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Title:
Fuzzy Concepts, Scanty Evidence, Policy Distance: The Case for Rigour and Policy Relevance in Critical Regional Studies.
Authors:
Markusen, Ann
Source:
Regional Studies; Aug2003, Vol. 37 Issue 6/7, p701, 17p
Abstract:
M ARKUSEN A. (2003) Fuzzy concepts, scanty evidence, policy distance: the case for rigour and policy relevance in critical regional studies , Reg. Studies 37 , 701-717. Regional analysis is increasingly populated by fuzzy concepts that lack clarity and are difficult to test or operationalize: flexible specialization, windows of opportunity, resurgent regions, world cities, cooperative competition. Many analyses rely on anecdote or singular case studies, while contrarian cases and more comprehensive and comparative inquiries are ignored. Methodology is often not discussed adequately. This trend has been accompanied by an increasing detachment from political and policy advocacy. In this paper, I define fuzzy concepts and relate their proliferation to an emphasis on process rather than institutions, agents and behaviour. To demonstrate my arguments, I review three highly acclaimed bodies of work - flexible specialization with its re-agglomeration thesis; world cities; and "cooperative competition' in industrial districts à la Silicon Valley. The paper makes the case for adherence to social science norms of conceptual coherence, causal theory (with both behavioural and structural components) and subjection of theory to the rigours of evidence, where the latter may encompass qualitative and quantitative techniques. Greater commitment to entering the policy debate and to making results accessible and informative to policymakers, regional planners and political activists would substantially strengthen this body of research and its usefulness. M ARKUSEN A. (2003)
Dream, Necessity, Or Both?
March 11, 2007
PHILADELPHIA -- To many people across America, the historic Northeast Corridor -- Maine to Virginia -- has an old, cold, crowded image. But could it be young, green and creative, a cutting-edge region of 21st-century America?
That question, posed by Petra Todorovich of the New York Regional Plan Association, engaged a Northeast Climate and Competitiveness Summit convened here March 2.
A close geographic match to many of the 13 colonies that formed the United States more than 200 years ago, the Northeast Corridor today is 50 million people strong and can boast a $2.7 trillion economy, 27 percent of the nation's output. In finance, media, health care and higher education, it still trumps many newer regions of the nation.
DOI: 10.1177/08854129922092559
© 1999 SAGE Publications
Administrative Discretion and Urban and Regional Planners' Values
Ann Forsyth
Department of Urban Planning and Design at Harvard University
This article explores the possibilities for using administrative discretion to do planning that reflects urban and regional planners' own deeply held values. The article first charts the broad character of administrative discretion and the limits of discretion. Potential problems include a lack of accountability, manipulation, unpredictability, intrusiveness, and poor decision making. The second section of the article examines one area of value-based planning-progressive planning. It concludes that administrative discretion may provide enough space for value-based planning, but using discretion for such actions often requires testing a set of ethical and political limits of working within governments.
By Joe Grengs
No other governmental program comes close to influencing the divided geographic patterns of our metropolitan regions like that of federal transportation. Yet most citizens would be hard-pressed to name who decides how and where transportation dollars are spent. Metropolitan planning organizations, or MPOs, are the bodies through which billions of federal dollars are distributed to state and local governments each year in support of transportation projects. Nearly every transportation project you see-new roads, fixed roads, interchanges, bus lines-has federal transportation dollars behind it. MPOs decide which projects get funded and which do not. These projects, in turn, influence where homes, jobs and stores are located. Yet the people who make up these MPOs, and the manner in which they arrive at their decisive choices, are mysterious to all but the most dedicated citizen activists.
The problem with MPOs is that most of them are biased against central cities in their voting structure. By allotting votes on a "one government-one vote" basis instead of a "one person-one vote" basis, MPOs grant outlying suburban jurisdictions considerably more political power in the decision-making process compared with center cities. Scholars and activists contend that this bias exacerbates sprawling urban development and further disadvantages poor households and people of color in the urban core. Whether this bias leads to worsening social equity remains an open question, but on a procedural basis a highly skewed representational scheme within an MPO may be in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause, thus making such a structure unconstitutional.
Should the actions of transportation officials be subject to democratic accountability? Not in the state of Michigan, according to a judge's ruling in August 2004. A civil rights lawsuit alleged that transportation officials in the Detroit metropolitan region choose projects and spend public dollars in a way that favors the largely white and wealthy suburbs and unfairly ignores the needs of the central city and its inner suburbs. At issue was the voting structure of the MPO. The judge found that voting strength of an MPO need not be in proportion to population because an MPO has limited responsibility as a special-purpose government. Unfortunately, as a result of the ruling, Detroit's famously segregated metropolis will continue to develop under the influence of a skewed procedure that builds in a bias toward building roads for suburban commuters over strengthening transit service for inner-city bus riders. But the case does offer important lessons that planners elsewhere can learn from to mount challenges against undemocratic practices in transportation funding.
...Call#: Van Pelt Library HE308 .T35 2005
Authors: Innes, Judith and Gruber, Judith
Source: Journal of the American Planning Association; Spring2005, Vol. 71 Issue 2, p177-188, 12p, 2 diagrams
Abstract:
In a 5-year study of the San Francisco Bay Area Metropolitan Transportation Commission, we found four planning styles at work: technical/bureaucratic, political influence, social movement, and collaborative. Each involved differing assumptions about knowledge, participation, and the nature of a good plan. Players using one style were often mistrustful or contemptuous of those working in others. Regional actions--as opposed to packages of projects for parochial interests--were rare. The few regional initiatives emerged from collaborative planning and social movements. We argue that where diversity and interdependence of interests are high, collaboration is the most effective approach. Key barriers to collaboration included state and federal funding formulas, earmarking, and the substantial documentation required by state and federal regulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Bay Area Transportation Decision Making in the Wake of ISTEA: Planning Styles in Conflict at the Metropolitan Transportation Commission
Innes
Journal of Planning Education and Research, Vol. 25, No. 3, 249-263 (2006)
Environmental Justice and the New Regionalism
Joel Rast
University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee
During the past decade, renewed calls for central city revitalization have come from scholars and practitioners working within a new regionalist perspective. Such arguments have provided much of the ideological underpinning for coalitions around the country promoting smart growth and other regional reforms. Smart growth policies seek to curb urban sprawl by channeling investment into already developed areas, including inner-city communities. Given the attention paid to urban policy among advocates of the new regionalism, one would expect inner-city minorities to be well represented in the dialogue. However, the dialogue over smart growth and regionalism has largely failed to engage inner-city African Americans, Latinos, and other minorities. This article asks why that is the case, examines the consequences, and proposes a strategy for reframing the new regionalist debate in a way that may resonate more with minority stakeholders.
Astana Journal
Kazakhstan’s Futuristic Capital, Complete With Pyramid
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
Published: October 13, 2006
Other countries have built futuristic capitals in remote outposts, Brasília most famously, and other cities have experienced feverish, transformational construction, like Dubai or even the imperial capital that once ruled Kazakhstan: Moscow. But none have sprung up quite like Astana, from the ambition to create not only a national capital but also a national identity shaped almost exclusively by a single man: the country’s president since its inception, Nursultan A. Nazarbayev. “The chief architect is really the president himself,” Yerzhan N. Ashykbayev, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, said at the ministry’s new building, which opened in April 2005. “Every project, every building is approved by him.”
Anger Drives Property Rights Measures - New York Times
By WILLIAM YARDLEY
...
Supporters of the ballot efforts in the West — often called “Kelo-plus” — say they want to stop so-called regulatory takings, the idea that government effectively takes private property when zoning laws limit how it can be used.
Opponents say the regulatory-takings initiatives are essentially a ruse, that they are trying to exploit anger over the Kelo decision and eminent domain to roll back zoning regulations that are critical to controlling growth, protecting the environment and preserving property values.
The more far-reaching proposals in the West — in Idaho, Arizona, California and Washington State — are citizens’ initiatives supported by signature petitions, and they are often supported financially and logistically by national libertarian groups.
...
EXHIBITION GUIDE- PDF
Architecture and Justice maps criminal justice statistics to make visible the geography of incarceration and return in New York, Phoenix, New Orleans, Wichita, and New Haven, prompting new ways of understanding the spatial dimension of an area of public policy with profound implications for American cities.
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The Architectural League presents
Architecture and Justice
September 15—October 28, 2006
The Urban Center, 457 Madison Avenue
Soaring Usage Puts 3 N.Va. Counties in Path
By Sandhya Somashekhar
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 10, 2006; Page A01
Dominion Virginia Power is planning to build a high-voltage power line that could stretch across parts of Prince William, Fauquier and Loudoun counties, an answer to the region's growing energy needs that has raised fears of spoiling some of the state's most fiercely protected open land.