Journal of Planning Education and Research
Spring 1999
Volume 18, Number 3

Community Organizations Recruiting Community Participation:
Predicaments in Planning

Howell S. Baum

Abstract

Planners usually justify community participation in terms of benefits to participants, such as claiming democratic rights, getting power, learning, solving problems, and building community. At the same time, community organizations depend on participation for the legitimacy, effort, and money needed to govern and carry out work. Organizations encounter predicaments when they cannot find one group that provides all three. They must choose among imperfect and conflicting participation arrangements, with risks of acting ineffectively or not at all. The article analyzes participation predicaments in planning in a working-class white ethnic community organization and an upper-middle-class Jewish community federation. The latter can raise more money from community members, but both face similar problems in organizing the participation needed to act.

Marginal Spaces in the Urban Landscape:
Regulated Margins or Incidental Open Spaces?

Ajay M. Garde

Abstract

In today's increasingly regulated cities, a noticeable pattern of open space between buildings and streets has emerged. The study shows that marginal spaces, defined as open spaces between buildings and the street, are generated as inevitable by-products of urban spatial development. Changes in both societal values and the regulatory processes of urban spatial development can transform marginal spaces into undesirable areas. In this paper, I argue that incidental generation and transformation of marginal spaces is inappropriate. Marginal spaces occupy a substantial proportion of urban land and deserve serious consideration.

The Planning Profession and Pedestrian Safety:
Lessons From Orlando

Rebecca Miles-Doan and Gregory Thompson

Abstract

The planning profession's traditional focus on pedestrian safety in neighborhoods has led to institutional neglect of pedestrian safety along urban arterial roads. To determine whether such neglect has had serious consequences, we present a case analysis of pedestrian-auto crashes in Orange County, Florida. Orange County's major city, Orlando, is typical of post-World War II development throughout the United States, and findings from that area may be taken as representative. Drawing on law enforcement information on pedestrian-motor vehicle collisions, the case analysis relates the geographic distribution of pedestrian/auto crashes to different types of streetscapes and the alcohol impairment status of pedestrians. The analysis implicates those segments of arterial roadways that are lined with strip commercial activities as an important factor in pedestrian injuries and deaths. The problems are worsened where strip commercial activities include establishments selling or serving alcohol. We conclude by calling for a reevaluation of planning practice that designates urban arterials as traffic-moving facilities and nothing else.

Victims No Longer:
Participatory Planning with a Diversity of Women at Risk of Abuse

Barbara Loevinger Rahder

Abstract

Participation in planning has been an important topic of debate for more than 30 years. Dramatic changes in the demography of North America and the failure of existing forms of participation have highlighted the need to find new ways of working with increasingly diverse and often marginalized communities. This article describes a participatory planning project in which a diversity of participants - including aboriginal women, immigrant and racial minority women, women with disabilities, and rural women - became organized, trained, and empowered to collectively challenge social services to become more accountable and responsive to their needs.

Environmental Justice and the Sustainable City

Graham Haughton

Abstract

As the debate on sustainable development and environmental justice has gathered momentum, considerable attention has been paid to identifying key principles. In this paper, I highlight a number of core principles and then move on to examine differing styles of policy approach, which have gained favor among different sources, for moving toward the sustainable city from market-based neo-liberal reformism to deep green ecologically centered approaches. I highlight four broad categories of approach to sustainable urban development and begin linking those to the core principles of sustainable development.

Discretion, Flexibility, and Certainty in British Planning:
Emerging Ideological Conflicts and Inherent Political Tensions

Mark Tewdwr-Jones

Abstract

In Britain, as the nature of the state's involvement in the spatial planning process changed to reflect political concerns (such as the need for employment-generating development or concern for the environment), so have the methods employed by the government to secure consistency, certainty, and continuity in policy execution. A desire to create more certain conditions for developers, the public, and investors through greater use of plans has both decreased discretionary decision making and shifted it from some parts of the spatial planning process to others. Since certainty has formed the underlying tenet to statutory changes to the planning system after 1990 and has found policy expression through national planning guidance, British planning could now be at the juncture of an unhappy ideological conflict between the discretionary nature of British planning and the more certain, less pragmatic forms of spatial planning. In this paper, I suggest that the changing political context of planning in the 1980s and 1990s has led to an ideological conflict in the operation of spatial planning, which involves issues related to administrative law, professionalism, and flexibility and certainty.

Taking Our Bearings:
Mapping a Relationship Among Planning Practice, Theory, and Education

Connie P. Ozawa and Ethan P. Seltzer

Abstract

The curriculum for graduate education in planning has been largely dictated by a conception of the planner's role as a technical advisor to decisionmakers. The rational planning model has shaped the construction of the core curriculum. Recent work by planning theorists suggests that the planner does more than simply provide technical advice, but serves to facilitate communications in critical ways. This article reports the results of a survey of senior planning professionals regarding the skills and competencies they seek in entry-level planners. The results provide strong support for communicative planning theories and suggest a recasting of traditional conceptions of what constitutes core graduate planning curricula.

Planning Theory at a Crossroad: The Third Oxford Conference

Oren Yiftachel

Learning through Conflict at Oxford

James A. Throgmorton

1998 Chester Rapkin Award for Best Article in Volume 17: Acceptance Speech

Jack Byers

Patsy Healey

Collaborative Planning: Shaping Places in Fragmented Societies
Vancouver: Univeristy of British Columbia Press

Review by Charles Hoch

Jack L. Nasar

The Evaluative Image of the City
Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications

Review by Katherine Crewe

Timothy Beatley and Kristy Manning
The Ecology of Place: Planning for Environment, Economy, and Community

Review by Michael Hibbard

Anne Larason Schneider and Helen Ingram
Policy Design for Democracy
Lawrence: University of Kansas Press

Review by James A. Throgmorton

Uner Kirdar, Editor
Cities Fit for People
New York: United Nations Publications

Review by Alma H. Young

Leonie Sandercock, Editor
Making the Invisible Visible: A Multicultural Planning History
Berkeley: University of California Press