Second Tier Cities: Rapid Growth beyond the Metropolis, edited by Ann R Markusen, Yong-Sook Lee, and Sean DiGiovanna.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 1999. 336 pages. $62.95 (hardback), $17.50 (paperback)

Reviewed by Nancey Green Leigh
Associate Professor
Graduate City Planning Program
Georgia Institute of Technology

This sixteen-chapter edited volume represents a rich but uneven effort. Its many contributors were part of a decade-long project conceived to compare industrial districts across nations and stages of development. Ann Markusen, one of the editors of the volume, and her colleague, Sam Ock Park, initiated the project. The title of the volume identifies that a particular kind of industrial district is being examined, which the editors explain:

In many countries, newer, smaller cities have been growing at the expense of older, larger ones, upsetting urban hierarchies. . . . A major phenomenon accompanying this shake-up has been the rise of “second tier” cities, spatially distinct areas of economic activity where a specialized set of trade-oriented industries takes root and flourishes, establishing employment and population-growth trajectories that are the envy of many other places. (P. 3)

The book’s title, however, gives a limited impression of its contents. I worry that it will not attract the readership the book deserves for its contribution to advancing our understanding of the role different kinds of industrial districts play in regional development. Furthermore, there is nothing in the title to indicate the strong international focus of its contents that might attract a broader set of readers.

The book is organized into three major parts: theory and method (four chapters), case studies (eleven chapters), and analysis and policy implications (one chapter). Part 1 lays out a theoretical framework with which to explore the question, What enables certain places “to generate, attract, and anchor productive activity” and to “achieve ‘second tier’ status [that] successfully challenge primate cities while others do not?” (p. 21).

Chapter 2 of part 1 presents an in-depth discussion of four industrial district types and their hypothesized features: the Marshallian new industrial district, the hub-and-spoke district, the satellite industrial platform, and the state-centered district. A reading of chapter 2 would provide a new student an excellent introduction to regional and industrial development. Chapter 3 presents Markusen’s previously developed methodology for studying regions and their industrial districts through extensive examination of key firms in key sectors.

The eleven case studies presented in part 2 were undertaken in four nations: Brazil, South Korea, Japan, and the United States. The case studies in part 2 are supposed to test the hypotheses advanced about the four industrial district types, as well as to reflect the methodology of studying regions by studying firms, presented in part 1. The success by which the case studies do so is uneven. This is perhaps not surprising given the large number of contributing authors and cases (many of the eleven chapters contain more than one case). It is stated in the final chapter of the book that each case study team designed and carried out extensive sets of interviews (see p. 351). The pedagogical value of the book would have been enhanced had the authors provided examples of the interview questions that were used.

A number of the case studies read as if they were policy reports being written for state or federal officials rather than as thoughtful analyses integrated to the book’s framework. Still, each of the cases will hold some interest for scholars of regional and industrial development. The material on South Korea and Brazil, in particular, helps to diversify the industrial district literature that heretofore has been so focused on the United States, Italy, and Japan.

As might be expected, the case studies that most successfully reflect the methodology of studying regions by studying key firms are those coauthored by Markusen. These case studies have been conducted in South Korea, Japan, and the United States. The South Korean case studies cover new ground and provide interesting insights on state-centered industrial districts. Chapter 7’s South Korean case studies of Kumi and Ansan are notable successes in relating case studies to the book’s theoretical framework.

While Japanese and U.S. industrial districts have been extensively studied, constituting a major portion of the literature, the case studies provided here offer significant new insights and important critiques of the previously dominant literature. For those seeking to understand U.S. high technology districts in particular, the case studies on Seattle (chapter 13) and Silicon Valley (chapter 14) are essential reading.

A strong editing hand would have been imperative to ensure that a project this ambitious, with this much material, and with these many authors (twelve in all) meet its full potential. However, even the slightest editing hand should have caught the claim in the book’s introduction (see page 14) that the final two chapters are devoted to comparisons across the country case studies when, in fact, there is only one chapter that does so. While the book’s material is quite data intensive, its tables and figures are primitive by today’s standards of data and graphic representation. Furthermore, it would have been helpful to the reader if all, instead of only some, of the case study chapters included maps identifying the industrial district areas being examined within their respective countries.

Despite the above quibbles, overall, this book is an exciting and major contribution to advancing the field of regional and industrial development. The second tier city concept, along with its four possible structural forms (industrial district types), offers an important theoretical framework for understanding evolving patterns of regionalism across the globe. Furthermore, the authors’ drawing out in the final chapter of the critical planning and policy implications arising from these forms can help improve economic development practice. Second Tier Cities is perhaps best thought of as a diamond in the rough. It has the potential to become a true classic. This reviewer would love to see a second edition of the book that takes the best of the first’s case studies, adds new ones that successfully integrate with the book’s methodology and theoretical framework, and continues to refine as well as deepen the understanding it provides of the important regional concept of second tier cities.

Transportation for Livable Cities, by Vukan R. Vuchic.
Rutgers, NJ: Center for Urban Policy Research Press. 1999. 377 pages. $29.95 (hardback)

Driving Forces: The Automobile, Its Enemies, and the Politics of Mobility, by James A. Dunn, Jr.
Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. 1998. 250 pages. $44.95 (hardback), $18.95 (paperback)

Reviewed by Paul Schimek
Formerly, Research Analyst
Volpe National Transportation Systems Center
U.S. Department of Transportation

Vukan Vuchic’s thesis in Transportation for Livable Cities is that U.S. urban transportation policy has fallen behind that of “peer cities.” These European peer cities offer pedestrian amenities and high-quality public transit service, a harsh contrast to the automobile dependency of the United States. Vuchic argues that “efficient” cities must have “rational” planning policies designed to provide “balanced transportation” by curbing the prevailing preference for auto use and, simultaneously, by promoting alternatives.

In Vuchic’s framework, there are four distinct scales of transportation planning: (1) individual facility, (2) single mode, (3) multimode, and (4) combined land use and transportation (pp. 82-7). He says American transportation planning is too much preoccupied with the lower levels in this hierarchy (single mode and individual facility) and is insufficiently concerned with multimodal and combined land use and transportation planning.

Everywhere he turns, Vuchic, a public transit expert, finds systematic “bias” in favor of automobiles at the expense of other modes. His explanation for proautomobile policies is, “A largely uninformed public does not have an adequate explanation of the causes of problems and trade-offs among alternatives” (p. 112). Special interest groups take advantage of this misinformation to promote their own advantage.

Vuchic’s vantage is that of the systems engineer who seeks to devise the rational, balanced solution. Politics is an annoyance in this view. At several points, Vuchic aims his critique at the work of academics such as John Kain, Jose Gomez-Ibanez, and Martin Wachs. He accuses such “theoreticians” of suffering from “biases and narrow views” and “inadequate understanding of transportation system characteristics” (p. 124). However, the book is insufficiently documented to be considered scholarly. It is often difficult to trace the source of Vuchic’s statements; many are not referenced. This makes it difficult to ascertain the accuracy of his assertions.

Vuchic is at his best when he tries to be evenhanded in his debunking of “common misconceptions,” including the assertion that “rail transit is superior to other transit modes” (p. 212). He argues that busway systems, such as in Ottawa or Curitiba, or transit priority street networks, such as in Zurich and Copenhagen, can produce effective transit service. However, Vuchic’s preference for rail transit comes through strongly, particularly in his rebuttal of “emotional” and “ideological” critics of new U.S. rail projects. The critics of such rail projects argue that an investment of similar magnitude in high-quality bus transit would produce much greater ridership.

Vuchic gives a well-founded critique of ineffective metropolitan transportation planning (pp. 109-11). However, the book’s case studies of policies in European countries, East Asia, Australia, and Canada, and two short comparisons of paired U.S. and European cities, have a disappointing lack of detail, particularly when compared with Pucher and Lefevre (1996).

Several of Vuchic’s assertions are not supported by the data. He writes that the automobile’s “average energy consumption per person-kilometer (-mile) is much higher than that for any other mode” (p. 35). The U.S. Department of Energy reports that in 1997, average energy intensity in BTU per passenger mile was 3,639 for autos, 4,238 for “personal trucks,” 4,318 for transit buses, and 3,253 for rail transit (Davis 1999). Thus, transit buses, given the low average occupancy rate of U.S. operations, have the highest energy consumption. The transit rail average is only 11 percent less than that of passenger cars.

Vuchic claims that transit aid has declined: “Expressed in constant dollars, transit assistance actually decreased from 1981 to the mid-1990s” (p. 106). Although federal funding did decline, state and local assistance to transit more than made up the shortfall. After adjusting to 1995 dollars, annual transit capital and operating funding from all levels of government increased from $12.8 billion in 1975 to $22.9 billion in 1995 (tabulated from American Public Transit Association’s Transit Fact Book, 1975-76 Edition and U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Transit Database 1995, adjusted using the consumer price index).

Vuchic also argues that bicycling on sidewalks marked as bike paths “is much safer and faster than bicycle travel in mixed traffic” (p. 311). In fact, North American and European studies have repeatedly and unanimously found that cycling on sidewalks and cycle paths adjacent to roads is more dangerous than cycling on roadways (Franklin 2000 provides a comprehensive list of references). Road cycling is also faster than sidewalk or side-path cycling, despite Vuchic’s claim that “separate bicycle ways make bicycle travel more reliable than car travel because bicycle movement is independent of street traffic congestion” (p. 311).

Transportation for Livable Cities is unlikely to make new converts to the cause of reducing automobile dependency. There is little new original material (some portions are reproduced from the author’s 1981 transit planning textbook). Although its scope is appropriate for an urban transportation planning course, the book would not likely be effective as a course text, given that Vuchic’s assertions are not always well documented and that the presentation is difficult to follow.

In contrast, in Driving Forces, James A. Dunn, Jr., argues that an antiautomobile vanguard has hijacked the U.S. transportation policy debate. The vanguard’s elitist agenda is to push measures to make car use more difficult and expensive and to promote noncar transportation to make the restrictions seem more palatable. Dunn would almost certainly classify Vuchic as a member of this vanguard.

In his concluding chapter, Dunn argues for his own, “Auto, Plus” reformist policy. Dunn insists that the automobile is here to stay and has brought many benefits, but some things can be done to reduce its negative consequences. Ironically, his policy proposals (having higher fuel efficiency standards or higher gas taxes, eliminating the Highway Trust Fund, permitting shared taxis, improving road design for bicyclists and pedestrians) might be quite acceptable to the vanguard. The major difference is in the rhetoric.

Between his introductory attack on the vanguard and his concluding “Auto, Plus” proposal, Dunn presents five compact, up-to-date, and well-researched chapters on the major issues in surface transportation policy. A political scientist, Dunn recognizes the political nature of transportation policy making. He borrows James Q. Wilson’s typology of politics as client (concentrated benefits, widely distributed costs), interest group (narrowly concentrated costs and benefits), majoritarian (widely distributed costs and benefits), or entrepreneurial (widely distributed benefits, concentrated costs). He groups the major federal actions affecting automobile and transit policy into these categories.

Dunn provides an illuminating discussion of the politics surrounding the creation of the federal gasoline tax in 1932 and every subsequent increase through 1993. Chapter 2, “Promoting Highways: Trust Funds and Taxes,” makes a good complement to the comparative study of national gasoline tax policies in half a dozen countries in Nivola and Crandall (1995).

Chapter 3 discusses policies to regulate automobile emissions, fuel efficiency, and safety. Although Dunn manages to cover many topics in a few pages, the evolution of auto emissions regulations, one of the great successes of U.S. transportation policy, is given insufficient attention.

Chapter 4 on urban transit subsidy policy covers topics that Vuchic sidesteps, such as the tendency of operating assistance to put upward pressure on transit operating costs and the tendency of capital assistance to encourage capital-intensive and inappropriate transit investments. Dunn argues that transit supporters have been brought into the highway benefits regime by getting their own part of the highway fund. But it seems that the vanguard has also been brought into the benefits regime by adding its own programs to highway legislation (such as the Transportation Enhancements program and the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality program). Dunn misses the parallel between the addition of transit to the highway trust fund coalition and the addition of the environmentalists.

Chapter 5 on intercity passenger rail is less useful to those focusing on urban transportation policy but is of interest to many transportation planners. Dunn argues that it will be very difficult for a new “benefits regime” in support of high-speed rail service to develop in the United States.

Chapter 6 on land use planning is of more general interest, given the increasingly high profile of efforts to reduce urban sprawl and to promote growth management. Although Dunn approves of some of the New Urbanist concepts, he believes the movement “will remain little more than an intriguing fad” (p. 155). He is in agreement with Vuchic that American regional institutions are too weak to impose the metropolitan- wide solutions that would be necessary to make a significant change in land use and transportation policies. However, both authors make the mistake of equating current policies with insufficient planning. In fact, ample off-street parking, wide streets, and low-density, single-use development are almost universally mandated, regardless of what the market would otherwise demand. Far from being “social engineering,” policies to relax these constraints on housing types and locations would help people choose the living environments and commuting distances they prefer.

Dunn’s unifying antivanguard theme is overstated and may turn off readers who sympathize with the goal of reducing the negative aspects of car use. However, his well-researched chapters provide a concise summary of the major issues in urban transportation policy that make the work a useful additional text for a course on that topic. The explicitly political treatment of the subject is realistic and helpful for those new to the field.

Neither book is entirely satisfactory as the principal text for a transportation-planning course. Both Meyer and Gomez- Ibanez (1981) and Altshuler with Womack and Pucher (1979) cover the topic more thoroughly, but both are out of print and now twenty years out of date.

Note

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Department of Transportation.

References

Altshuler, Alan (with James Womack and John Pucher). 1979. The urban transportation system: Politics and policy innovation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Davis, Stacy C. 1999. Transportation energy data book: Edition 19, ORNL-6958 [Online]. Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN. Available: http://www-cta.ornl.gov/Publications/Tedb.html

Franklin, John. 2000. Cycle path safety: A summary of research [Online]. Available: http://www.lesberries.co.uk/cycling/ cy_pathr.html (Last updated 11 March 2000)

Meyer, John R., and Jose A. Gomez-Ibanez. 1981. Autos, transit, and cities. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Nivola, Pietro S., and Robert Crandall. 1995. The extra mile: Rethinking energy policy for automotive transportation. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.

Pucher, John, and Christian Lefevre. 1996. The urban transport crisis in Europe and North America. London: Macmillan.

Toward Sustainable Communities: Transition and Transformations in Environmental Policy, edited by Daniel A. Mazmanian and Michael E. Kraft.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 1999. 341 pages. $25.00 (hardback)

The Land That Could Be: Environmentalism and Democracy in the Twenty-First Century, by William A. Shutkin.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 2000. 340 pages. $27.95 (paperback)

Reviewed by Philip R. Berke
Associate Professor
Department of City and Regional Planning
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

Environmental planning has increasingly been touted as essential for guiding societal change. Critical environmental issues of pollution, global warming, and loss of biodiversity have led to increased advocacy for more and better planning. These two books provide a critical evaluation of the contemporary environmental movement based on a synthesis of theory and practice of environmental policy. Authors of both books contend that planning must play a strong role in making the critical transition from traditional environmental concerns to a more comprehensive and integrated approach that takes into consideration the concept of sustainable development.

The purpose of the books in this series, produced by MIT Press, is twofold. First, both books attempt to advance the understanding of the evolution of the environmental movement. The authors rightfully claim that it is important to step back and evaluate the history of the environmental movement to obtain insights for crafting future policy. Second, the books explore the current debate over environmental policy that is dominated by the concept of sustainable development. This focus offers an important contribution to planning for sustainable development since there is considerable confusion about the precise meaning of the concept.

The books give attention to the meaning of sustainability from diverse perspectives. Editors Daniel Mazmanian and Michael Kraft explore factors that influence achievement of community sustainability in the context of intergovernmental frameworks that account for national, state, regional, and local perspectives. William Shutkin takes a local perspective in examining initiatives to achieve sustainability. Taken together, the approaches offered by these books contribute to understanding how to design local sustainability initiatives and create intergovernmental frameworks that foster, rather than impede, these initiatives.

The books are of value to scholars in a wide range of disciplines. Students of environmental and land use planning, public administration, public policy, community development, geography, and urban politics, for example, will find that these books provide comprehensive reviews of the environmental movement and its relationship to urban development and land use change. The target audience is upper level undergraduate and graduate students in introductory courses on environmental and land use policy. The readings are reasonably extensive, with each book containing an examination of the evolution of environmental policy, case studies that depict the successes and failures of diverse environmental initiatives, and implications for future environmental policy that fosters community sustainability.

Toward Sustainable Communities: Transition and Transformations in Environmental Policy is an edited reader consisting of nine chapters divided into four parts. Part 1 includes two excellent chapters that offer a conceptual framework for evaluating subsequent case studies. In chapter 1, Mazmanian and Kraft contend that the modern environmental movement can best be understood as the unfolding of three distinct epochs: (1) the rise of top-down, command and control environmental regulations; (2) the period of reform toward more flexible and market-oriented environmental policies; and (3) the transition toward sustainable development. The environmental movement begins in the late 1960s, with the dramatic rise in national concern over environmental decline, and moves to the merging with the broader movement of sustainability starting in the 1990s. The authors contend that the sustainability movement “extends well beyond the boundaries of environmental policy and the concerns of the first two environmental movements” (p. xii). They argue that the goal of regulatory clean-up (epoch 1) and flexibility (epoch 2)

pales in comparison to the goal of sustainability. Focusing on sustainability, for instance, draws attention to the failure to incorporate into the economic activity of society (and calculation of a nation’s gross national product) measures of environmental health, quality of life, and the full (true) costs of human settlement patterns. (P. 17)

In Chapter 2, Lamont Hempel explores the multiple definitions of sustainable development and reviews the evolving frameworks that can be traced to sustainable development. Of particular interest to planners, the chapter gives considerable attention to linking the historical roots of sustainability to city and regional planning and urban design by drawing on classic writings of Patrick Geddes and Lewis Mumford and to current debates surrounding growth management and the Smart Growth movement.

Part 2 provides three case studies on managing individual environmental media. Each exemplifies efforts to transition from the top-down regulatory approach (epoch 1) to more flexible, market-oriented approaches to environment management (epoch 2). Chapter 3 (Mazmanian) focuses on reform of clean air regulations in southern California. Chapter 4 (Kraft and Bruce Johnson) evaluates efforts to shift from top-down water resource protection under the Clean Water Act to use of collaborative planning techniques in the Fox-Wolf River Basin in northeastern Wisconsin. Chapter 5 (Daniel Press) focuses on open space protection initiatives in California and how they have evolved through the epochs. Each of these chapters highlights the inherent constraints of top-down regulations, the strengths and weakness of market incentives and flexible management systems, and the promises and pitfalls of making the transition across epochs.

Part 3 examines three case studies of new and encompassing efforts that involve development of multimedia and multisector strategies aimed at achieving sustainability. Chapter 6 (Franklin Tugwell, Andrew McElwaine, and Michele Fetting) explores the evolution of a broad range of environmental problems in the metropolitan area of Pittsburgh and efforts to promote a greener city. Chapter 7 (Thomas Horan, Hank Ditmar, and Daniel Jordan) provides a critical review of national transportation policy and examines progress made under the 1991 Intermodal Surface Transportation Act in achieving a holistic transportation policy consistent with the concept of sustainable communities. Concluding this part, Chapter 8 (Babe Rabe) reviews the cleanup and restoration efforts in the Great Lakes Basin, which is one of the most ambitious environmental planning initiatives ever undertaken in the United States. This case clearly reveals the strengths and limitations in efforts to move through the three environmental epochs in attempting to achieve long-term sustainability.

Finally, in Part 4, Chapter 9 (Kraft and Mazmanian) offers a clear and important discussion on the extent to which the epochs framework aids in the understanding of the environmental movement. Practice-based recommendations are given to improve future prospects for achievement of sustainable development. The authors then set forth a thorough and well-thought-out research agenda on the types of future studies needed to improve the understanding of the social, cultural, economic, and political factors that affect societal movement toward (or away from) sustainability.

The Land That Could Be: Environmentalism and Democracy in the Twenty-First Century consists of eight chapters. Chapter 1 reviews the decline in public participation in civic affairs and describes the growing social and economic inequalities, as well as the loss of the sense of community. Chapter 2 describes how the decline of democratic conditions and the widening gaps between the haves and have-nots have undermined the livability of built environments and experiential connections to the nature. Shutkin argues that these conditions have resulted in pervasive deterioration of inner cities, contamination of urban sites (brownfields), air pollution from growing levels of vehicle miles traveled induced by sprawling metropolitan areas, and development of rural open spaces.

Chapter 3 outlines the core thesis of the book. It contends that top-down professional orientation of traditional environmentalism must change to foster civic environmentalism that emphasizes grassroots organizing and constituency building. Six core concepts of civic environmentalism are set forth to serve as a framework for interpreting local case studies: democratic process, community and regional planning, education, environmental justice, industrial ecology, and place. The concepts closely reflect holistic notions of community sustain- ability since they are designed to bridge “the gap between environmental protection, economic development, and community building” (p. 240).

Chapters 4 through 7 present local case studies that illustrate how application of civic environmentalism can help improve the physical, social, and economic conditions in American communities. The cases include an inner city community development project in Boston (i.e., Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative), Oakland’s Fruitvale transit village, open-space conservation in rural Colorado, and Smart Growth in suburban New Jersey. Chapter 8 concludes with a brief review of how each case study reflects a particular civic environmental strategy, a restatement of the six core concepts of civic environmentalism, and a short discussion of the challenges and failures revealed by the cases.

Concluding Observations

Toward Sustainable Communities and The Land That Could Be offer powerful critiques of the established environmental movement and significantly extend the debate about future environmental policy. The problems of the built and natural environments these books present are widespread, and the solutions they offer should be informative to a broad spectrum of readers. They argue that sustainable development has great potential to provide an overarching approach for guiding the formation of holistic strategies for confronting social, economic, and environmental ills of American communities.

Toward Sustainable Communities does not suffer from a common problem of most edited books involving the lack of internal consistency. The editors of this book are to be commended for articulating a clearly defined conceptual framework and for ensuring that the case studies are written to reflect this framework. The logic and coherence of the evidence presented is extraordinary given that the book is a reader. The Land That Could Be is exceptional in using clear and forceful language to argue with clarity and conviction about the mutually reinforcing relationship between environmental and social deterioration.

However, these books have some limitations. Both books place emphasis on understanding the linkage between planning practice and the environmental movement. Chapter 2 in Toward Sustainable Communities emphasizes the need for more and better planning, especially regional planning. Chapter 9 outlines a research agenda that gives considerable attention to planning. Similarly, The Land That Could Be emphasizes the need for planning as one of the six concepts of civic environmentalism. However, the role of planning, as depicted in each book, is somewhat vague. The linkage between the theory and practice of planning and the environmental movement is not clearly explained. Key questions involving this linkage remain unanswered: How is the process of sustainable development integrated into well-established local planning programs? How are specific growth management techniques used to guide community development and land use change in ways to achieve sustainable development? How can key principles of sustainability be integrated into the development of local comprehensive plans? How should sustainability indicators be incorporated into the local planning process? How can these indicators be used to monitor and evaluate the performance of plans in supporting sustainability?

In The Land That Could Be, it is not evident how the six concepts of civic environmentalism are used to interpret the case studies. They are implied but not made explicit in the analysis of each case. This limits theory development on understanding factors that affect performance of local environmental movements. Moreover, the last chapter is too brief (only seven pages in length) and lacks depth. Recommendations for practice and future research are vague and not clearly articulated.

Despite these limitations, both books are solid contributions to the literature on environmental policy and should have appeal to a broad readership. I hope that scholars and practitioners will use these promising books as a foundation for future work aimed at translating the concept of sustainable development into action-oriented planning theories and practices.

What’s Wrong with Plastic Trees? Artifice and Authenticity in Design, by Martin H. Krieger.
Wesport, CT: Praeger. 2000. 184 pages. $55.00 (hardback)

Reviewed by Liette Gilbert
Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies
York University

This book is a challenging work about design. What’s Wrong with Plastic Trees? seeks to transcend our general understanding of design as material objects and processes—in architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, art, engineering, computation, and so on—to the intellectual realms of scientific theorizing, philosophy, and theology “to make our peace with designed things” (p. xix). Exploring an impressive range of tensions (artifice and authenticity, perfection and contingency, purity and degeneracy, repetition and preservation, among many others), Krieger argues, “All the stuff that we are concerned about, including what we now take as nature, is a product of human design” (p. xiv). For Krieger, a professor at the School of Policy, Planning, and Development of the University of Southern California, design is not limited to a morphological scenario but rather embodies the not-so-obvious ambitions of scientific progress, theological enlightenment, and philosophical traditions. In this brief, concentrated, almost convoluted book, Krieger reiterates his scientific and philosophical approach to design previously elaborated in an article (by the same title) published in Science (1973).

While the scientific and philosophical breadth of the book might appeal to a wide range of scholars and students of architecture, planning, environmental studies, engineering, and computer science, the scope of descriptive vignettes (despite some clear warnings by the author) produces an exhausting tone. From the big bang to Hegel’s dimensions of the Absolute, Fermat’s Last Theorem, Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Niagara Falls, Kantian critiques, and mathematical model theory, the book might serve as an interesting means for a discussion in a specialized seminar. I would, however, hesitate to bring it in the classroom because it is not the most accessible book on design.

Among the scientific and the philosophical meditations of the author, the book offers some more concise sentences that, even though they seemed to synthesize paragraphs of technical or philosophical explorations, beg for more development. For example, Krieger writes,

The hard problem for the designer is to know how to ask. How to elicit what users really need, how not to pervert their desires to fit the current solution, yet mold notions of what users want to what is practically doable. (P. 47)

Several of Krieger’s arguments insightfully capture some of the most problematic aspects of the more traditional approach to design. That is particularly the case when the author talks (again, maybe too briefly) about designers and “the sin of pride, our desire to be God, to control and to perfect the world” (p. 8). Most designers are likely to recognize themselves and others in such statement. His discussion on the contingency, accuracy, noise (or the so-called imperfections) inherent to the process of designing probably is the most interesting part of the book because it raises important issues about the pretensions of the designer’s intentions and practices. As Krieger states, “Designers[’] . . . intentions are always adjusted to what can be done. Intentions and programs are affected by practice and history” (p. 78). In this sense, the source of design often becomes the end: surprise is controlled to generate surprise, repetition is reinterpreted as innovation, and contingency is reenacted as a fact of design. Such ideas take a particularly interesting meaning when considering that design is generally viewed as an “authentic” representation of artifice, and/or an “artificial” representation of some kind of “authenticity.”

If I were to refer to Hegel’s “three aspects of composition as moments of a whole, the Absolute” mentioned in the book (p. 25)—science, culture, and spirit—I would conclude that this book is an interesting contribution in design science and spirit. However, despite Krieger’s argument of design as the historical product of society, the cultural implications and representations of design remained timid. It might be that since Krieger’s original publication of the article, the development of cultural representations and productions as a dynamic area of research (notably in cultural studies) probably overshadow the article and book. Krieger might in fact be his own toughest critic when he states, “When they [designers], and others who take up the cause of design, begin to advocate and argue, they are rather less clear, rather more burdened by ideas that in fact do not apply to their actual designing” (p. xiii).

Overall, Krieger’s scholarship is of interest if only for the tour de force of condensing so a wide range of material in 130 pages. What is good about What’s Wrong with Plastic Trees? is that the book explores many avenues to think about such a question. What is “wrong” about What’s Wrong with Plastic Trees? is that Krieger does not directly answer the question beyond the arguments of tackiness and artificial “authenticity” demonstrated through a series of scientific and philosophical ideas. But such a question is likely to resonate differently to various fields within the practices of planning and design. Although Krieger’s work by now has “designed” a particular niche in the scientific rationalization of planning and design, I hesitate to recommend the book for applied instruction. Beyond the authentic-and-artificial argument of the experience of nature, I believe that some planning and design students might provide incisive arguments related to the social and ecological implications of “plastic trees.” Hence, there is an inherent complexity to the question of What’s Wrong with Plastic Trees? that remains unanswered. Issues of large-scale deforestation/ reforestation have different environmental implications than the chemically preserved palm trees of Las Vegas’ casino- scapes or the constructed structure of Disneyland’s Robinson’s family tree.

I believe that most design students will first need a more practical and focused exploration to this challenging question while keeping within Krieger’s argument of nature as a product of human design.

Reference

Krieger, Martin H. 1973. What’s wrong with plastic trees? Artifice and authenticity in design. Science 179:446-55.

Foundations of Natural Resources Policy and Management, edited by Tim W. Clark, Andrew R. Willard, and Christina M. Cromley. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 2000. 372 pages. $37.50 (hardback), $18 (paperback)

Reviewed by Stacey Swearingen White

Assistant Professor

Graduate Program in Urban Planning

University of Kansas

Natural resource problems pose significant challenges in both theory and practice. The various interactions among the physical, biological, and social spheres of these problems render them particularly complicated, with solutions that are hard to isolate. This book, an edited volume, proposes a policy- sciences approach to teaching, understanding, and dealing with natural resources issues. Clark and Willard contend that the policy sciences provide “a set of tools that are unparalleled” for this task (p. 3). Their goal is to introduce these tools, using their own teaching experiences to illustrate policy-sciences applications in a variety of natural resources case studies.

Just what are the policy sciences? The first section of the book is devoted to an explanation. Drawing largely from the work of political scientist Harold Lasswell, Clark and Willard describe an analytical framework that can be applied to virtually any policy situation. Its strength, they argue, and what distinguishes it from other analytical methods, is its integrated approach. Researchers collect and analyze data in four dimensions: problem orientation, social process mapping, decision process mapping, and observational standpoint. The integration of these dimensions allows “insights into social process that simply cannot be achieved by using conventional views and terms” (p. 9). Although the editors maintain that the policy-sciences method is not merely a “cookbook” approach to analyzing and solving natural resource problems, their elaboration of the method suggests that it calls for careful, well-delineated steps. They state that understanding problem orientation, for example, involves five specific tasks, while seven “interlinked functions” comprise decision processes (p. 14). The authors may not view this as a recipe, per se, but the methodological ingredients do not appear to be particularly negotiable.

Of most interest to planning educators, particularly those who teach courses in environmental planning and policy, are the potential applications of the policy sciences to natural resources issues and their subsequent utility in the classroom. Following their discussion of the policy-sciences analytical framework, Clark and Willard explain its use in the Foundations of Natural Resources Policy and Management course they teach at Yale University. Although it stops short of providing the syllabus, this course description is quite detailed. The authors even include the form they and their students use to assess class presentations. They also provide selected comments from student evaluations as well as their own assessments of the course’s success. Should one be tempted, it would be fairly straightforward to structure a similar class of one’s own based on the information presented here.

The bulk of the book and its second part consist of ten case studies of natural resources issues that were actual student projects in the Foundations course. The chapter preceding these cases serves as a guide to reading them. Once more, Clark and Willard provide very detailed information: an outline of what they require of the papers in their course. While they argue that this outline is flexible, one cannot help but notice that it goes so far as to suggest a title of roughly ten words and includes recommendations for what should be written in the first through the fourth paragraphs of the introduction. They also emphasize the importance of an engaging but less than 200-word abstract and direct the reader to the case studies for examples. The case chapters, however, do not in fact include abstracts (perhaps a final editing oversight), so the reader cannot glean their substantive contents without perusing them in their entirety.

The actual case studies vary widely in their topics and include analyses of ozone pollution in Baltimore, endangered salamander protection in Texas, and national park management in Ghana. Each study is commendable in its thorough analysis of the issue at hand and its consideration of alternative policy responses. Recommendations range from the general (e.g., more analysis, using a policy-sciences approach) to the specific (e.g., initiation of a system of fines and legal punishment for violation of established standards). When one considers that these studies were the final products of a semester-long course, they are all the more impressive.

All ten cases, not surprisingly, remain circumscribed by the policy-sciences approach. While they differ in format, they bear some useful similarities. The cases serve to clarify the ways in which the policy sciences can be applied to real issues. Of particular interest to this reviewer was the careful way in which each case study author reflected on the perspectives and biases they bring to their topic. As well, the recommendations offered seem practical and well thought out, even when they advise further examination of the issues at hand. As evidenced by the acknowledgements that most of the authors include at the end of their case studies (another requirement of the project outline), they credit the success of their efforts to the policy-sciences approach. It is important to recall, however, that their course considered only this single method.

I have more than once lamented that finding appropriate texts for environmental planning classes can be as challenging as the issues themselves. While this book initially seemed very promising in that regard, ultimately it is likely to be more useful as a reference than as a course text. Even if one wished to focus a course entirely on the policy-sciences method, the aforementioned level of detail about the Yale course serves as a bit of a stumbling block. For instance, students would learn that they can be expected to “grow skeptical about the utility of the policy sciences” in the middle of the semester but that this resistance will likely prove to be a “temporary phase” (p. 28). Changes to the format of the class presented in this book would require explanation as, for that matter, would the decision to teach a very similar course.

The policy sciences, although they appear to be a valuable approach to natural resources policy, are one of many different analytical tools. A new offering from Burger et al. (Protecting the Commons, 2000), for example, considers resource management issues through Elinor Ostrom’s analytical framework. What may eventually tilt the scales in favor of one approach over another is the actual resolution of natural resource conflicts. In the meantime, books such as Foundations of Natural Resources Policy and Management provide a potentially useful tool for further analysis.

Reference

Burger, Joanna, Elinor Ostrom, Richard B. Norgaard, and David Policansky, eds. 2000. Protecting the commons: A framework for resource management in the Americas. Covelo, CA: Island.