Journal of Planning Education and Research

In past decades, accreditors have asked planning programs in North America to perform increasingly elaborate assessments of student learning. Most recent is a requirement for directly measuring program-level learning outcomes (PLLOs). I ask, does this measurement improve professional planning education? Do the benefits of such measures outweigh the costs? While it seems sensible to pay attention to what students learn, I argue that directly measuring PLLOs is both burdensome and ineffective. That is, planning programs are being asked to do something that wastes time yet we comply out of fear or inertia. It is time to stop.

Addressing strategies for managing vacant, abandoned, and deteriorated (VAD) properties is important for maintaining healthy communities. Yet, the process of identifying these properties can be difficult. Here, we create a human-in-the-loop machine learning (HITLML) model called VADecide and apply it to a parcel-level case study in Savannah, Georgia. The results show a higher prediction accuracy than was achieved when using a machine learning model without human input in the training. The HITLML approach also reveals differences between machine versus human-generated results. Our findings contribute to knowledge about the advantages and challenges of HITLML in urban planning.

Land use plans, a crucial component of statutory master plans, are often deemed failures. To test this hypothesis, an ex-post evaluation of seven master plans from five Indian million-plus cities was conducted using percentage implementation (PI) and conformance variation (CV) as evaluation factors to ascertain variation between proposed and subsequent existing land uses. Contrary to master plans, a significant difference in CV was observed among land uses after performing analysis of variance (ANOVA) across all master plans and land use categories. Post hoc tests revealed that residential, governmental/public and semi-public, industrial, and overall developed/urbanized areas grew relatively as expected compared to recreational use.

In the United States, courts can review zoning decisions and overturn local approvals. Judicial review doesn’t just stall projects, it alters land use governance. This paper uses a case study approach to investigate a highly litigated suburban multifamily development project. The case demonstrates how courts have become a de facto second stage of approvals. This has important implications for planning. Courts privilege abstract, technical, and procedural arguments and they elevate different land use actors to the fore. Pervasive judicial review also imbues planning work with future legal import, changing practices within the municipal system.

This paper proposes a replicable, data-driven index to identify informal subdivisions and measure levels of peri-urban housing informality. Dallas (Texas) and Catawba (North Carolina) county assessment data, a review of the literature, and insights from qualitative research in North Texas yielded variables which were reduced to two factors through exploratory factor analysis. We identified 128 and fifty-three highly informal subdivisions in Dallas and Catawba counties, respectively. This work highlights the pervasiveness of peripheral informal subdivisions and helps guide planners’ efforts to locate and assist the most precarious subdivisions.

This paper examines the resilience of retail stores—whether they maintain their store visits—during COVID-19 across jurisdictions with different socioeconomic characteristics. Using cell phone locational data, I adopted an event study design to compare visits to retail stores across counties with different mitigation policies and socioeconomic characteristics. I found a significant decline in-store visits by 16 percent after three rounds of community mitigation strategies, which shows a lack of resilience. Meanwhile, the distribution of resilience was unequal across jurisdictions with different socioeconomic profiles. Policy recommendations are made to support retail businesses and promote inclusive development.

Renters living in subsidized housing managed by Public Housing Authorities (PHAs) are vulnerable to disasters. This study aims to describe barriers, facilitators, and opportunities for the implementation of disaster risk management (DRM) strategies at PHAs. Fifteen semi-structured key informant (KI) interviews with federal and state housing officials, PHA leaders, and housing non-profit staff were conducted and thematically analyzed. Interviewees mentioned financial and administrative hindrances, lack of policy, and lack of disaster training among PHA staff as notable barriers to engaging in DRM. Past disaster experience, interagency partnerships, and designated DRM roles at PHAs were introduced as facilitators for implementing DRM strategies.

In 2013, as part of a climate adaptation plan, Bogota introduced a housing subsidy to facilitate the relocation of residents in high-risk zones. Residents in the urban periphery, specifically those already displaced by civil conflict, voice concerns of the potential for a secondary displacement or a “double displacement.” Using housing data issued between 2013 and 2023, this study analyzes the spatial relationship between the city’s risk zones and subsidized housing. It finds that residents resettled with this subsidy continue to be disproportionately represented in high-risk zones, with 57% of subsidized units, and 51% of those for internally displaced persons, or desplazados as they are locally known, located in high-risk zones.

The Washington Metropolitan area has been growing rapidly and experiencing gentrification since the 1980s. Contemporaneously, a light rail corridor in the inner suburbs was planned and is currently being constructed. This light rail, Maryland’s Purple Line, travels through dense urban areas, post-war era suburbs, and through a series of dense low-income immigrant gateway neighborhoods. Through a case study of the Purple Line during the construction phase, this paper examines the costs and benefits of the modern paradigm of transit-oriented development. Qualitative evidence suggests that the benefits of the line may be imbalanced against its costs in the short run, especially with respect to housing stability and affordability, displacement, and neighborhood change. Furthermore, this paper argues that displacement due to transit investment can occur prior to the opening of new transit lines. In light of this, the tenuous political coalitions that support construction of light rail will have to adjust to be more inclusive of equity, vulnerable populations, and provision of affordable housing.

This article critically evaluates the practices of entrepreneurial urban governance in China’s urban redevelopment under state-led financialized urbanism. The research identifies a new trajectory of transition in urban governance from the growth machine mentality into a new fashion of debt machines. Urban redevelopment has enhanced land use efficiency, but equitable outcomes for various stakeholders remain elusive. A peculiar pattern of changes in urban governance is unveiled to show how a municipal government under a Party-state has manipulated financial instruments for revenue generation and political ambition. This study contributes insights into the diverse trajectories of changing urban governance in the era of financialization.

Though urban climate policy increasingly centers “equity,” the term remains amorphous and is often sidelined for technocratic framings. This paper investigates how cities arrive at equity aspirations and how, if at all, “equity” remakes climate planning processes. Using qualitative case studies in Oakland and San Jose, California, this paper argues that equity is constructed relationally, with consultants at the center. Consultants are positioned as both technical and procedural experts, allowing them to advocate for or gatekeep equity aspirations. The turn to equity both challenges technocratic consultant-driven planning practices and reproduces consultants as procedural experts.

In-depth interviews with Australian urban planners identified barriers to and facilitators of climate change action across Janin Rivolin’s model of planning systems, categorizing them against Healey’s theory of transformations in urban governance. Insights from everyday planning practice reveal four factors necessary to transform urban planning systems for effective climate change action: (1) planning education institutions and professional associations must appropriately update professional capacity requirements and opportunities; (2) professional capacity and culture change needs to be enabled; (3) material resources must be facilitated; to (4) design and implement effective urban planning policy instruments for climate change action.

Legacy city plans prescribe reusing vacant residential land for green uses that improve quality of life and strengthen neighborhoods. To reduce combined sewer overflows, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency required green stormwater infrastructure (GSI), a possible reuse of vacant land consistent with those plans. Case studies of two cities, based on interviews, meetings, and government documents, revealed that GSI rarely reused vacant land because goals of mayors, sewer agencies, and neighborhood advocates were incompatible; reforms to facilitate GSI emphasized development sites; and no measures protected GSI from destruction. Nonprofit organizations will likely lead efforts to install GSI on vacant residential land at smaller scale.

With limited recognition of rights and Land claims, Indigenous Peoples are constantly developing ways to resignify, reclaim, and reimagine the futurities of their Land. I refer to this as “planning in re-existence.” Building on decoloniality theory, planning in re-existence describes the mechanisms, Knowledges, and struggles Indigenous Peoples experience and negotiate under the dominance of settler states. Drawing from the disputes about the Bears Ears National Monument, I use critical place inquiry to share three stories that unveil decolonial cracks from the perspective of Tribal Nations and explain re-existence as a theoretical and practical framework to redefine planning with Indigenous communities.

This article discusses shifts in planning education. In particular, it highlights the future role of planners in the location of Drug Consumption Rooms (DCRs). The United Kingdom’s experiment with DCRs raises an important question for planning education and professional practice: are future planners adequately equipped to deal with the “frontier politics,” stakeholder reactions, and community views toward DCRs? This article reveals this is not the case and suggests practical, structural changes to U.K. planning education to create a more socially inclusive planning imagination that engages effectively with illegal drugs and harm reduction interventions, and how the “illegal” should be planned for.

It is important that the current and the next generations of planners are well equipped to contribute to the realization and upscaling of effective climate change action as a central element in any urban or spatial planning educational program. Framing the issue in the European context, and building on studies of other global regions, this research is the first European-wide scale survey to look at the extent to which European planning schools are addressing climate change in their curricula. The findings highlight the need for more comprehensive education on this critical issue and that further research and resources are needed to enhance climate resilience education in planning.