2011 Planishprocom

Discussion Question For 12/7

Your reading assignments for this week are:

Judith Innes and David Booher, “Reframing Public Participation: Strategies for the 21st Century,” Planning Theory 5(4), 419-436 (2004). On Blackboard
Susan Fainstein, “New directions in planning theory.” In the class text, Readings in Planning Theory (chapter 9)

These two readings are in dialogue with one another.  Fainstein promotes her idea of the “just city” by critiquing the communicative action model of planning, which Innes is a proponent of, and which underlies Innes’ suggestions for public participation strategies. These two readings will help us spring-board off the memoing assignment you are handing in at the beginning of class with the integrative themes for our last session together.

Your blog question for this week:

What, if anything, surprised you about the planning meeting that you attended? Do the implications and recommendations in your memo corroborate or challenge any of Innes and Booher’s arguments about public participation, and if so, how? Now think about their recommendations—alternative practice framework, creating forums and arenas, etc.—from Fainstein’s perspective of achieving a “just city”. Is the agenda that Innes and Booher suggest the right one? Why or why not?

Blog Question for 11/30

Excellent work on the presentations! You guys did a great job of quickly producing professional-caliber work. Make sure you get a reflection blog up on your experience.

For next class, there are two readings in the blackboard folder. I suggest you begin this week’s readings with the Walker interview, which will acquaint you with the idea of resilience, which is rapidly challenging “sustainability” as a creative framework for thinking about a desireable future in light of the apocalyptic possibilities of climate change, peak oil, biodiversity loss, water scarcity, and other looming threats. Then read my co-authored article on achieving resilience through collaborative storytelling.

Your blog question is:

Why does it enhance resilience if communities tell their own story, given that our profession could simply provide them with guidance for good planning practice, and other experts are available to help them understand other features of their social and ecological contexts? Can you think of an instance from your own life where community resilience was enhanced through storytelling (or, failing that, from your reading and coursework?) Please make specific reference  to the concept of resilience as laid out by Brian Walker, which is not a garden-variety notion of sustainability through optimizing existing arrangements - as he says, this kind of approach might only “increase the metabolism of the system”!

No Discussion Question For 11/9 But Read This

At the beginning of next class we will do a blog group, focusing on Rob Olshansky's visit and talk. Blog group leaders, please be prepared to lead, and hand in your discussion preparation after class.

The introduction to the UNOP plan is assigned for next week, as well as your group's District Plan, which is found at this link. 

In order to read the plans effectively, your team should have a plan for preparing for your presentation. If you have not been assigned to a team because you were not in class, contact Eric IMMEDIATELY - failure to join a team will lead you lose 20% of your grade!

As you prepare, re-read the team briefing assignment that I handed out in class, which is also posted on blackbaord in the course documents section. You should arrive in class with a clear enough sense of the UNOP Plan and the assignment to work effectively with your team members on preparing for your presentation the following week. You may need to conduct further analysis of the the planning documents, including supplementary web-based research, but move quickly - it will take most of the following week to prepare the powerpoints and handout and practice your delivery.

Make sure you bring in your schedules, so your team can decide on at least one additional meeting time with your time during the following week, to prepare and practice your presentation.

There will be no discussion question due for next week's class, as you prepare for your team briefings. Reflection blogs are due as regularly scheduled.

I will post any emerging issues, resources, and questions below in this blog post that I think are useful to you all - you might check back for changes to this FAQ as the week progresses.

Good luck with your group preparations!

Bruce

 

FAQ (last updated 11/3):

 

1. Should the focus be on the District plan more than the City Plan?

Answer: Analyze both plans equally.

2. The UNOP's district plans have been rolled up into a master plan and comprehensive zoning ordinance for New Orleans. [http://www.nolamasterplan.org/documentsandrresources.asp]. However, you should to stay "frozen" in time with a focus on the UNOP (which uses a lot of data and stats from 2006/2007). Our goal here is not to become familiar with the latest happpenings in New Orleans, so much as to use the UNOP plan as a case, to integrate what we've learned so far in a real-world setting, and learn some briefing and group-work skills. Rather than worry about learning more about New Orleans, make a serious effort to incorporate past class readings in reference to your briefing perspective.

Discussion Question For 11/2

I'm glad to hear that Eric led you through today's charette and it went off well. This is the first time I can honestly report that I slept through my own class - in bed, with the Nyquil and the tissues on hand. Next year, I'm getting a flu shot.

Here's your assignment for next week:

So far, in our case studies, we have read about some of the substantive tasks planners have had: making cities more functional and beautiful, spurring job growth, fighting poverty, and more. The next three weeks will give us the chance to learn about an important ongoing case of helping a major city recover from natural disaster—and, some would say, from a variety of man-made disasters as well. Disaster experts typically distinguish two phases: relief action (which meets immediate needs of the victims, such as for clean water, food, and shelter); and recovery and reconstruction, which restores the longer-term bases of people’s lives, from economic livelihoods to housing to valued cultural heritage and more. Our work over the next three weeks will focus on planning in the second phase. This week introduces New Orleans, its politics, the events surrounding Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and then the recovery planning efforts that followed. Rob Olshansky, a planning professor who specializes in post-disaster recovery planning, will be joining us in class to help us begin to think about this enormous planning challenge . He is also the author of this week's readings, from his book entitled "Clear As Mud: Planning for the Rebuilding of New Orleans" - the title should give you some sense of his judgment of efforts there! His visit will prepare us to examine specific New Orleans planning efforts during the following two weeks.

Your discussion question for this week, a simple one, was suggested by Rob, who tells me it is the first question he usually is asked when he presents his findings on the Crescent City:

Why should we rebuild New Orleans?

 

Discussion Question for 10/26

This week's readings are meant to prepare you to play a role in a New Urbanist charette during this week's class. Under separate cover, I will send each of you instructions for the charette and information about the identity you will assume during this role play, based on a real-life situation in the City of Lynchburg, Virginia.

Your blog assignment for this week is to research your role on-line, and write a blog post that provides links to at least 2 websites where you have gathered information about your role (on the handouts I gave you, there are some initial suggestions in italics). In addition, provide a short summary of how what you imagine the individual you have been assigned to play wants to achieve by participating in the charette, making at least two specific references to New Urbanist design principles or critiques from the readings. I recommend you print this out and bring it to class, to remind yourself of your motivation and perspective.

Be sure to be on time next class - we're going to jump right into the charette. Discussion leaders, orient your preparation for blog group with the idea of gleaning lessons from the charette exercise.

 

 

Discussion Question For 10/19

The issue of planning amidst social diversity is becoming ever more important, since migration and other forces are producing unprecedented social diversity in cities around the world. This important issue for planning is often treated simplistically as an issue of tolerance or valuing difference. During next week I would like you to consider this issue by reading authors with different views about diversity and planning, as well as an interested case study of communication failure.

Your question for next week:

Emily Talen, our guest speaker this week, describes the benefits of place diversity in terms of vitality, economic health, social equity, and sustainability. Susan Fainstein champions the idea of the "just city" as a guideline for planners to address diversity. Caroline Tauxe suggests that public hearings are governed by “an invisible cultural selection process” that favors some participants over others on the basis of their rhetorical styl.

Using ideas from the readings, suggest how you might enable members of diverse community to engage in authentic dialogue and voice their concerns, in a way that is compatible with Fainstein's ideas about the just city

 

 

NO Blog Question For 10/12 - Class Will NOT MEET

PLEASE NOTE that despite what the syllabus says, we are not meeting next week - we are meeting in two weeks, though, so we are just switching the 10/12 class to 10/26. Check back here next week for your blog question for the 10/19 class. Here are the details, which I just sent by email

Hi All,

There will be NO CLASS next week, 10/12. I will be in Salt Lake City. Should've checked my calendar...

However, there WILL be class on 10/26, which is currently in the syllabus as a "no class" day. On that day we'll pick up the assignment that was due next week, on New Urbanism, and do the charette which Eric sent you confidential instructions for.

So no problem if you've already begun the research or reading for next week, we're just having that class two weeks later. If you've prepared your blog post, just re-post it in two weeks.

See you in two weeks (10/19), when we discuss "Inclusive Planning Amidst Diversity", with our special guest, Emily Talen. Note that Emily is giving her talk right after class, in the same room we are meeting in - there will be a brief reception after class and before her talk - and I would like you to attend her talk, which will wrap up around 6PM.

Bruce

 

Discussion Question For 10/5

Here is your next blog question:

Think of a planning controversy with which you have intimate knowledge or personal experience. Try applying at least two of the ethical frameworks in the Silva piece to the controversy. What implications for action and what stakeholder views become clearer through this exercise?

Discussion Question For 9/28

This session addresses another “planning classic” —Paul Davidoff’s argument for advocacy planning. The case poses a fundamental question to help wrap up this part of the course: Can planning be an effective tool if the parties “at the table” subscribe to very different notions of what good planning and “the good plan” are?

The social context for Davidoff’s (1965) essay, like that of Arnstein’s on the “ladder of citizen participation,” was the turbulent late 1960s. Davidoff is discontented with the rational planning model, a common theme across our discussion of “planning as politics” and “planning as collaboration”. However, the argument heads in a new direction - Davidoff urges planners to be advocates for client interest groups (as attorneys are), not just technicians, and to engage in the “contentious work” of developing policy. He proposes that there be multiple plans, including “community” plans, rather than a single public plan. Forty years later, Innes and Gruber examine a clash of styles in transportation planning by considering the range of players involved and how they act to influence plans and outcomes, and what they assume. Note that Innes and Gruber treat Davidoff as part of the “social movement” style and specifically as part of “oppositional” politics.

Your discussion question:

Do you think that advocacy, as an orientation, can help remedy the limits of the rational planning model? In light of Innes and Gruber’s “Clash of Styles”, do you think advocacy planning enhances, or diminishes, the role of planning in society?

Discussion Question for 9/21

For this week, note that the case is not on blackboard – it is available online at:

http://books.google.com/books?id=ZaRsf_Rai8AC&pg=PA53&lpg=PA53&dq=%22a+towering+dilemma%22&source=bl&ots=664mPQUpqr&sig=3uPhEMrXqTxgGKUEHlAzpHJ-je8#v=onepage&q=%22a%20towering%20dilemma%22&f=true

Only pages 54-60 of this case are assigned – the rest is part of a sociology text and interprets the case differently than the way we are approaching it.

As we have discussed, modern planning was born on very big and debatable assumptions—mostly about who could and should “guide society” and how. Not surprisingly, modernist or rational planning came under severe criticism, especially on political grounds. But much of that criticism (like Altshuler’s) stayed at the broad, structural level without offering much advice on the micro-level, everyday settings in which planners actually practice. Our aim for next class is to focus on the micro level by focusing on planners as facilitators of disputes among stakeholders in pluralist democracies, where interests and values often come into conflict.

Your discussion question:

Drawing explicitly on different ideas from the readings, how would you approach the problem in the “Towering Dilemma” case as a planner? What are the principal obstacles to achieving resolution, and how can planning as facilitated dispute resolution help?