The new planning, and the new planner: Modernisation, culture change and the regulation of professional identities in English local planning

Reforms to the English planning system introduced from 2001 by the New Labour government under the rubric of "modernisation" have made a series of claims to revitalise planning as a governmental and professional activity. In order to realise the ambitious goals of reform there have been widespread calls for a "culture change", particularly amongst professional planners in the public sector. The discourse of culture change is rooted in the managerialist thinking that has been central to long-term processes of state restructuring, and suggests a concern to regulate the attitudes and identities of workers. The thesis aims to interrogate the claims that have been made for a reformed planning system and practice. In so doing it seeks to uncover the cultural politics of modernisation, assessing the ways in which the discourses of reform have targeted and sought to change local planning cultures and planners' roles and identities. It therefore opens up identity as an analytical lens for assessing the modernisation of planning. I argue that the modemisation agenda has been marked by a series of tensions, simultaneously positioning planners as the agents of modernisation, but also as objects to be modernised. Reform has therefore imposed a considerable burden on planners as they seek to understand what is expected of them, and negotiate their professional identities in the midst of a complex set of changes that have intensified the demands of their practice. This suggests the need for greater attentiveness to the lived experience of processes of reform, and its impacts on those charged with realising change

Sandy Regional Assembly SIRR Analysis

The NYC Mayor's Special Initiative for Rebuilding and Resiliency (SIRR) is a comprehensive effort to formulate recommendations guiding the rebuilding of neighborhoods impacted by Superstorm Sandy, and increase the resiliency of New York City as a whole. The plan combines citywide proposals with neighborhood-specific interventions in various neighborhoods. The federal Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force administered by HUD is responsible for overseeing the rebuilding and allocation of funds for all post-Sandy projects funded by the federal government; the Task Force is also charged with preparing a Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Strategy to present to President Obama by August 2nd. Recommendations in the SIRR Report include plans to allocate the $294 million in HUD funding already provided to New York City and must comply with the Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force guidelines. After the Mayor's SIRR Report was released in June 2013, the Sandy Regional Assembly met to assess whether community-defined priorities and recommendations had made it into the Mayor's recovery plans. The following assessment reviews the SIRR Report from the context of the Sandy Regional Assembly Recovery Agenda, including both areas where there is synergy with the goals and recommendations of the Agenda and areas where the SIRR failed to address critical community priorities

Predictors of Seasonal Flood Control in Owode Yewa, Ogun State, Nigeria

The increasing challenges of seasonal flood pose serious threat to lives and properties of citizens. This is a major concern for residents in an uncontrolled environment like Owode town in Ogun State. The current study examined a linkage between land use planning and flood control in Owode town. Utilizing a systematic sampling technique, a structured questionnaire was administered to 191 household heads in the study area. The data was analysed with logit Regression model and Marginal Effects at 5% level of significance. The result points out the significance of good road network (Beta= 0.056; p = 0.008) better drainage system (Beta= 0.024; p = 0.000), planned environment (Beta= 0.023; p = 0.000), and public awareness (Beta= 0.016; p = 0.011) as land use planning measures to completely stop flood occurrences in Owode town. Thus, an integration of these measures can sustainably reduce flood risk in flood prone towns like Owode. The study therefore recommends the need for government to re-evaluate its environmental policies to control both human activities and natural habitats

Assembling The Future: The Role Of Transactive Planning Theory In Generating Alternative Urban Strategies

Conditions of uncertainty, rapid change and heightened social, economic and spatial inequalities are symptomatic of an Increasingly Internationalised and urbanised world system. These issues correspond to the emergence of an urban problematic that requires the requalification of planning’s tools and techniques. Within this context: How does planning go about assembling the future? The Mont Fleur civic scenarios undertaken in South Africa (1991-1992), the Toekomstverkenningen Amsterdam (1998-1999), and the Bishopsgate Methodology Statement proposed for an inner-city development site in London (2002), are presented as illustrative examples of how, planning connects knowledge to action in the public domain, translates complexity, deals with the future; Do the tools and processes used in the examples, extend or limit the possibility of alternative urban strategies? These questions, are a starting point from which to explore John Friedmann’s theory on Transactive Planning (1973). This theory is defined as a normative response to improving the practice of plannirig through a dialogical process that combines various forms of technical and experiential knowledge, through which a deeper understanding of issues surrounding a particular problem, is achieved. Within the present research framework. Transactive Planning is used to formulate the principles, tools and techniques of an approach corresponding to the conditions of an urban problematic. The final question: ‘What kind of future do we want to assemble?” opens the discussion towards considering the role, not only of Transactive Planning, but of an urban imaginary as a way of rephrasing the urban problematic. The endgame is to refunction the notion of the future, not as “uncertainty” that has to be resolved, but as a creative process that generates innovative urban strategies

Assessment of comprehensive local land use plan and low carbon cities in Malaysia

Asia is the major contributor of GHG and CO2 emission in the world. Prior to that, many Asian countries begin to implement Low Carbon Cities initiatives in their comprehensive local land use plans to mitigate climate change. The purpose of this study is to assess the comprehensive local land use plan and Low Carbon Cities in Malaysia. Content Analysis Method is used in the study to assess and analyse three (3) Low Carbon Cities from three (3) local jurisdictions by qualitative and quantitative, on how well these plans recognized the concepts of low carbon city in preparing for climate change mitigation and adaptation. Five (5) protocol components and 43 indicators were used in the process and Descriptive Statistics for Plan Quality result shows that the plans reflect adequate awareness but with limited analysis for climate change; although the actions taken varied widely in scope and content in their plans. The results for Total Standardized Scores exhibit City of Shah Alam at (26.58/50), Cyberjaya of Sepang at (37.08/50) and The Federal Territory of Putrajaya at (39.55/50). Factual Basis score lowest (Mean = 6.11) while Inter-organizational Coordination and Capabilities score highest (Mean = 7.78). The results for Indicator Performance of Plan Component in Coverage shows Implementation and Monitoring is the lowest at (75.0%) while Inter-organizational Coordination and Capabilities is the highest at (100%). The results for Indicator Performance of Plan Component in Depth indicates Factual Basis has the lowest percentage of (58.3%) and Inter-organizational Coordination and Capabilities has the highest percentage of 77.8%. This study concludes that Low Carbon City action plans at local jurisdictions is a dynamic and long-term process. As this study is limited to a single period it may not reflect the actual planning progress. Plans and policies require time to develop, therefore longitudinal analysis is more reliable to find the contributing factors to policy learning responding to the climate change issues at local level

Delivering urban energy infrastructure: the capacity of planning and governance networks in the cases of Barcelona, Burlington, Lerwick, London, and Toronto

District heating and cooling (DHC) systems are a sound solution to environmental, energy security, climate change, and fuel poverty concerns in cities. As an environmental policy goal not fully controlled by government and subject to complex multi-actor negotiations, building DHC can be understood as requiring network governance patterns of behaviour. This thesis investigates the role of planning in delivering DHC, employing a conceptual framework of Actor-Centered Institutionalism to unravel the relationships between industry, government, and citizen organizations in governance networks. It contributes to a growing area of study on the intersection of urban development, energy infrastructure, and environmental policy goals. It responds to calls for further practical research on governance patterns of behaviour, applying a recognised network governance approach to the analysis of five international case studies. It also investigates the weight of institutional context and the purported connection between network interaction characteristics and policy outcomes. The research categorises a range of potential roles for planning organisations and planning interventions in governance networks for DHC. The comparative analysis suggests that planning organisations rarely negotiate for DHC but that planning interventions are regularly used to initiate governance networks for DHC and to shape negotiations by other actors. The findings outline a number of specific institutional factors, actor orientations and capabilities as well as qualities of interaction which affect the capability of governance networks to deliver DHC. The research contributes to the explanatory ambitions of network governance research and expanded understanding of the capacity of planning in building and managing urban energy infrastructure. The findings can potentially be extended to other urban utility infrastructure and environmental policy goals

Developer-Planner Interaction in Transportation and Land Use Sustainability, MTI Report 01-21

This study argues that significant unmet demand exists for alternatives to conventional auto-oriented development; and further that planning interventions that restrict densities and land use mixing in developed areas are a major reason that this demand remains unmet. In order to explore these hypotheses, this study carried out two principal investigations. The first is a national survey of developers, randomly selected from the database of the Urban Land Institute in Washington, DC, the premiere national organization of land developers. Overall, the survey reveals considerable interest on the part of the private development community in developing in a fashion that is more compact than regulations currently allow. This interest varied by region, with the greatest interest expressed in the densely settled regions of the mid-Atlantic and the Northeast. Developers in the Southwest and South Central regions (Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana) expressed considerably less interest in developing in a more dense or mixed-use fashion than permitted by current regulation. Similarly, interest in developing more intensely than current regulations permit varied by setting. Little such interest exists for development in rural areas, but developers\u27 interest in such development in inner suburbs was especially keen