How Plan Monitoring Improves Plan Implementation: A Longitudinal Evaluation of the Neighborhood Planning Process

Abstract

Plan monitoring is broadly believed to address plan obsolescence. We inquire to what extent neighborhood plan monitoring meetings enhanced implementation conformance over that achieved by original plans in the shrinking city of Youngstown (OH), via a monthly-based longitudinal evaluation of demolitions. We find that monitoring meetings’ recommendations diverged rapidly from original plans; that a combination of monitoring and plans maintained a stable conformance ratio; and that plan monitoring is more important for politically unstable implementation actors than independent actors. We conclude that plan monitoring is a valuable but challenging tool to react to uncertainty by offering suggestions for improved plan monitoring.