An on-going debate about the planning profession has been taking place over
the last few days arising from Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk's appearance on a
national news program, PBS's News Hour with Jim Lehrer, in a segment about
'The New Urbanism'. To get a recap of Plater-Zyberk's appearance on the
News Hour go to:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/newurbanism/

This debate has been taking place primarily in the United States on the
Planning Educators Network (transcripts below in reverse order) and the
Public Broadcasting System (PBS) 'News Hour with Jim Lehrer On-line Forum'.

The link above is also available in an added 'New Urbanism' category on the
Research Studio Bibliography Resource page with other links to the Congress
for the New Urbanism, Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company, and 'New Urbanism'
developments in Celebration and Seaside, Florida. Go to
http://www.research-studio.com to access this info.

I would be interested in hearing people's comments about this, especially
Professor Mike Batty's as I'm pretty sure he has been following this
debate. I must admit that though I have found this debate on one level to
be fascinating, on another I have found the underlying subtext of both
architects' and planners' comments to be kind of depressing.

I personally take the comments of those arguing about 'planning in crises'
below and the rather 'pedestrian' justifications of Plater-Zyberk and Peter
Calthorpe (on the New Hours website) for the New Urbanism model (this
despite the wealth of built environment research out there, much of which
would provide legitimate evidence supporting some of the New Urbanism
ideas, for example regarding constitution) as further confirmation of M
Christine Boyer's arguments in 'Dreaming the Rational City' about an
unbridgeable gap between architecture and planning.

I still remain optimistic that this very real gap is, in fact, bridgeable
but I find my confidence being slowly chipped away at. It also seems to me
that the 'potential' of The New Urbanism as a mechanism for a radical
rethink about the future of our cities (especially in the United States) is
slowly being squandered by criticism which - for the most part - could be
easily deflected, or addressed, with research (unless the New Urbanists are
adopting a very Machiavellian approach intended to offend as little as
possible by substituting platitudes and, dare I say it, Clintonian
positions which bend with the wind... to paraphrase George Bush Senior, do
the New Urbanists live in the 'Waffle House'?) .

What are other people's impressions? Does anybody else despair?

Best wishes

Mark David Major
Executive Director, Research Studio Inc.

23 July 2000

There is an ongoing controversy in performance and musicology concerning
authenticity, Early Music, and problems of interpretation.  Some claim one
can recover the original mode of performance, from the musical text and
information on instruments and performance practice, and that should
determine the performance practice for today.  Others (see below) suggest
that no such authenticity is possible, or at least its claim to being the
right mode of performance is dubious.  The latter  suggest that we are
always interpreting, that the Early Music movement reflects a modern
neopositivist philosophy.   (Mozart always improvised, and the idea that
the musical text is complete does not apply.  Stravinsky who wanted to
prescribe just how his pieces should be played, recorded the same piece
over the decades in quite different ways.)  I recommend Richard Taruskin,
Text and Act (Oxford, 1995), which lays forth the second point of view, by
someone who is part of the Early Music movement but who also sees things
differently.  (All of this may well be well known to many of you.  I just
encountered Taruskin's book, and was reading it while we began the
discussion of New Urbanism.)

I mention all of this because it is helpful to realize that any such
movement, which is in some sense neo-traditional, is often a quite "modern"
movement claiming to find in tradition the authority and authenticity for
its preferred modes of practice.  Whether it be a return to nature, my own
concern, or a return to the lovely European walking city we imagine, it is
a return to a past we have constructed.  This is not to say whether or not
it is desirable.  However, it has little to do with authenticity.  That
people prefer some sort of design is interesting, of course.

MK

23 July 2000

My sense is that planning academics and their journals didn't pick up on
this trend (or at least consider it seriously as well as critically) sooner
is because of the movement's emphasis on "design" and "process."

At the risk of sounding self-serving I'd like to call attention to the
chapter on "Kentlands: New Town Plan" in my book: The Design Process: Case
Studies in Project Development (1989) Whitney Library of Design, New York.
To cite an excert (p.226):

"The work of Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk reflects a new
traditionalism in urban planning that looks to the American small town as a
design model for an alternative to suburban sprawl....To achieve this aim,
DPZ employs an unconventional design process: They plan new towns by
assembling all the key participants in a project for an intense one-week
work session they call a charrette, held on site....This case study takes a
close look at DPZ's process as a model for what town planning might be like
in the future."

Despite the hype and regardless of what anyone might think about the
cloying character of new urbanist imagery, new urbanism has attracted
public attention as a realistic/realizable ideal, that on some level
(theoretically) is based on a participatory process.

It seems to be fair to say that many planners--perhaps as a consequence of
the profession's  zeal to be taken seriously as a social science--discount
the value of the image, and specifically, images of a preferrable and
realizable alternative future. Ultimately it takes creative design skills
to craft such an image or at least to orchestrate a design process that
enages the public's imagination.

If planning is a "synoptic" "holistic" enterprise then planners should be
looking to integrate social, economic and physical concerns...not pit one
area of specialization against another. The edge planners have over
architects in the field new urbanists are playing in is that we do not make
a fetish of buildings, nor do we have a vested interest in obtaining the
architectural contracts that may result from a planning exercise.

Just some thoughts

Ellen Shoshkes
Senior Urban Designer
NJ Department of Community Affairs

22 July 2000

So planning's public image isn't all that great. That's an old story.

So planning is in crisis. Where have I heard that before?

And Wildavsky's sound bite about the nothingness of planning  keeps being
circulated. Why?

And how shall those citizens among us who continue to engage with our
multi-facetted field respond to these Jeremiads?

There is no easy cure-all for the situation described. But then, there is
no easy cure-all for cities either.

Educational reform might be one place to begin. We seem to believe that a
2-year curriculum  entitles one to full professional status (put AICP aside
for the moment).  I have a hard time accepting this. Think of the many
sub-fields of planning, each with their own doctrines, literatures, culture
heroes, and so forth. Transportation, social planning, regional economic
development, urban design, international planning, environmental planning,
with links into law, business,  architecture, and engineering. MIT has just
added strength in urban technologies. But what sort of training do we
provide in any of these? In most schools, a planning specialization is met
by taking  three courses that typically aren'tt even offered as  a
sequence.

I have argued for many years in favor of  a professional doctorate in
planning that would add a third year to the regular master's curriculum.
The year would be taken up with an in-depth study of a planning
specialization and could be followed by another  year's supervised
internship.

I think I've heard almost all of the objections to such a proposal. I also
think that just making this change in a few schools won't suddenly brighten
our public image.  But as I said, you've got to start somewhere. And just
tooting our horns and  circulating a glossy brochure or two about how
wonderful planning is won't make a smidgen of difference.

I'll be interested in following this debate as it evolves.

JOHN FRIEDMANN
UCLA/University of Melbourne

22 July 2000

I want to add to Dave's comments.

1. The town I live in recently approved a very controversial retail
development. The Town Council justified this by saying the town needs
"economic development." Yet the town has been debating this proposal since
at least 1989, and in the entire time the town has never had a
professionally qualified economic development planner (i.e. someone who at
a minimum took an economic development concentration at a PAB-accredited
school) look at the issues. I've been shocked at the landuse planners'
(including the town's own planners, a professional landuse planner on the
Town Council, and various landuse consultants) total ignorance of land
economics, public finance tax theory, economic development planning, and
other related bodies of knowledge. I've also been shocked by their
arrogance at dismissing such knowledge. So, one lesson I draw is that
persons within our profession do exactly the same thing that Dave points
out about other professions doing to planning as a whole, namely dismissing
it because in their arrogance they think they know what they need to know.

2. Planning is not like law because, in the U.S. at least, there is no
codified body of rules that dictate how to do planning, and lawyers are "in
charge" of dealing what rules do apply. Planning is not like medicine
because we have not developed (or, perhaps more precisely, do not use) a
substaintial body of scientific knowledge concerning the development of
human settlements and intentional collective action aimed at influencing
that development.

3. I do not think the problem is planning pitching its tent too big. The
problem is we do not take the tent seriously enough. We have to stop
equating physical and landuse planning with "planning" because by now we
all know that this approach is far too narrow. Instead, we have to see
planning as primarily an academic discipline whose "object of knowledge" is
how people in human societies intentionally shape the future. I say this
because we currently lack a meaningful knowledge base on this object, and
without it any planning profession will suffer the problems Dave points out
(lack of substantive knowledge, lack of a distinct professional identity,
etc.). Unfortunately, in the US at least, the planning profession as
currently constituted has only minor impact on the shape of the future
(witness Dave's comment about the proposed APA panel on national planning
initiatives), so planning theorists have to reject their current singular
focus on the planning professional and governmentally sanctioned "planning"
activities. Instead, we have to ask, "In the development of human
settlements, what intentional actions most importantly determine the course
of that development?" Then we have to understand this and how people can
most effectively intervene in this process to serve some version of the
public interest. We also have to get rid of the narrow blinders of space
and time, but studying planning in other countries and at other times.

My favorite example of what I have in mind is the biblical story of Joseph
and the Pharaoh. You will remember Pharoah had a dream of seven fat cows,
sever skinny cows, seven ears of corn standing up, seven wilted, etc.
Joseph interpreted this dream as meaning there would be seven years of
plenty followed by seven years of famine, and he recommended that Pharaoh
build store cities to hold grain in preparation for the famine. We have to
understand why and how such planning practices were used. I am not saying
there are general "laws" of planning. I am saying that our current
orientiation does not recognize any socially and historically rooted
systematic, causal determinants of planning as a social institution and,
distinctly, as a social practice. Also, just as we might be critical of the
use of such superstitious planning methods in ancient Egypt, we have to be
able to look for similar superstitions in contemporary professional
planning. Only when we can understand what causes planning to take certain
forms will we be able to intercede to create more beneficial forms. Only
when we can understand planning this way will we begin to have the
substantive knowledge that a profession could actually use to shape the
future of human settlements in a significant way. Of course, such an
approach might discover that professions, by their very nature, are unable
to do this and that true planning must take place outside any profession.
The fact that we currently ask questions in such a way as to preclude this
answer is a sad commentary about the current state of planning in the
academy.

Marsh Feldman

21 July 2000

Frankly, this has been a troubling week for me as a retired but still
active teacher of urban planning.   My Yale Alumni Magazine arrived with a
cover story on Yale's new campus "UnPlan."  It's not a bad plan, attempts
to integrate the University and the City of New Haven, and provides a
stragtegic framework for future growth rather than detailed project
proposals.  The "UnPlan"  was prepared by an architectural firm.  There
seems to have been no input from anyone remotely identified with the  city
planning profession.   The term "UnPlan" is no doubt intended  to avoid all
those negative connotations now associated with the notion of a  "master
plan."

Then, day before yesterday, a guest editorial appeared in our paper, the
Asheville-Citizen Times, authored by the head of the local "Smart Growth
Coalition."  The editorial, citing our old friend, Jane Jacobs and the
"Death and Life..., etc., denounced the "pseudo-science of "urban
planning," as the source of destructive proposals, generally,  and
currently on the local public agenda.  The author obviously confused
highway planners and city planners, but then so did Jane Jacobs.  Never
mind that APA has a national Smart Growth© initiative.  Planners are widely
regarded as the bad guys.   I wrote a rebuttal letter, but the fact is, the
negative perception is out there.

Finally, yesterday, I paid a call at the Univ. of Tennessee where I had
taught planning for 20 years prior to (early) retirement and found to my
astonishment that the new Chancellor had set up a campus Master Planning
project to be headed by the Dean of Architecture (who had done her best
upon arrival to destroy the School of Planning at UT to capture the budget
line for architecture.  Have you ever met an architect who doesn't believe
she or he is automatically an "urban planner" of the "built environment"?
I haven't.)  The proposed UT Campus Master Plan activity, of course, has no
involvement of the UT School of Planning.   The University of Tennessee,
(most noted these days, alas, for athletic/academic scandals and state
underfunding) simply ignored the fact that it has a School of Planning.
Not surprising, but, of course, disappointing and perplexing to planning
faculty and students.   They are, of course, making a noise about it.

What conclusions can one draw from these isolated, though not so
unconnected, events?

Perhaps the following:

Planning has a blurred public image.

Planning is not adequately understood or respected as an identifiable
profession outside its own professional boundaries.

Planning is regarded as dull, and not a source of new ideas or vitality,
or, worse-- the origin of proposals and projects that are destructive of
civic progress and environmental values.  (There may be some truth to this
accusation, n'est-ce pas?)

Planning seems to lack a core of "best practices" in the manner of the
major professions such as law or medicine.  (Is planning really a
profession or simply a meeting place for other professions and
disciplines?)

The cutting edge of planning ideas has often been outside the established
field of planning-- in landscape architecture, urban design, environmental
science, etc. -- not surprising, if one regards planning as primarily an
integrative, synoptic activity.  This is our primary strength, but we pay a
price for it.

Planning lacks its heroes, and tends to borrow them from other areas.
(Examples:  the recent lionizing of Ed Bacon and Robert Moses as "planning
pioneers"  though both scorned planners and comprehensive planning
approaches.) (At the same time, the establishment of the AICP Fellows
program, in mimicry of the Fellows Program of the AIA,  seems to me
evidence of professional arteriosclerosis and a form of inner-directed
navel contemplation.  My recollection of the AIA program is that the
Fellows were typically not the innovative and leading minds in that
profession, but rather the academically dull and safe practitioners.   But
maybe that's to be expected in any field.)

More seriously, the planning profession suffers from a problem of
self-identity. One is reminded of Aaron Wildavsky's expression that "if
planning is everything, maybe it's nothing."  Is the tent simply too big?
At the same time, planning tends to be irrelevant with regard to important
and burning national issues.

(When a group of us proposed a panel for the last APA conference to discuss
the need for a renewal of national planning initiatives, the idea was
flatly rejected.  Too controversial, perhaps.)

A related problem:  planning is no longer attracting the best students into
the profession.  They wisely go to business or to law, where the action is,
or, at least, seems to be.   Maybe it's always been thus, but my perception
over a thirty-year career is that we used to do better.

Thus it should not be surprising that other professions such as
architecture have moved in to fill the perceived vacuum.   And it is not
surprising that the hype for the "new urbanism" has drawn so much
attention-- never mind that we as planners have been promoting similar
ideas for decades.  We didn't do the PR job as well, and the time wasn't as
ripe as it is now.  We also were not as adept at imagery and vision
creation as the architectural design crowd.

The planning profession seems to me to be in crisis, and doesn't even
realize it.   That, in my opinion, is the significance of the "new
urbanism."

Comments and reac

David A. Johnson, Ph.D., AICP
Professor Emeritus of Planning
University of Tennessee

21 July 2000

The New Urbanism movement is now over 20 years old, and is influencing
changes in land use, transportation planning, community design, and other
areas of planning, not to mention the expenditure of billions of dollars in
HUD funds. JAPA is behind on taking up New Urbanism, and only two topical
pieces come to mind from recent years:

Crane, Randall. 1996. ìCars and Drivers in the New Suburbs: Linking Access
to Travel in Neotraditional Planning.î JAPA 62:51-65.

Southworth, Michael. 1997. ìWalkable Suburbs? An Evaluation of
Neotraditional Communities at the Urban Edge.î JAPA 63:28-44.

There have been a small but growing number of articles published in
journals like Urban Studies, Urban Affairs Review, Environment and Planning
D, and JPER in recent years, including articles in the past few months by
Susan Fainstein (Urban Affairs Review 35:451-478) and Anne Vernez Moudon
(PLACES 13 (2): 38-43). Entire issues have been devoted to the topic in
PLACES and will be the Forum focus in Housing Policy Debate, Vol 11, Issue
4 ("New Urbanism in the City: Applications and Implications for Distressed
Inner-City Neighborhoods," by yours truly, plus two commentaries and a
round table transcript).

Most of these articles, however, have involved literature reviews,
theoretical discussions and debate that draws on the marketing and
manifestoes of New Urbanist practitioners, with very little research to be
found (the one exception is in the area of transportation). This is likely
to change, as there are now more plans and places to evaluate, and the
topic is cropping up in conference papers and dissertations which should
find their way into print in the coming year.

Ironically, reactions to New Urbanist/neotraditional communities are
reminiscent of the reactions to early postwar suburbs, like Levittown, and
new communities like Reston and Columbia. It wasn't until sociologists like
Herbert Gans and others undertook in-depth, first hand research on these
communities that a significant body of knowledge began to emerge. In a sign
that something similar might emerge with respect to New Urbanism, Andrew
Ross (an American Studies professor at NYU) acknowledges Gans work as a
model and inspiration for his research and book on Celebration.

Charles C. Bohl
Center for Urban & Regional Studies/
Department of City and Regional Planning
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

20 July 2000

Hello All,

As always, I'm interested in popular culture interpretations of planning
(this is from the person who brought you Bette Midler). Some of you might
be interested in a broadcast last night on the News Hour, in which Ray
Suarez interviewed Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk. Today the public broadcasting
site has a whole section on New Urbanism. It's at
www.pbs.org/newshour/newurbanism/index.html.

The site contains the audio and text portion of the interview, an excerpt
from her new book, an online forum in which you can ask questions, a
summary of new urbanism and its critiques, and links to new urbanism sites.

What is curious to me is that the site notes that New Urbanism is a "new
trend in architecture." Plater-Zyberk wouldn't disagree. Neither would
Kunstler, who is cited on the web site. Is this not also a new trend in
planning? Have we given this up to architecture? Before everyone jumps to
disagree, I don't remember any articles in JAPA on it.

--Renee
________________________________
R. E. Sieber
Department of Geography
McGill University

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Building and Urban Design Research Studio
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