Journal of Planning Education and Research
Summer 1999
Volume 18, Number 4

"Urban Modeling and Contemporary Planning Theory:

Is There a Common Ground?"

Subhrajit Guhathakurta

This article provides a critical review of the history of urban modeling in North America, with a focus on unraveling some fundamental issues that militated against incorporating the first-generation urban models into planning practice. After examining the underlying theoretical context in social practice, I demonstrate that the re-emergence of a different form of rationality creates the conditions for incorporating new forms of urban models. Finally, I highlight the developments in group decision support systems research and suggest how these systems, together with a geographic information systems component, can be designed for critical planning practice.

"Local Planning and Economic Restructuring:

A Synthetic Interpretation of Urban Redevelopment"

Jason Hackworth

This paper presents an analysis of commercial land redevelopment in the Phoenix Metropolitan area during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Using four specific cases, I show how local landscape change is connected to the broader forces of urban restructuring. In addition, I discuss important differences between the city-building process in a central core and a suburban process within this structural context. The local deviations from the structural context are explained vis-à-vis the Phoenix regional economy, conservative political culture, and relative youth on the American urban frontier.

"In Lieu of Required Parking "

Donald C. Shoup

Some cities allow developers to pay a fee in lieu of providing the parking spaces required by zoning ordinances, and use this revenue to finance public parking spaces to replace the private parking spaces the developers would have provided. This paper presents a survey of in-lieu programs in 46 cities in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, South Africa, Germany, and Iceland. These in-lieu programs reduce the cost of development, encourage shared parking, improve urban design, and support historic preservation. The in-lieu fees also reveal that the cost of complying with minimum parking requirements is more than four times the cost of the impact fees that cities levy for all other public purposes combined. The high cost of required parking suggests another promising in-lieu policy: allow developers to reduce parking demand rather than increase the parking supply. Examination of an Eco Pass program in California shows that reducing parking demand can cost far less than increasing the parking supply.

"The Utopianism of Children: An Empirical Study of

Children’s Neighborhood Design Preferences"

Emily Talen and Mary Coffindaffer

Little is known about the environmental preferences of children. While planners have taught children about planning, relatively little academic research has been conducted on what children can teach the discipline about planning. This paper summarizes the results of a survey of the planning preferences of 248 children in kindergarten through second grade. The content analysis revealed a preference for land use variety and for places associated with activity and social interaction. Children tended to favor diversity and accessibility, as opposed to homogeneity and privacy. Further, the children’s plans were different in terms of age and particularly in terms of gender. Children were able to conceptualize neighborhood even at the kindergarten level, and many of their conceptualizations were not dissimilar from the traditional view of neighborhood espoused by planners.

"Patterns of Doctrinal Development"

Andreas Faludi

Planning doctrine refers to a conceptual scheme giving coherence to planning by means of conceptualizing an area’s shape, developmental challenges, and ways of handling them. The focus of this article is on the dynamics of such a doctrine. Drawing on Thomas Kuhn, doctrine implies a phase model, from a pre-doctrinal to a doctrinal situation and on to one where revolution threatens. Four pre-doctrinal situations are discussed: the Flemish Structure Plan, the Second Outline Structural Plan for the Benelux, European Union planning, and Florida’s state growth management. Conceiving of them as pre-doctrinal focuses on how, in the fullness of time, they may evolve. However, what about situations where, like in the Netherlands, doctrine is mature? In those situations, a ‘Laudanian Model’ of evolutionary change (after Larry Laudan, a critic of Kuhn) opens up new perspectives.

"Planning for Recreation in Rural England"

Neil Ravenscroft and Jo Reeves

In this paper, we analyze recent rural strategy initiatives in England in an attempt to explore the relationship between planning policy and the provision of outdoor recreation. Notwith-standing a wider rhetoric of accessibility to the countryside, much recreational planning activity has been based on the discriminatory notion of acceptable leisure activities. Acceptability in this case is associated with a land use planning system in which land itself assumes a form of naturalness, in contrast to its uses, which are seen to be socially constructed. This dualism is based not on any definition of demand, need, or public interest, but on a continuing spatial determinism in which rights of land owner-ship are constructed as both socially and morally superior to other rights. This continues to legitimize a rationalized form of protection through the statutory planning system.

Instruction

"Teaching Planning Methods Through Modules"

Riad G. Mahayni, Thomas W. Sanchez, and Eric Damian Kelly