New Zealand Planning Institute presents a series of planning principles it believes will lead to more successful, functional and desirable urban areas

It is interesting in this context, to recall this from the NZPI in 2007:

Media Advisory

New Zealand Planning Institute® Comments On Demographia’s International Housing Availability Survey

The New Zealand Planning Institute® strongly supports Demographia’s call for planners, local councils and developers to collaborate more proactively and effectively on the provision of an adequate supply of affordable new residential housing. In fact, some excellent progress is already being made: in the greater Christchurch area, for example, local councils have come together under the Urban Development Strategy banner to agree on a common set of objectives governing future land use zoning.

Importantly, this and other such partnerships around New Zealand will help ensure that affordable housing takes its rightful place at the heart of community planning decision-making, alongside other key elements such as environmental sustainability.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO200702/S00134.htm

Also of interest is what Planning Institute Australia was coming around to in 2005:

http://alga.asn.au/site/misc/alga/downloads/planning-housing/PIA_Nation…

".......The Inquiry found serious labour-market  deficiencies, concerns that planners were not always able to access appropriate training, and widespread acknowledgment that most planners experience unacceptable stress in the workplace.......

".......Planners are often subject to completely unacceptable work stress. Sources include political pressure, high volumes of work, legislative requirements, demands from the community and the development industry, and limited human and financial resources......"

This discussion paper is interesting:

http://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/89650/1/cesifo_wp4571.pdf

Two opposing teams of noted academics on the subject of sprawl and compact city planning, discuss what they agree and disagree on.

Something very significant they agree on:

"........The most effective “cure” for sprawl may be simply “getting the prices right.”.......

Also note that

"......Although (the anti sprawl academics) appear somewhat uncomfortable with the results, they accept that compact cities do not lead to shorter commuting times because of higher levels of congestion in central cities and the fact that longer suburban triplengths are more than offset by faster trip speeds......."

Sadly, "getting the prices right" (i.e. of infrastructure and infrastructure use) does not deliver fat capital gains to big property owners like a UGB does, hence it is not the preferred first remedy to sprawl. Obviously the planning schools were long since hijacked by the vested interests.

Here is a very interesting posting recently on the Transportation Modeling Improvement Program discussion list hosted by the US DoT, from

Arash Mirzaei, P.E. | Senior Program Manager

Model Development and Data Management | NCTCOG  (North Central Texas Council of Governments)

The dynamics of growth, transportation accessibility, and UGB seem logical enough to be formulated in models and used in real planning process, as it is shown with the professional success of Sonny, Brian, Keith, and others in Oregon. However, it is not clear to me that having UGB in-place for growing areas such as Dallas-Fort Worth is the solution for the sprawling growth pattern that we see in the region. In fact, it is not even clear that the expansion of the urbanized area that we have been experiencing is a problem or a success. If we believe in effectiveness of collective decision making process through representative governance, UGBs are effective in some areas but not in all. To make this statement meaningful, here is a brief observation of the growth pattern in Dallas-Fort Worth area between 2000 and 2010.

Between 2000 and 2010, the 12-county area of Dallas-Fort Worth grew 24% or 1.2 million. This growth rate is more than the growth rate of the state of Texas and almost 2.5 times the growth of the country as a whole. Most of the growth happened outside the urban core. Many places in the urban core even lost population when maps are created in Census Tracts! Yet, this is not a dramatically bad event because at the same time, many leap-frogged open land areas in the core got developed. Within the same period, the development of the transportation system, both in transit and highway systems, continued with a noticeable speed. Meanwhile, the land rent almost remained constant, perhaps even got cheaper when adjusted for inflation.



One can argue that population growth, maintenance of acceptable transportation system performance, affordable housing, and economic growth in the region is a successful achievement. Pretty much every player in the system won something. The residents enjoyed newer and affordable housing. The local governments benefited from tax of the newly developed land, transportation system did not get significantly worse than before, and all players, including the state, benefited from the economic growth. The sheer growth in population created an attractiveness for external investment. 



There are some disadvantages in this growth pattern, though. The central cities did not grow as fast as the region and some local areas really got hit with outmigration. Some of the planned growth inside the urban core did not happen. But I am not sure if these are due to the lack of proper implementation of plans, unrealistic plans, or the lack of large regional level policies such as UGB. As for the air quality, the region remains a non-attainment area but the absolute pollutant measures show improvement in the area. This is something that a lot of coordination effort is behind it but none includes controlling the growth boundary. As for the agricultural land, there is still plenty available even inside the 12 county area.



Regarding the future growth, modeling, and policy feedback, I believe the situation is too complex for a meaningful "forecast" of future in detail. But, even with imperfect models, we can analyze possible futures and inform policy makers. The key is that imperfection of the models should be known and well understood. IMHO, this is the key problem with making the model too complicated. I attribute the success of the modeling practice in Portland to the knowledge of the modeling staff to make meaningful and relevant information available to policy makers. The discussion about models without the users of the models is inconclusive and argumentative because this is an imperfect business and needs expertise to make the case.

 

The good news Phil is that the present planners are going to fix all the past mistakes of earlier planners, and the future planners that are in training will be able to fix all the mistakes that the present planners are making. Maybe if they stopped planning there would be less mistakes to fix.

Seriously, very good comments.

I'm all for Planning - in the micro sense that businesses etc do it:  forecasts, kpi's, frequent mid-course adjustments as sales crater or costs rise.  Aided by good data, BI and literally millenia-person-years of embedded thought in the software used.

But this crew ain't about That, and the issue really is that their Plans have no mid-course correctivity, if I may coin a neologism.  Let alone any Data.  Let alone any Planning intelligence.

We, the People, are stuck with their damned Fads for high fractions of Centuries.....