Doctoral / Recent Graduates
2009
2008
Planning a Metropolitan Atlanta: The Atlanta Regional Commission, 1970-2002
by Carlton Basmajian
Though it possesses a history dating to the beginning of the 20th century, regional planning in the United States has frequently been characterized as weak and disorganized. Sprawling urban regions are often cited as concrete evidence of the failure of the nation’s regional planning agencies to develop and implement a coordinated regional development agenda, and Atlanta is as often mentioned as a prime example of this phenomenon. And so goes the prevailing wisdom about the causes and conditions of sprawling development and its relationship to regional planning: if only regional coordination were better, sprawl would be so much less. But this is a bold conclusion. Though there often appears to be a disconnect between development patterns and the policies devised by regional agencies, this does not mean that the work the agencies do is unimportant to why an urban region grows in a particular way. Taking a longer view, I argue through this dissertation that much of the planning and coordination that regional agencies actually accomplish is largely hidden from public view, but that regional planning agencies have long possessed a quiet power that has influenced the shape of the landscape of urban regions like Atlanta. To understand how regional planning agencies wield power we must refocus our attention away from mechanical indicators and toward more fluid issues of language and procedure (discourse) and the rules that govern the behavior of public agencies (structure). Using archival sources related to Atlanta’s public regional planning agency, I examine, in turn, the formation of the agency, the Atlanta Regional Commission, in 1971; the preparation of the 1975 regional development plan; the initiation of a regional watershed management planning process in 1978; the genesis of the 1989 state law that mandated comprehensive planning; and a battle over air quality and the building of a suburban freeway in 1999. Focusing on the long-term work of a regional agency deeply rooted in the politics of a particularly place provides us with the chance to see in detail how the planning process unfolds, and the contours of power that regional planning institutions exert on the sprawling suburban metropolis.
Why Cooperate? An evaluation of the formation and persistence of voluntary regional land use cooperative arrangements in Michigan
by Nina David
For more than a century, planning scholars have been both frustrated and fascinated with the notion of regional cooperation, one of the most sought after yet elusive ideals of land use planning. While scholars view regional cooperation as the answer to most land use problems, they debate whether regional cooperation can be achieved without substantial mandates, incentives, or both. My dissertation contributes to this planning literature by focusing on the problematic of regional cooperation in Michigan, which most planning scholars regard as representative of states with permissive institutional settings that are unfavorable to cooperation. There are two parts to the puzzle of cooperation in Michigan: first, whether municipalities voluntarily cooperate, and second, whether this ensuing regional cooperation produces desirable planning outcomes. My dissertation focuses on the first part. Using a mixed methodology approach comprised of surveys of local elected officials and case studies of selected municipalities, I focus on whether regional cooperative arrangements can be crafted voluntarily, and I assess the factors the affect the formation of such arrangements. Results show that half of the surveyed Michigan municipalities cooperate on land use issues. These municipalities, however, differ considerably in the kinds of arrangements they use to cooperate on land use issues. While some municipalities cooperate informally by just conversing, others establish formal cooperative mechanisms such as joint master plans and zoning ordinances. Further, the factors that determine whether a municipality makes the initial decision to cooperate are not always the same factors that determine whether a cooperative effort is formalized. The perception of future growth pressure and the internal support for cooperation in a municipality are important in explaining a municipality's initial decision to cooperate. The roles of informal institutions and county and regional planning agencies serve as important explanatory factors of the extent to which municipalities formalize their cooperative efforts. Finally, and somewhat surprisingly, a high degree of regional governance culture appears to make it less likely that localities will engage in formal cooperation. Examining cooperation in this light not only allows an in-depth view into decision makers? calculus of cooperation but also offers insight into the underlying causal mechanisms of the key factors predicting cooperation.
"Planning at the Edge: Planning Capacity, Growth Pressure, and Growth Management at the Urban Fringe"
by Carolyn Loh
In many states, the task of managing the pace and nature of future growth is left to local governments. That they are adequately carrying out the planning process is largely taken on faith. In this dissertation I test the hypotheses that existing land use conformance with master plan goals and future land use maps decreases with growth pressure and increases with planning capacity. I combine GIS analysis, plan and zoning document analysis, and qualitative interview analysis to investigate these hypotheses. Local governments use the long range master planning process to project and manage a future vision for the community. In theory, the process works as follows. First, the planning commission holds a visioning session to gain community consensus on plan goals. Commission members and planners incorporate those goals into the master plan and set forth objectives and implementation steps. Local government officials implement the plan by codifying its recommendations in the zoning ordinance, and enforcing ordinances uniformly. At each of these four steps, however, the process can break down, and the spirit of the community's vision can fail to be translated into reality. I call these the four potential disconnects. I find that a lack of planning capacity, meaning the resources available to the community with which to plan, can indeed negatively influence conformance with master plan goals; in other words, lack of planning capacity makes it more likely that the community experiences disconnects in the planning process. Some combination of money, community involvement, and staff and official expertise is necessary to first create a high quality plan, then implement it and enforce ordinances consistently. Higher growth pressure is associated with lower conformance between existing land use and future land use maps, but a large part of this difference can be explained by vacant land use succession patterns in urbanizing areas. An awareness of causes and circumstances involved in the breakdown of the planning process allows the direction of resources in a targeted manner to improve conformance between plans and built outcomes.
Public Participation in Brownfields Cleanup and Redevelopment: The Role of Community Organizations
by Daniel Spiess
This study explores the role of community organizations in the planning process, using the Seattle, Washington, brownfields program as the focus of study. Applying scholarly literature from planning, social work, and environmental studies, this research focuses specifically on the effect that community organizations have on promoting public participation, influencing project outcomes, and mediating between neighborhood residents and government at three brownfield sites in Seattle. I apply multiple qualitative research methods in this study, including case studies, semi-structured interviews, and archival research, to identify conditions if and where community organizations have been integral to public involvement and influential to project outcomes. My descriptions, questions, and analyses are based upon existing brownfield studies, participation and community organization literature, and the communicative planning debates. This research shows a notable lack of meaningful participation by individuals in brownfields projects despite the presence of several active community organizations in each case and assumptions in the literature of organizations’ promotion of public participation. Government officials and developers in this study implemented ‘public participation’ but often produced little more than an outreach/advertising effort that lacked any real path for input, reflecting the rationalization of participation requirements by those in power. For their part, community organizations played a mediating role but the role was as much for the benefit of city officials and developers as it was for neighborhood residents. Organizations in these cases assisted government officials in gauging local concerns and added valuable support to developers seeking city approvals yet rarely provided increased access to the planning process or facilitated activism, often due to the political context of these developments. Despite the appearance of minimal opportunities for meaningful participation, however, residents appeared mostly satisfied by the planning processes and showed little concern for contamination highlighting Seattle’s neighborhood planning efforts of the previous decade and emphasizing the importance of trust, long-standing relationships, and “local” status. Calls for increased public participation in the literature and in practice may not be necessary (or at least not necessary in all phases of a project) as long as planners and politicians strengthen efforts to build relationships and trust between stakeholders.
“Inappropriate” appropriations of planning ideas: Informalizing the formal and localizing the global"
by Sanjeev Vidyarthi
This research explores how the American planning idea of the neighborhood unit was implemented in India, why and how the recipient society appropriated the concept, and what that means for how Indian cities actually develop. Using insights from cultural studies, anthropology, planning, and historiography this research examines the adaptation of the concept at the national and state level, and document and analyzes the spatial transformation of three built neighborhood units in the city of Jaipur. It does so by employing a combination of four research methods within a case study approach: archival research, analysis of built up areas using Geographical Information System (GIS), the neighborhood history calendar technique, and semi-structured open-ended interviews. This research reveals that the aspirations of elites and the contemporary planning and development agendas of recently independent India facilitated the introduction and institutionalization of the neighborhood unit concept. However, a range of actors including planners contributed towards the appropriation of the neighborhood unit. Indian planners attempted to adapt and translate the concept in order to translocate its American origins into Indian patrimony. This enabled planners to claim equal ownership of the concept and helped internalize it. The residents appropriated the envisaged spatiality of built units by transforming residential land use into commercial, encroaching on open setbacks to build residential extensions, and building temples in what were intended to be recreational parks. In addition, the urban poor have built informal settlements on the peripheries of these neighborhood units, and the state and its capillary organizations such as the Housing Board and Urban Development Authority have appropriated the open spaces and planned land uses. This study reveals that everyday practices of residents have substantially enriched the simple planning concept through a diverse range of appropriations. Such a pervasiveness of appropriations suggests patterns of collective behaviors that call for more multifaceted and historic studies of Indian cities in order to plan efficiently. It also calls for revisiting present subdivision norms that emphasis residential land use and proscribe other uses in neighborhoods apart from a few convenience shops. Planners and policy-makers, once they begin to appreciate the worth of these informalities, have sufficient ingredients at hand to create rich, lively and diverse neighborhoods in Indian cities.
