocket science. A complete open source plan-
ning application, suitable for anyone with basic programming skills, is LocalData.14
If the reader is overwhelmed by anything that looks like (programming) code, then
she should look at Code for America15 as a temporary source for help in setting up
crowdsourcing and digital community engagement services.
A nice (hypothetical) example for how to crowdsource public participation in
planning can be found in the second half of a 2009 article by Brabham. The idea of

4
http://www.openstreetmap.org/.
5
http://suggest.divvybikes.com/page/about.
6
http://labs.strava.com/heatmap.
7
http://makeloveland.com/.
8
http://emigrantcity.nypl.org/.
9
http://buildinginspector.nypl.org/.
10
http://oralhistory.nypl.org/.
11
http://maps.nypl.org/.
12
http://geoodk.com/.
13
https://s3-ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com/myw-media/myw/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Map-
Your-World-Guidebook.pdf.
14
https://github.com/LocalData.
15
http://digitalcharlotte.org/code-for-america-lands-in-charlotte-the-goal-build-citizen-
engagement/.

[email protected]
5.4 Understanding What People Do by Observing Their Actions and Behaviors 91

crowdsourcing in planning-relevant applications has been popularized in 2007 by

Goodchild coining the term “volunteered geographic information” or VGI. The
article was entitled Citizens as sensors: the world of volunteered geography, which
leads us to our next topic, sensor networks.

5.3 Sensor Networks

There is plenty of planning-relevant information that cannot be directly observed;

traffic counts being a prime example. Goodchild’s notion of citizens as sensors
alludes to the fact that a lot of data, especially in our age of Big Data, is collected
automatically. Groups of autonomous measuring devices that are distributed over a
geographic area are called sensor networks.
The majority of sensor networks have been deployed either by natural scientists (e.g.,
weather stations) or civil engineers, particularly in the transportation sector. From a
regional planning perspective, the latter is of particular interest as they allow for real-
time updates on traffic flow patterns, which in turn can be used to manage the signal
system in what is then referred to as an intelligent vehicle management system.
Intelligence is a term that is quite often conjured in this context; the other term is
smart. Based on the concept of the Internet of Things (Ashton 2009), all kinds of
devices are now deployed to measure air pollution, noise, light, vibration, traffic,
and meteorological data to alert planning agencies to local problems that affect
urban activities and public health. Chicago’s waggle16 or Cambridge (MA)’s
CitySense program are examples for the deployment of fairly universal sensors that
can be adapted for all kinds of urban planning applications. Although based on
Open Geospatial Consortium and ISO standards, these implementations are still
experimental, and the market is very immature. Numerous large companies (IBM,
Google, Siemens) are trying to establish themselves in this area, but in contrast to
applications in the environmental science and homeland security realm, there are no
off-the-shelf implementations for Smart Cities yet.

5.4 Understanding What People Do by Observing Their

Actions and Behaviors

This section encourages planners to use the skills and techniques developed and
used outside of mainstream planning – drawing from the disciplines of architecture,
urban design, and environmental psychology. Some planners may dismiss these
approaches as “soft” or “without rigor”. Nothing could be further from the truth.

16
http://wa8.gl/.

[email protected]
92 5 Placemaking: Why Everything Is Local

5.4.1 Behavior Maps

Architects and planners build spaces with a particular purpose in mind and are often
surprised about the way they are then used. Ittleson et al. (1970) introduced us to the
idea to literally follow the pathways of each individual entering an area of interest
while taking note of what everybody is doing, how long they pause in front of or
near what structure, and, not the least, how much interaction there is between each
of the individuals observed.
The emphasis here is on observation; there is no interference with the individu-
als, no asking them why they are doing whatever they are doing. In a way, since we
cannot presume to understand their behavior, the emphasis of behavior maps is
more on the space and its elements. It is like observing the behavior of animated
objects on a computer screen and trying to discern the rules according to which
those objects move: speed, direction, number of turns, collision avoidance, as well
as length of presence in the observed space, clustering/gathering, and interaction
with elements of that space. Mere observations are sometimes sufficient to deter-
mine what environmental conditions act as connections and which ones serve as
separators.
Behavior maps have been often used to help optimize the use of special environ-
ments such as children playgrounds, nursing homes, museums, or transit hubs.
While the recording is still quite labor-intensive (for attempts to automate, see the
following section), the analysis of such data has become a lot easier with the intro-
duction of GIS in general and “space syntax” methods (Hillier and Hanson 1984;
Jiang and Claramunt 2002) in particular.
A special subset of behavioral maps is places and traces mapping (Zeisel 1984).
Any use of space leaves traces – be it footsteps, worn-out paths, discarded trash, etc.
A place that shows no sign of use signifies that it is not used, which in itself is
significant.
Where the local environment does not meet the needs of their inhabitants, people
adapt them. This may be in the form of moving (street) furniture or by changing
their intended use (stairs become sitting places). Places that are frequented by the
same people tend to change over the time of day. Whyte’s 1980 Social Life of Small
Urban Spaces has not lost its relevance.

5.4.2 Sensors/Trackers

Increasingly, behavior maps can be created semiautomatically by handing subjects

tracking devices that log people’s locations at regular time intervals. Each one of
these devices records to what amounts to a space-time path as depicted in Fig. 5.1
(Hägerstrand 1970; Kwan 2004; Neutens et al. 2012). Multiple tracks can then be
overlaid to determine opportunities for interaction or to get a sense of the use
(crowdedness) of space at different times. The passive counterpart to such tracking

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5.4 Understanding What People Do by Observing Their Actions and Behaviors 93

Fig. 5.1 Space-time path

devices is static sensors that just record the number and speed of objects/people
passing. These are commonly used in all kinds of traffic counts, from street intersec-
tions to passengers at subway entrances.

5.4.3 Participant Observation

An extension of the behavioral techniques described above is to shadow consenting

citizens during their daily routine. In addition to recording space and time, this very
intensive method allows us to ask the participant why they are doing what they are
doing. Only at this level (and the next), do we learn about the motivations and the
reasoning process that causes people to use their environment in a particular way.
For example, if we see someone waiting for ½ hour at a bus stop in winter, we might
conclude that this person has no car; but the effect that this has on this person’s other
daily spatiotemporal decisions cannot be discerned unless we follow them through-
out the day and learn about their decision-making in context. In addition to the time
spent in the field (in order to assure “representativeness,” a multitude of participants
need to be observed on different days of the week and preferably in different sea-
sons), transliteration, coding, and analysis of these observations require significant
resources.

5.4.4 Ethnographic Research

The more time the observer spends in the field, the more her work approaches the
realm of ethnographic research. The goal here is to experience life in the community
by recording minutely all observations of everyone the researcher is encountering
while living in the community. In anthropology, such studies are measured in years

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94 5 Placemaking: Why Everything Is Local

trying to immerse oneself to be part of the community. This is not realistic for plan-
ning purposes but can be approximated (a) by short-term multiple participant obser-
vation and (b) by encouraging members of the community to become active
researchers. Participatory action research emphasizes this latter option, where the
research/planning question is indigenous to the community and the traditional sepa-
rations between the outside researcher (planner) and the community she serves are
erased (e.g., Whyte, 1991)

5.5 Understanding People by Asking Them

The methods in Sect. 5.4 aim to minimize the effort on the subjects of our work.
They are passive in the sense that we try to interfere as little as possible. The follow-
ing set of methods, on the other hand, asks participants to reflect on how they inter-
act with their environment. A point in case is perceptual mapping, where there is no
objective space as defined by an outside observer.

5.5.1 Perceptual Mapping

Closely related to behavioral mapping, here there no aquarium within which we

observe the movement of objects. Instead, we ask residents, workers, or tourists to
create a map from scratch. It is up to the participant to select what they want to map
and what the spatial relationships (distance, topology) among their objects are
according to them. Perceptual maps provide enormous insight because it is those
perceptions that form the basis for people’s behavior; as such, they provide explana-
tory power that the behavioral maps lack. The downside is that perceptual maps are
often as hard to interpret as dreams. It is very difficult to ascertain the meaning of
what is drawn on such maps, and it requires a lot of interaction with their creators to
assemble a standardized set of real-world features and relationships that can be
translated into plan items. If there is a budget for it, then multiple perceptual maps
can be overlaid in GIS (see Sect. 5.7) and the results quantified – which adds a valu-
able dimension to traditional official maps. A good example for such perceptual
mapping is given in Sect. 2.6 of our Hunts Point case study.

5.5.2 Key Informant Interviews

Key informants are (local) experts, thought leaders, or anybody else who has first-
hand knowledge about the community. They are not necessarily representative of a
larger group of people but are in a position that allows them to reflect on the thoughts

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5.5 Understanding People by Asking Them 95

and actions of a particular group of people. Examples for key informants are local
politicians, religious leaders, and people who are hired as experts such as transpor-
tation planners, ecologists, etc.
Key informants are a great resource at the beginning of a research project because
(especially if one has the opportunity to interview a varied set of them) they are a
great way to stake out the scope of issues at hand. A well-chosen set of key infor-
mants will provide you with the history, the main players, and all important aspects
of your research. They do not replace your own understanding of the issue and lack
all aspects of a quantitative study, but they work well as bookends, helping to cast
one’s own research agenda as well as to provide critical reflection at the end of the
study.

5.5.3 Annotated Online Maps

There is a myriad of online maps out there that allow citizens to create their own
sketches or just place markers on a map, which are accompanied by comment boxes
or annotations. Typically, these are project-/task-specific, i.e., they are created with
a particular research question in mind, be it to collect complaints, to solicit com-
munity input on a proposed development, or to facilitate online collaboration.
US-based examples include Community Remarks®,17 GeoCommons,18 and
Mappler.19
As in the above two subsections, these maps are qualitative in nature. Aligning
them with traditional GIS data (Sect. 5.7), e.g., counting the number of submissions
for a particular feature on a Web map, requires some efforts as there is some fuzzi-
ness to the specificity of the input. The biggest advantage of annotated online maps
is their expressiveness and sheer attraction of such maps (if they are well-designed).
They have the potential to be a great tool for spatial collaboration.

5.5.4 Surveys

Dedicated surveys are the most powerful tool to learn about people, their percep-
tions, and subsequent behaviors. Of the methods discussed in this section, they are
the most quantitative ones, which are both their boon and their bane. The boon is
that once we have enough survey responses, a well-designed survey can be analyzed
with an arsenal of quantitative tools that fills many textbooks. The bane lies in the
two qualifiers of the previous sentence. Designing a survey to really and unambigu-
ously address one’s research question is a difficult task. There are a number of good

17
http://www.communityremarks.com/.
18
http://geocommons.com/search.html.
19
http://www.mappler.net/.

[email protected]
96 5 Placemaking: Why Everything Is Local

textbooks (Rea and Parker 2005; Gaber and Gaber 2007; Babie 2012) that try to
teach the art of survey design, but in the end, it takes some practice.
The second caveat is the need to have a representative sample. For very simple
surveys, one might get away with a hundred or so respondents. But more complex
surveys often have to be balanced by gender, age, income, or location (e.g., x num-
ber of respondents per ZIP code area) and that combinatorial explosion leads to
survey requirements in the thousands – a very expensive endeavor.
A good survey can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars or years of research
time (often both). New online tools may be able to circumvent some of these obsta-
cles if one manages to couch the survey questions in such a way that the online form
“goes viral,” i.e., respondents help to distribute the survey in a snowball system.
Offline communities such as the elderly or visually impaired will, of course, remain
outside of the surveyed populations.

5.6 Understanding Local Environmental Conditions

Planning is simultaneously about people and place. The latter is more than just a
locational reference as described at the beginning of this chapter. The whole geog-
raphy of a place matters, i.e., the climate, the culture, the tax code, design consider-
ations, land-use codes, etc. All of these form the “environment”; in other words, this
term encompasses all the physical, social, and cultural characteristics associated
with a place – it is what makes a place unique.20
In a planning context, the most common environmental conditions are the hous-
ing stock; availability of services such as transportation, sanitation, education,
health providers, groceries, etc.; characteristics such as crime rates, employment
opportunities, and neighborhood amenities; as well as what is usually considered
“environmental”: green spaces, noise, air, or water pollution. Each of these catego-
ries is a stand-in for a multitude of variables. Housing stock, for instance, which is
owned or rented, has an age, vacancy rate, maintenance level, etc. Even the building
material is important, for example, when considering fire resistance or slope and
aspect of the roof when calculating solar efficiency.
Static data is typically easier to get hold of and to process than data about phe-
nomena that change over time. Transportation accessibility, for instance, is very
much a function of time. Numbered bus routes often take different routes at differ-
ent times of day and may not be available when a middle school student tries to get
home.
Once the data is in place (and aligned to the same geography of reporting units),
it is fairly straightforward to employ descriptive statistics and to look for correla-
tions, say between environmental conditions and social or behavioral outcomes.

20
Although, arguably, some cookie-cut suburban neighborhoods may lack uniqueness.

[email protected]
5.7 GIS 97

5.7 GIS

There are more GIS textbooks out there than on any other method used by plan-
ners. And it is only fair to assume that the reader has some experience with some
GIS software. Our goal is not to introduce the reader to fancy GIS methods but to
illustrate how GIS can be used in concert with all the other methods discussed
here.
A first step is to situate GIS among all the methods of Chapters 4 and 5. We are
discussing it here because from a planning perspective, GIS is still not very usable
at the regional level. Writing from our own experience in Metro New York, han-
dling GIS for a 20 county, 30 million people region requires enormous resources.
So large that the City only started its own city-wide GIS operations only after the
turn of this century, and there is still no agency that has a comprehensive GIS for
the region. This does have very practical consequences: planning at the regional
scale is by definition sector-specific. In other words, comprehensive use of GIS is
eminently local.
Second, and this may initially sound like a contradiction of the previous point,
GIS is essentially quantitative in nature – with all the advantages and disadvan-
tages that this entails. As one of the authors of this volume tells their students,
“computers are incredible fast – and incredibly dumb.” GIS takes everything liter-
ally. If we want to create a buffer of 500 feet, then this is what the GIS does,
excluding features that are 501 feet away, although for all practical purposes, the
two distances are the same. Similarly, cleaning data so that different sources truly
match (e.g., spelling of street addresses or the data type of census IDs) takes both
a lot of discipline and the patience of a saint. Ideally, the reader is working with a
GIS specialist and does not have to do all of this herself. But even then, it pays to
know the pitfalls and to understand the time it takes even when working with
those incredibly fast computers.

5.7.1 Determining Data Needs

One of the ironies of working with urban and regional planners is that they seem
to be pretty bad at planning their projects. Before anyone sits down in front of a
GIS, it is opportune to (a) develop a conceptual model of the task at hand, (b)
define the data needs based on that conceptual model, and then (c) pare those
needs down to what is available/affordable. The result of (c) is what we refer to as
an implementation model, i.e., the ideal world of the conceptual model cut down
to what is achievable given local constraints. This process is important to guaran-
tee transparency, to create awareness of the limitations of a project due to lack of
data or funds.

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98 5 Placemaking: Why Everything Is Local

5.7.2 Organizing Spatial Data

Given the many dimensions of demographic data, it comes as no surprise that each
of these comes as a file or a table. Planners need rudimentary database skills to
handle that kind of data, to link from one table to another, to create indices, to trans-
form data from text to machine-readable to table format, to create and understand
metadata, and to deal with different locational references. All of these functions are
part of geographic information systems (GIS) or more specifically geo-databases
such as SpatiaLite21 or PostGIS.22
The first thing that every planner needs to pay attention to is the need for the data
to have a locational reference. Without a (or multiple) variable that links to the study
area or a part of it, the demographic data is not usable. The locational reference can
be an identifier that is spelled out in another data set; it may be a name that can be
uniquely identified in a gazetteer, an address, or a coordinate.
All four locational references in Table 5.2 refer to the same real-world feature,
but they actually link to different representations. The identifier refers to a US
Census tabulation block area with well-defined boundaries. The name refers typi-
cally to a building but could also mean the property grounds that this building is
located in. The address turns out to be a so-called vanity address. The mail will be
delivered (albeit not to the abovementioned building), but there is no house number
at the entrance of the building which happens to be located along a line referred to
as Pennsylvania Avenue. Finally, the coordinate is in reference to a particular geo-
detic datum (an equation describing the shape of the earth) and geographic coordi-
nate system describing a point at the intersection of the two main axes of the
building.
Complicating the storage of locational references (and hence their lookup and
use) is that the identifier and name are each usually stored in a single field, while the
address is part of a multitude of fields describing country, state, city, delivery zone,
street name, and house number, and coordinates are stored in two or three fields and
typically require additional information stored in another file that specifies the geo-
graphic coordinate system used. Because so much mail is addressed to the White

Table 5.2 Locational Reference

references type Example
Identifier 110010062021039
Name The White House
Address 1600 Pennsylvania Ave
Coordinate 38.8976962,-77.0364835

21
http://www.gaia-gis.it/gaia-sins/.
22
http://postgis.net/.

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5.8 Spatial Analysis 99

House, it has its own ZIP code (20500), which in this particular case is different
from the ZIP code area it is located in (20006).
Because there are so many different ways to describe locations and because, his-
torically, the specification of locations was the responsibility of one authority, while
the description of what can be found at each location is distributed, the geometric
component of demographic data is often stored separately from the so-called attribute
data. The specific link between georeferenced geometry and descriptive attributes
(such as demographics) is known as the georelational principle. Based on the more
generic idea from information science, it allows to link many different tables to one
and the same geometric representation of the geographic feature of interest. With the
proliferation of different (often private) data sources, this separation is however slowly
receding, and we increasingly find data, where all components of a feature are stored
in a single record. Figure 5.2 is an example for a single long string that describes the
White House in Washington, DC. Here, the geometry is a fairly detailed polygon
(area) with a bunch of attributes that the authors have made up.
This trivial example does not capture the demographic complexities of neighbor-
hoods and cities. The US Census Bureau, for instance, lists under the header of
people-based data: age, ancestry, disability, commuting to work, education, employ-
ment, family/relationship, health insurance, income and earnings, language, origins,
poverty, race and ethnicity, and veterans. For each of these, there are dozens of
tables and often permutations across these categories. To complicate matters, in
order to prevent analysts from identifying individuals, those permutations (e.g., (1)
married (2) taxi cab driver (3) from Somalia (4) with three children) are only avail-
able for larger geographic areas. As a result, it behooves planners to develop a
data(base) organization schema that matches the planning question on hand.

5.8 Spatial Analysis

The term spatial analysis means different things to different people. Technically, it
involves the use of statistical methods when working with georeferenced data. GIS
is not the tool of choice to do that – although this functionality is slowly added to a
number of mainstream packages.

{"type": "Feature",
"properties": {"name": "The White House", "owner": "US
Government", "occupant": "Barack Obama", "start_date":
"2009-01-20", "end_date": "2017-01-20","dog": "Bo"},
"geometry": {"type": "Polygon", "coordinates": [[-77.039336,
38.895041], [-77.039336, 38.900051], [-77.033704,
38.900051], [-77.033704, 38.895041], [-77.039336,
38.895041]]}}

Fig. 5.2 Sample code for a geographic feature

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100 5 Placemaking: Why Everything Is Local

More colloquially, the terms “spatial” and “geographic” are used interchange-
ably, and spatial analysis is the result of using analytical GIS functionality rather
than the much larger set of data management functions. We distinguish analytical
functionality by the kind of data that it is applied to.

Points Techniques used to analyze an undifferentiated set of points, e.g., point

pattern analysis
Spatial objects Techniques that analyze an attribute matrix and reduce space to a square
with attributes matrix of spatial relationships between pairs of objects, e.g., measures of
adjacency or proximity
Networks of links A range of techniques for analyzing networks in transportation and
and nodes hydrology, based on attributes of network links and nodes
Spatial Models of the interaction between pairs of objects, based on an analysis of
interaction the characteristics of origin objects, destination objects, and the spatial
models separation between them
Raster techniques Methods of analysis based on the representation of continuous layers as
rasters of cells and supported by the so-called raster GISs

5.8.1 Vector GIS

Of the data models above, point analysis falls squarely into the statistical realm. The
same is true for most spatial interaction models, although there are a few that are
more deterministic in nature – but their discussion would be way beyond the scope
of this book. Spatial objects with attributes are our traditional vector model and the
set of analytical tools here is as limited as it is ubiquitous: we are either dealing with
some form of distance measurement or a small set of topological operations, the (in)
famous buffers and overlays.
The reason for their ubiquity is (a) the familiarity of the vector model to anyone
who has ever looked at a map and (b) the very fact that the set of functions is limited.
The strength of vector-based analysis lies in the fact this small set of operations can
be concatenated into workflow models that allow for intricate spatial filters and
subsequently spatial decision support systems.

5.8.2 Network GIS

Networks of nodes and links form the basis for what is often confused with vector
GIS but in fact is a very different kind of GIS. Networks can indeed be formed from
the points and lines of a vector GIS, but the data organization is different, and more
important, the set of analytical functions is very different. The graphs that network
GIS is based on do not know of areas or polygons. There are no property lines, no
parcels, no land use, all mainstay of a planner. The easiest way to conceptualize the
difference is to think of a network GIS as if it were some form of subway map.

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5.8 Spatial Analysis 101

The nodes and links form graphs that may or may not be connected, as for exam-
ple, when we are trying to depict two different utility networks. Yes, we want our
houses (represented as nodes rather than areas) to be connected to the networks, but
we do not want the gas and electricity networks to share nodes.
As in the vector model, analytical operations are limited to distance and topo-
logical measures. Given the difference in the data model though, the implementa-
tion is very different and in most GIS rather crude. The best implementations of
network functionality are found in dedicated software packages that sometimes may
call themselves GIS and offer some limited GIS functionality but really are graph-
based tools such as SNAP,23 the very expensive Palantir,24 or Pajek.25 The most
appropriate dedicated package for applied planners is TransCAD.26 Robin Lovelace’s
sustainable transport planning with R package (STPLANR 2017) is as of 2017 the
most promising non-commercial solution.

5.8.3 Raster GIS

The one form of traditional GIS that most planners stay away from is raster GIS,
which is ironic because from an analysis perspective, the raster data model offers by
far the widest range of analysis functions. To see why, it is helpful to recall the
notion that computers are very fast and very dumb. The raster data structure is
extremely simple; all spatial relationships are implicit and based on the specifica-
tion of the number of rows and columns as well as the size that each raster cell
represents in geographic space. This basic spreadsheet-like matrix structure allows
for very fast computation. Coordinate-based vector GIS, on the other hand, requires
complex geometry calculations that not only bog down the computer but are also
algorithmically really hard to implement (which helps explain, why the set of ana-
lytical operations in vector GIS is limited).
Raster GIS is often associated with image processing and natural science appli-
cations, which is correct but too limiting. The raster model is particularly useful for
planning when we want to translate vector data into surfaces or when we want to
apply fuzzy overlays. A common example of surfaces are cost distance calculations,
but they are also applicable when we want to identify catchment areas (e.g., around
schools or hospitals) or if we want to create more realistic representations of popu-
lation distributions by applying dasymetric mapping techniques (as was done in Fig.
3.25). All of these are just examples for the advantage of changing the data model
to better fit one’s conceptual model. The real advantage of working with raster data
is the kind of modeling that we can perform with it.

23
http://snap.stanford.edu/snap/.
24
https://www.palantir.com/.
25
http://mrvar.fdv.uni-lj.si/pajek/.
26
http://www.caliper.com/tcovu.htm.

[email protected]
102 5 Placemaking: Why Everything Is Local

One of the main drawbacks of vector GIS is that it is very good at representing
a cadaster-like snapshot of a given geography, but it is not suitable to represent
change. If we want to represent (rather than just visualize in the form of an anima-
tion) spatially differentiated change, then raster GIS is the tool to use. One of the
big advantages of not having to deal with geometries is that we can now apply any
kind of modeling equation vertically to cells across multiple layers or horizontally
to neighboring cells. Anything that can be expressed mathematically can be cal-
culated with raster GIS, and the same holds for multivariate statistical analyses.
We can apply all kinds of distance calculations, including traditional network
analysis, by using auxiliary layers as lookup table for what constitutes a node or a
link.
A major reason for switching to the raster model is the ability to perform
weighted overlays on as many layers as one could ask for. This makes complex
spatial decision support systems and Geodesign (see next section) much more
straightforward to implement than in vector GIS. Finally, the raster format used in
GSI is the same as for cellular automata, a modeling technique widely used in
land change science.

5.8.4 Visualization Versus Analysis

One common misconception is that software, which is capable of displaying phe-

nomena in three dimensions or in form of animations, is also capable of analyzing
in 3D or across time. For off-the-shelf software, this is only marginally true. There
is limited volumetric analysis in some vector GIS, but with the exception of very
expensive GIS applications in mining and defense, there are no GIS applications on
the market that use true three dimensions or have built-in analytical routines for
routing across three dimensions or performing spatiotemporal overlays. Useful, as
such functionality would be, its implementation is still the realm of PhD theses
rather than a planner’s desktop.

5.9 Geodesign

No modern planning methods book would be complete without a section on

Geodesign (there are multiple spelling versions, in one or two words, CamelCase,
etc.). It combines tools from computer-aided design (CAD), landscape design (also
one of the disciplines that GIS originates from), GIS, and modeling. Similar to the
variations in spelling, there are also many different interpretations; there are a myr-
iad of interpretations as to what constitutes Geodesign. Acknowledging its origins
in McHarg’s and Steinitz’ systems thinking approaches of the 1970s, it is probably
easiest described by a list of necessary and desirable characteristics.

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5.9 Geodesign 103

5.9.1 3D

Geodesign relies on visual impact and has a focus on looking as “real” as possible. To
do this, it borrows from CAD and landscape design and adds the notion of fly-throughs.
It is hard to discuss this characteristic without the next one because they are so tightly
integrated. Given the discussion of 3D GIS, true three-dimensionality is certainly more
on the wish than requirement list, but the motivation to go 3D is certainly there.

5.9.2 Visualization

This single header deserves attributes such as “fancy,” photo-realistic, etc. At a mini-
mum, a Geodesign project ought to provide visualizations from many interactively
chosen perspectives and at multiple scales. The end goal is to mimic Hollywood-style
interactive videos that allow the participant to experience different design solutions.

5.9.3 Simulation

One of the purposes of Geodesign is to provide the client with scenarios that are
based on calculations with real-world data. The Geodesign workshop27 held at the
University of Washington in 2015 is a nice example, as it worked with King County
data on a number of scenarios that workshop participants had to work through.

5.9.4 Participation

Built into the design philosophy is the workshop character described above. Affected
community members are supposed to participate in all steps of the design process,
and by playing with scenarios and experiencing the visual outcomes, both learn and
eventually decide on the optimal implementation strategy.

5.9.5 Geography

This one is not as obvious as it seems, given the CAD and landscape design sources,
where the connection to a real-world setting is not always a prerogative. Geodesign,
however, requires a GIS input, if not setting. Geography is seen as context-setting

27
http://depts.washington.edu/pgist/Geodesign2015.

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104 5 Placemaking: Why Everything Is Local

and as a determinant. Here, the distinction between mere spatial (geometries) and
geography (people and place) becomes important again. Participants are not just
supposed to be wowed by the visualizations but to have researched the implications
of each scenario on their own lives.

5.9.6 Sustainability

Environmental sustainability was not as much front and center in the early years of
Geodesign but now plays an ever more important role. As such, Geodesign is devel-
oping from a method to a school of thought, an approach that brings together aspects
from a number of disciplines. It is no coincidence that the first Geodesign master
program in the United States (at Philadelphia University) stresses its post-
postmodern philosophy. While the philosophical foundations are contested, the
emphasis on issues like minimizing a project’s carbon footprint is widely shared.

5.9.7 Resources

This one is not part of any official definition yet probably the most important ingre-
dient. To accomplish even a minimal set of the six characteristics above takes an
enormous amount of time, especially on the preparatory side. During a Geodesign
workshop, it is essential that the scenarios can be run within an acceptable amount
of time, which requires significant computing resources. Workshop planners may
wish to run the whole workshop in the Cloud, e.g., Amazon Web services, Google
Computer, or Microsoft Azure. There are, at the time of writing (early 2017), no
software packages that combine all the necessary capabilities. The closest we have
at this point is CommunityViz that we mentioned in Chapter 4. Setting up a
Geodesign workshop will realistically take six person months, although each of the
steps in 9.1 to 9.4 could be implemented individually in about one person month.

5.10 Planning in a Brave New World: Reflecting on Data

Junk and Other Thoughts on Planning

The past few years of Big Data have changed the world of planners irrevocably. On
one hand, there now is more data available to us than we hoped for only a few years
ago. On the other hand, there is a deluge of messy data that confuses not just plan-
ners but also the concerned public. Open data laws have challenged public officials
to struggle with ways to make data both intelligible and protect privacy. Releasing

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5.12 Geographic Constraints 105

data in unintelligible form (non-editable formats, poor spatial resolution, noncom-

patible identifiers, etc.) was for a long time the bureaucrat’s way to deal with such
demands. But the public’s expectations with respect to data access are constantly
evolving and rising, and we now observe in most administrations a melee between
different business units, some of which have adjusted to the new open world and
others who have not.
The long-term solution will be well-managed public data infrastructures and the
education of those custodians who learned their lesson that data is power. In the
meantime, planners would do well to familiarize themselves with some data science
techniques that are used to reformat and recast data to their needs. Familiarity with
tools like Python and Jupyter28 will not only make a planner’s work a lot easier but
also greatly enhance her career opportunities.

5.11 Experts Versus Non-experts

The discussion of methods in this chapter might have given some readers the idea
that we have expert-driven advice on one side versus community-driven “feelings”
on the other. Crowd-sourced data collection, for example, may be perceived as qual-
itatively inferior, although we already tried to nip this notion in the bud in our dis-
cussion of OSM. Let us, therefore, look at another argument, the wisdom of the
masses.
Surowiecki (2005) has shown that when it comes to the accuracy of predictions,
the average of independent predictions of non-experts tends to beat the predictions
of experts. Similar to what we outlined for the Delphi technique, it is important that
the data is collected independent of the bias of the next person but a planner would
be well advised to listen to the community. Rather than treating expertise as a slid-
ing scale, we see it as the summary of different experiences and approaches, like the
metaphor of the blind men and the elephant.

5.12 Geographic Constraints

All of the data that goes into any of the analyses above has to have a spatial foot-
print, i.e., a locational reference that in most cases describes an area of interest and
its subdivisions (see also Sect. 5.1 in this chapter). This spatial support trips up
many beginners for two very different reasons. One is that the reporting units may
not match, the other that the underlying geographic coordinate systems do not
match.

28
https://jupyter.org/.

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106 5 Placemaking: Why Everything Is Local

5.12.1 Reporting Unit Mismatch

Different agencies have different reporting units that fit their respective mission.
Examples are school districts, police precincts, ZIP code areas, or electoral districts.
It would not be particularly challenging to list a dozen of these for a city like New York
City. Attempts to reason across such dissimilar areas lead to the modifiable areal unit
problem or MAUP (Openshaw 1984). Figure 5.3 exemplifies the reporting unit mis-
match. Any statistical analysis of the two crime patterns depicted here will result in
very different outcomes, depending on whether the base unit is a census tract, a voting
district or a police precinct. If one has access to finer-grained data, e.g., at the address
level, then this allows to reaggregate one’s data to the desired target layer. Where such
data is not available, one can try to use techniques such as dasymetric mapping
(Mennis 2003) to, for example, redistribute populations, where it is safe to assume
they do not exist (parks, water bodies, etc.). This was done in Fig. 3.25, where the
census tract population of Roosevelt Island was redistributed to the building footprints
using the fair assumption that households surveyed by the US Census Bureau have to
live in a residential building and that the number of apartments in a building is a fair
way to distribute the population across the buildings. Any such calculations are, how-
ever, based on assumptions that will have to be verified. The reader is advised to also
check whether the original scales for which the data was compiled are roughly the
same; as a general rule of thumb, any combination of spatial footprints will deteriorate
the output to the coarsest resolution input.

5.12.2 Coordinate System Mismatch

All geographic data (as opposed to abstract civil engineering drawings) has to be
specified in units of measurement (degrees, meters, feet, etc.) and given a coordi-
nate system origin. Lack of a proper specification and, depending on what software

Census tracts Voting districts Police precincts

● Armed robbery ● Assaults

Fig. 5.3 Example for the modifiable area unit problem

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5.12 Geographic Constraints 107

Fig. 5.4 Coordinate

system mismatch

is used, translation into a common coordinate system will lead at best to errors but
more likely to the data sets not to align at all. See Fig. 5.4 for the effect of a coordi-
nate system mismatch in case of the now-familiar Roosevelt Island. Both data sets
are from the US Census Bureau, one for 1990 Decennial Census data, the other for
2011–2015 American Community Survey data. The difference between the two ver-
sions of the southern tip of the island is a whopping 250 m.

5.12.3 Lying with Maps

Mark Monmonier wrote in 1991 a little book entitled How to Lie with Maps that
concentrates on purposeful distortions of visual representations of geospatial data.
Assuming that our readers are acting ethically, the bigger challenge rests with creat-
ing visualizations that are not misleading and appropriate for intended audiences.
Guidelines, including do’s and don’ts are well documented in Krygier and Wood’s
Making Maps (2011).

5.12.4 Limitations of a Data-Driven Approach

This book is written from a quantitative-friendly perspective. Yet, the authors are
well aware of the limitations of an overreliance on data, especially in the age of “Big
Data” (see previous section). Similar to the real estate mantra location, location,

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108 5 Placemaking: Why Everything Is Local

location, all the approaches discussed in this chapter are dependent on context. If
anything, then all the data collection and manipulation is intended to serve as con-
text-setting – a shortcut allowing the planner to get a feel for the situation that she is
about to interfere with.
One obvious limitation of the non-experiential approach is the lack of history
that provides attachment to a place, no matter how dysfunctional it may look from
the outside. Only highly specialized surveys and techniques discussed in Sects. 5.2
and 5.3 will accomplish that. Related to that is the fact that GIS methods are essen-
tially good for taking snapshots of a given situation. GIS is very cumbersome (at
best) if we want to represent processes or change. At a minimum, any attempt to do
that requires very careful planning on the data management side.
Another limitation of current data-driven approaches is the fact that the data we
have is usually not the data we need to represent our conceptual models, i.e., our
understanding of the phenomenon we trying to study. Thus, there is a mismatch
between what the data can actually tell us and what we want to believe it can tell us.
Finally, the use of geospatial data, especially of vector data, assumes that the num-
bers (whether they are coordinates, distances, or attribute values) are exact. This is,
however, almost never true. Accuracy-appropriate GIS analysis would require fuzzy
reasoning techniques that are way too cumbersome for traditional planning applica-
tions. The results of GIS analyses should hence be taken with a grain of salt.

5.13 Concluding Comments

This chapter is chock-full of pointers to a plethora of methods that a planner ought

to be familiar with. Let the reader be reminded that ours is not a methods book nor
do we advocate for planners to become bogged down with all the data massaging
techniques that we are mentioning here. Every method has its place and the choice
is dictated by the planning situation. This is why we introduced two case studies in
Chapter 3 and have been constantly referring to them both here and in Chapter 4.
The reader is also reminded of the fact that several of the techniques introduced in
these two chapters were not used in either case study. Partly, this is due to the fact that
a typical graduate planning studio or a real-world planning project does not have the
resources to conduct the more intensive methods like scenario building or Geodesign.
We will, in the following two chapters, continue to drive home the notion of context.
Every planning task has a budget and a situational context that goes beyond mere
geography. Planning methods have to match the needs of the community that we are
planning with (Chapter 6) and have a whole range of implementation constraints that
influence the choice of methods discussed in the past two chapters.
In a way, we, whose bread and butter job it is to teach quantitative and qualitative
methods, are striving to write an “un-methods” book. Sure, every planner should be
familiar with what we presented here (and if she is not, the following section pro-
vides plenty of pointers for further reading), but at the same time, it is important not
to lose sight of the real purpose of planning. Technologies can be a smokescreen,

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References 109

and some planners might even want to hide behind the “objectivity” and anonymity
of the computer. The following two chapters will provide the counterweight and
drive home the fact that methods are necessary means to an end but means that
should be applied judiciously. Such judgment calls will become easier to make with
experience, and Chapters 6 and 7 are intended to fast-track this learning process.

References

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ArrivingInBerlin (2017) A map made by refugees. Berliner Stadtmission, Berlin. Online resource,
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Rea L, Parker R (2005) Designing and conducting survey research: a comprehensive guide, vol 3.
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Chapter 6
Civic Engagement

6.1 What Is Civic Engagement?

One of the overall goals of this book is to offer planning practitioners a curated list
of research and analysis methods, techniques, and approaches to support and inform
their day-to-day work. The methods discussed in this book are generally agnostic of
specialization insofar that they can be used by land-use planners, transportation
planners, urban designers, and so on, although each specialist may gain value from
a subset of methods that are discussed in Chapters 3 and 4. This chapter focuses
exclusively on the complexities of civic engagement. All planners must familiarize
themselves with civic engagement practices.
Invoking a traditional dictionary definition, civic, is an adjective that is related to
the activities or obligations of individuals in a public forum and/or concerning
issues that relate in some way to public life, while engagement is a noun that typi-
cally conveys a legal or moral obligation to do something. In other words, a student
who speaks at a college-wide governance forum is exercising her civic duty, so also
is an individual who votes in a local election.
As we grow up and participate in everyday activities beginning with school, we
learn quickly that we are part of a more complex societal fabric, outside of our
immediate familial networks. We are linked by geographies, ideas, aspirations, and
values; this recognition becomes the first step to understanding our obligations and
responsibilities to care for and protect our shared ideals and interests. In democratic
societies, the process of choosing our elected officials is often referenced as an obvi-
ous exposition of an individual’s civic duty. In addition to the actual voting, civic
actions also include canvassing for votes and participating in the public sphere to
demonstrate in support of, or against causes or candidates. In this chapter, we view
participation and engagement in electoral politics as an essential but rather narrow
framing of civic engagement. Community-oriented civic engagement activities are
not apolitical per se. Civic engagement is shaped by dominant sociocultural norms,
providing individuals and groups the needed motivation to participate or to act.

© Springer International Publishing AG 2018 111

L. Ramasubramanian, J. Albrecht, Essential Methods for Planning Practitioners,
The Urban Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68041-5_6

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112 6 Civic Engagement

However, activities carried out by the public that create and give voice to social and
political concerns by questioning and challenging established social norms and
practices are also an important and necessary aspect of civic engagement in contem-
porary America and the world.
The term “social capital” is often used to characterize and explain civic engage-
ment, which became popular after Robert Putnam brought it to the forefront of the
public’s attention in the early 1990s. His arguments are organized and presented in
the book Bowling Alone in which he speculated about the causes and consequences
of the decline in civic engagement in America (Putnam 2000). Social capital refers
to networks of association and trust, a kind of social glue that brings people together
to work on volunteer activities, social causes, and creating a feeling of belonging,
albeit for a short time. Much has been written about social capital, and these ideas
and concepts previously found favor in global organizations like the World Bank
(Bebbington et al. 2006).
Some of these social networks tend to be insular – in that the groups develop a
sense of belonging and identity because they perceive themselves to be distinct from
others around them. For example, immigrants to the United States often connect
with immigrants using familiar associations of the regional geography/language/
religion of their country of origin as a marker of trust. This “bonding capital” is use-
ful to build and strengthen a group’s identity and can help accomplish some civic
objectives. However, many more civic engagement objectives can be achieved when
groups with different interests connect with each other. This is not so hard to under-
stand, once we think about our lived reality – we are all members of many groups
because of our multiple identities, and we belong to different groups – practicing
planners are also sports enthusiasts, and there can be a great diversity of sports and
teams to choose from. Planners are also parents, caregivers, churchgoers, nature
lovers, and runners. The list can go on. The kind of social capital that helps create
associations between heterogeneous groups fosters civic engagement activities that
are outward facing that can serve a larger social purpose.
In this chapter, we argue that all planners have a responsibility, an obligation, and
the skills to support and nurture civic engagement, i.e., to create opportunities for
the public to participate in civic activities. In other words, we encourage planners to
recognize community organizing and mobilization outside of the sphere or electoral
politics as civic engagement. This requires professional planners to inform, educate,
and empower the public to actively participate in community decision-making at a
variety of ways. This commitment is akin to a way of working, rather than a single
task to be checked-off a list. Civic engagement and the role of planners have in
facilitating that engagement is an ongoing process and part of the planners’ own
code of ethics. More about ethics later, in Chapter 7. For now, consider our claim
that civic engagement can influence a project or program’s success. Likewise, in the
twenty-first century, it is a truism to state that good projects and ideas can some-
times be derailed because of poorly managed civic engagement processes.
The next section critiques the two established frameworks that have been used by
planners to create a culture of civic engagement. Understanding the strengths and

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6.2 Origins of Modern Civic Engagement 113

limitations of these frameworks is essential for all planners, especially for those
planners who are at the start of the careers.

6.2 Origins of Modern Civic Engagement

Historically, some sections of the public have always participated in planning deci-
sions – the upper echelons of American society were engaged with the City Beautiful
movement as well as other subsequent reform-minded planning actions that began
at the turn of the last century (Hall 1996). Elites used their time and resources to
support “good” government-led planning and design. The middle class and the poor
were not consulted; they were treated as ignorant or otherwise incapable of making
meaningful decisions about the quality of life in their neighborhoods and cities.
Modernist ideals of progress demanded the dramatic reconfiguration of the built
environment. Changes included the creation of impressive civic and public works
and the development of robust transportation infrastructure and road networks that
essentially cut through neighborhoods creating ruptures in the urban and social fab-
ric. Modernist planning predicated the social, political, and economic transforma-
tion of cities and regions as determined by and dependent on transformations of the
built environment.
The received wisdom of the time was that the harm done to a few neighborhoods
and communities was balanced by the gains for the city and region. The people who
were left out of these decision-making processes did not have an easy way to be
heard. Although individuals with formal education expressed their dissenting opin-
ions by writing opinion pieces and letters to the editor of major newspapers in much
the same way we do today, it was a sad reality that once planners and politicians
aligned together to accomplish noble goals – considering the interest of the majority
and looking ahead 10, 15, and 20 years ahead – it became practically impossible to
stop projects from moving forward.
Yet, everyday people were never fully complicit or compliant in the face of
oppressive planning regimes. In big cities, tenants organized rent strikes to protest
rising rents and used a combination of legal and public relations strategies to be
heard. It took some time before the pattern of these displacements became all too
apparent – that the interests of poor and working-class neighborhoods were being
sacrificed.
The civil rights movement of the 1960s transformed and energized the voices of
protesters, helping to launch the antiwar movement, the women’s movement, and
the gay rights movement, the environmental movement, and the disability rights
movement. While the major cities Boston, New York, Chicago, and San Francisco
all undertook “slum clearance” and massive redevelopment projects, the trend also
affected smaller cities like Milwaukee, Portland, and New Orleans. Urban renewal
projects came under critical scrutiny, and preservation of individual neighborhoods
and communities became a way to organize and energize protest.

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114 6 Civic Engagement

In her 1961 book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs
wrote a polemical but prescient book that critiqued the penchant for urban planners
and architect to introduce a sense of order into city life – she used her experiences
from Greenwich Village in Manhattan to reveal the social order and the security
embedded in a bustling neighborhood that (at the time) was integrated across age
and class lines if not by race. Lloyd Rodwin, a renowned MIT planning professor,
reviewed her book1 in the NY Times. In the review that appeared on November 5,
1961, he wrote:
[Her book] fuses ineffectual elements of discontent into a program that can pack quite a
wallop. It won’t matter that like the reformers she criticizes, she has little sympathy for
persons who want to live differently from the way she thinks they ought to live; nor will it
matter that some of her own proposals (on the planning process, for example) come straight
from the planners she criticizes; and that some of her cherished reforms, however tenta-
tively advanced, are as romantic and “utopian” as those she rejects. The same holds for
transparent gaps and blind spots, such as her blasé misunderstandings of theory and her
amiable preference for evidence congenial to her thesis. In short, except to the miscella-
neous victims and the academic purists, it won’t matter that what this author has to say isn’t
always fair or right or “scientific.”

Jane Jacobs used her voice as a citizen and engaged in a variety of actions to chal-
lenge and push back the power of planners. She is celebrated over a half a century
later, because she succeeded! In 2017, a documentary Citizen Jane: Battle for the
City celebrates Jacobs, the “non-expert” who wielded her power over and thwarted
the grandiose aspirations of the master planner, Robert Moses. Matt Tyrnauer, the
director, says that contemporary audiences in the United States and throughout the
world can learn a lot from this epic battle. He says, “Jacobs tells us that we must be
skeptical. We must look and listen for ourselves and then act to make the changes
that will help our communities improve and thrive. You can’t leave it to the ‘experts.’
There are no experts. The expert has to be you.”2 This is the planning challenge we
described in Chapter 2. Tyrnauer appears to be saying that one’s instincts and feel-
ings about things can replace facts and objective analysis. He is not alone. We don’t
debate his view of the world here. However, complete adherence to Tyrnauer’s rea-
soning will leave planners with limited options, privileging some publics, but
undoubtedly marginalizing others.
Many books have been written about the David versus Goliath battle between
Moses and Jacobs.3 For our purposes, suffice it to say that the context of participation

1
Rodwin, L. 1961. Review of Jacobs, J. 1961. The death and life of great American cities, 458 pp.,
New York: Random House, published in the New York Times, November 5th, 1961. Available
from NYTimes Archives.
2
Brynes, M. 2017. Why the Jane Jacobs vs. Robert Moses battle still matters, Atlantic City Lab, A
Q&A with Matt Tyrnauer, director of Citizen Jane: Battle for the City. Available at: https://www.
citylab.com/politics/2017/04/why-the-jane-jacobs-vs-robert-moses-battle-still-matters/523125/.
Retrieved April 30, 2017.
3
The Guardian, April 2016, Story of cities #32: Jane Jacobs v Robert Moses, battle of New York’s
urban titans https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/apr/28/story-cities-32-new-york-jane-
jacobs-robert-moses. Retrieved April 15, 2017.

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6.2 Origins of Modern Civic Engagement 115

in the 1960s and 1970s was essentially reactive – attempts to stem the onslaught of
a pro-development agenda that was supported by political liberals and conservatives
alike at the time. Along with the activism of Jane Jacobs, the work of Paul Davidoff
who helped to establish the concepts and principles of advocacy planning and
Sherry Arnstein who delivered a blistering critique of established protocols for gov-
ernment-mandated public participation exemplifies the benefits and limits of reac-
tive citizen participation.

6.2.1 Davidoff and the Advocacy Planning Model

Paul Davidoff (1930–1984), a planner and lawyer, felt strongly that the prevailing
model of the rational-comprehensive model of planning was far from value-free.
Rather than being “neutral” and representing the best interests of the public at large,
he felt that the plans particularly large-scale planning projects put forward by city
agencies tended to favor and benefit some while causing harm to others –the plan-
ning process was stacked against the interests of poor and marginalized communi-
ties, those who did not have a seat at the table.
In addition, Davidoff felt that it was impossible for an individual planner or a
team of planning professionals to create plans that could clearly balance the inter-
ests of different groups, particularly those that held opposing viewpoints about a
thorny planning issue. Davidoff argued that the differences and dichotomies of posi-
tions, especially value conflicts, would become more apparent if each planner or
planning team advocated for the interests of one group or one issue – for example,
the interests of renters or more broadly the interests of low-income people. Drawing
upon his legal training, Davidoff further reasoned that these competing viewpoints,
when argued by experts (planners), would allow better decisions to be made on the
merits of the case. His arguments are summarized in his seminal article Advocacy
and Pluralism in Planning (Davidoff 1965).
Several senior planning scholars have discussed Davidoff’s contributions to the
field,4,5,6,7 and some of their views are summarized here. There are many benefits to
undertaking advocacy planning. Advocacy planning helps planners clarify project
goals, objectives, and intended outcomes. Good advocacy planning prevents

4
Checkoway, B. Paul Davidoff and advocacy planning in retrospect. Symposium introduction.
Journal of the American Planning Association. 60, 139–143, Apr. 15, 1994. ISSN: 01944363.
5
Marris, P. Advocacy planning as a bridge between the professional and the political, part of a
symposium on: Paul Davidoff and advocacy planning in retrospect. Journal of the American
Planning Association. 60, 143–146, Apr. 15, 1994. ISSN: 01944363.
6
Peattie, LR. Communities and interests in advocacy planning, part of a symposium on: Paul
Davidoff and advocacy planning in retrospect. Journal of the American Planning Association. 60,
151–153, Apr. 15, 1994. ISSN: 01944363.
7
Hayden, D. Who plans the U.S.A.? a comment on “Advocacy and pluralism in planning”, part of
a symposium on: Paul Davidoff and advocacy planning in retrospect. Journal of the American
Planning Association. 60, 160–161, Apr. 15, 1994. ISSN: 01944363.

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116 6 Civic Engagement

planners from making generic statements that are mere platitudes by inserting rigor
in their analyses. Furthermore, planners are encouraged to take on a normative and
activist stance toward addressing the needs of their neighborhoods and communi-
ties, rather than serving as mere functionaries who are content with implementing
existing rules and regulations. Advocacy planning used/uses the adversarial
approaches inherent in the legal system to address complex societal challenges such
as racial segregation, urban renewal, and displacement. Yet, we note that the flaws
inherent in this legalistic approach create its own set of new challenges.
In the last 50 years, advocacy planning has evolved and has become “profession-
alized.” Advocacy planning now relies on outside experts, ultimately creating teams
of expert planners who are “hired” to argue or champion different policy positions.
As individuals interested in championing distinctive positions, these experts are less
interested in resolving problems than they are about solidifying arguments and
allies to support specific policies. Advocacy planning results in a wide range of
intended and unintended outcomes. There is a great human cost to advocacy plan-
ning that affects individuals who may be at odds about the issue. There are addi-
tional costs to the neighborhood, community, and society: for instance, delayed
projects negatively affect residential property values and force small business own-
ers to go out of business while abandoned or boarded-up properties create unsafe
and unsanitary conditions for people who live in the neighborhood. Collectively, the
uncertainty associated with advocacy planning as it is practiced causes a great deal
of anxiety to both sides – project proponents and opponents. Although it is not the
intended outcome, when a “win” eventually arrives, it can feel like a “loss” for all
other competing positions, creating permanent divides that are unsuitable for long-
term community development.

6.2.2 Arnstein and the Ladder of Citizen Participation

Sherry Arnstein’s 1969 article A Ladder of Citizen Participation is both a primer

and critique on government-mandated efforts at citizen participation. Her ladder
consists of eight rungs, moving from manipulation and therapy (nonparticipation)
and further upward through informing, consultation, and placation (various degrees
of tokenism), and culminates with partnership, delegated power, and citizen control
(various degrees of citizen power). Arnstein’s typology is a result of her concern
about the fuzziness of the dominant terminologies associated with citizen participa-
tion – particularly “maximum feasible participation.” The ladder she put forward
allows us to unpack the concept, and she states explicitly that the typology is a
purposeful simplification to “illustrate the point that so many have missed – that
there are significant gradations of citizen participation.”
Although Arnstein states that her typology can be generalized in different insti-
tutional and situational contexts, her primary understanding of the pros and cons of
citizen participation came from her experiences with the Great Society programs of
the Johnson administration, including the Model Cities program. In Arnstein’s

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6.2 Origins of Modern Civic Engagement 117

typology, the partnership rung of the ladder is characterized by genuine power shar-
ing between community and government. This requires community residents to be
organized and mobilized and to have the skills to understand the complexities of
local management and governance and the resources to solicit expert technical
assistance as and when needed. Delegated power allows for the community to hold
decision-making authority or veto power over large sections of the plan through
participation in boards or governing councils. Citizen control transfers the gover-
nance of local services or programs such as schools to the hands of citizens; many
of these proposals were experimental efforts at direct democracy, bypassing prees-
tablished frameworks of representative democracy such as elected city councils.
Arnstein’s framing of the planning process as a dichotomy between governments
as working with/for/against monolithic communities is a vestige of the past.
Contemporary planners would do well to remember that Arnstein’s citizen partici-
pation ladder is an elegant simplification. Blindly emphasizing the rungs on the
Arnstein ladder limits an understanding of the various ways the present-day public
engages in planning and decision-making.

6.2.3 Discussion and Critique

In the second decade of the twenty-first century, it is now 50 years since advocacy
planning first hit the planning lexicon. It is over 40 years since Arnstein argued that
government needed to be held accountable for its actions through active citizen
participation.
Planners should celebrate the visible and systemic changes that have occurred
since the 1960s because of the ideas put forth by Davidoff and Arnstein. The way
planners are prepared has changed significantly; all planning schools now empha-
size the value of public participation. In the United States, public participation is
required by law in many, if not all projects, programs, and policies. Local govern-
ment agencies routinely partner with a range of nongovernmental agencies to
address complex issues such as affordable housing, social services provision, eco-
nomic development, and neighborhood revitalization. Many states have also passed
“sunshine laws” that limit planning decisions being made behind closed doors.
While “manipulation” and “participation as therapy” persist, they are more rou-
tinely identified and vilified in the public sphere. The development and growth of
digital technologies have expanded access to data and information, making it easier
to hold elected officials and government agency employees accountable. From 2009
to 2016, the federal government expanded access to government data and informa-
tion, in accordance with a federal commitment to transparency, participation, and
collaboration.
We contend that the challenges that we face as a society now and in the next 50
years demand different strategies and tactics to reenergize planning processes. One
of the limits of the work of Davidoff and Arnstein is that they focused very much on
how to “fix” problems with the way things were being done at the time. Their

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approaches were reactive, responding to a particularly volatile time in American

history, when trust in public institutions was low. Their approaches established an
adversarial relationship between government planners and the people, a persistent
challenge.
How should advocacy planning evolve? What lessons have been learned from the
wins and losses attributed to advocacy planning over the years? When is it prudent
to use the adversarial tactics of advocacy planning? Is citizen control (the highest
rung of the Arnstein ladder) appropriate for all planning projects? Can providing
information to the public be dismissed as mere tokenism? Is it fair that the city is
held hostage by the delaying tactics employed by one interest group? These are the
questions that contemporary planners should be asking, rather than relying exclu-
sively on strategies and tactics that have worked in the past.
The concerns that were raised by Davidoff and Arnstein during the 1960s are not
fully resolved, and as a society, we continue to struggle to address deep social injus-
tices, environmental, health, and security challenges. Yet, it is crucial that planners
propose and implement new ways of connecting with the public, acknowledging
societal, cultural, and technological shifts that have influenced our everyday lives
and will continue to do so.

6.3 Managing Change

A standard description of planning is the United States will most likely state:
Good planning helps create communities that offer better choices for where and how people
live. Planning helps communities to envision their future. It helps them find the right bal-
ance of new development and essential services, environmental protection, and innovative
change8

Presently, public planning is a collaborative endeavor; it is focused on helping peo-

ple manage change in a systematic and orderly way. Planners who are on the front
lines, charged with empowering people from all walks of life, understand and come
to terms with change and how it will impact their day-to-day lives.
Change can be daunting, even when it is desired. The creation of a plan is an
integral component of change management. Although many planners work for and
represent government agencies, planners also serve the nonprofit and private sector
entities. In Chapter 2, we discussed three major global challenges – urbanization,
demographics, and climate change, that create predictable physical and social con-
sequences including the need to combat sprawl, create and maintain public infra-
structure and transportation systems, plan for an aging society, plan for social and
gender inclusion, address environmental quality, and design for climate resilience.

8
American Planning Association, Colorado Chapter. http://www.apacolorado.org/what-is-a-plan-
ner. Retrieved April 10, 2017.

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6.3 Managing Change 119

Planning students often hear that like politics, all planning is local. This is true to
some extent, because the most intense debates about managing change occur at the
local level. In this book, we urge planners to recognize and consider the global driv-
ers of these local changes, for example, the planned closing of a local grocery store
in a community may be a result of out-migration in the same way that need for new
housing is a result of population growth in the same areas. Planners should address
quality-of-life concerns such as solving the challenge of access to shopping when
the only store has closed at the local level while simultaneously taking a systems
approach to their work.
Some scholars question this commitment to quality-of-life planning. Radical
academic scholars often exhort practitioners to struggle with the complexities of
racialized policing and other social injustices that affect vulnerable populations in
the public realm. New planners are often confused: they are labeled as the “enemy”
by the left, simply because they signed up to be employed in their chosen profes-
sion, and at the same time pilloried by the right because they advocate government
oversight and avoid mindless adherence to free market thinking. Our sincere advice
is to encourage planners to read, reflect, and learn from these critiques but continue
to focus on problem-solving. Practitioners must recognize that planning is about
avoiding binaries of any kind – planners can address quality-of-life concerns and
simultaneously strive to address serious social justice concerns through their work.
One of the ways to do both is by practicing civic engagement strategies on and off
the job.
Practicing planners should be the first to acknowledge that the feelings of anxiety
and, in some instances, extreme trepidation that are experienced by the public are
real, whether there is tangible data and evidence available to support these feelings
or not. In this chapter, we explore how a planner especially a newly minted planner
with limited access to her own networks and professional ties and one that feels
vulnerable about her own job prospects and advancements can stand up to the estab-
lished hierarchies.
We propose that by elevating the quality of the planning discourse, planning
practitioners can help facilitate difficult but necessary conversations about change.
Planning practitioners can reposition themselves as facilitators of dialogue between
different interest groups, rather than representing one position over another. Planners
become mediators and translators of information to help explain the differences
between policy positions and over time can help to build a consensus about the scale
and type of change that the community can bear.
We feel strongly that individuals in neighborhoods and communities cannot stay
in a permanent state of opposition with each other. In small communities, it is prac-
tically impossible to navigate life in this way. Citizen activism and organizing must
give way to decisions, projects, programs, and policies, and new institutional and
governance structures are required to manage them. The strategies and tactics of
reactive and hostile community mobilization are not suited for institution building
which is better served through proactive civic engagement.
Consider climate change as an exemplar of a major planning issue that affects a
wide range of communities in the United States and throughout the world. East-coast

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communities, whether they are year-round residential communities, heritage towns,

working-class enclaves, or working waterfronts, will experience rain events, storms,
and consequent impacts such as storm surges and flooding more frequently. Our
observations and conversations in coastal communities tell us that long-term residents
in these locations are aware of, and attuned to these changes. If we used the traditional
advocacy planning model (applied in a stringent way), we would pit some groups
within these communities against other groups. Railing against the government may
not be a helpful approach either. In this context, a concerted effort is needed to address
immediate concerns as well as plan for long-term solutions. Although different poli-
cies and approaches are needed for every coastal community, the principles of col-
laboration and consensus building are essential to resolve and manage the real impacts
of climate change now and in the future. Since the government is a partner, rather than
a leader in the planning effort, the participation should be managed in a way that is
sustainable even after the government’s formal obligations have concluded.
In Chapter 3, we discussed two case study examples, Roosevelt Island and Hunts
Point, both neighborhoods in New York City. Having worked in these diverse neigh-
borhoods in our teaching and research, we propose some civic engagement strate-
gies that will facilitate consensus building and future-oriented planning.

6.4 A Framework for Twenty-First Century Civic

Engagement

Creating a principled approach to participation wherein all members feel welcome

and invited to participate is critical to the success of any project, program, or policy.
Planners understand that they must engage with everyone, easier said than done. For
planners in the beginning of their career, or even for those who have planned many
interventions, we present a framework, informed by research and practice to create
and sustain a progressive civic engagement agenda.

6.4.1 Understand the Rich Diversity of the Community

Be warned! This is not a trivial or easy task. Relying on publicly available data is a
place to start, but nothing beats establishing a personal familiarity with the streets
and alleys, the open spaces, the public facilities, and the various attributes of a com-
munity that you are planning for. We remind you to focus on understanding the
community’s composition along racial and class dimensions, without ignoring other
demographic, cultural, and spiritual dimensions.
The data we have assembled about Hunts Point and Roosevelt Island should
provide you with some guidance on how to develop your own community profile.
For large cities like New York, a wealth of community profile data is readily avail-
able. Do not let the volume of data lull you into complacency. Data quality is elu-

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6.4 A Framework for Twenty-First Century Civic Engagement 121

sive, because every piece of data is driven by a question that made its collection or
creation possible. The framing of questions may have influenced the quality of the
data set. We encourage field observations that include temporal and spatial varia-
tion. Get out of your car! Walk and bike, whenever possible so that you can experi-
ence the environment in different ways.
Understanding the community is essential to define the study area or the zone of
intervention for a particular project, program, or policy. The conventional wisdom
about defining a study area boundary may have to be renegotiated to have an ade-
quate representation of all sectors of the community that may have a position about
a proposed change. It is useful to draw a broader boundary than a narrower one so
that a planner can be more inclusive than less inclusive.
There is an art to drawing study area boundaries – often, planners consider pre-
existing political boundary definitions which may or may not serve the purpose for
a study. Physical geography sometimes can be a useful determinant of the edge, but
again this is not always the case. People cross geographic boundaries like rivers and
streams or human-made boundaries like freeways to access shopping or entertain-
ment opportunities. It may also be useful to think about commuting via walking,
biking, or driving in determining study area boundaries.
Since we are talking about pragmatic realities, we want to remind practitioners
that a “paying client,” be they a government agency or a private developer, may
insist that a boundary definition be drawn in a prespecified way. In this situation, the
planner should work very hard to understand the motivation behind the client’s rea-
soning – we have found that in many instances, clients attempt to draw boundaries
in a misguided attempt to avoid conflict. It is important that planners understand the
motivation behind these “arbitrary” decisions so that the best advice and guidance
can be offered. To the extent possible, it is the planner’s responsibility to advise the
client in favor of being inclusive, choosing to embrace potential conflict, rather than
exclude it in the process of defining a study area. Ultimately, the planner and plan-
ning team have the freedom to gather data and conduct analyses outside the study
area and include this information in their analyses to assess second-order effects.

6.4.2 Promise to Engage the Whole Community and Keep Your

Promise

This is a simple and yet an elusive concept that appears to challenge many planning
practitioners. Often, planning practitioners begin a project focusing on the need to
engage the “difficult” groups – those that are expected to be in opposition to a pro-
posed project. We unequivocally state that everyone who lives and/or works in a
community should be consulted about a project or program that is being proposed.
This decision has implications of how planners plan their outreach strategy. There
are entire catalogues of public participation methods and techniques available to the
planners interested in working with the public (e.g., Creighton 2005), and we
encourage planners to familiarize themselves with them.

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122 6 Civic Engagement

It is useful to make a public commitment to whole-community engagement

because it creates an awareness that the project will approach engagement in a dif-
ferent way and that it is not a case of business as usual. It also allows the various
actors engaged in the project remember that they have made a commitment to a
more engaged, inclusive, and innovative approach to public involvement.
The public is a not a homogeneous or monolithic group. It is useful to consider plan-
ning with and for multiple publics. Rather than segment the population by race and/or
ethnicity alone, it may be useful to segment in a way that cuts across these boundaries.
Homeowners are an important segment but so, too, are renters. It is useful to include
property owners in a conversation, but it is equally important to recognize the individu-
als who own properties may not be residents of your community. Sometimes, small
business owners are left out of important conversations because they rent, rather than
own their business locations. If the debate is about education and the expansion of a
local school, it is still useful to engage adults without children or parents who do not
send their children to that school. Our comments may fly against conventional wisdom
and potentially increase the costs of doing community outreach (to be discussed later in
this chapter), but we believe it is well worth the effort in terms of potential gains in creat-
ing and sustaining a cross section of the community that is interested in the future well-
being of the place they have chosen to live, work, or visit on a regular basis. Once a
planner clearly understands that there are multiple publics, she can design a community
engagement strategy that is tailored to each of these groups.

6.4.3 Develop Civic Engagement Principles

In our view, community engagement must be approached in a principled and ethical

way. One way to articulate a clarity of vision and approach is to lay out some princi-
ples of engagement. Examples of principles can include equity, respect, and inclusion.
For example, if we believe in the principle of equity, then community engagement
processes and protocols would pay special attention to fairness, ensuring that different
segments of the public have the same (similar) opportunities to express their opinions.
However, truly honoring the principle of equity would require the planners and the
planning team to make additional efforts to ensure a diversity of views. The principle
of respect is valuable so that people or groups holding seemingly unpopular views or
positions can be heard. The principle of inclusion suggests that the process will not
privilege nor disadvantage individuals or groups because of their geographic location
or gender orientation or because of a policy position they hold.
Many other principles can be developed, depending on the scope and scale of the
project. Two principles that practicing planners may want to consider are the
principle of relevance and the principle of proficiency. The principle of relevance
suggests that the advice and suggestions provided by the people of a community
should be carefully focused to meet the scope, context, and needs of the project. In
other words, the focus on relevance allows for individuals who may disagree on one
subject (say, e.g., electoral politics) to agree on a shared vision about the need for
additional investments for the central business district. This is a challenging prin-

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ciple to uphold in public forums and town hall meetings. The principle of profi-
ciency allows the planning team to solicit, support, and use the skills, knowledge,
and expertise that is resident within the community to improve the quality of the
decision-making process and in the preparation of plans. This principle honors and
values the local knowledge and expertise that is found in many communities. It also
develops and nurtures individuals with specialized expertise to become community
resources after the current planning process is concluded and create a cadre of tal-
ented community volunteers. We encounter community experts in every neighbor-
hood. Often, their expertise is not related to their work, but their passion or
extracurricular interest. We have met experts who understand the city’s water and
sewer supply, those that have an encyclopedic knowledge about the buildings in
their neighborhood, and amateur storytellers who can describe and document neigh-
borhood change. Collectively, tapping this expertise allows planners to understand
the values and ideals of a community as the engagement process unfolds.

6.4.4 Design an Inclusive Community Outreach Strategy

Crafting an inclusive community outreach strategy is challenging, and especially so,

if there are budgetary constraints. At the beginning of this chapter, we discussed the
concepts of social capital and the networks of trust and association that seem to be
important in promoting social cohesion and a commitment to civic engagement.
Planners can help to design opportunities for bridging social capital to emerge – by
creating opportunities of people to work collaboratively with other people in their
community whom they may have not have had a chance to encounter before.
Increasing the opportunities to hear and learn from a diversity of voices is essential
to a successful civic engagement strategy.
A. Draw Study Area Boundaries
As discussed earlier, the definition of a study area is an art. One technique we sug-
gest is to overlay study boundaries from different projects that have happened in the
area over time to see if there are any visible differences. Another technique is to ask
long-term residents about the geographic extents of their neighborhood or commu-
nity. Yet another technique is to use GIS and statistical software to understand how the
demographic composition of the community can shift if a few census blocks are
included or excluded in defining a study area. While there is no precise right or wrong
answer, the delineation of a study area boundary is a political act, not a technical one.
B. Identify Stakeholders
As previously indicated, the community is not a monolithic whole. True, there is a
sense of geographic community, particularly in neighborhoods that are well estab-
lished over time. There are also communities of interest that may crisscross the study
area. Identifying stakeholders requires more than listing the most obvious racial and
ethnic groups to identify new and interesting ways in which the community can be
encouraged to engage. Relying on formal, established stakeholder groups can be a

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starting point. In areas with small populations, individuals representing sectoral inter-
ests can be assembled to form a group that represents a particular geography.
C. Develop Outreach Plan
The purpose of developing an outreach plan is to find ways to connect with dif-
ferent stakeholder groups, in other words, connect with multiple publics. We recom-
mend that planners consider connection points in person (face to face) and online
across place and time.

Same place – same time Same places – different times

Example: Open houses Example: Community-led walking tours
Different places – same time Different places – different times
Example: Electronic town hall Example: Online surveys

Community conversations are at the heart of any outreach endeavor and they are one
of the most conventional, reliable, and one of the most rewarding activities associ-
ated with community engagement. Holding conversations in real time can be done
throughout the course of a project, but they are particularly important in the early
stages. It is important to identify those individuals in the community who are com-
municators and nodes in information networks. It may be a small business owner,
the head of the local parent teacher association (PTA), or the editor of a community
newsletter. In any event, begin talking to them to get the word out that a community
engagement process is beginning and that they should get involved. In all probabil-
ity, they will advise you on who else the planning team should reach out to and
provide appropriate contact information.
Focus groups are a specialized kind of structured community conversation. They are
an ideal way to get a group together to clarify high-priority issues of concern in the com-
munity or to solicit feedback about how to approach a topic. With a good facilitator, an
hour-long focused conversation can provide insights about how small groups of people
think and feel about a planning problem. Focus groups can be scheduled in advance and
organized with a minimum of fuss. Focus groups work very well when the participants
have similar interests or are part of the same interest group – for example, conducting a
focus group of small business owners who all provide retail services to the community
may work better than trying to manage a focus group that includes both retailers and
restaurateurs. This is because retail businesses have different kinds of needs and chal-
lenges than restaurants and other food service establishments. Thus, putting together
focus groups must be approached carefully and systematically to avoid confusion.
Town hall meetings are another type of community conversation. They can offer
great benefits because they create opportunities for a robust and broad dialogue with
a large swatch of the community in a short period of time, say in a 2-h evening meet-
ing. Organizing and logistics are slightly complicated – most communities will
require them to be scheduled several months in advance. Depending on the scale of
the project, planners can use a town hall meeting between one and three times over
the course of a year-long project. The town hall meeting agenda has to be carefully
planned to ensure that the process complies fully with the principles of community
engagement described in the previous section.

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Community-led walking/biking tours are a great way to engage active commu-

nity leaders to showcase their skills and expertise. Having a resident or business
owner lead a tour of a neighborhood is a wonderful way to understand the values
and places that townspeople hold dear. Some of these activities are better suited for
good weather, but these activities can provide additional context to support archival
sources like previous planning studies or newspaper reports.
Conversations occur in space and place
Open houses, in the context of this discussion, indicate an accessible physical location
that can be made available for walk-in appointments for the public to drop in to dis-
cuss a variety of issues and concerns over the life of a project. Vacant storefronts can
be repurposed for this task, for example, with a commitment to be available for a
couple of hours every week. Once a pattern is established and it is understood that
someone will be available, members of the public can feel motivated to visit and
engage in the project or projects that are being discussed. Artifacts from work in prog-
ress can be presented for review and discussion. Likewise, a computer with an internet
connection can allow participants to look at different information online, take an
online survey, or otherwise engage in some collaborative activity while they go about
their routines – a stop on Saturday morning at a community open house is a nice break
from shopping or running errands. By going to where the people already are, planners
increase opportunities for meaningful community engagement.

Strategy: Host an Open House

If you are a planner assigned to introduce a project to a community, consider
hosting an open house in partnership with a local business, locally based non-
profit organization, or a house of worship. In an open house, planners make
themselves available to answer questions about their project to drop-in visi-
tors. In addition, planners can create a series of activities to engage neighbor-
hood residents in discussing community concerns.
Hosting an open house requires some preplanning and organization. The loca-
tion of the open house must be familiar and accessible to people in the neighbor-
hood. Open houses that are scheduled after regularly scheduled activities work
well because they accommodate the pace of activities in the community and don’t
feel like an imposition. Inviting participants to attend and reminding them is
another key to having a well-attended open house event. An open house can be
distinguished and differentiated from a conventional community meeting because
neighbors can drop in and stay for as little or for as long as they want.
It is beneficial to plan several activities to engage different demographic
groups – consider different activities for children, teenagers, and elderly, all
with the goal of being able to better understand the strengths/assets of the
community as well to gather some preliminary data about problems that can
be addressed through a planning process. The open house is also an opportu-
nity for a planner to describe the scope and extent of the planning project and
document community concerns (if any) about the project.

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Every engagement process should be an opportunity to educate citizens about

planning methods and techniques, not through lectures and exams but through
informal activities. Young people can be invited to develop their own futuristic
visions through art projects, while adults could engage in researching prece-
dents or ideas that they would like to see implemented in their community.
Static information displays with contact information can be left in local estab-
lishments such as cafes and other hangout spots. Community members should
be tasked with the responsibilities of setting up these informational displays –
their conversations with business owners will expand the reach of the project
and demonstrate that different members of the community are invested in this
process.
It is important for planners to recognize the value and benefits of online com-
munity engagement as part of a community outreach effort
Digital technologies allow for completely asynchronous communication. A website
with downloadable information, online surveys, polls, participatory mapping activi-
ties, and other interactive digital methods discussed in Chapter 4 can be developed
and used throughout the process. Millennials prefer to participate online rather than
face to face. Live streaming of town hall meetings will allow young people and
elderly people who are not able to easily travel to join in a meeting can gather a lot
of information if they can watch the proceedings via a computer with an internet
connection. Smaller groups can conduct a great deal of productive work via confer-
ence calls and Web-enabled meetings where documents can be viewed (in shared
mode) and discussed. Both free and paid services to facilitate these conversations
are now available, and every planning team should take full advantage of them. A
webinar is an elegant digital alternative to a town hall meeting, especially if it is
intended to have one-way information sharing with a limited question and answer
session. People can participate in informal polls or raise questions in this format.
The entire webinar can be archived and made available for nonparticipants who may
want to access the information later.
D. Establish Timeline and Reporting Milestones
An outreach strategy must be calibrated to fit the scope of the project and the
expectations of the community. Yet, all outreach strategies must include a clear
timeline, including measurable milestones, an estimate of the approximate number
of people who will be “touched” through the outreach, and a clarity about how each
stakeholder group will be contacted. This document requires detail and clarity, and
vague notations should be avoided.
E. Publish and Communicate Outreach Plan
Once the plan is finished, the general outline (including timeline and milestones)
should be reported out to stakeholder groups, the community at large, and within the
planning agency. Outreach is perhaps a misnomer here, signifying uni-directional
communication. It should be noted that we have made every effort to create and
foster dialogue throughout.

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6.5 Closing Comments About Engagement

The planning team should develop an engagement strategy that is suited for the
scale of the project and should maximize community-based resources. Securing
these resources is also an important way to engage the community – in-kind contri-
butions from local businesses, time offered by volunteers, and interest from local
experts in getting involved are all measures of a successful engagement strategy.
The planning team must identify community leaders who are not always leading
projects but those who are new and eager to get involved and help prepare them to
take on leadership roles such as facilitating small group conversations, staffing open
houses, and playing a role in managing the outreach process in some way.
Although the engagement strategy may unfold organically, a successful engage-
ment strategy should be planned with a good understanding of the needs of the
project at hand and the community’s own resources and tolerances for community
engagement. Some communities are process oriented and are interested in how
decisions are being made, while others are focused on seeing tangible outcomes of
the decisions and knowing that their participation resulted in specific accomplish-
ments. In most situations, communities vacillate between the two approaches and a
successful engagement process must offer satisfaction in both ways. An engage-
ment strategy’s cadences and milestones should be meaningful to participants. This
is only possible if the planner understands her community. Scheduling an important
community meeting on a religious holiday or holding a town hall meeting during
public school vacation are embarrassing and avoidable gaffes that nevertheless
occur with depressing regularity.

6.6 Social Media

No planning project can be successful without a social media strategy. Social media
can be used for both for information dissemination, encouraging peer-to-peer infor-
mation sharing, and for increasing visibility about a project. Social media platforms
are discussed in detail in Chapter 7. There is a variety of risks associated with the
use of social media. One of the main concerns that are often raised by legal experts
and risk-averse individuals is that the message can get lost and, worse, get co-opted
and misused in counterproductive ways. In addition, government agencies have
additional restrictions in using social media platforms because they cannot be seen
lobbying for policy outcomes. Despite such fears, it is imperative to develop and
roll out a social media strategy to support meaningful civic engagement. Initially, it
is useful to start small, selecting one platform, such as Twitter to disseminate infor-
mation as it happens and provide links to a static digital website so that the average
onlooker can keep themselves informed about the project as it evolves. It is useful
to develop some appropriate hashtags that can be used to consolidate the discus-
sions that occur about the project.

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6.7 Conclusions

In this chapter, we have made several points. Chief among them is to avoid falling
into a trap of an adversarial strategy that creates winners and losers. Planning agen-
cies are easily co-opted and at the same time vilified by savvy community groups
who understand the power of 1960s style organizing and protest politics. Moving
planning away from a game where political favors are given or withheld toward a
more collaborative model of civic engagement requires time and patience. At the
end of every engagement process, planners should ask themselves the following
questions:
• Is there more willingness to participate in the future?
• Do more people trust the process, even when they disagree about the
outcomes?
• Do newcomers who joined the process better understand how planning works, its
strengths and its limits?
• Have participants become better at articulating in sharing their personal and local
knowledge for the benefit of the community?
• Has the social, intellectual, political capacity of the participants improved?
• Is the process sustainable without planners?
If the answer to these questions is affirmative, then that is a measure of a good
civic engagement process. Ultimately, engaged participants understand how to
transform spaces and places using data, information, historical precedents, and with
a realistic understanding of global and regional challenges. Planners are vital in
facilitating civic engagement because they can educate, inform, and support the
public in articulating the strengths of a community and shape their wishes and ideas
into tangible projects and programs.

References

Arnstein S (1969) A ladder of citizen participation. J Am Inst Plann 8(3):216–224

Bebbington A, Woolcock M, Guggenheim S, Olson E (eds) (2006) The search for empowerment:
social capital as idea and practice at the World Bank. Kumarian Press, West Hartford
Creighton J (2005) The public participation handbook: making better decisions through citizen
involvement. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco
Davidoff P (1965) Advocacy and pluralism in planning. J Am Inst Plann 31(4):331–338. https://
doi.org/10.1080/01944366508978187
Hall P (1996) Cities of tomorrow: an intellectual history of urban planning and design in the twen-
tieth century., Updated edn. Blackwell, Malden
Jacobs J (1961) The death and life of great American cities. Random House, New York
Putnam R (2000) Bowling alone: the collapse and revival of American community. Simon &
Schuster, New York

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Chapter 7
Implementation

7.1 Moving from Ideas to Action

Recent planning graduates and new entrants to the planning profession are often
overwhelmed about how best to be effective in their job. Most planning profession-
als enter the field with high-minded values such as social justice and equity and
subsequently struggle to identify ways to “make a difference” within the confines
of their role within an organization. Entry-level planners, especially those working
in complex and hierarchically organized bureaucracies are assigned specialized
tasks that often preclude them from understanding the big picture. Even in organi-
zations that have a relatively flat managerial structure, planners may not be familiar
with the myriad of ways in which their individual contributions interact with the
work of others within and outside the organization. Nowhere is this disconnect
more obvious than when a project moves from the creative planning phase to the
pragmatic operational or implementation phase. This chapter describes the dynam-
ics of implementation. We argue that a planner who understands these dynamics is
better prepared to intervene to secure the integrity of ideas that they have champi-
oned in the planning phase. Only then, will they be able to help achieve project/
policy implementation – an achievement that all planners celebrate. Successful
implementation of plans often provides individual planners and planning teams a
sense of accomplishment and job satisfaction.
What is implementation? Implementation usually references a wide range of activ-
ities or actions that occur after a decision has been made – decisions that include a
requirement of action. Implementation is shaped by the scale, context, technological,
and sociopolitical variables. The disconnect between plan making and implementa-
tion failures is a perpetual challenge; it casts negative aspersions on the value of plan-
ning as an approach to solving social problems in a democratic society.
Most planners would agree that the completion of a plan is an important mile-
stone and an achievement to be celebrated. For instance, for transportation planners
and supporters of public transit advocating for reducing auto dependence, the

© Springer International Publishing AG 2018 129

L. Ramasubramanian, J. Albrecht, Essential Methods for Planning Practitioners,
The Urban Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68041-5_7

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130 7 Implementation

unveiling of a new city-wide greenway plan that encourages walking and bicycling
is a memorable achievement because it is a product, an artifact that synthesizes the
outcomes of their efforts which includes a complex array of data gathering and
analysis tasks, as well as a series of community consultations to shore up support for
the plan. Yet, no planner wants the plan they worked on to become part of a library’s
archive and never see the light of day again. Plans, as important and significant as
they are, are often not celebrated unless the ideas contained within them are enacted
to shape the built environment. The development of policies and programs encoun-
ters the same challenges – their value is full realized only when they are adopted
within the corpus of existing laws and regulations that govern everyday life.
Planning professionals serve in multiple roles to translate ideas into actions.
Their contributions to plan making are supported by a variety of research and analy-
sis methods discussed in Chapters 4 and 5. The methods and techniques of civic
engagement necessary to garner stakeholders’ support for planning actions are dis-
cussed in Chapter 6. This chapter discusses the skills, methods, and techniques that
are necessary in the long implementation and evaluation phases of a project, pro-
gram, or policy.

7.2 Understanding Implementation Cycles

Implementation is challenging, even in the case of well-defined plans that are mod-
est in scope, completed on time and under budget, and where the implementation
falls within the purview of a single agency. When a project, policy, or plan is imple-
mented, its immediate impact can sometimes be observed and measured immedi-
ately. For example, a transportation planner working on designing or planning a new
bridge can celebrate the completion and opening of that bridge. They can also assess
the effectiveness of the new bridge by assessing (through empirical methods)
whether the new bridge serves its stated purpose – achieving a reduction in traffic
congestion.
The impacts of many social policies, plans, and programs are difficult to verify
immediately because implementation usually occurs in phases. Even in the case of
the bridge example, there may be second-order effects that occur over time. For
example, traffic flows could increase, thereby increasing congestion, rather than
reducing it. Another second-order effect is that the new bridge could spur new
development initiatives. Thus, both positive and negative effects of planning inter-
ventions can be difficult to assess and quantify immediately. Returning to the earlier
example of greenway planning, planners and other greenway enthusiasts will not be
able to accurately measure, quantify, or qualify all the societal benefits of the green-
way immediately after the first phase is completed.
The complexity of implementation cycles can best be understood and explained
by examining the history of large-scale infrastructure or planning projects. Alan
Altschuler and David Luberoff (2003) define megaprojects as “initiatives that are
physical, very expensive, and public” and state that they are a “fundamentally an

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7.2 Understanding Implementation Cycles 131

expression of public authority” (p.2). Among the many projects that qualify for this
categorization are Boston’s Central Artery/Tunnel (CA/T) project and the Tappan
Zee Bridge replacement project in New York.
The New NY Bridge project, now known as the Mario Cuomo Bridge, currently
underway (scheduled completion in 2018), is intended to replace the 3.1 mile
Tappan Zee Bridge originally constructed in 1955. The project’s estimated cost of
USD 3.98 billion and the length of time from when the first discussions about bridge
replacement began in 1997 to when construction began in late 2013 qualify it to be
acknowledged as a planning megaproject. Philip Plotch (2015) describes this tortur-
ous path using the mnemonic, FAILURE, to explain the different factors that
delayed project implementation. The factors include insufficient funding, adverse
goals, interagency conflict, lack of leadership, uncertainty about alternatives, regu-
lations that were onerous, and expectations that were unrealistic (p.182). Each of
these factors provides insight into the complexities associated with plan implemen-
tation. Long and costly delays are not exclusively linked to complex megaprojects.
This book does not focus on the reasons (or factors in Plotch’s parlance) typically
associated with implementation delays; instead, we describe some valuable strate-
gies and tactics that planners can adopt to minimize delays and manage stakehold-
ers’ expectations before and during implementation.
The skills that planners require to move ideas into tangible outcomes undoubt-
edly begin with plan making. But a good plan does not automatically result in an
implemented plan! Most agency archives include a variety of plans that were never
implemented. We argue that in the current social and political environment, plan-
ners, more than ever before, must be involved in conversations about implementa-
tion regardless of their area of specialization or expertise. As educators, we
understand that graduate students and new planners aspire to become specialists in
a specific area of expertise because it conveys job preparedness and readiness. We
do not minimize this desire to cultivate specialized skills. However, planners cannot
disengage from conversations about implementation.
One of the difficulties in moving from ideas to action is associated with reminding
different stakeholders about the scope, purpose, and intended contributions of a proj-
ect, plan, or policy. In linear time, stakeholders engaged in early stages may shift their
focus or disengage completely by the time the plans are completed. Those who got
involved to champion a single cause or issue are most likely to disengage once their
ideas are considered, but the average member of the public has neither the inclination
nor the stamina to be associated with the project for its entire planning and implemen-
tation life cycle. Citizens also trust that planners will implement the wishes that were
expressed in public meetings. Having fulfilled their civic obligations, they move on to
deal with their own lives. There is a collective amnesia that surrounds many long-term
projects – goals change, scope creeps occur, and in a dynamic system, changes to parts
of the system diminish the value of the project or plan that is being implemented. For
example, a mobilized community’s efforts to create local, well-paying jobs can be
derailed by a national recession, an event over which they have no control. A thought-
ful planner serving as a community memory keeper can play an important role in
supporting the implementation of good projects, plans, and ideas.

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In Chapter 2, we discussed some of the process-oriented challenges of planning.

These included addressing the distrust of the public, the notion of “planning exper-
tise,” navigating the complexity of planning with and for a diverse populous, and
finally, recognizing that the ways in which citizens’ groups, bureaucrats, and elected
officials engage with each other and with professional planners have changed over
the years. Also in Chapter 2, we reminded planners that planning is both an art and
a science, and requires the innovative use of available tools, including digital tech-
nologies. In the next section, we discuss the concept of digital storytelling to sup-
port implementation.

7.3 Digital Storytelling

Stories, or narratives, play a critically important role in communicating our perspec-

tive within our community and to the broader public. An effectively told story can
influence decision-makers and spark wider discussions in our cities and neighbor-
hoods (Schön and Rein 1994; Throgmorton 1996; Forester 1999). Some planning
scholars have advocated for the integration of storytelling techniques to persuade
and convince stakeholders about the value of specific planning decisions. Within
this framework, the narrator does not merely provide the data and information nec-
essary to make the decision – they use their skills to craft a situated and contextual-
ized narrative that allows decision-makers to fully understand the significance of the
decisions they are about to make. Critics point out that the storytelling is just that,
stories – that relying on storytelling can sometimes mean succumbing to potential
misrepresentations and falsehoods that are ultimately harmful within the context of
planning. Throgmorton, an advocate of storytelling, also summarizes the critique of
planning scholars like Flyvbjerg (1998) who observe that all the persuasive and
eloquent storytelling in the world cannot outweigh power differentials, in other
words, “power, not stories, is what matters” (Throgmorton 2003:127).
We use the phrase digital storytelling to describe socio-spatial narratives created
by combining a variety of digital techniques. The use of this genre to inform and
educate was popularized by documentary film makers like Ken Burns who com-
bined still photographs, narration, actors reading quotes, as well as diaries and inter-
views in the 1990 TV series “The Civil War” to create a very comprehensive yet
accessible collage of the military, social, and political facets and dynamics of that
period in the history of the USA. Yet, Ken Burns has an advantage over the average
planner – he tells a story about the past, whereas planners are called upon to speak
persuasively about the future.
We are all experts about where we live, and our stories about places we know and
love (or know and want to change) can be an evocative, eloquent, and compelling
force for change through urban planning. Individuals or interest groups compile their
understanding of a place and its history using photographs, video, animation, sound,
music, text, and/or a narrative voice. For example, creating an audio narrative of citi-
zens speaking about the positives and negatives of their neighborhood is more power-
ful than a planners’ reporting of the same information that was derived from census

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data. More importantly, personal narratives add new data – they provide planners and
decision-makers with new information which simply did not exist before! Nevertheless,
census data is incredibly valuable. In our work with community groups, we have taken
our data to the community for members to pore over it and confirm or disconfirm our
work. Community residents are excited when the census data confirms what they
know “in their gut.” At the same time, the data sometimes challenges the cherished
assumptions and biases of residents in a neighborhood. Planners as skilled facilitators
(see Sect. 7.8) can help to explain these discrepancies. However, sometimes, even the
best planners have to go back and check their numbers!
Experiential knowledge is also needed for further analyses – different types of
data can be used for different purposes. In a community planning process, digital
storytelling can be an effective way of gathering and sharing information on what is
important to community members and what makes a community unique. By com-
bining elements of public history and public art with storytelling, place construction
can be redefined from current mainstream experience to include forgotten “invisi-
ble” parts of the city and make them visible.
Table 7.1 describes the strengths and limitations of digital storytelling. Planners
or stakeholders can use digital storytelling techniques to describe a future vision or
visions (scenarios), and it might also be used to illustrate the intended results of an
agreed-upon plan. Narrative approaches can be related to formal modeling
approaches (see Chapter 5). Narratives can be mined to provide the input data for
urban models (Guhathakurta 2001, 2002). Narratives and quantitative models can
be combined to develop scenarios that can be run at workshops with a variety of
stakeholders. Narrative-driven scenarios are also an important component of
“community visioning,” which is a strategy used by urban planners to encourage the
building of sustainable futures for communities through civic engagement (Ding
2005). As with any activity, it requires careful planning to make sure the stories will
effectively inform a planning process.

Table 7.1 Strengths and limitations of digital storytelling

Strengths Limitations
People can describe communities, places, Requires specific technologies and technical
and memories in their own words expertise
The narratives can be edited and adapted for Digital technologies constantly change and
different audiences evolve; keeping up may be challenging
Different points of view can be expressed/ Like many participatory tools, storytelling
juxtaposed (digital or not) is limited by the number and
quality of the participants
Effective way to engage youth and audiences
without formal planning experience Hard to introduce to groups that are comfortable
with traditional engagement techniques
Effective way to create intergenerational and
intercultural conversations Developing the storyline and story production
can be time-consuming
Many free and user-friendly tools to get
started with digital storytelling Poorly produced digital narratives can introduce
bias that is not representative
Narratives can be archived and shared to
create a community memory

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Digital storytelling activities are effective when they engage a broad diversity of
participants and when they are integrated as a part of community conversations
between and among different publics. Storytelling allows everyday citizens to effec-
tively participate in value-mapping activities because the stories help elucidate and
clarify the values contained within quantitative information. For example, the Orton
Foundation’s Community Heart & Soul model integrates digital storytelling into its
phased approach to community planning with its three core principles: (1) involving
everyone, (2) focusing on what matters, and (3) playing the long game. This model
showcases the seamless integration of technology and storytelling to craft a narra-
tive that advocates for the preservation of small towns and rural communities.1
Although these narratives can be used during any stage in a planning process, for
example, in a data-gathering (analysis) phase, we present this technique in Chapter 7
because we argue that it is very powerful toward the end of a planning project, when
planners move from a phase of data analysis to data synthesis and implementation.

7.4 Understanding the Governance Landscape

Since a clear majority of entry-level planners will work for the public sector either
directly or through their work in private consulting firms that fulfill planning func-
tions for government agencies, we urge planning students and new graduates to
invest time understanding the functions of different state and local agencies to
understand where different types of planning occur. In most American cities, many
traditional planning functions like zoning and land-use controls reside at the local
(city/county) level. In a small- or medium-sized city, the planning department is an
integral part of the city’s management team, and the planning director has a great
deal of power and influence about how important social and political concerns
affecting that city are addressed. However, economic development, infrastructure
provision and maintenance, environmental protection, and many other aspects of
our public life are the responsibility of many government agencies that cross juris-
dictional boundaries. Spatial extents and high density are but two of the variables
that can add complexity.
In larger cities, public authorities (corporate instruments that undertake bureau-
cratic obligations and have broad powers and autonomy) and public-private partner-
ships P3s (contractual agreements between public agencies and private sector
entities that deliver services or create facilities used by the public at large) routinely
engage in major planning activities. In addition, a variety of nongovernmental
organizations that include organized advocacy groups and informal issue-based
coalitions and individual stakeholders also influence planning.
Recent graduates, and others new to the field, should learn about the diversity of
planning activities that are undertaken within city and state government. One way to

1
Orton Foundation’s Community Heart & Soul model. Interactive website available at https://
www.orton.org/build-your-community/model/, retrieved on April 2, 2017.

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7.4 Understanding the Governance Landscape 135

accomplish this goal is to understand the different types of work that agencies
undertake. Planning activities can be examined across sectors, such as housing, eco-
nomic development, education, and transportation. They can also be examined
across a range of sociodemographic issues, chief among them inclusion, community
development, aging populations, and youth services. The protection of the natural
environment, energy production and conservation, and water and waste manage-
ment also involve a great deal of planning. In short, planning occurs just about
everywhere. It’s the responsibility of serious planners or aspiring planning profes-
sionals to understand the diversity and complexity of planning from an agency per-
spective. For new graduates, this scan of agencies will provide valuable information
about places to look for future employment.
Planning approaches may vary drastically from agency to agency. Kelly and
Becker (2000) describe the different approaches to community-wide planning. They
include goal-driven planning (a classic and traditional approach), trends-driven
planning (a technocratic and incremental strategy that assumes that the present uses
and activities will continue at a greater or lesser intensity), opportunity-driven plan-
ning (planning based on assessing needs using techniques such as SWOT analysis
to determine intervention strategies), issue-driven planning (a pragmatic and results
oriented, with expectations of immediate wins), and vision-driven planning (a prin-
cipled long-term approach that can help create a culture of planning within a com-
munity). We would like to include crisis-driven planning (short-term planning to
address immediate concerns, e.g., planning for the resettlement of refugees or
addressing the after effects of a natural disaster) to this list.
In some cities, organized nongovernmental groups wield great influence in shap-
ing conversations about planning. These include civic and advocacy organizations
that champion specific planning approaches and ideas. In the New York region, the
Regional Plan Association (http://www.rpa.org/) advocates its visions through the
development of regional plans. Since the 1920s, the organization has published
three plans, and some of the ideas contained within have been adopted and adapted
by planning agencies in the region. At present the organization is working on the
Fourth Regional Plan. The Congress for the New Urbanism (https://www.cnu.org/),
founded in the early 1990s, has been influential over the last two decades in encour-
aging elected officials, architects, landscape architects, and planners to work col-
laboratively to mitigate urban sprawl through innovations in design and planning.
New Urbanism includes a set of planning theories and frameworks and is coupled
with a social movement that organizes and engages citizens in planning. If planners
remember their planning history (see Chapter 2), then, they will not and should not
be surprised that New Urbanist ideals have gained social and political currency.
Research institutes also influence public debates about planning. Some research
institutes are more politicized than others, but all such institutes and think tanks use
data to inform, educate, persuade, and ultimately focus decision-making. Examples
of such influential institutions that have shaped planning discourse include the
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (https://www.rwjf.org/), the Brookings Institution
(https://www.brookings.edu/), and the Urban Institute (https://www.urban.org/)
among others.

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To the extent where public participation is encouraged, community-based activ-

ists also strive to have their say. Organized activism continues to shape and limit the
actions of many local and state governments. Last but not the least, individual citi-
zens, John and Jane Q Public, also offer inputs directly, unfiltered by intermediaries
as they have always done – through direct participation in planning processes, by
sharing their views in public forums, and through the ballot box – electing those
who are likely to share their views. In short, planning activities occur within and
outside of the formally established departments of planning.

7.5 Understanding Policymaking Frameworks

What is public policymaking? A basic definition comes from Thomas Dye, “Public
Policy is whatever governments choose to do or not to do” (Dye 1972:1). While
simple, it seems to be rather vague. Policy appears to be very similar to planning –
in that many scholars agree that the word policy describes the general principles that
help to guide action. A simple way to separate policy from planning, for our pur-
poses, is to consider public policy to be “principles that are made explicit in law and
other formal acts of governmental bodies” (Preston and Post 2013: 11, emphasis
added). The policy sciences literature, however, cautions us that many policies in
practice are implicit, in that they “can be implemented without formal articulation
of individual actions and decisions” (Preston and Post 2013:11). Policymaking can
also be programmatic, different from those principles that are enacted as laws.
Planners working at the national (consider federal agencies) or supranational scale
(consider the United Nations or the World Bank) are more likely to be involved
directly in policy analysis and public administration than those who work for local
governments.
Policies can vary in scope and influence. For example, a government agency or
department can design, implement, and enforce policies to achieve its legally man-
dated obligations. These policies tend to define the power and influence of the
agency making the policy and may not impact a wide swath of society. There are
three main models of policymaking – optimization, incrementalism, and power and
bargaining. The fourth, institutional systems model integrates all three and is preva-
lent in complex democratic societies (Preston and Post 2013).
Policymaking and planning can seem virtually indistinguishable when we
examine the rational-comprehensive approach to planning, popular after World
War II. Within this framework, planners made technical and scientific information
available to decision-makers in the political arena. They were charged to find opti-
mally feasible solutions for well-defined problems, based on criteria articulated by
decision-makers. This is the optimization model of policymaking (Preston and
Post 2013).
Incrementalism popularized by Charles Lindblom (1959) argues that policies are
made gradually, in stages. This model begins with the premise that decision-makers
are not in agreement about overarching goals or the criteria that will help arrive at

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7.6 Agenda Setting and the Role of Social Media 137

an optimal solution. Consider the Tappan Zee Bridge project we discussed earlier in
this chapter. The reasons for the delays are attributable easily to the lack of agree-
ment about goals and the key criteria that were needed to be satisfied to arrive at an
optimal solution. If history is to be our guide, then most policymaking falls under
the incremental model. Within the incremental planning model of policymaking,
decision-makers develop policies to address immediate and near future concerns.
Policies become a scaffold built to support specific ideas being championed and are
more likely to address procedural concerns than resolving ideological conflicts.
The power and bargaining model of policymaking has its roots in political sci-
ence. This model focuses on interactions between different societal groups, recog-
nizing that there are many different constituencies that have varying levels of social,
economic, and political power to influence the actions of government and that indi-
viduals can simultaneously be members of different constituencies. In its simplest
form, a bargain requires mutually acceptable divisions of rewards among the groups
that are involved in the negotiations. Accurately understanding the relative power of
various groups that are involved and devising good communication processes
becomes critical before one can successfully advocate for or against a specific pol-
icy position (Preston and Post 2013). This model of policymaking, anchored as it is
in power, does not privilege technical expertise or normative positions – relying
entirely on the positions that are articulated by those with power and influence over
important decisions. Advocacy planning, discussed in Chapter 6, can be viewed as
an off-shoot of, or as a reaction to this model of policymaking.
In contemporary societies, these three models of policymaking often coexist and
operate alongside each other. The institutional systems model best describes their
integration. Here, policymaking begins with formulations that are articulated and
imbued with constitutional and governmental authority. Groups in our society raise
issues that constitutional and governmental systems are required to address; these
groups also simultaneously react to the actions taken by these systems. Once issues
are brought to the fore, the optimization model of policymaking proceeds in an
incremental fashion, with a recognition of the power differentials that exist among
groups. Institutional systems analysis recognizes that the implicit norms and values
that govern policymaking can change over time (Preston and Post 2013). In this
policymaking landscape, planners must recognize where, when, and how to act to
gain support and credence for their ideas. One way to identify those moments and
points of inflection is to understand the nature of agenda setting in policymaking.

7.6 Agenda Setting and the Role of Social Media

In describing the institutional systems analysis approach to policymaking, we previ-

ously observed that groups in society exert pressure on governments to enact laws,
policies, and rules and they also react and respond to the laws and policies enacted by
governments. Planners must ask, “How do governments decide which issues to take
on?” An ancillary question to consider is, “Why now?” Let us look outside the world

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of planning to understand this dynamic better. In the United States, the Supreme Court
is the highest court of law; the cases the court decides to hear are widely accepted as
important public policy issues because they have become worthy of the court’s con-
sideration. The decision to accept or reject a case for consideration is not taken lightly
by the judges – and there are many procedural guidelines and steps that are followed.
Yet, some issues that once were not on the Supreme Court’s radar eventually become
worthy of their consideration. How does that happen? As individuals, we hold opin-
ions or perspectives about a range of issues that are relevant in the public realm.
Opinions matter – sometimes, the same opinion is held by many people (for example,
regarding the use of eminent domain authority); at other times, many people recog-
nize that even if an issue affects only a subset of the population (e.g., transgender
individuals), its meaningful resolution concerns society in its entirety.
Public opinion is an important way in which issues get placed on the court’s
agenda. It’s reasonable to conclude that the results of opinion polls matter to policy-
makers. Opinion polls are conducted and developed by many organizations and the
media. Despite credible research and practical evidence that suggests that opinion
polls can be unreliable, they do have the power to create news headlines and thereby
exert their own influence on policy conversations.
Interest groups have always worked to shape public opinion. Setting aside the
interest groups that work in the arena of electoral politics, there are many interest
groups that are issue-based coalitions that work to create visibility for specific issues
and actively help to shape the policy to address their concerns. The American
Planning Association in 2014 released the results of their national polling – unsur-
prisingly, they found that 67% of those surveyed believed that “community plan-
ning is important for economic recovery” (American Planning Association 2014).
While the report offers a rich source of data and insights about how different demo-
graphic groups in the United States think about planning and the value of planning,
one could not be faulted for wondering whether this was a self-serving exercise.
The American Planning Association (APA) also regularly assembles the collec-
tive thinking about issues that are important to planners. The policy guides2 cover
many different topics and include aging in community, agricultural land preserva-
tion, billboard controls, climate change, community residences, endangered species
and habitat protection, energy, environment-waste management,
environment-wetlands, factory-built housing, community and regional food plan-
ning, freight, hazard mitigation, historic and cultural resources, homelessness,
housing, impact fees, neighborhood collaborative planning, provision of childcare,
public redevelopment, security, smart growth, surface transportation, takings, and
water. The association notes that three new topics – planning and health, afford-
able housing, and social equity and inclusive growth – have been approved for study
and policy guide development.
Individual leaders often use their expertise to shape policy conversations. In
New York City, William H Whyte, a sociologist, became interested in how people

2
American Planning Association APA Policy Guides. Available at https://www.planning.org/pol-
icy/guides/, retrieved on April 14, 2017.

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7.7 A Brief Comment About Budgets 139

move in public spaces. His landmark book and accompanying documentary, The
Social Life of Small Urban Spaces (1980), used time-lapse photography, observa-
tions, behavioral maps, and movie footage of public spaces to challenge many exist-
ing planning policies. His work was influential in creating physical changes (the
transformation of Bryant Park in Manhattan) which is one notable example, but it
also facilitated a whole series of policy changes about the design and management
of urban public spaces. These policies were adopted by the New York Department
of City Planning and continue to influence urban design in the city to this day.
Another example of an influential leader shaping urban design is the architect Jan
Gehl. Jan Gehl designed interventions that created pedestrian friendly public spaces.
Cities throughout the world have used Gehl’s work to develop policy and design
guidelines to create pedestrian- and bike-friendly cities.
While the media has always helped to shape the policy agenda (there is a strong
relationship between government officials and elected officials on the one hand and
journalists on the other), the phenomenon of social media, including but not limited
to texting, blogging, instagramming, and live streaming, and other individualized
and hyper-local journalistic endeavors must be taken seriously by planners. In this
century, social media is a significant influencer of public policy, escalating issues
quickly to the realm of national debate and discussion. Sometimes, these high-
energy viral transmissions of information are like electrical voltage fluctuations –
they are an anomaly that is recorded but one that can ultimately be ignored. Yet, at
other times, social media dialogues and hashtag activism serve as a bell weather that
reflects changing public sentiments about social and political issues that directly
impact how public policy issues are framed and reframed.

7.7 A Brief Comment About Budgets

Planners should understand how the budget for the agency they work for is struc-
tured and whether the budget allocations have increased or declined or stayed con-
stant over the years. After adjusting for inflation, the budget is a reliable indicator
about the government’s overall policy priorities. A budget also shapes the proce-
dures an agency can use to allocate resources for public programs and services,
including how the performance of those programs and services will be evaluated.
While outside of the scope of this book, we strongly recommend that planners make
every effort to understand the basic principles of budgeting. An agency’s budget
usually includes an operating budget (expenditures for the current year) and a capi-
tal budget (a plan for long-term development or maintenance of new facilities or
equipment). Open and/or publicly available data are useful to understand city and
agency budgets, spending patterns, and how taxpayer dollars are allocated and dis-
tributed across different types of government functions. In sum, and to put it bluntly,
budgets strongly define the success and failure of policy priorities.
While the structural opportunities and constraints that shape project implementa-
tion can seem daunting, we suggest that planners can continue to grow their sphere

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of influence over public policymaking within and outside their agencies by cultivat-
ing a range of skills discussed in the next chapter. You may wonder why a book
focused on planning methods takes the time to discuss the development of personal
and interpersonal skills. Our experience leads us to understand that successful plan-
ners possess a unique blend of technical, social, and political skills that enable them
to shape and facilitate conversations about social and political change.

7.8 Ethics

As professionals, planners are expected to conform to ethical guidelines in their

practice, regardless of whether they work for the government, private, or nonprofit
sector. Acting ethically can be interpreted differently – depending on the situational
context. For example, advocacy planners may differ from planners working for gov-
ernment on how to interpret situational ethics, but they would both agree that
accepting bribes is verboten.
The key to acting ethically is to be well informed about the situational context
and to act responsibly and thoughtfully. There are two sets of ethical guidelines that
can provide guidance to all planners, especially newcomers to the field. The
American Planning Association is a membership organization that welcomes mem-
bers who are interested in planning regardless of their organizational affiliation. The
American Institute of Certified Planners is an association of credentialed planners
who demonstrate education, experience, and knowledge of the profession (qualify-
ing for and passing the AICP exam) and commit to stay current on planning issues
(Certification Maintenance). Both organizations have ethics guidelines. There is
much agreement between the APA’s statement of ethical principles in planning
which is a guide and the AICP Code of Ethics; there are also some differences that
may shape how individual planners holding an AICP certification address situa-
tional conflicts.

7.9 Conclusion

Planning professionals should consider the complex governance regimes and policy
frameworks that drive implementation in the localities where they work. In addition
to having a good understanding of technical skills and civic engagement methods,
planning professionals should cultivate a variety of skills to assist everyday people
in sifting through different kinds of information, ensuring that diverse voices are
heard, and ultimately forging consensus about how to address shared community
concerns about the future. When planners distance themselves from these obliga-
tions, confining themselves to technocratic roles, they diminish the influence of the
profession to create meaningful social transformation.

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References 141

References

Altschuler A, Luberoff D (2003) Mega-projects: the changing politics of urban public investment.
Brookings Institution Press, Washington, DC
American Planning Association (2014) Investing in place for economic growth and competitive-
ness: a research summary, May 2014. American Planning Association, Chicago
Ding P (2005) Envisioning local futures: the evolution of community visioning as a tool for man-
aging change. J Fut Stud 9(4):89–100
Dye T (1972) Understanding public policy. Prentice Hall, Inc, Englewood Cliffs
Flyvbjerg B (1998) Rationality and power: democracy in practice. University of Chicago Press,
Chicago
Forester J (1999) The deliberative practitioner: encouraging participatory planning processes. The
MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
Guhathakurta S (2001) Urban modeling as storytelling: using simulation as a narrative. The
Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) working paper series, 37. Available
through CASA
Guhathakurta S (2002) Urban modeling as storytelling: using simulation models as a narrative.
Environ Plan B Plan Des 29(6):895–911
Kelly E, Becker B (2000) Community planning: an introduction to the comprehensive plan. Island
Press, Washington, DC
Lindblom C (1959) The science of muddling through. Public Adm Rev 19(2):79–99
Plotch P (2015) Politics across the Hudson: the Tappan Zee MegaProject. Rutgers University
Press, New Brunswick
Preston L, Post J (2013) Private management and public policy: the principle of public responsibil-
ity. Stanford University Press, Stanford
Schön M, Rein M (1994) Frame reflection: toward the resolution of intractable policy controver-
sies. Basic Books, Boston
Throgmorton J (1996) Planning as persuasive storytelling: the rhetorical construction of Chicago’s
electric future. University of Chicago Press, Chicago
Throgmorton J (2003) Planning as persuasive storytelling in a global-scale web of relationships.
Plan Theory 2(2):125–151
Whyte W (1980) The social life of small urban spaces. Project for Public Spaces, New York.
(published 2001)

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Chapter 8
Epilogue

8.1 Introduction

We are nearing the end of our narrative. Our narrative recognizes the powerful role
that planners can play in creating transformational change. The most obvious con-
tributions that planners make reside in their ability to shape the built environment.
This is important and should not be overlooked. Safe streets, well-planned neigh-
borhoods with amenities that support the needs of residents and visitors, and wel-
coming public spaces support economic development and contribute to an enhanced
quality of life. Yet, planners can and indeed do much more! Planners identify myr-
iad opportunities for intervention by developing policies, programs, plans, and
actions, all designed to address the needs of communities, while working within
existing institutional frameworks and competing political agendas to address the
needs and aspirations of the communities they serve.
According to the American Planning Association, a sizable majority of planners
(70%) work in the public sector.1 Among these public sector planners, about 40% are
employed in city governments. For planners working in government, their work and
self-expression are shaped and circumscribed by the politics, policies, attitudes, and
beliefs of elected officials and appointed agency heads. Simply put, planners work-
ing in government are not able to articulate or implement ambitious planning agen-
das. They opt to use incremental planning approaches, as discussed in Chapter 7.
This is no excuse for a new planner to retreat into a world governed by techno-
cratic expertise. The need to engage with political actors should be welcomed,
rather than feared. We anticipate that planners reading this book will consider

1
The 2016 APA/AICP Planners Salary Survey Employment Characteristics. The 2016 web-based
survey was conducted by Readex Research for APA and AICP. The survey was sent to APA regular,
life, faculty, and new professional members (28,856). The survey achieved an overall response rate
of 39 percent. The results for salary are reported for 9709 respondents who provide salary data and
indicated that they are employed or self-employed full time and year-round as planners or in plan-
ning-related positions. Data available from the American Planning Association.

© Springer International Publishing AG 2018 143

L. Ramasubramanian, J. Albrecht, Essential Methods for Planning Practitioners,
The Urban Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68041-5_8

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144 8 Epilogue

working within and through formal institutions to create transformational change.

All planners, especially those working in government, would do well to cultivate a
wide range of planning skills – it is imperative to creating and then growing one’s
individual sphere of influence.

8.2 Planning Skills

As we have observed in Chapters 1 and 2, planners are interested in future-oriented

problem solving. In a democracy, planners are (or should be) at the front lines,
mediating and negotiating between competing interests and helping to forge a
strong and hopeful vision for a shared future. To be successful at their job, they must
understand the community they serve in all its complexity. Chapters 3, 4, and 5
provide some guidance about how planners can immerse themselves in understand-
ing their community using a variety of data sources. That immersion is a wonderful
first step and requires time and dedication to do correctly. They must also under-
stand how to think critically about the built environment and its impact on the lived
experience (Talen 2009).

8.2.1 Written Communication Skills

Planners must be able to communicate their knowledge and understanding of issues

and methods to a range of nontechnical actors, chief among them citizen planners
and elected officials who may be called upon to make legally binding decisions
based on the data, analyses, and recommendations provided to them by planners
who are expected to have some specialized expertise. These types of written com-
munication can include staff reports, environment impact statements, and advisory
memos. Although some of these documents can be quite lengthy and follow pre-
scribed formats, a typical planning report or memo is relatively short. Most memos
include the description of the problem or planning issue, an analysis of alternatives,
and a set of recommendations as suggested actions. The format and content are
highly variable depending on the needs of the agency.
Bonnie Johnson and Ward Lyles (2016) conducted a systematic analysis of staff
reports that examined noncontroversial development applications, building a repre-
sentative national sample of 94 reports, one each from 94 cities across 41 states.
They concluded:
Many staff reports provide traditional basic information, but do not summarize that infor-
mation or use modern formatting tools to make text more comprehensible. Most staff
reports reference the comprehensive plan but rarely cite the future landuse map or plans of
adjacent jurisdictions. Many mention checking traditional public facilities like roads, but
rarely list parks or pedestrian or cycling facilities. Most do not include maps, arguments for
recommendations, or references to soliciting public input. (Johnson and Lyles 2016; 22)

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8.2 Planning Skills 145

Their findings reveal the challenges of writing for nontechnical audiences in a per-
suasive and reliable way without compromising their technical integrity. This bal-
ancing act – of making practical judgements, based on available data and evidence – is
a skill that must be cultivated. When planners provide jargon-filled technical narra-
tives that stop short of drawing inferences and meaningful recommendations, they
are not living up to the ideals of the field and the profession. Even though much of
the writing within the world of planning can be labeled technical writing, it must
inform, engage, and spur action.

8.2.2 Graphical Communication Skills

There is an extensive literature in planning that speaks to the power of hand-drawn

sketches (e.g., Alexander et al. 1977; Lynch 1960), maps (McHarg 1969), and other
2D and 3D renderings, models, and simulations (e.g., Brail and Klosterman 2001)
to inform and educate the public. Practicing planners must understand the technical
skills of mapping and visualizing data using Geographic Information Science (GIS)
tools (Albrecht 2007). See Chapter 3 for the use of these tools and techniques to
describe a community in all its richness and complexity. Planning documents,
reports, and memos should integrate graphics to communicate concepts that are
more easily understood in graphical rather than in narrative formats. Michael
Kwartler and Gianni Longo (2008) argue that visioning allows for greater transpar-
ency and inclusiveness and provides participants with a comprehensive understand-
ing of the issues being discussed. Furthermore, proponents of 3D visualizations and
realistic simulations argue that the lay public (and more importantly elected offi-
cials) can better understand the physical contours of a proposed project, before
breaking ground. While this is true, professional planners must take responsibility
for grounding the soaring creativity embedded in artistic renderings to match lived
and budgetary realities (not every plan warrants a Geodesign solution). Thus, plan-
ners must familiarize themselves with the strengths and limits of graphical visual-
ization techniques.
Learning the use of graphical tools and techniques is a demanding but ultimately
rewarding endeavor. For new planners, staying current with new graphics and visu-
alization technologies is an imperative. Fortunately, there are many nonproprietary
and free-to-use tools which are now available, and this list continues to grow.
Keeping up with evolving technologies can sometimes seem a Sisyphean task.
Notably, tech meetups2 allow planners to interact with their peers as well as tool
developers. A plethora of online resources like webinars can help planners stay
abreast of evolving tech trends.

2
https://www.meetup.com/.

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146 8 Epilogue

8.2.3 Public Presentation Skills

Planners are often called upon to make presentations to different audiences. Planners
working in the public interest must present information and evidence to the lay
public in a respectful way. Being prepared to make public presentations and being
an engaging speaker make planners accessible to community members. People who
attend community meetings are more likely to ask questions and participate in plan-
ning activities if the planner attends community meetings and events on a regular
basis. In this way, planners are akin to politicians – they must be visible and acces-
sible to the communities they serve. New planners should take every opportunity to
attend community meetings and observe senior planners and local elected officials
in action. Ultimately, each planner cultivates his or her own style of presenting
information and engaging in public conversations, but here we end by observing
that it is an important aspect of a successful planner’s repertoire.

8.2.4 Consensus Building Skills

In engaging with the public, planners must be genuine and transparent brokers
between different interest groups. They cannot “take sides” and must provide data
and information equitably to interest groups. Securing agreement from all partici-
pants about the parameters of the process and its intended outcomes is a critical first
step. Documenting and sharing points of agreement are also valuable. In commu-
nity meetings, planners must remember that consensus does not mean complete
agreement; it means that everyone is satisfied with the process and can abide by the
results.
It is important to recognize that planners are often engaged simultaneously in
substantive and procedural conversations – in other words, “what we are trying to
do?” along with, “how are we trying to do it?” In these instances, the consensus
building requires planners to pay attention to diverse stakeholders’ interests as well
as the power differences inherent in any social group. Planners may consider devel-
oping skills in designing and managing charrettes (see end of Sect. 8.3).

8.2.5 Social Communication Skills

Aspiring planners, and recent entrants to the planning profession, should develop a
regimen for consuming and digesting social media narratives about the urban envi-
ronments and sectors they work in. It may also be necessary to cultivate a social
media presence and avidly manage and curate their presence to fully participate in
these newly emergent forums for public policy conversations. We suggest caution
though; not all conversations are civil in these online spaces, and the propensity for

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8.3 Planning in the Twenty-First Century 147

harassment is high. Planners should try to understand diverse policy perspectives.

Nowadays, online forums make it possible for consumers to custom-tailor their
information consumption, picking and choosing information that conforms to their
world views and preconceived ideas. When carried to an extreme, many negative
consequences can result – particularly troubling for planners who are expected to
engage and serve all people, not just people holding ideologies that mirror their
own.

8.3 Planning in the Twenty-First Century

Most planning textbooks outline a typical planning process. The description is usu-
ally accompanied by a diagram that includes a hierarchical series of inter-connected
steps, moving from issue identification, goal formulation, data collection and analy-
sis, development of alternatives, selection of a preferred alternative, implementa-
tion, and monitoring. We suggest that this formalized planning process is a
twentieth-century ideal, better abandoned in theory and practice.
The case studies we describe in Chapter 3 provide a sketch of how a community
can be described to facilitate a center-out planning process that integrates elements
of top-down and bottom-up planning, acknowledging that planning in contempo-
rary societies is initiated and supported by governments, civil society organizations,
and the private sector. Our case studies emphasize and draw attention to the impor-
tance of constructing study area boundaries – boundaries matter a great deal. Even
when our case study locations, Roosevelt Island and Hunts Point appear to be
clearly delineated and stand out as distinct entities, closer scrutiny reveals a series
of connections and dependencies with the rest of the city, for example, in the way
political jurisdictions are drawn to include Roosevelt Island as a part of Manhattan
for some planning purposes but not for others. A similar recognition of interdepen-
dency can be observed as we observe flows of people to and from Hunts Point for
the purposes of employment. Planners should guard against study area boundaries
that are drawn to avoid or ignore serious problems or contentious issues. A study
that skirts around serious problems, even when well executed, will eventually prove
to be useless.
Boundaries are not merely physical – planners should also be watchful when
some issues are moved “off the table” because they do not fall neatly into a desig-
nated aspect of planning. Issues such as social inclusion (or the lack thereof) of any
societal group must be addressed within the context of planning – it should not be
set aside as someone else’s problem to solve.
In both our case study examples, we have emphasized the importance of under-
standing history from the perspective of the people – in other words, to bolster offi-
cial historical narratives with indigenous “people’s narratives” of their place. In
addition to validating and celebrating local experiential knowledge, understanding
the people’s history also prepares planners to identify fault lines of disagreement
that can occur when envisioning the future.

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148 8 Epilogue

Planners must use GIS and other visualization tools to develop a geographical
history of a place – in other words, understand the interconnection between nature
and the built environment. Twentieth-century planners have emphasized the idea of
a tabula rasa, a clean slate upon which planners could imprint their singular visions
(e.g., Peattie 1987). We state unequivocally that there is no such tabula rasa and
planners must acknowledge this clearly. We began our narrative, referencing cli-
mate change and the importance about communicating complex information to a
skeptical public. One of the ways to break the barriers of communication is to use
geographical history – in Hunts Point, for example, the old maps distinguish
between high ground and swamp land, and they show the rivers and the tributaries
that once flowed to drain the landscape but have yielded to impervious paved sur-
faces. Hunts Point is not alone. Eric Sanderson’s Welikia project,3 for example,
allows citizens to go back in time to better understand how their neighborhood must
have been before humans settled there for the first time. It is these types of educa-
tional conversations that will allow planners to talk critically about contemporary
planning challenges and opportunities.
Authors such as Kretzman and McKnight (1993) have pioneered an asset-
building approach to planning, arguing that successful planning must identify and
celebrate the unique assets of any community for that plan to create positive out-
comes. This is true in recognizing the physical infrastructure assets as well as the
cultural and social assets of any community. Engaging nontraditional planning par-
ticipants, including children (e.g., Race and Torma 1998), can offer great rewards in
understanding the rich tapestry of any physical setting.
Twenty-first-century planning cannot be reactive; it cannot be limited to quality-
of-life planning, nor can it be limited to the creation of a laundry list of social issues
waiting for someone else to solve them. If planners want to make a difference, they
must learn to improve the quality of the civic engagement processes. We have dis-
cussed civic engagement throughout the book, beginning with specific methods of
data collection in Chapters 4 and 5, the theories and conceptual ways to manage
engagement in Chapter 6, and the integrative approaches of digital story telling in
Chapter 7. Planning charrettes are one way to cultivate and nurture civic engage-
ment in a neighborhood or community. Charrettes are useful to move ideas from
planning to implementation, by developing specific ways for the public to think
about the feasibility of visionary ideas. In other words, a charrette is a one-stop shop
where experts from different disciplines work collaboratively with members of the
public to create a workable plan (e.g., Lennertz and Lutzenhiser 2006; Condon
2008). Charrettes are an important element in a planning process. This process
begins with planners and community members learning about the community
together and developing a shared understanding of planning issues and problems
and culminates with the implementation of an agreed-upon plan.

3
Welikia project. Available at https://welikia.org/explore/mannahatta-map/. Accessed May 15,
2017.

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8.4 Twenty-First-Century Planners 149

8.4 Twenty-First-Century Planners

Over 25% of all planners working for the public sector work in areas with a popula-
tion of half a million people or more.4 Most planners work in cities or city-like envi-
ronments, with only 5% of planners reporting that they work in a rural area according
to the APA/AICP survey referenced earlier. These statistics should give the reader
some pause. The 2016 survey also indicates that over half of the planners surveyed in
2016 were engaged in community development (53%). Land-use or code enforce-
ment and transportation planning also attracted many planning professionals. It may
be useful if more planners worked or chose to work in other less-developed planning
specializations including housing, sustainability, facilities and infrastructure planning,
participation and empowerment, spatial planning, and planning law.
Earlier, in Chapter 2, we argued that the three crosscutting planning challenges
were (1) urbanization, (2) demography, and (3) climate change. The processes of
urbanization hollow out the hinterland, creating new planning challenges and oppor-
tunities (e.g., Vance 2016). A recent essay in the Wall Street Journal noted that rural
America is the new inner city.5 Setting aside the fact that the reference promotes
unhealthy stereotypes about the “inner city,” the article observes that the people “left
behind” in rural America tend to be poorer, unhealthier, and more collectively disad-
vantaged than their urban counterparts. In this context, we challenge planners, particu-
larly those planners working on issues of community development to pay attention to
the development of rural areas and small towns – this may call for newer and more
innovative policies and practices of land management, education, health-care delivery,
and workforce development. Likewise, demographic shifts impact the design of civic
engagement processes and communication protocols – planning approaches that work
effectively in a youthful community of highly educated and wealthy millennials may
not work well in a community of new immigrants or older adults.
Finally, we return to the issue of climate change. National and international cli-
mate change policies have been crafted,6 and most nations agree in principle about
the need to change their patterns of consumption and production in order to reduce
the deleterious effects of climate change. Cities and local governments throughout
the world can and should play an important role in mitigating the harmful effects of
climate change and helping citizens adapt to the changing climate.7,8 Planners
should be at the forefront of assisting with both the development of mitigation strat-
egies and adaption planning by working in partnership with scientists, educators,
and concerned publics to address these challenges.

4
The 2016 APA/AICP Planners Salary Survey Employment Characteristics.
5
Adamy, J. & Overburg, P. 2017. One Nation, Divisible | Rural America Is the New ‘Inner City’,
The Wall Street Journal, May 26th, 2017. Available at https://www.wsj.com/articles/rural-america-
is-the-new-inner-city-1495817008. Accessed on May 26, 2017.
6
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Available at http://unfccc.
int/2860.php. Accessed on May 26, 2017.
7
100 Resilient Cities. Available at http://www.100resilientcities.org. Accessed on May 26, 2017.
8
ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability. Available at http://www.iclei.org/. Accessed on
May 27, 2017.

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150 8 Epilogue

Scholars have the luxury of offering critique of planners who are data-driven or
not data-driven enough, for instance, or about planning processes that wasted time
on community consultation or were not consultative enough. Practising planners are
criticized for focusing exclusively on quality-of-life issues and not taking on larger
structural and societal challenges. Planners are criticized for not focusing on the
needs of the middle class or for focusing entirely on them. So, it goes. As educators
and practitioners, ourselves, we urge you, the reader, to listen and reflect on feed-
back and criticism but to not become paralyzed rendering yourself inactive or inef-
fective. Professional planners have the obligation to plan for everyone, even those
who reject the need for planning. Planners are obligated to act ethically and respon-
sibly to consider the needs of present and future generations – we propose that all
twenty-first-century planners must make a serious commitment to planning for sus-
tainability within their own area of specialization.
We believe that if planners want to shape and influence planning policies, one
simple way to begin is to become engaged in shaping the policy agenda of the field’s
most prominent advocate, to join and participate in the membership association that
represents the nation’s planners. Another way to influence the agenda is by being
engaged directly in community-based, or better, community-driven planning activi-
ties. Participating in community activities outside of the job is an important way to
gain the trust and respect of the communities you serve.
Planners are storytellers, they analyze and synthesize, and, above all, they help
to make sense of the present and the future. This is an important role and one that
planners should not abdicate to others. We hope the methods and techniques we
have discussed in this book encourage you to become better at your craft – doing
planning is hard work, and the best planners make it look easy. You can tell stories
with data and information, with maps and graphics, and with innovative ways to
engage the communities you work with and work to bridge and resolve differences
through conversations – conversations are at the heart of good planning.
We wrote this book for new planning graduates, planners in the early stages of
their career, and planners who are making career transitions. We firmly believe that
twenty-first-century planners should not shy away from learning innovative analyti-
cal methods and techniques. At the same time, we want to ensure that planning
methods are situated and used appropriately within a social and political context,
and with respectful engagement with multiple publics. We recognize that we are
asking a lot of future planners – we do so because the field and the profession
demand it, and we believe planners are more than up to taking on these challenges.

References

Albrecht J (2007) Key concepts and techniques in GIS. Sage, London

Alexander C, Ishikawa S, Silverstein M (1977) A pattern language: towns, buildings, construction.
Oxford University Press, New York
Brail R, Klosterman RE (eds) (2001) Planning support systems: integrating geographic informa-
tion systems, models, and visualization tools. ESRI Press, Redlands

[email protected]
References 151

Condon P (2008) Design charrettes for sustainable communities. Island Press, Washington, DC
Johnson B, Lyles W (2016) The unexamined staff report: results from an evaluation of a national
sample. J Am Plan Assoc 82(1):22–36
Kretzman J, McKnight J (1993) Building communities from the inside out: a path to finding and
mobilizing a community’s assets. Center for Urban Affairs and Policy Research, Northwestern
University, Evanston
Kwartler M, Longo G (2008) Visioning and Visualization: People, Pixels and Plans. Cambridge,
MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy
Lennertz B, Lutzenhiser A (2006) The Charrette handbook: the essential guide for accelerated
collaborative community planning. American Planning Association (Planners Press), Chicago
Lynch K (1960) The image of the city. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
McHarg I (1969) Design with nature. Natural History Press, Garden City
Peattie L (1987) Planning: rethinking Ciudad Guyana. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor
Race B, Torma C (1998) Youth planning charrettes: a manual for planners, teachers, and youth
advocates. American Planning Association (Planners Press), Chicago
Talen E (2009) Urban design reclaimed: tools, techniques, and strategies for planners. American
Planning Association (Planners Press), Chicago
Vance JD (2016) Hillbilly elegy: a memoir of a family and culture in crisis. HarperCollins
Publishers, New York

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Index

A GIS and visualization tools, 148

Actions and behaviors planning challenges, 149
behavior maps, 92 quality-of-life issues, 150
ethnographic research, 93 social inclusion, 147
participant observation, 93 storytellers, 150
sensors/trackers, 92 urbanization, 149
Advocacy and Pluralism in Planning, 115 Challenges, of planning
Advocacy planning model, 115–118, 120 death of expertise, 29
Aging society, 26, 27 diverse populations, 30
Air quality, 28 future of participation, 30
American Planning Association (APA), Charrettes, 148
138, 143 Citizen Jane: Battle for the City, 114
APA/AICP survey, 149 Civic engagement, 9, 10, 113–118
Annotated online maps, 95 advocacy planning, 115, 116, 118, 120
Arnstein’s typology, 116, 117 in America, 112
Asset-building approach, 148 bonding capital, 112
Citizen Jane: Battle for the City, 114
citizen participation, 116–117
B civil rights movement, 113
Behavior maps, 92 climate change, 119
Bias, 84, 85 community organizing and
Big data, 35 mobilization, 112
Budgets, 139, 140 community-oriented, 111, 119
The Death and Life of Great American
Cities, 114
C decision-making processes, 113
Census, 87, 88, 97, 106 definition, 111
Census transportation planning package democratic societies, 111
(CTTP), 88 in electoral politics, 111
Center-out planning process, 147 government-led planning and design, 113
21st Century planners, 148 government planners, 118
asset-building approach, 148 grow up, 111
charrettes, 148 immigrants, 112
climate change, 149 inclusive community outreach strategy,
demography, 149 123–126

© Springer International Publishing AG 2018 153

L. Ramasubramanian, J. Albrecht, Essential Methods for Planning Practitioners,
The Urban Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68041-5

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154 Index

Civic engagement (cont.) Develop outreach plan

oppressive planning regimes, 113 community-led walking/biking
participate, 111 tours, 125
and planners, 112 conversations, 124
planning, 113, 118, 127 establish timeline and reporting
practices, 111 milestones, 126
practicing planners, 119 focus groups, 124
principles, 122–123 open house, 125–126
public participation, 113, 117, 121 publish and communicate, 126
public planning, 118 town hall meetings, 124
quality-of-life planning, 119 Digital storytelling
reconfiguration of built environment, 113 community planning process, 133
resources and tolerances, 127 data, 133
rich diversity of community, 120–121 narrative approaches, 133
social capital, 112 principles, 134
social media, 127 strengths and limitations, 133
whole-community, 121–122 value-mapping activities, 134
Civil rights movement, 113 Diversity, 26
Climate change, 4, 22 community, 70, 120, 134
coastal flooding, 22, 54, 70, 119 demographic, 22, 26
human-induced, 5, 22 equity, 7, 10, 122
mitigation and adaption planning, 5, 28 inclusion, 89, 90, 118, 122, 123, 147
Climate resiliency, 28 of the planning profession, 2, 3, 19,
Coastal communities, 120 134, 135
Community-based organizations
(CBOs), 49
Community-oriented civic engagement, 111 E
Connection stories, 51 East-coast communities, 120
Conversations, 124 Edge cities, emergence of, 19
Coordinate system mismatch, 106, 107 Emerging technologies
Cost, 16, 19, 25 computational advancements and
Council Against Poverty (CAP), 49 modeling techniques, 32
Crowdsourcing computationally intensive
advantage, 89 approaches, 31
OSM, 90 highways and freeways,
VGI, 91 development of, 32
prevailing vision and value
system, 32
D travel demand forecasting, 31
Data-driven approach, 107, 108 Environmental conditions, 96
Data quality, 120 Environmental quality, 28
Data science techniques, 105 Ethics, 4
The Death and Life of Great American APA/AICP code, 112, 140
Cities, 114 Ethnographic research, 93
Decision-making, 16, 29–31, 35, 113 Expertise, 105
Decision-making authority, 117 Experts, 105
Delphi technique, 9, 80 Experts vs. non-experts, 105
Democratic societies, 111 Exploratory methods, 79, 82
Demographics Extrapolative methods, 79
IPUMS, 88
NHGIS, 88
population study, 22, 87 F
PUMAs, 88 Forecasting, 79, 82, 83, 85
web-based data sources, 88, 89 Futures wheel, 81

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Index 155

G climate resilience, design for, 28,

Geodesign 119, 120
3D, 103 diverse populations, serve, 26
environmental sustainability, 104 environmental quality, 28, 42, 53
geography, 103 infrastructure and transporation
participation, 103 systems, 24, 76
resources, 104 policy, 130, 136, 139
simulation, 103 sprawl, combat and manage, 23
visualization, 103 Impact analysis, 81–83
Geographic constraints Implementation phase
coordinate unit mismatch, 106, 107 complexities, 131, 132
data-driven approach, 107, 108 defined, 129
reporting unit mismatch, 106 governance, 134, 135
visual representations, 107 planning skills, 131
Geographic information systems (GIS), 32–34 second-order effect, 130
data needs, 97 transportation planner, 130
metro New York, 97 Inclusive community outreach strategy
spatial data, 98, 99 development, 124–126
and statistical software, 123 identify stakeholders, 123, 124
Governance, 134–136 study area, 123
Government agencies, 5 Infrastructure, 25
Graphical tools and techniques, 145 Integrated public use microdata series
Greenwich Village, 114 (IPUMS), 88

H K
Homogeneous/monolithic group, 122 Key informants, 94, 95
Hunts Point, Bronx
blocks and residential land use, 40
challenge, 42 L
communities, 41 A Ladder of Citizen Participation, 116
community burdens, 47, 48, 50 Locational references, 98, 99
community resources, 49–51
demographics, 45, 46, 49
geographical setting, 40 M
historical land use, 40 Maps, 32–34
history, 42–44, 48 annotated online, 55, 90, 95
planning challenges asset mapping, 57
climate resilience, design for, 54 behavioral, 92, 139
declining residential quality, 51, 53 dasymetric, 101, 106
environmental sustainability, 54 graphical communication,
nuisance land uses, 51 145, 148
truck traffic, 51 lying with, 107
planning opportunities Open Street Map (OSM), 90
field observations and community perceptual, 9, 94
conversations, 55, 56 story-telling with maps, 150
improving accessibility, 57, 59 value mapping, 134
Mario Cuomo Bridge, project, 131
Maximum feasible
I participation, 116
Identify stakeholders, 123, 124 Mitchell-Lama Housing
Immigrants, 112 Program, 62
Impacts, on planning, 22–28 Model cities program, 116
aging society, 26 Modeling approaches, 79

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156 Index

N spatial and land use, 3

National historical GIS (NHGIS), 88 strengths and limits, 16
New Urbanism, 20, 21 US settlement forms, 18, 19
NIMBY, 51, 85 Planning challenges
Normative methods, 79 climate, 22, 23
demography, 22
expertise, 29
O participation, 30, 31
Open house, 125 technical and political, 30
Open Street Map (OSM), 90 urbanization, 21
Oppressive planning regimes, 113 Planning skills
Outreach plan, 124, 126 consensus building, 146
graphical communication, 145
public presentation, 146
P social communication, 146
Participatory methods, 79, 126 written communication, 144, 145
Paying client, 121 Politics, 138
Places and traces mapping, 92 Pre-policy scenarios, 82
Planning Public planning, 118
for aging society, 26, 27 Public policymaking
ambitious and visionary, 1 definition, 136
apps, 35 incrementalism, 136
buildings, relationship of, 17 institutional systems, 136, 137
case studies, 8 (see also Hunts Point, optimization, 136, 137
Bronx) (see also Roosevelt island, power and bargaining, 137
Manhattan) Public use microdata areas
challenges of, 8 (PUMAs), 88
civic engagement, 9, 10
climate change mitigation and adaption,
4, 5 Q
in community-based organizations, 6 Quality of life, 119, 143
community-based techniques, 9, 135
cultures/faiths, 17
digital technologies, 6 R
education, 6, 29 Rational-comprehensive model, 115
educators and practitioners, 2 Reference forecasting, 85
everyday practice, 2, 29 “Religious” rules, 17
expertise, 5 Reporting unit mismatch, 106
future-oriented and pragmatic decision- Roosevelt island, Manhattan, 72–74, 76
makers, 4 commercial and residential
government agencies, 5 buildings, 59
implementation and sustainability, 10, community burdens, 64, 65
11, 30 community resources, 66–68
individuals, 7 demographics, 62
innovation and creativity, 1 geographical setting, 40
junior planner, 2 historical landmarks, 59
long-term societal challenges, 8 historical land use, 40
methods and approaches, 3 history, 60
professional, role of, 3 planning challenges, 69–72
public interest, 5 planning opportunities
role of, 1 Cornell campus, 73, 74, 76
as science, 31, 32 transportation improvements, 72, 73
settlement patterns, 17 population map, 64

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Index 157

S Study area, definition, 123

Scenario planning, 79, 82–84 Surveys, 96
Sensor networks, 91
Sensors/trackers, 92
Settlement patterns, 17 T
Simulations, 84 Town hall meetings, 124
Slum clearance, 113 Travel demand forecasting, 31
Smart growth principles, 25
Social capital, 112, 123
bonding capital, 112 U
Social media, 35, 127 Urban infrastructure, 25
APA, 138 Urbanization, 21
interest groups, 138 Urban planning simulations, 84
policy agenda, 139 Urban transportation planning, 83
public opinion, 138
Soils, 28
Spatial analysis V
defined, 99 Veto power, 117
network GIS, 100, 101 Volunteered geographic information
raster GIS, 101, 102 (VGI), 91
vector GIS, 100
visualization vs. analysis, 102
Sprawl W
definition, 23 Water quality, 28
expansion and development, 31 Whole-community engagement, 122
limit and curb, 25 World Economic Forum, scenario, 82

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