Guide to Authors
PLEASE READ ALL PARTSWe have an excellent group of authors who can produce an excellent book. This will happen if each of us will try to write a seminal piece, something that one should read in order to understand the selected subject and to advance it.
- You are invited to submit an essay, i.e., not a regular journal paper that tells the reader about your recent research, but a much wider piece regarding the state of the art in the subject of choice, including your personal outlook and/or the lessons you want to deliver to the next generation of students and scholars.
- As far as possible, take into consideration the following suggested structure of your essay: (a) an extensive literature survey of the selected topic; (b) an analysis of several relevant cases in various places/countries; (c) conclusions for future planning and for future research.
- Please try to use the words of the logo of our website (appears on the upper left side on each of the website pages)Planning with/for People: Looking back for the Future as a guide to your writing. Try to provide a longitudinal perspective, to follow changes over time (in values, theory, practice), and to draw planning lessons (possibly also research lessons) for the future.
- Your essay is expected to be in the range of 6,000-8,000 words. Please use Arial 11 font, 1.5 spaces, three and not more of four levels of headings. (Heading I – 12 bold, centered; heading II – 12 bold, on the left; heading 3 – 11 italics, on the left; level 4 – if absolutely necessary – 11 italics on the left and the text continues on the same line following a hyphen).
- We decided to follow the style adopted by the JPER – Journal of Planning Education and Research. Please search there for details of citation and references. Notes should be kept to minimum and typed at the end of the manuscript.
Please do your best to submit your essay soon (five of us have submitted before the end of October). Early submission assists the review process. The deadline for submission is hereby postponed to November 30th, 2008.
Guide to chairs and discussants
to be completed
Abstracts
Table of Contents
Allen, Judith, University of Westminster
Neighbourhood Improvement: The Complicity of Space
Alterman, Rachelle, and Emily Silverman, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology
From Exclusionary to Inclusionary Land Use Regulations: Opportunities for Cross-National Learning
Andreotti, Alberta and Enzo Mingione, University of Milano-Bicocca
The City as a Local Welfare System
Banerjee, Tribid, University of Southern California and Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, University of California, Los Angeles
Suspicion, Surveillance, and Safety: A New Social Contract for Public Space?
Bratt, Rachel G., Tufts University and Ken Reardon, University of Memphis
Beyond the Ladder: What Have We Learned About Resident Roles in U.S. Community Development Initiatives?
Churchman, Arza, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology
Planning For All – Who Does This Include and How Can It Be Accomplished?
Fainstein, Norman, Connecticut College and Susan Fainstein, Harvard University
Restoring Just Outcomes to Planning Concerns
Feitelson, Eran, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Environmental Equity: Is It A Viable City Planning Goal?
Galster, George, Wayne State University
Neighborhood Social Mix: Theory, Evidence, and Implications for Policy and Planning
Gurstein, Penny, University of British Columbia
Equity in the Network Society: Implications for Communities
Hasson, Shlomo, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
The Transformation of Democracy and the City
Howe, Deborah, Temple University
Planning for Aging Involves Planning for Life
Keating, Dennis, Cleveland State University
Urban Regeneration in the U.S. and the U.K.: A Comparative Review
Khamaisi, Rassem, University of Haifa
Culturally-Oriented Planning: The Case of the Arab Palestinian Communities In Israel
Krumholz, Norman, Cleveland State University
Toward an Equity-Oriented Planning Practice in the U.S.
Levine, Jonathan, University of Michigan
Urban Transportation and Social Equity: Three Transportation-Planning Paradigms That Impede Policy Reform
Marcuse, Peter, Columbia University
Social Justice and Power in Planning History and Theory
Moulaert, Frank and Stijn Oosterlynck, KU Leuven
Spatial Development: How Culturally Empowered Is It? The Role of Social Innovation in Territorially Based Collective Action
Schnell, Itzhak, Tel Aviv University
Policies towards Migrant Workers
Shefer, Daniel and Amnon Frenkel, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology
The Center-periphery Dilemma and the Issue of Equity in Regional Development
Teitz, Michael and Karen Chapple, University of California, Berkeley
Planning and Poverty: An Uneasy Relationship
Tosics, Iván, Metropolitan Research Institute, Budapest
From Socialism Into Capitalism: The Restructuring of Cities and the Social Outcomes
Vale, Larry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Public housing, Neighborhood Renewal and the Poor
Wachs, Martin, University of California, Berkeley
The Past, Present and Future of Professional Ethics in Planning
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Abstracts by alphabetical order of surname
NEIGHBOURHOOD IMPROVEMENT: THE COMPLICITY OF SPACE
Judith Allen University of Westminster
How does shifting the focus of governance to a small localised area affect the micro-politics of place by bringing them into the public arena? How can practitioners develop a more politically reflexive understanding of their work? The first part of this paper presents a synthetic framework for analysing the results of empirical research in 62 neighbourhoods in a variety of countries. The synthesis distinguishes three main dimensions: neighbourhood, community and governance. The second part of the paper develops an approach to thinking about democracy in neighbourhoods-of-intervention. This is done in two steps. It first sets out a formalistic analysis which can be linked with neighbourhood governance. Secondly, it considers the notion of experiential democracy which can be linked with communities-in-places. The problem is that the governance of improvement requires predictability, whereas robust democratic processes introduce large elements of indeterminacy.
FROM EXCLUSIONARY TO INCLUSIONARY LAND USE REGULATIONS: OPPORTUNITIES FOR CROSS-NATIONAL LEARNING
Rachelle Alterman & Emily Silverman Technion – Israel Institute of Technology
The relationship between land use regulation and social diversity of housing areas may be drawn along a conceptual spectrum from intentional exclusionary, through attempts to remove regulatory barriers, to proactive inclusionary policies. Attempts to remove the regulatory barriers applies in the USA have delivered only modest results. In recent years, an increasing number of advanced-economy countries are adopting proactive policies for inclusionary housing and other affordable housing policies. This trend is attributable also to the gradual erosion of national-level housing policies even in those countries previously acclaimed for their exemplary social housing. More and more affluent countries have to rely on planning-based regulatory tools in order to deliver some affordable housing that otherwise would no longer be delivered either by government or the market. This trend precedes the current “financial-economic crisis” and is likely to be further exacerbated by it. The paper will explore the challenge of regulating for affordable housing in several advanced-economy countries. Through a comparative theoretical framework, we shall seek to identify shared underlying trends as well as differences in policies and outcomes. Special focus will be given to the possibilities of cross-national learning and transferability of regulatory instruments from the “kit tools” of the various countries.
THE CITY AS A LOCAL WELFARE SYSTEM
Alberta Andreotti & Enzo Mingione University of Milano-Bicocca
The paper focuses on the interpretation of local welfare systems in contemporary industrially advanced societies. In the post industrial economic transition, some new processes are at work: 1) increasing individualisation, stressing centrality of the individual actor over the different social groups (including family); 2) destandardisation of life patterns and needs; 3) disarticulation of the urban fabric and community networks. These processes shape the different local contexts according to their specific configurations, and have a different impact on the social cohesion of cities. As a consequence of the unfolding of these three processes, social assistance, i.e. the protection of citizens from the new social risks, and in-kind-services which are implemented and governed at the local level assume an increasing importance. The comparative interpretation of local welfare systems becomes crucial, even though difficult as the national welfare capitalism models can be taken only as a loose and outdated starting point. The paper discusses the main features affecting an interpretation and a classification of local models of welfare focussing both on the variety characterizing welfare demand and the numerous factors affecting different local welfare supply.
SUSPICION, SURVEILLANCE, AND SAFETY: A NEW SOCIAL CONTRACT FOR PUBLIC SPACE?
Tridib Banerjee & Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris University of Southern California University of California, Los Angeles The basic premise of this paper is that the social contract in Western liberal democracies, based on openness, access, trust, freedom of speech, and diversity is increasingly compromised by a growing obsession with safety, security, and surveillance in a post 9/11 era. In this paper we explore the implications for the public space and life in contemporary cities. Even before 9/11, the increasing privatization of the public realm – following the neoliberal argument for the “enclosure of the commons” — has contributed to the decline of the intensity and diversity of social contacts and in the changing functions, purposes, and uses of public space. This trend has been further exacerbated by the growing preoccupation with control and surveillance in the public realm to promote public safety, provoked in part by the terrorist attacks of the last decade. This paper will examine the roots, factors, and consequences of these phenomena, which some have coined “the assault on public space” and consider the implications of this new social contract for the future of public space.
BEYOND THE LADDER: WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED ABOUT RESIDENT ROLES IN U.S. COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT INITIATIVES? Rachel G. Bratt & Kenneth M. Reardon Tufts University University of Memphis
During the second half of the 20th century, the role of residents, or lack thereof, in U.S. community development efforts gained considerable attention. Driven, in large part, by the demands of local civil rights leaders and their supporters, local governments and their federal partners were challenged to develop more participatory and inclusive planning processes.Sherry Arnstein’s seminal 1969 paper: “A Ladder of Citizen Participation,” has framed much of the discourse on this topic in the U.S. This paper revisits the Arnstein Ladder, assesses its strengths and limitations, explores the dramatic changes in the context in which community development work takes place, and discusses evolving roles for residents. Based on these observations and experiences, we suggest that the Arnstein framework be broadened and we offer three categories of resident participation that complement the original Ladder. We further discuss how particular forms of resident participation should be linked to the local community development context and we offer recommendations both for future research and for the development of two new guides to promote and support resident initiatives. Hopefully, this effort will help a new generation of planning students and practitioners to incorporate a wide range of resident voices into their work.
PLANNING FOR ALL – WHO DOES THIS INCLUDE AND HOW CAN IT BE ACCOMPLISHED?
Arza Churchman Technion-Israel Institute of Technology
The basic assumption of this paper is that the goal of planning is to provide the opportunity for each individual to achieve as high a level of quality of life as possible given existing personal, social, economic, and environmental constraints, without injury to others in this generation and in future generations. Quality of life is defined as the subjective judgment of an individual as to the degree to which her or his needs in the various domains of life are met. Behind this assumption lies the realization that each individual embodies a combination of unique and shared characteristics, needs, preferences and goals, and that planning for all through the prism of groups of individuals is not a simple task. The implications of these assumptions are that planning must be differentiated, contextual and specific and that one way of achieving this is by people’s participation in the decision-making process. This paper is based on the relevant international literature and on over thirty years of teaching, research and consulting related to this subject. It addresses the manner in which populations can be differentiated into relevant groups; the planning issues that are important for these different groups; and the participatory decision-making process that is seen as facilitating the achievement of the basic goal described above.
RESTORING JUST OUTCOMES TO PLANNING CONCERNS
Susan S. Fainstein & Norman Fainstein Harvard University Connecticut College
Planning theorists have long created utopias explicitly or implicitly intended to create a built environment in which the “common man” would be better off. These visions have informed modernist grand plans as well as ordinary practice and the popular imagination. Today, however, the egalitarian emphasis of the modernist planners is largely absent in visions of the built environment except in some honoring of diversity. Many planning theorists have turned to discourse and deliberation rather than physical form as the best vehicles for producing equitable planning outcomes. A planning theory framed in terms of social justice needs to interrogate concepts of diversity, democracy, sustainability and equity as they apply to the built environment within a conceptions of the just society. Such a vision cannot be imposed from the top, but it can inform and channel those popular desires.
ENVIRONMENTAL EQUITY: IS IT A VIABLE CITY PLANNING GOAL?
Eran Feitelson Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Environmental equity issues have garnered much attention in the past fifteen years. Yet, the meaning and measurement of environmental inequities are unresolved. Against this backdrop I ask whether environmental equity can be a meaningful goal for city planning. To this end the paper first scopes the issues to which environmental equity concerns may pertain. In doing so it is shown that transportation is a special case that should be analyzed differently, as it is a network that ferries people, in contrast to all other pollution sources. Then, the paper asks how the various issues should be assessed in a planning context. It argues that they should be evaluated from a Rawlsian perspective. That is, the focus should be on the prevention of ‘pollution havens’. However, as environmental inequities are an outcome of larger societal processes, environmental equity should be analyzed and discussed in relation to wider planning goals and issues, rather than as a primary goal. Still, as environmental equity is a valuable mobilizing theme, environmental equity concerns should be upheld as part of the planning discourse, both to counter hegemonic forces and to shift the attention back to the wider sustainability issues, which have lately been overtaken by the narrower global warming concern.
NEIGHBORHOOD SOCIAL MIX: THEORY, EVIDENCE, AND IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICY AND PLANNING
George C. Galster Wayne State University
An appropriate mixture of advantaged and disadvantaged groups (whether defined by economic standing, ethnicity, or immigrant status) within neighborhoods has been a longstanding tenet of Western urban planning. Unfortunately, planners have given insufficient attention to the theoretical and empirical bases for this position. The paper first presents an analytical framework for elucidating the equity and social efficiency criteria that might justify pursuing a policy of neighborhood social mix. Second, the paper considers theoretically the mechanisms by which the social mix of a neighborhood may influence socioeconomic outcomes of its residents. It demonstrates that a neighborhood social mix policy can be justified only under a particular set of assumptions about the nature of inter-neighbor social externalities. Third, the paper synthesizes the Western European and American scholarly evidence in light of the foregoing analytical frames. It argues that the extant Western European evidence base sufficiently supports a social mixing policy aimed at avoiding concentrations of disadvantaged individuals if and only if planners emphasize equity grounds, but does not provide such unambiguous support on efficiency grounds. By contrast, the American evidence base provides sufficient support for a certain degree of neighborhood social mix on either efficiency or equity grounds. Ironically, however, policies aimed at neighborhood social mixing have been implemented to a far greater scale in Western Europe than in the U.S. Finally, the paper briefly reviews these efforts and comments on how social mix programs might be better designed on the basis of the evidence
EQUITY IN THE NETWORK SOCIETY: IMPLICATIONS FOR COMMUNITIES
Penny Gurstein University of British Columbia
As globally interdependent relationships, driven by information and communications technologies (ICTs), increasingly form within the economy, state and society, these relationships and networks affect our society at a variety of scales from the micro-processes within the workplace and home, to the macro-processes found at the community, regional, national and global levels. While some of the research on the “network society” illustrate positive outcomes and engender new opportunities for inclusion, nevertheless, many of the findings point to increasing disparities in income distribution, fragmentation in workplaces and communities, and the blurring of boundaries between public and private space and time. Reimagining how networks, and the resources they bring, can be for the benefit of all is crucial. This is not a naïve belief in the power of technologies to transform society but recognition that societal responsibilities to ensure equity should be at the core of any policy framework for the network society.
THE TRANSFORMATION OF DEMOCRACY AND THE CITY
Shlomo Hasson The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
At the center of this article are two major arguments: 1) democracy is undergoing a radical transformation, and 2) the city largely affects and is being affected by this process. Majority rule within the city, as expressed in representative democracy, is gradually eroded. This is largely due to globalization process and the rising autonomy of individuals. As a result power shifts from local elites and urban representatives to public-private coalitions and organized social groups. Unlike electoral coalitions, held as accountable to the voters, the newly formed coalitions are accountable to no one but their members’ interests and values. The public respond in a myriad ways that reshape the nature of urban democracy. First, large segments of the public retreat from local politics, with the corollary results of increased democratic deficit and the weakening of representative democracy. Second, certain social groups make a concerted attempt to affect local politics through the advancement of deliberative democracy. Finally, frustrated with both representative and deliberative democracy, some other groups seek to challenge the existing political system by resorting to ‘city-square’ politics, known as activist democracy. This article aims to deal with these issues by exploring the following questions: 1) What are the main features of the transformation that urban democracy is undergoing? 2) What are the reasons for this transformation? 3) What is to be done?
PLANNING FOR AGING INVOLVES PLANNING FOR LIFE
Deborah Howe Temple University
Society is aging worldwide, the result of declining fertility rates and increases in longevity. Physical, emotional and cognitive changes associated with aging can contribute to a misfit between the needs of older adults and built environments defined by automobiles and low density development. Preferences for independent living combined with increasing health care and energy costs and global economic downturns are creating severe personal hardships and placing great stress on caregivers. Planners have given little attention to aging which is seen as a predominately social issue. This paper is a call to planners to fully appreciate the impact of the built environment on the aging experience and to exert leadership in transforming development practices. Aging provides a powerful lens for assessing and transforming the built environment thereby enhancing independence, reducing living expenses, facilitating care giving, and improving the quality of life for people of all ages.
URBAN REGENERATION IN THE U.S. AND THE U.K.: A COMPARATIVE REVIEW
Dennis Keating Cleveland State University
This paper is a comparative review and analysis of urban regeneration policies and programs in the United States (U.S.) and the United Kingdom (U.K.) from the 1930s era of the Great Depression through the contemporary period. In the United States, this covers such programs as public housing, urban renewal, model cities, the community development block grant program, urban development action grants, empowerment zones, HOPE VI, and community development corporations. In the U.K. this includes inner city renewal, council housing and its privatization under the Thatcher Tory regime’s Right to Buy and stock transfer policies, the Urban Programme, Urban Development Corporations, the City Challenge Initiative, the Single Regeneration Budget, and New Labour’s New Deal for Communities and Neighbourhood Renewal Fund. The analysis includes the intergovernmental structure for these programs. The conclusion is that in both countries there have been mixed results with problems of affordable housing, poverty, blighted neighborhoods and social exclusion continuing.
CULTURALLY-ORIENTED PLANNING: THE CASE OF THE ARAB PALESTINIAN COMMUNITIES IN ISRAEL
Rassem Khamaisi University of Haifa, Israel
The paper focuses on planning among the Arab Palestinians in Israel, as a community whose attachment to place is strong, in a similar fashion to other traditional societies. This attachment limits mobility and migration and has a direct impact on attitude towards land. Planners face special challenges working within a semi-traditional and community-oriented society, which is also in a transition phase. The Arabs in Israel are in transition: undergoing urbanization processes while behaving as a traditional rural society, whilst balancing between state law and customary law. The housing institution is largely focused within a locality on family compounds as well as on neighbourhoods based on the clan (hamula) or religious groupings. Outside barriers related to the governmental planning policies, and policy of exclusion and spatial control, lead to a shrinking of the space available for development. The Arab communities’ understand the purpose of official planning to be a mechanism aimed at controlling, and thus they resist planning which for the most part ignores their cultural needs. This understanding and attitude towards land and place attachment will be discussed in the paper by presenting the attitude towards land reparcelization at three localities. The lessons from this experience, obstacles and barriers will be highlighted.
TOWARD AN EQUITY-ORIENTED PLANNING PRACTICE IN THE U.S.
Norman Krumholz Cleveland State University
The fortunes of planning fluctuate, but the planners are not significant players in the American scene. They have certain local powers, but little generalized influence. Their work is guided by a belief in the importance of technical rationality with a decided bias toward efficiency. Thus, they have an implicit orientation toward preserving the status quo of privilege. In order to move planning practice toward greater distributional justice, equity considerations must be substituted for those of efficiency which has been done in number of American cities under the leadership of progressive mayors. Within this context, five additional roles for planners are proposed: (1)the imposition of restraints; (2) developing creative investment proposals; (3) policies for constructive shrinkage; (4) strengthening neighborhood organizations; and (5) pursuit of regional collaboration.
URBAN TRANSPORTATION AND SOCIAL EQUITY: THREE TRANSPORTATION-PLANNING PARADIGMS THAT IMPEDE POLICY REFORM
Jonathan Levine University of Michigan
Equitable transportation planning has historically been impeded by three underlying suppositions. The first is a mobility-based definition of the goals of transportation planning. This approach treats movement as an end itself, rather than as one means to achieve access to destinations. The way to overcome inequities of access is implicitly more movement, an assumption that neglects the role of physical exclusion in increasing needs for mobility in the first place. The second is the economics-based problem definition that asks whether inequities justify governmental intervention into markets. In the transportation realm, governmental actions themselves underpin many of the inequities observed, a factor that ought to render this question largely moot. Finally, transportation planning methodology is largely based on extrapolation of current demand in order to scale future investment. Where transportation needs are not served, they remain unrevealed and will be as absent from future projection as they are from current observation.
SOCIAL JUSTICE AND POWER IN PLANNING HISTORY AND THEORY
Peter Marcuse
Columbia University
Power and social justice weave their way through planning’s history, how to handle power most often in the background, the possibilities for contributing to social goals and more broadly social justice sometimes in the foreground. These strands are traced briefly in planning’s history, with main attention on the profession itself. Three aspects are highlighted: subservient technical planning, in which the planner obeys the wishes of those in power, offering independent advice on means but not on goals; social reform planning, in which the planner attempts to input social goals within the tasks assigned by those in power; and critical social justice planning, in which the planner questions the goals of those in power, sometimes in utopian fashion, in arguing for the adoption of the goal of social justice.The paper concludes by suggesting the profession has recently missed a signal opportunity to grapple with the roles of social and social justice planning in the work of the profession. The paper is not intended as an exercise in planning theory, although it relates to many discussions there, and it does not aspire to be a historical account nor to cover all approaches of planning, given the limitations of space. It is intended as a framework for on-going debates on the history and purposes of planning. The hope is also that it will contribute to clarify the issues contended to have been recently avoided in professional decisions about its Code of Ethics.
SPATIAL DEVELOPMENT: HOW CULTURALLY EMPOWERED IS IT? THE ROLE OF SOCIAL INNOVATION IN TERRITORIALLY BASED COLLECTIVE ACTION
Frank Moulaert & Stijn Oosterlynck
KU Leuven
This paper addresses the dialectics between spatial development practice and theory in three ‘time conjunctures’ in Western European urban development policy: the German reunification and the socio-economic consolidation of German cities (second half of the 19th century), the rise and decline of the sectoral welfare policy in France (1960-1980) and the place of social innovation in urban development in Antwerp, Belgium (1990 till now). For each of these periods, the triangular tensor of development ‘technology – organization – culture’ is mirrored onto the ‘théories en vigueur’. An attempt is made to understand the role of theory as a normative driver – a part of cultural exchanges? – as well as its relation to hegemonic and counter hegemonic projects. ‘Social forces’ are a key category in this analysis.
POLICIES TOWARDS MIGRANT WORKERS
Itzhak Schnell
Tel Aviv University
Migrant workers policies are not emerging from a vacuum but as part of a socio-political and economic reality. The socio-political context must be understood in three hierarchical levels: Global; national and urban. The global advances a neo-liberal policy that enhances workers’ international mobility. While the urban level regulates migrant workers’ daily lives the state remains the main arena for the political struggle concerning migrant workers’ legal rights for citizenship and for inclusion in the welfare system. Five alternative policies may be identified toward migrant workers in states and cities: Transient, Guest workers, assimilation, multi-culturalist and trans-culturalist. While Transient and Guest workers policies characterize states’ policies during early stages of absorbing migrant workers, more permanent policies replace them. Ethnic democracies with conservative governments tend to adopt assimilationalist policies and civil democracies dominated by social democratic governments tend to adopt more multi and trans-cultural policies. The debate over policies is motivated by four main catalysts: Ideology, which shows strong inertia in maintaining policies; state economy with emphasis on pressures to reduce social benefits to migrant workers in economic recessions and in response to increasing dependency rates among migrant workers; socio-demographic considerations in which migrant workers rights are restricted once hosts ethnic majority is under risk and apolitical structure in which more fragmented political systems tend to more intensively debate policies toward migrant workers transforming them into moral issues debated in elections.
THE CENTER-PERIPHERY DILEMMA AND THE ISSUE OF EQUITY IN REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Daniel Shefer and Amnon Frenkel
Technion – Israel Institute of Technology
In order to reduce disparities among regions, government agencies device policies and initiate programs whose main objectives are to improve the competitive edge and thus increase the employment level, per capita income, and in general the rate of economic growth in peripheral regions. Outlaying areas attract less investment in comparison to central regions. This is because of the higher risks involved and the low marginal productivity of factors of production in the outlaying areas.
To attract high tech industries to outlaying regions is now in vogue. However, attracting high technology industry or investing in large scale public facilities, like hospitals, universities, R&D Centers, Technological Incubators, railways and highways is not necessarily the panacea for outlaying areas. Because of scarce resources it is paramount to select the most cost-effective program. In this paper we will critically discuss the implications of spatial allocation of selected public investment/incentive programs in order to better facilitate the development of peripheral regions.
PLANNING AND POVERTY: AN UNEASY RELATIONSHIP
Michael Teitz & Karen Chapple
University of California, Berkeley
Throughout its history, planning has tried to reconcile the harsh realities of poverty with the affluence that has been the mark of successful capitalist cities. Four pivotal moments have revealed this schism, each time in a new light. The first is the split between the Public Health/Progressive and the City Beautiful movements at the turn of the 20th century, focused on physical rather than social issues. The second key moment occurs with the rise of international development planning in the aftermath of World War II, when decolonization and the formation of new international organizations heralded an effort to reduce poverty at a world scale. The third moment in the U.S. and Europe is the social upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s, which highlighted the flaws of the physical planning approach in addressing urban poverty, but in the U.S., separated planning and community development. The fourth moment is the present crisis of climate change and global urbanization, which addresses poverty on a hitherto unimaginable scale and arguably shifts the focus back to physical planning and sustainability. Currently popular formulations of the sustainability problem almost invariably cite the trilogy of environment, economy, and equity, thereby attempting to close the historic circle. However, it may not be that easy.
FROM SOCIALISM INTO CAPITALISM: THE RESTRUCTURING OF CITIES AND THE SOCIAL OUTCOMES
Iván Tosics
Metropolitan Research Institute, Budapest
The last 20 years brought the largest and quickest changes in the history of the east-central European cities. Within this short time three periods can be distinguished: the socialist system, the transitory unregulated free market system, and the recent attempts for regulated capitalism.
The essay aims to explore the changes in the urban development processes of the east-central European cities (represented mainly on the example of Budapest) across these three periods, with special regard to the social inequality aspects of development.
In the socialist period urban development was told to follow equalitarian principles, regarding the allocation of advantages among people and among different parts of the city. There are many empirical proofs that this not happen in that way, the realities of socialist urban development can rather be described with the allocation of advantages according to merit instead of needs and with the resulting segregation of the new ruling class.
After the change of the political system the “historic pendulum” went to the other side. In the procedure of mass-scale give-away housing privatization the unequal distribution of advantages of the socialist period became marketized and turned into even larger differentiation. Moreover, complete administrative decentralization has been carried out, as a result of which the public sector became too fragmented for any meaningful and strong public policy.
In the last couple of years attempts are observable to introduce new type of public interventions with the aim to better regulate the market processes. These efforts, marking the end of the transition from socialism to capitalism, aim also to correct the largest inequalities caused by the previous free market period – though with very limited results so far.
For each of these main periods the paper elaborates on three aspects: the macro-level processes and the main restructuring policies, the socio-spatial outcomes, finally the local planning policies.
The essay ends with a critical evaluation of the post-socialist transformation of the east-central European cities and with some remarks about the chances of urban researchers to influence planning policies.
PUBLIC HOUSING, NEIGHBORHOOD RENEWAL AND THE POOR
Lawrence J. Vale
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
This paper considers the tortuous and tortured saga of public housing in the United States, viewing it as a kind of double social experiment: first when it was built–under the high modernist hopes of the mid-20th century–and again, as the 20th century closed, when it was redeveloped to mimic a pre-modernist urbanism. In both phases, planners and designers promised new and improved housing for low-income households, clearing slums the first time and, in the second iteration, clearing public housing itself. The paper traces both the evolution of public housing and the corresponding way that scholars and practicing planners have responded to it. This means 1) coming to terms with the rationales behind the initial enthusiasm for public housing, 2) contending with the ‘rise and fall’ critiques that soon followed, and 3) assessing more contemporary revisionist efforts to defend, re-invent, replace, or simply eliminate this form of deeply-subsidized housing.
THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE OF PROFESSIONAL ETHICS IN PLANNING
Martin Wachs
University of California, Berkeley
It is widely acknowledged that planning as a social pursuit is deeply reflective of a society’s concept of morality and ethics. Relatively simple, but very useful, codes of professional ethics evolved to insure that societies are well served by planners. These codes attempt to protect citizens as well as planners from temptations to benefit from improprieties. But, planning is inherently a blend of technical expertise and normative commitments to action. Plans should reflect human values on a much broader scale than are typically reflected by codes of ethics that circumscribe planners’ behavior. Plans guide actions that in turn shape urban environments; such actions and plans have ethical foundations. To understand planners’ tastes, styles, and recommendations, it is necessary to analyze their ethical orientations – the values they are pursuing. This paper examines the evolution of professional codes of ethics and addresses their limits and their future. It also addresses broader concepts of ethics in plans. It concludes that while planning is motivated by moral commitments, the ethical content of plans must remain “situational” and that it will remain difficult to assert that one action is more moral than another within the context of planning.