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Since early 2000, Italian regions have been taking a 'multilevel' approach to territorial planning by seeking a 'shared vision' between different strategic planning levels: the regional level with the territorial plans of the regions, the national level with the National Strategic Framework based on the so-called 'strategic platforms', and the European level with the Trans-European Network for Transport corridors and European Spatial Development Perspective polycentrism. Territorial cohesion and territorial competitiveness constitute objectives of all these planning levels and related visions to a certain extent. But they are understood in different ways at the different levels. Thus, coordination between these 'multilevel' visions—the chief problem of any multilevel governance—often presents radical problems. Structural incoherencies or incompatibilities between the different visions make interaction difficult, and coordination even impossible. Efforts are needed to work towards the goal of better coordination between visions, so that they can at least speak a common language in relation to the existing territorial problems and possible strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents abstracts on various topics which include social life and civic education in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the political aspect of neighborhood football clubs in Santiago, Chile and the legacy of urban renewal in Southwest Washington, D.C.

Focusing upon a period during which the planning discipline emerged and was consolidated in Latin America from the 1920s through the 1950s, this article aims to identify some of the impulses behind the widening of the scope of planning activities undertaken by planners of capital cities, from the local and urban to the regional and territorial. The author uses a comparative perspective to analyze this tendency toward the enlargement of the territorial extent of the plan, interpreting it as part of the process through which Latin America's urban modernization proceeded while also relating it to the epistemological and professional shift from urbanismo towards planificacion and planejamento. While factors such as the emergence of planning offices in some capital cities and the emergence of the first courses in planning in university curricula are considered, the article focuses mainly on the the approaches of pioneers in Latin American planning to this transition, in particular Carlos Contreras and Hannes Meyer in Mexico City, Carlos della Paolera in Buenos Aires, Karl Brunner in Bogota and Santiago de Chile, and Maurice Rotival in Caracas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For many Philippine provinces, decentralization and more autonomous local development planning did not lead to the desired outcomes. This article examines the experiences of the two provinces of Cebu and Leyte. While Cebu became a centre of trade and industry, Leyte is still struggling with its local economy oriented to natural resources. A main reason for the divergent development paths of the two islands can be found in the emergence of different elite structures, which resulted in different path-dependent patterns of economic specialization. Despite this different historical experience, both provinces today suffer from similar institutional infirmities in their planning system for promoting local development. Local planning capacity constraints, such as regional and local co-ordination and co-operation patterns, local finances, human capital and knowledge are analysed. The Cebuano elites used the room for manoeuvre provided by decentralization reforms more successfully than elites in Leyte. This created pockets of efficiency in Cebu leading to more development-friendly investment policies. In order to increase local and regional planning capacity, short-term interventions and policy reforms at the local, regional and national level are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Planning support systems (PSSs) are intended to facilitate relevant steps in planning processes; however, the academic evaluation of PSSs reveals many bottlenecks precluding a widespread use of these systems. A central weakness is the lack of communication between PSS developers (focusing on technical issues) and potential PSS users. Other academic fields such as knowledge management and technological innovation recognised similar bottlenecks years ago. On the basis of methods proposed in these fields, a new process architecture for the development of a PSS is proposed. Through a dialogue in which PSS developers and potential users discuss and use the PSS, existing tools, instruments, and models are refined and improved to be more useful to their potential users. The focus shifts away from the development of a technically more sophisticated support system, towards a process of PSS development which is intertwined with the planning process itself. This process architecture is called mediated planning support (MPS). We explore what can be learned from other academic domains and enquire about the applicability of these findings to PSS development. In Amsterdam the Department of Transport wanted to transform their transportation model into a land-use and transport PSS and their work illustrates how such a process architecture can link PSS developers and users in planning practice. We discuss the concepts behind MPS and use the case of Amsterdam to visualise its workings, lastly offering hypotheses on the method and suggestions for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports the decision of the Washington Court of Appeals 'Cannabis Action Coal. v. City of Kent.' The court conclude that the city ordinance prohibiting "collective gardening" of medical marijuana, although permitted by state law, is a valid exercise of the city's zoning authority and a state's legislation does not preempt the ordinance because the ordinance regulates land use activity.

This paper presents an urban taxonomy or classification system for New Zealand settlement forms across five urban scales: metropolitan/regional, sub-metropolitan/city; community/neighbourhood; local/residential block and houses/micro. It provides taxonomical descriptions and density patterns of existing and emerging New Zealand residential urban forms at neighbourhood and local levels. Considering seven case studies in the Auckland Region, this paper formulates a set of basic quantitative urban form descriptors within the urban taxonomical framework. An analysis of these descriptors indicates that dwelling and household densities and spatial distributions of built-up roof areas, vegetation, productive land, impervious pavements and pathways reflect their urban form characteristics. These varying qualities can be linked to the appraisal of environmental sustainability performances of different urban forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1963, the ministère de l'Agriculture du Québec directed the Eastern Quebec planning bureau (Bureau d'aménagement de l'Est du Québec - BAEQ) to accomplish an unprecedented task: to create a Master Development Plan for the pilot territories in the Lower St. Lawrence, Gaspé and Des-de-la-Madeleine regions. The plan was innovative in its preparation, through both the philosophy that shaped it and its methodology. In fact, the BAEQ appealed for the active participation of the communities directly affected to support the report it planned to submit to the government, to lessen the socio-economic disparities between Eastern Quebec and the rest of "La Belle Province." The BAEQ completed the project in June 1966, with the submission of a substantial report published in ten volumes and containing more than two hundred recommendations, including several proposals for a major reconfiguration of the political and economic framework in Eastern Quebec. The BAEQ was extremely prolific in its academic writings until the mid-1980s. Since then, sociologists, anthropologists and political scientists seem to have turned a blind eye to this research subject, as if an irrevocable verdict had been rendered against it. The BAEQ seems to have been the biggest failure of the Quiet Revolution, the prototype of the technocratic drift, the illustration of the failure of centralized development planning, and the embodiment of the government's lack of responsiveness towards citizens' demands. And yet, when we re-examine the BAEQ we can now appreciate how this political experimentation left behind a legacy of social innovations that, over the years, have become an integral part of the government's processes. From this perspective, the BAEQ is seen in a different light : it is a crucial step in the history of public administration in Quebec, the direct and indirect fallout of which has profoundly re-shaped the logistics of territorial development in Quebec. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The discovery and greater understanding of what have come to be known as 'rural-urban linkages' calls for a more radical change in development planning than policies inspired by the sustainable livelihoods approach or by the uncritical desire of 'strengthening' linkages allow. The rebirth of interest in rural development in the late 1990s offers an opportunity to bring to prominence more comprehensive frameworks for such planning. This article starts from the position that rural development needs to be regionalised, and that poverty alleviation is dependent on the retention of the multiplier effect in the local economy, and the redressing of exploitative socio-spatial relations. The overarching model and the experience of the Rural-Urban Partnership Programme in a Nepalese municipality are recounted here, with special focus on the micro-enterprise component. Major lessons include the importance of getting the nuts and bolts of practice right even when the underlying model appears coherent. RUPP experience also appears to highlight the importance of localising much of the value-added chain of local resource-based commodities in the rural region. The coordinated governance of villages and towns appears to be essential too. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents abstracts on city planning-related topics, including visions of waterfront development in postindustrial Philadelphia, the construction of a town planning perception of Colombo, and city planning and the U.S. census.

This paper provides an empirical comparison between utility-maximization and regret- minimization perspectives of spatial-choice behaviour. The key difference between these two perspectives is that the regret-minimization perspective implies that the anticipated satisfaction associated with a chosen spatial alternative depends on the anticipated performance of nonchosen alternatives. In order to provide a meaningful statistical comparison, we formulate a model of regret minimization such that it reduces to utility maximization for a given parameter restriction. Estimation results, based on a binary stated travel-mode-choice experiment, show how the regret-based model outperforms its utilitarian counterpart. Furthermore it is shown how participants in the experiment attached relatively much weight to the situation where the nonchosen alternative is slightly better than the chosen one, and they tend to discount larger differences. We show how this concavity of the regret function is in line with the prospect theoretical notion of risk-seeking behaviour in the domain of losses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a new approach to land-use planning and transportation planning that provides regional planners with a means to achieve their goals without infringing upon local autonomy. The approach focuses on facilitating cooperation between city and regional planners. This is accomplished through two sequential stages: (I) the regional-planning stage and (2) the city-planning stage. In both stages, land-use planning and transportation planning are cast as multiobjective design problems and solved with a genetic algorithm. An example of the approach is presented using data for a medium-sized metropolitan region and a city within it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Problem: From the antislum crusades of the Progressive Era to the idealistic regional planning and public housing movements of the New Deal, the postwar urban renewal controversies, and recent attempts at integrating suburban America, housing advocates have pressed urban planners to take up the moral challenges of their profession. Many planners, especially since the 1960s, have met the challenges by embracing social goals. Yet, time and again, major efforts for social change have been defeated or diluted, sometimes with the very planning tools that were created for reform purposes. Purpose: I aim to explore the relationship of housing reform to the field of urban and regional planning over the last century and understand why housing and planning reformers have been unable to achieve their goals. Methods: I survey and synthesize secondary and primary sources on the history of housing reform and the planning profession in the United States. Results and conclusions: Over the last century local property owners, business leaders, and political officials have exploited the framework of the American political system to appropriate or defeat idealistic housing and planning schemes. Whether the reform was zoning, garden cities, public housing, urban renewal, or the integration of suburbs by income and race, parochial interests have deterred or diverted policies for their own ends. The weak point in carrying out progressive goals has been the inability to overcome local opposition. Takeaway for practice: Successful implementation of social housing and planning programs in the United States depends on recognizing the ways that local prerogatives have undermined reform efforts in the past and organizing support for them at the local level in the future. Research support: This work was supported by the MacArthur Foundation and the Ford Foundation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents abstracts on planning-related topics which include an examination of the popularity of dancing in New Zealand during the 1920s and 1930s, an examination of how religious diversity in community affects church membership in a period of high growth and social change and an examination of child labor in urban industries in the Dutch Republic.

Despite the centrality of comprehensive plans to the profession of city and regional planning, there is a gap in knowledge about the quality of plans as they are not routinely evaluated against best practice standards. We discuss plan quality evaluation, an emerging methodology for assessing the quality of plans. We review the evolution of the concept, the dimensions covered, and the principles and criteria used. We then provide a comparative meta-analytic analysis of the findings from published plan quality evaluations, ranging from research studies in the United States to national planning policy applications in Holland and New Zealand, and offer recommendations about future directions in improving content analysis of plan documents and research design in plan quality evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews the affairs of the local administration in India, both urban and rural, which have received a constitutional status through two constitutional amendments in 2002. Apart from ensuring that representatives from the people take the responsibility of administrating civil affairs, the Constitution now states that a quarter of the positions should be filled by women and other minorities, including registered ethnic groups and tribes as well as lower classes, which represents a huge change in the millenary tradition of equilibrium of power and authority in this enormous country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the varieties of capitalism, welfare capitalism, and systems of innovation literatures, the university is a critical actor as public employer, trainer and provider of several public goods. However, there is relatively weak enquiry into the spatial and institutional characteristics of university-led economic development and a relative neglect of the political economy and organizational features of embedded R&D projects in urban and regional planning. We argue that technical projects, far from being stand-alone entities, have taken on the broad characteristics of the university and city-regional development mandate in where they reside. The article is based on an exploratory study of university-industry R&D projects in six city regions of Finland. We show that: (a) the shifting role of universities reflects a changed context for the welfare state in which the “public” debate occurs; (b) These create distinct issues of legitimacy and coalition-building in local economic planning which give rise to diverse regional interpretations of single technology programmes; (c) We categorise three general types of models of R&D projects in universities and propose tentative categories of contributions to “public knowledge”. This diversity of interpretations and outcomes leaves us optimistic regarding the ability of city-regions to adapt and plan for the future against a changing welfare state that shapes the university's role, yet more cautious about any clear-cut “public knowledge” emerging from such technical projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we analyse the degree of achievement of the Regional Innovation Strategy goals. This is an European Union Commission policy oriented toward the promotion of regional Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) policy design through the involvement of regional stakeholders. We analyse two categories of objectives: those dealing with process participation and those dealing with behavioural change. Our results show that the overall achievement of the goals is meaningful: the former have been achieved in a larger extent than the latter ones. However, other aspects such as multidisciplinary, and the establishment of a monitoring and evaluation system have not been so fruitful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a new institutional economics account of the broad issues of governance in European rural development. It is argued that rural governance is determined by rural development stakeholders' property rights which in turn reflect their interests in rural development. On this basis, rural governance is explained in terms of the property rights structures reflecting the growing commonness of interests of rural development stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Small scale urban green-blue infrastructure (indicated as GBI hereafter) comprises huge underexploited areas for urban development and planning. This review article aims to highlight the relevance and knowledge gaps regarding GBI from the perspective of the food–energy–water (FEW) nexus, these being key resources for the survival of human communities. In particular, this review was focused on publications on urban ecosystem services (positive effects) and dis-services (negative effects) associated with different GBI typologies. The review proved that GBI can contribute environmentally, socially, and economically to FEW security and urban sustainability. Yet, such positive effects must be considered against ecosystem dis-services tradeoffs, including urban food production, commonly connected with heavy water and energy consumption, specifically under dry climate conditions, and sometimes related to an excessive use of manure, pesticides, or fertilizers. These conditions could pose either a risk to water quality and local insect survival or serve enhanced mosquito breeding because of irrigation. Up to now, the review evidenced that few nexus modeling techniques have been discussed in terms of their benefits, drawbacks, and applications. Guidance is provided on the choice of an adequate modeling approach. Water, energy, and food are intrinsically associated physically. However, depending on their management, their tradeoffs are often increased. There is a need to minimize these tradeoffs and to build up synergies between food, energy, and water using a holistic approach. This is why the FEW nexus approach offers good insights to address the relation between three important individual resource components of sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This section presents abstracts of papers on city planning published from 2007 to 2008, including "Streets, Sounds and Identity in Inter-war Harlem," by Clare Corbould, "(Re)making the Other, Heterosexualising Everyday Space," by Kath Browne, and "Rankings and Reactivity: How Public Measures Recreate Social Worlds," by Wendy Nelson Espeland and Michael Sauder.

Sustainable development is now widely held as a transcendental ideal of town and country planning, yet the way in which it is taught in planning schools remains problematic. This arises from a range of factors, including the all-persuasive nature of sustainability and the lack of solid examples of success through implementation. The issue of how best to promote learning for sustainable development in planning has arguably intensified in the last two years in the case of the Royal Town Planning Institute-sponsored 'fast track' one-year Masters, which has reduced the opportunities for students to engage in wider (and perhaps even deeper) concepts, including that of sustainable development. This paper explores this through discussion of a specific project developed at Queen's University Belfast, facilitated by a grant from the UK Higher Education Academy. Working with a local community, this entailed a group of students working on their Masters thesis collectively addressing issues of sustainable regeneration in a small Irish market town. The design of the project draws heavily on the concepts of enquiry based learning, experiential learning and action competence, which are seen as being central to improving education for sustainable development (ESD). The paper explores the benefits of such an approach and discusses the ways in which this experience can help enhance student's experience of ESD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paris' successful bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics arises in the midst of a grand rethinking of the politics of regional and local development in the Île-de-France region. Paris 2024 also emerges at a time when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is struggling to find cities willing to host the Olympics and has introduced a series of reforms to help recruit and motivate potential bid cities to consider how an Olympic project might be integrated into existing patterns of urban development. This exploratory research examines the blending of the Grand Paris regional development project and the 2024 Olympic ambition. Incorporating results from semi-structured interviews with seven key informants who possess specialized knowledge and are involved with governance mechanisms of the Île-de-France region and urban megaevent development, we explore how the Paris 2024 Olympic Games are being leveraged to facilitate metropolitan transformation. In the highly fragmented institutional setting of the Île-de-France region, negotiating site locations for Olympic facilities and establishing legacy or heritage objectives for the Olympic Games has important implications for the development of an institutional framework for metropolitan governance. • Project-based governance transformation • The use of mega-events to foster a vision of metropolitan consensus in a capitalist democratic context • The leveraging of the Olympic bidding and hosting process to produce institutional change • International Olympic Committee's Agenda 2020 and the potential to inform territorial dynamics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As recognized by the Paris Climate Agreement of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), local and subnational regions are crucial actors to achieve international mitigation and adaptation commitments. Scientific literature and empirical evidence point at multi-level climate governance as a crucial factor to engage subnational levels in the achievement of national and international objectives. This work focuses on the multi-level climate governance arrangements in Italy to investigate how Italian regions/provinces/cities are contributing to the achievement of national commitments. To this purpose, the paper undertakes a review of the climate policies of different tiers of government adopted to date and of the interrelationships among them. The results of the analysis show that the effective coordination between the different government levels should be strengthened to further incentivize and support initiatives at the local level. Results also show the relevant role played by international regional and city climate networks in boosting local and regional climate planning in Italy. • Climate plans of 21 Italian regions, 32 provinces, and 32 cities were assessed. • 57% of the Italian regions; 13% of provinces and 78% of cities set a carbon target. • 10% of regions, no province, and 2% of municipalities have an adaptation plan. • Cities are more active than provinces and regions in defining mitigation policies. • Active multilevel governance is effective for implementing climate plans in cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A member of the Regional Planning Association of America and architect on groundbreaking projects such as Sunnyside and Radburn, Henry Wright affirmed a communitarian regionalism that advocated new town development in a balanced region as an alternative to sprawling suburbs and congested cities. In his collaborative designs with Clarence Stein, he explored efficiency, aesthetics and quality of life issues, integrating superblock, hierarchical street systems, clustered housing, mixed uses and connected park systems. Yet Wright's subsequent adaptation of the Radburn idea offered a more complex, urban vision than the greenfield, suburban alternative. Reviewing archival material, journal articles from the period and more recent assessments of Radburn, this paper is a comparative study of Wright's interpretation of the regional city. Examination of this relatively little-known alternative vision offers new insights into the planned community and communitarian regionalism, which are of particular relevance given renewed interest in these concepts, most notably among the new urbanists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents abstracts on planning which include "Labor Unions and Affordable Housing: An Uneasy Relationship," "Smoke and Mirrors: Willy Clarkson and the Role of Disguises in Inter-War England," and "Urbanization and Spatial Organization: Hospital and Orphanage Location in Chicago, 1848-1916."

Fair-share housing in California has gone through six stages since the requirement was established as the housing element in the general plan. At first, each stage required greater rigor and care than the previous one in preparing the housing plan. After a while, the state also began reviewing local elements for compliance with state law, challenging cherished traditions of home rule. All the while, however, the focus was exclusively on housing. Most recently, planning implications of housing have forced a broader focus, now also beginning to consider other regional planning concerns dealing with transportation, air quality, and the environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The historical lineage of New Urbanism is often narrowly limited to the traditional town-planning techniques of John Nolen and Raymond Unwin. This paper focuses on the historical basis of the regional, polycentric city concepts that are an essential part of the New Urbanist manifesto. I focus primarily on the regionalism of Patrick Geddes, Lewis Mumford, Clarence Stein, and Benton MacKaye, and the principles laid out in the Regional Planning Association of America (RPAA) in the 1920s. I begin with a brief overview of the main principles of regionalism, culminating in the ideas of the RPAA, and then analyze how these ideas either connect or conflict with New Urbanism and its particular brand of the regionalist paradigm. An essential question for New Urbanists is how their particular version of regionalism stands up against earlier versions, and whether theirs will have a better chance of being implemented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Port Adelaide waterfront is symbolic of a distinctive form of entrepreneurial urban governance that emphasises specific forms of capital accumulation. As in waterfront projects elsewhere in Australia and overseas, depicting Port Adelaide as an 'urban problem' has been critical in legitimating the public-private market-based approach to regenerating the waterfront site. This paper outlines how the ascendancy of urban governance in Australian political sensibility is coinciding with and facilitating a particular urban form in waterfront developments. This involves transforming the Port's disused industrial and maritime landscape from a site of production to one of consumption. This urban makeover signifies a radical reconstitution of place identity, economic function and social relations. This paper also investigates the impact on the pre-existing social structure, built form and economic activity base of the location and suggests that the potential for this significant waterfront project is not confined to the re-imagining of the discursive identity of the place but extends to meeting wider institutional metropolitan and regional planning objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interest in spatial planning and territorial cohesion has prompted new scales of land-use planning interventions. This paper considers the experimentation and learning around the National Planning Framework in Scotland. This political instrument is predicated on active public participation to craft and legitimate a national planning agenda to re-position a devolved Scotland in a global context. The process involves a two-year programme of participatory activities. This paper conceptualizes this innovation through a discussion of the prerequisites for civic involvement at this national scale. It explores ideas relating to the need to develop a national vocabulary in the context of a small nation state. It highlights ideas relating to civic virtue and civic formation and the significance of an interest in public affairs, respect and trust, political equality, and a sense of public-spiritedness in preparing the way for active public engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Problem: Traditional American zoning separates land uses, yet many urbanists and contemporary planners argue that bringing mixed use back to the American city is the key to restoring its vibrancy. Purpose: This article compares the American and the German approaches to regulating land use. Methods: I derive my conclusions from a review of German federal and local regulatory documents, and interviews I conducted in the German city of Stuttgart. Results and conclusions: The U.S. zoning approach assumes that each land use district is suitable for only a single type of human activity, such as residential, commercial, or industrial use; whereas in Germany the prevailing principle is that each land use district is suitable for multiple types of activity, and most districts end up in mixed uses. Thus, despite some nominal similarities in the land use categories employed in both countries, the zoning methods are in fact starkly different. Takeaway for practice: The German zoning system, which commonly mixes the land uses, challenges deeply engrained assumptions that underlie standard U.S. zoning, and it may offer useful alternatives for zoning reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large urban development projects are at the forefront of scholarly attention. This article aims at complementing critical analyses of urban projects from a political-economic perspective with an analysis centred on planning agency and practice. The focus is on the role of innovative planning concepts in the governance process. The question raised is: how can discourse on the urban quality of places affect collective choices in a reflective way, possibly leading to integrating private interests within ambitious public strategies? The question is addressed by analysing planning of large urban projects as a "framing" practice, intended in a dual sense: as a practice defining arenas and forms of interaction, and as a practice conveying ideas, visions, concepts of "urbanity". The case study presented - the Zuidas in Amsterdam - is interpreted as the scene of conflicting frames about the "public" meaning of places and as the contradictory struggle for framing collective action by means of innovative planning concepts. The analysis highlights the limits of framing approaches that do not adequately address the multiplicity of arenas and interactions involved in the governance of urban transformations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Facility placement and associated service coverage are major concerns in urban and regional planning. In this paper an approach is detailed for the problem of covering spatial demand for service, where potential facilities are located in the continuous plane. It is shown that weighted demand, represented as points, lines or polygons, can be optimally served by a finite number of potential facility locations, called the polygon intersection point set (PIPS). The developed approach is an extension of a point-based abstraction of demand to more general representations (e.g. points, lines or polygons). An empirical analysis of warning siren siting in Ohio is carried out, highlighting the applicability of this approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents abstracts of planning. They include "The Fall and Rise of the Local Community: A Comparative and Historical Perspective," by Hellmut Wollman, "The Compact Versus the Dispersed City: History of Planning Ideas on Sofia's Urban Form," by Sonia Hirt, and "A Paradigm for Practice," by Ronald D. Brunner.

The Province of Ontario has been successful in passing legislation for a regional growth management plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe in southern Ontario by bundling together two seemingly contradictory notions: growth management and environmental conservation. Over a period of about thirty years, the environment has moved from the background to the foreground in regional planning. Yet the green and region-wide growth planning legislation contains provisions for infrastructure expansion and resource extraction that fuel growth, compromise the protection of ecosystems and agricultural lands, and institutionalize a competitive regional economic agenda. This illustrates the ways in which different, and often contradictory) traditions and value positions can be harnessed in legislation and policy implementation. In this case study, we show how nature can provide a cornerstone, lubricant or new state space for centralized integrative regional planning, and how this complex may operate in contradictory and self-defeating ways to cause continued harm to the non-human environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on a survey of the readings that have most influenced the professional development of Canadian planning practitioners. Results indicate that influential writings originate from a wide diversity of sources, both inside and outside the discipline. We also detect a relationship between the age of respondents and that of the works mentioned, pointing to the determining effect of influences encountered during formative years. Works published in the 1960s, which are critical of previous approaches, are widely cited in the survey. A large selection of subsequent works proposing alternatives to mainstream planning suggests a lasting adherence to critical perspectives launched in the 1960s. Consequently, few foundational texts, and more generally works predating the 1960s, figure in the survey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the substratum and infrastructure networks as relevant components of spatial planning. Since 2001, in Dutch government documents on spatial planning the Layers Approach has been presented, with three layers: substratum; networks; occupation patterns. The Layers Approach assumes that the characteristics of the substratum provide conditions for infrastructure networks and that these infrastructure networks then condition the occupation patterns, including the locations for housing, business activities and related services. These more or less hierarchical relationships are supposed to produce clear ground rules for the spatial planner. The Layers Approach seems to offer a robust methodology for spatial planning. This contribution presents the background of the Layers Approach, adds some critical notes and proposes an amendment: the Network Approach, connecting different spatial scales. After the presentation of a typology of networks a preliminary overview of the dynamics of transport networks is given. The spatial relevance of information and communication technology (ICT) networks, that support transport networks, is discussed. Nodes are presented as links between infrastructure networks and occupation patterns. The paper concludes that actors, dealing with regional spatial plans in a decentralized planning system, have to acquire an in-depth knowledge of the technology, economy and governance of current networks and the qualities of the substratum, which form a conditioning and stimulating framework for the spatial planning of urban and regional areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors analyse the influence of intergovernmental relations on international urban strategies. They build on the general premise that institutional settings shape actor behaviour, both as constraints and as opportunities. First, they focus on the influence of domestic intergovernmental patterns on the international activities of cities. It is found that the political status of city governments with respect to higher government levels, the strength of regional governments within a national intergovernmental system, and city-regional dynamics, are all factors that shape international urban strategies-in terms both of their orientation and of their coherence. Second, concerning the relationship between international urban strategies and intergovernmental processes linked to European integration, it is found that both `download' and `upload' Europeanisation create a pattern of institutional constraints and opportunities that push cities-especially secondary cities-towards active participation in European networks and the development of a clear international profile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Planners and policy makers are increasingly aware that local amenities can play an important role in community and regional development and greenways represent one such amenity that can be locally developed. As planning initiatives compete for scarce resources it becomes vital that decision makers have ex ante information about the impact of policy options. This paper provides empirical estimates of changes in land value that should be expected if a planned greenway, the Catawba Regional Trail, is developed in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. Passing through economically modest neighborhoods, the trail holds potential to increase equity in the distributions of open space though the aggregate impact on priority values is limited by neighborhood characteristics. Using a hedonic land value model. we estimate the real estate premium associated with the trail and find that most of the impact to land values will be captured within 1000 ft of the planned greenway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the recommendations of the Allsopp Review on the adequacy of UK regional economic statistics. It raises general concerns over the philosophy underpinning the review and specific questions as to whether the review's recommendations are sufficient to operate effectively the present UK regional policy regime. In particular, the institutional arrangements that make up the 'new localism' in UK regional policy have data requirements that are more extensive than simply monitoring performance against government targets. Many of these in formational requirements were simply not considered or were given an inappropriately low weight in the Review's deliberations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors assessed the willingness of residents to pay for urban green-space conservation in Hangzhou, China, using the contingent-valuation method. The aim of the study was to provide policy makers with information that would be useful for making informed decisions in urban-development planning. The findings of the study are as follows: 1) The willingness of residents to pay for urban green-space conservation was positively correlated with their perceptions of the benefits of green spaces and negatively correlated with perceptions of the annoyances. 2) The willingness to pay a higher premium for green-space conservation is directly related to gender, income level, and residential-ownership status. Age and education level are not significantly correlated with willingness to pay. 3) A majority of respondents view the conservation of urban green spaces as a very important function of the city, and most of them are willing to pay additional taxes for this conservation. 4) The total value per year to the public of the conservation program in Hangzhou is about $15.4 million. These qualitative and quantitative findings can be used in the policy-making process for urban-development plans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the traditions of urban and rural land development in the Netherlands. The author provides different reasons behind the emerging practice of regional development planning which is said to unite both traditions. Two case studies have been analyzed to provide further insight of the new practice. The implications of regional development planning for the institutional capacity of Dutch provinces are also discussed.

The physical appearance of the Netherlands is rapidly changing. The land of prosperous towns and villages embedded in rich, flat and open agricultural land is turning into a metropolis. A distinctive quality of this metropolis is the mix of highly urbanized centres and open, green areas that come in different shapes and sizes. But how to design an appropriate planning system for this environment? Mixing ‘red’ (urban) and ‘green’ (rural) land uses, for instance, now becomes problematic as Dutch spatial planning has always focused primarily on the urban domain whereas planning of green areas has its origins in agricultural land consolidation policy. A genuinely integrated approach to the planning of built-up areas and green areas in the open spaces is a distant ideal in this setting. In addition, the regional administrative level, being so important for metropolitan spatial challenges, needs reinforcing. The authors make a plea for a reframing of the notion of spatial planning at the national and provincial geographical and administrative scale. It takes a new object for planning, design and analysis to do the trick. The traditional rural-urban opposition is traded for ‘metropolitan landscape’, a new image reflecting the integration of built-up and non-built-up distinctively urban and rural land uses. Planning for the metropolitan landscape requires a reassignment of duties and responsibilities among national, provincial and municipal governments and other stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents several abstracts featured in various journals as of August 2006. "Creating the Public Domain: Nineteenth-Century Local State Formation in Britain and the U.S.," by Alan Digaetano; "The Significance of Color Declines: A Re-Analysis of Skin Tone Differentials in Post-Civil Rights America," by Aaron Gullickson; "Deconstructing the City of Culture: The Long-Term Cultural Legacies of Glasgow 1990," by Beatriz García.

Purpose ? The purpose of this paper is to describe experiences with the initiation of transdisciplinarity in academic case study teaching with special reference to regional planning, based on the case study ?Leben 2014 (Life 2014) ? perspectives for regional development in the national park region Ober-pinz-gau, Salzburg?. Design/methodology/approach ? The methodology used, was the evaluation of process steps of the project, based on the general project concept, protocols and questionnaires. Findings ? A key for successful transdisciplinary cooperation is the integration of non-academic actors at an early stage of the project. Important principles are the implementation of a structure of communication and networking in the case study region and the definition of rules of collaboration. The establishment of personal relations and network building is indispensable in order to guarantee a constant and broad exchange between all participants. Joint decision-making processes are essential for stable cooperation, which includes a joint problem definition process at the outset of the case-study phase as well as joint responsibility for decisions and joint ownership of ideas during and after the case-study phase. Practical implications ? Transdisciplinarity in case-study teaching also requires thorough preparation of academics. A constant discussion of different approaches to inter- and transdisciplinarity, the adaptation of existing conceptual frameworks to the specific requirements of the current case, the building of a committed teaching team and joint teaching of classes are all important. The careful selection of students and their specific preparation with respect to methodology and content are prerequisites for a successful outcome of a transdisciplinary case study. Originality/value ? The paper describes the experience of initiating transdisciplinarity in academic case study teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The zoning of land in Israel for purposes of development and town and regional planning are strongly influenced by the securitization discourse. The defence establishment has power of veto over most major planning decisions while it is also able to preserve land for its own long term purposes if it posits an appropriate security concern. Nearly fifty percent of the land in Israel (not including theWest Bank) is either directly or indirectly under the influence of the defence establishment. This paper distinguishes ten categories of military / security land uses, ranging from the physical location of army camps to a vague definition of the "home frontier" (internal security) and the location and construction of major transportation arteries. It then discusses the planning mechanisms through which decisions are taken, focusing on the respective role of three major players: the defence establishment; the land developers; and environmental lobbyists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last 25 years the neoliberal institutional turn and globalization have caused profound structural changes and challenged our theoretical understandings. In this article the emerging structure of the Norwegian home-building industry is presented, with a focus on the interaction between different actors in the different stages and functions of the home-building network. The structure of employer-contractor relations in the liberalized housing market is disclosed and used as a basis for discussing the theoretical perspectives developed by Amin and Thrift's work on circulation and distanciation and by Castells' work on the network enterprise and space of flows. The questions asked are whether these trends are seen in the Norwegian home-building industry. From the analysis we learn that home-building is considered a local business due to: a capacity restraint regarding local market knowledge; the interaction with local planning authorities; face-to-face meetings; and social relations. On the other hand, there are a set of factors that tell a 'circulation' story: an increasing number of participants, especially in design and planning; a more complex market structure; and a need for developer's knowledge on trends in design and construction. In sum, the analysis discloses a structure of increasing circulation but without a corresponding distanciation, and from Castells' perspective there is an emerging space of flows, but still a rather local geometry; a pattern probably prone to change in the years to come. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents abstracts of environmental planning research. They include "Integrating a performance-based approach into practice: A case study," "Local commitment to state-mandated planning in coastal North Carolina" and "Fiscal consequences of concentrated poverty in a metropolitan region."

The article focuses on the concept of "New Urban Governance" and the analyses of its path dependency and institutional security. The authors assert that cities are searching for appropriate ways of governance in the context of political, economic, social and institutional transformations. These transformations are taking place with profound changes in networks and balances of power among stakeholders of the public, private and civil society which trigger the evolution of innovative strategies, procedures and instruments of how to coordinate, manage and govern urban development.

Focuses on the urban housing capacity template developed by the School of Geography, Planning and Architecture at the University of Queensland for the use of density tools for the regional plan for South East Queensland. Reason for developing the template; Significance of the template to the regional plan; Stages of the template.