Metropolitan Planning Organizations and the New Regionalism: The Case of Louisville

This article outlines the new regionalism movement and its metropolitanagenda, reviews federal efforts to promote new regionalism underISTEA and TEA–21, considers how the new federal policieschanged the role of metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs)in transportation planning by examining the MPO for the Louisvillemetropolis, and assesses the MPO process in Louisville. Thelocal decision of whether to build a new bridge across the OhioRiver was a major test of the enhanced MPO process. Federaltransportation policies enhanced regional coordination and cooperationin transportation planning in the Louisville metropolis resultingin a consensus plan to build two bridges across the Ohio River.However, the MPO process did not lead to the development ofa metropolitan-wide interest or perspective. Moreover, the newregionalist agenda was not advanced because sprawl was not afactor in the decision on whether and where to build the bridges.     

Balancing Regionalism and Localism: How Institutions and Incentives Shape American Transportation Policy

Public policy decisions are increasingly made by regional governance efforts that involve diverse decision makers from multiple government units within a geographic region. These decision-making bodies face competing pressures to represent regional and local interests. We study how decision makers balance preferences for regionalism and localism within metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs), the policymaking entities that are responsible for implementing U.S. federal surface transportation policy at the regional level. Our model of regional governance relates variation in regional policy outcomes to the incentives of MPO decision makers and the institutional environments in which they interact. Analyzing data from a sample of the nation's largest metropolitan areas, we find that MPOs dominated by elected officials produce more locally focused policies, holding other factors constant, while MPOs dominated by nonelected public managers produce more regionally oriented policies. Contextual factors, as well as the regional governance institutions themselves, further shape the balance between regionalism and localism.     

ISTEA and the Role of MPOs in the New Transportation Environment: A Midterm Assessment

This article undertakes a modest midterm assessment of MetropolitanPlanning Organizations (MPOs) under the Intermodal Surface TransportationEfficiency Act of 1991 (ISTEA). The focus is on the role ofthe MPO, emphasizing its intergovernmental context. Two major sources of primary data are used: (])a national surveyof MPOs, completed in March 1994, and (2) an ACIR study of eighteenMPOs in twelve U.S. regions. The article addresses decentralization of transportation policyto regional MPOs, local policymaking and decision authority,intergovernmental issues under ISTEA, and what lies ahead forMPOs. The article concludes that ISTEA has brought a great dealof change to MPOs. The data suggest that ISTEA is having somesuccess: decentralization is taking place; more stakeholdersare getting involved; public involvement programs are becomingmore common; and greater attention is being given to air quality,intermodal issues, long-range planning, and intergovernmentalcoordination. However, most MPOs are encountering difficulties in implementingISTEA. They do not know how to do many of the new tasks assignedto them, and the intergovernmental links that ISTEA dependson are not yet forged solidly.     

Corporatism and Planning in London in the 1980s

This study confirms the existence of corporatist forms of interest intermediation at the micro level of four local planning authorities in London. In all four boroughs distinctions could be drawn between local business associations and metic, non-local firms. The former displayed most of the institutional characteristics outlined by Schmitter in his original definition of corporatism. In contrast the non-local or metic firms did not exhibit all these institutional characteristics at the level of local government. The conditions under which they bargained with local planning authorities (LPAs) were often influenced by statutory and other requirements handed down from central government. These requirements were themselves often the result of corporatist interest intermediation at the level of the central state. Both local business associations (LBAs) and metic production organizations (MPOs) were required by (LPAs) to implement planning policies. This process has increased in importance during the Thatcher era. Economic decline has made the local planning authorities even more dependent on private organizations for implementation than before. Local LBAs and MPOs were granted privileged access to the planning system. Only the LBAs were granted representational monopolies for their very local areas in this process. MPOs developed representational oligopolies but because they were so few in number they could be in conflict with one another over the rights to develop a particular site. In return for these representational privileges both the LBAs and MPOs were expected to moderate their demands for major departures from the approved local plans. The methods used to intermediate interests to the local planning systems were primarily informal. Although a small number of formal meetings were held each year between external organizations and the LPAs they represented a minority of the contacts between them and representatives of both LBAs and MPOs. Informal bargaining took place in two ways. First, there were issue specific negotiations over particular developments. The second type of contact was long-term, non-issue specific and primarily concerned with network building. Both types of bargaining were relatively secret and involved only the top echelons of the organizations concerned.     

Organising Strategic Spatial Planning: Experiences from Italian Cities

Strategic urban and regional planning, which emerged in Europe in the 1980s, has become an instrument to establish sustainable development of previously successful industrial areas today affected by the crisis caused mostly by the globalisation of the 1990s. Strategic urban planning concerns organisational land use which in turn regulates resource protection, sustainable development, regeneration and infrastructural investments and multilevel governance. Careful planning is imperative to reach goals such as enhancing local competitiveness and life quality. These dimensions represent the two focal points of the majority of city planning strategies. Their implementation depends not only on planning effectiveness, but also on the organisation and the management of the implementation process by the planning agency or the equivalent local promoter. This paper looks at the experience of Italian cities, in order to derive implications for theory and for future planning processes. More specifically, it analyses the extent to which Italian cities follow similar or divergent paths at the stage of the design process; the Italian case study is then compared with the guidelines proposed by the planning literature and with other European cities.     

Planning science and technology policy

Long-range policy planning for international scientific and technological affairs has been hindered by a variety of problems. One is the overall crisis-response nature of foreign policymaking and another is the difficulty of developing technical information needed for sound forecasts. Within the State Department the record of attempts to establish systematic planning amply demonstrates the problems. Nevertheless, a number of key conclusions can be drawn from the few successful experiments in policy planning: An effective planning staff should combine the skills of both foreign policy specialists and scientists; planners should be closely familiar with, but not involved in, operations; the planning role requires consistent support from senior officials; the power to influence budgets significantly strengthens the planning function.     

Political Homophily and Collaboration in Regional Planning Networks

We study the extent of political homophily—the tendency to form connections with others who are politically similar—in local governments’ decisions to participate in an important form of intergovernmental collaboration: regional planning networks. Using data from a recent survey of California planners and government officials, we develop and test hypotheses about the factors that lead local governments to collaborate within regional planning networks. We find that local governments whose constituents are similar politically, in terms of partisanship and voting behavior, are more likely to collaborate with one another in regional planning efforts than those whose constituents are politically diverse. We conclude that political homophily reduces the transaction costs associated with institutional collective action, even in settings where we expect political considerations to be minimal.     

Local Transportation Sales Taxes: California's Experiment in Transportation Finance

Over the last 25 years, voters in 20 California counties approved “local transportation sales taxes” to pay for transportation projects. A growing source of revenue, they generate roughly $2.5 billion per year. Four features explain their popularity: they require direct voter approval; funds are raised and spent within the counties that enact them, so voters experience benefits directly; most automatically expire; and they usually specify the improvements to be financed. These taxes are an important revenue source, but tend to favor capital investments over operations and maintenance. They have enhanced local governments' decision‐making authority, but may have made regional transportation planning in multicounty regions more difficult to achieve.     

环渤海经济区发展中的陆海统筹策略探析

陆海统筹的本质和目标是区域统筹。文章分析了环渤海经济区海洋经济和陆海统筹发展现状,表明环渤海经济区陆海统筹存在区域差异;在借鉴国外发达国家陆海统筹经验基础上,本文从制度、空间、产业、设施、生态等方面提出了环渤海经济区陆海统筹的战略重点和内容,并指出要充分发挥北京在环渤海经济区陆海统筹中的作用。     

Regional Council Program Priorities for the 1990s: Two Emerging Program Clusters, Leading to a Policy Question About Human Services

This research demonstrates that regional councils across the nation are developing a clearer program focus for the 1990s. Two clusters of program priorities are emerging for the future: (1) a transportation planning and environmental preservation cluster and (2) an economic and human resources development cluster. Regional growth is useful as a predictor of the future priorities council executive directors expect to place on these clusters. It is positively associated with future priorities for transportation planning and environmental preservation programs, and negatively associated with future priorities for economic and human resources development programs. However, human services programs do not fall in either program cluster. They receive the lowest future priorities of any major subgroup of programs, leading to a policy question about the role of regional councils in human services delivery in the 1990s and beyond.     

The Portland region: Where city and suburbs talk to each other—and often agree

Abstract

Portland, OR, is often cited as an example of successful regional governance and planning. The metropolitan area appears to match many of the precepts of the popular “compact city” model of urban growth and to demonstrate the capacity of local and state government to shape growing metropolitan regions. Given this reputation, it is important to evaluate the relevance of the Portland experience for other communities, distinguishing unique local circumstances from generalizable characteristics.

This analysis explores the spatial character of metropolitan Portland in the 1990s, summarizes the politics of regional planning, examines weaknesses in the Portland approach, and offers suggestions for other metropolitan areas. The study finds that many of Portland's accomplishments center on urban design, but that the region's most distinguishing characteristic is its attention to political process. The discussion concludes with suggestions about the value of extensive civic discourse, incremental policy making, and institution building.     

Understanding Strategic Planning and the Formulation and Implementation of Strategic Plans as a Way of Knowing: The Contributions of Actor-Network Theory

ABSTRACT

This article has two purposes: first, to take seriously the notion of strategic planning as a way of knowing, and second, to argue that actor-network theory provides a particularly apposite method for understanding whether and how strategic planning works in particular circumstances. Pursuit of these purposes also helps illuminate possible contributions of strategic planning to inclusive, participative, and democratic public management. The paper is illustrated with examples from the 1995 and 2007 strategic planning and subsequent implementation efforts of MetroGIS, an organization created to foster widespread sharing of geospatial information primarily among public organizatons serving the Twin Cities metropolitan area of Minnesota, USA, and further, to enhance their individual and collective effectiveness. The Metropolitan Council, the regional government, is the primary sponsor of MetroGIS, which is comprised of over 300 organizational partners across the region. Conclusions are offered about the importance of viewing and studying strategic planning as a way of knowing and as a potential vehicle for inclusive public management in a democratic society.

[A table featuring a complete timeline of the major MetroGIS accomplishments between 1995 and 2008; the controversies, participants, processes, technologies, and artifacts involved; and the outcomes or major consequences resulting from the accomplishment is included as an online supplement on the publisher's website.]     

Planning and budgeting in Pakistan

Twenty years ago a pioneering study of planning and budgeting in Pakistan pointed to significant weaknesses. This article reviews the changes made subsequently to the formal processes and assesses how these are currently working. The planning agency is now a permanent organization. Planning and budgeting have been combined and these processes have moved closer to the centre of political power. On the other hand there are difficulties over linking planning and budgeting to the management of economic and fiscal policy; planning is geared to securing foreign aid funds; the planning processes favour large expensive projects which emerge from the more developed areas of the country and discriminate against the smaller projects with a shorter time horizon needed in less developed provinces–thus accentuating economic imbalances. Finally, although the importance of evaluation is recognized, in practice reporting and evaluation are not adequately practised.     

Planning theory as political practice

Howell S. Baum is associate professor, teaching planning theory, social planning, and organizational behavior at the University of Maryland Institute for Urban Studies and School of Social Work and Community Planning. He has done research on planning in bureaucratic organizations and is author of Planners and Public Expectationsand The Invisible Bureaucracy.He is completing a book on the experience of working in bureaucracy, Membership Without Intimacy.     

Applying Large-Group Interaction Methods in the Planning and Implementation of Major Change Efforts

Public policy makers, planners, and managers are increasingly relying on what might be called large-group interaction methods to involve large numbers of people (from as few as eight to more than 2,000) in planning and implementing major change efforts. These methods are structured processes for engaging large numbers of people to: (1) enhance the amount of relevant information brought to bear on a problem; (2) build commitment to problem definitions and solutions; (3) fuse planning and implementation; and (4) shorten the amount of time needed to conceive and execute major policies, programs, services, or projects. Proponents of such methods claim that they provide sets of concepts, procedures, and tools that can help public and nonprofit organizations and communities deal effectively with change. On the other hand, a number of boundary conditions surround the successful use of the methods. The authors compare and contrast seven approaches most frequently used in the public sector in the United States and abroad (i.e., Real Time Strategic Change, Search Conferences, Future Searches, Strategic Options Development and Analysis, Strategic Choice, Technology of Participation, and Open Space Technology) to illustrate their comparative strengths and weaknesses and to develop an agenda for research.     

HIGHWAY INTERMODAL FREIGHT TRANSPORTATION: A Policy and Administration Challenge for the New Millennium

This article provides an overview of factors influencing highway intermodal freight transportation planning and policy in the United States. The article provides examples of state and local initiatives to manage or balance the increasing highway transportation of freight with decreasing system capacity. It also identifies important trends in commerce affecting intermodal freight generation. It concludes with a discussion of issues facing intermodal freight transportation planning and policy making at the millennium.     

Distinguishing city and Suburban Movers: Evidence from the American housing survey

Abstract

A significant amount of research has concentrated on the process of urban decentralization. Resulting patterns of urban development have far‐reaching effects on land use, transportation, regional fiscal structure, public services and facilities, economic development, and social equity. Because planning policies are being developed to attempt to revitalize the urban core, it is important to know which households may be deciding to relocate to the central cities and why.

A discriminant analysis is used to explore the similarities and differences among movers to central cities and suburban locations drawn from metropolitan samples of the 1989 through 1991 American Housing Survey. The analysis compares the reasons for relocation, demographic differences, and metropolitan characteristics between central‐city‐to‐suburb movers and suburb‐to‐central‐city movers. The results indicate that these two groups are very similar in some respects and that some metropolitan‐area characteristics may play a role in urban residential decentralization patterns.     

Collaborative Institutions in an Ecology of Games

This article seeks to improve our understanding of policy institutions and cooperation by adapting Long's (1958) analysis of the ecology of games to the context of collaborative land use and transportation planning in California. The traditional institutional rational choice analysis argues that collaborative institutions reduce the transaction costs of cooperation among multiple policy actors. The ecology of games framework extends IRC by emphasizing the consequences of multiple institutions and identifies several reasons why collaborative institutions may actually reduce the amount of cooperation in existing policy venues. Analyses of survey data from policy actors in five California regions demonstrate that higher levels of cooperation in collaborative institutions are associated with lower levels of cooperation in other land‐use and transportation planning institutions.     

Planning democracy in Africa: A comparative perspective on Nigeria and Ghana

Ghana and Nigeria are in the midst of government-initiated democratization programs. This paper compares the different settings, reasons, strategies, procedures, and implementation of democratization efforts in these two countries. While Nigeria's comprehensive approach to democratic planning has enabled elite continuity, it has neither assured regime stability nor enhanced state capacities. In contrast, Ghana's plan for democratic transformation, pursued in a piecemeal fashion, has resulted in regime stability and some state consolidation, but not in democratization. In both countries, there is little doubt that the unintended consequences of each approach may prove more significant than the direct results of successful policy implementation. Thus, even if the specific design for democracy may fail, the democratic project in these West African states may nevertheless be progressing.     

Where Have All The Workers Gone? Exploring Public Sector Workforce Planning

Governments undertake extensive planning of many services and functions, but tend to neglect planning of public service workforces. Disruptions to public service delivery, such as shortages of nurses and doctors, have rejuvenated interest in workforce planning, but many organisations struggle to do it effectively. This historical study examines the capacity of central personnel agencies to predict workforce risks and support workforce planning, using a study of the Queensland public service. It identifies lack of workforce data as a barrier to effective workforce planning, as a result of factors such as changes in the direction of the central personnel agency, lack of appreciation for the value of comprehensive central workforce data, and limited agency human resource (HR) skills or capacity.