Long-term integrated planning in cities and regions is an increasingly complex task. The wide-ranging, sometimes conflicting, activities of the growing number of regional data providers, stakeholders, and decision makers are not easily reconciled or integrated at a regional scale. This is especially true for large binational metropolitan areas, which need to develop the capability to be treated as single systems composed of communicating networks of infrastructures. Integrated scenarios for energy and emissions, material flows, and land use and development are starting to be researched. This integrated vision for sustainable regionalism is largely based on the understanding that urban planning needs to give way to city-region (metropolitan) planning, and that urban management needs to lead to new modes of urban governance, in particular, integrated decision-making. While this new concept of urban governance may depend on long-term planning, partnerships, and coordinated action, it can only be done through the use of information technology (IT) that will enable accessibility, accountability, transparency, and efficiency.
Planning, by its very nature, is a collaborative process and planers must be able to effectively convey their plans and ideas with peers, elected officials, committees, the public, and others. An important aspect of this is to demonstrate the efficacy or lack thereof of alternative policies, plans, and projects. Metrics, under the general label of quality of life indicators, are often used in this regard.
It is also becoming increasingly important to have tools to help constituents visualize alternatives and be portable enough to allow interaction with them in the planning process. A number of sketch planning models have been developed to facilitate such interactions including Community Viz, Paint the Town, Smart Growth Index, and PLACE3S, but little comparative analysis of them has been conducted. PLACE3S is being used throughout California, and SANDAG is working with its member agencies to incorporate PLACE3S into their planning processes. Potential research questions include:
* What are the strengths and weaknesses of these models?
* Are they effective in improving the planning process and increasing constituent interaction?
* How could they be improved?
Demographic Changes
Significant demographic changes in the future will have important implications for planning. Two major trends will be the aging of the population and increasing ethnic diversity. What has generally received the most public attention is the aging of the baby boom generation and the implications for Medicare and social security systems. These pervasive demographic shifts will impact planning in other areas as well including transportation, urban design, health care, housing, social services, and the economy. Potential research questions include:
* How does the future demographic outlook in the San Diego region compare to the California, the U.S., and other parts of the world such as the Middle East, Europe, Japan, and China? Do the demographic issues differ across these areas? What are the implications of these demographic shifts for the planning process and how best can the planning profession respond to them?
* What are the impacts of changing demographics to specific planning areas such as those noted above? What planning strategies could be developed to help mitigate these impacts and why would those strategies be successful.
Population Forecasting
Forecasts of population, housing, the economy, transportation, and other related factors are widely used by planners. Forecasting and planning are closely intertwined. They are not synonymous however. Each has its own goals and objectives. Forecasting attempts to predict the future, while planning seeks to affect it. Successful planning may not only react to forecasts, but may also seek to influence the changes implied by the forecast. Planners need not only be educated consumers of forecasts, but understand the interplay between forecasting and planning. Potential research questions include:
* What is the interplay between forecasting and planning? How should a forecast be effectively integrated into the decision-making process? What are some of the potential conflicts or issues between forecasting, planning, and policy-making? How can these conflicts be resolved?
* What are the important criteria that a planner can use to evaluate a forecast? How can a planner best convey the uncertainty inherent in forecasting to decision-makers and other constituents?
Books, Articles, Papers
Demeny, P. 2003. Population Policy Dilemmas in Europe at the Dawn of the Twenty-first Century. Population and Development Review, 29, 1-28.
Isserman, A. 1984. Population, Forecast, and Plan: On the Future of Population Forecasting. Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 43, 247-259.
Romaniuc, A. 1994. Reflection on Population Forecasting: From Prediction to Prospective Analysis. Canadian Studies in Population, 21(2), 165-180.
Siegel, J. 2002. Chapters 7 and 13 in Applied Demography: Applications to Business Government, Law, and Public Policy. San Diego: Academic Press.
Smith, S., Tayman, J, and Swanson, D. 2001. Chapters 1 and 12 in State and Local Population Projections: Methodology and Analysis.
Swanson, D. and Tayman, J. 1995. Between a rock and a hard place: the evaluation of demographic forecasts. Population Research and Policy Review, 14, 233-249.
Tayman, J. 1996. Forecasting, Growth Management, and Public Policy Decision-Making.Population Research and Policy Review
Web Resources - Links and Data
U.S. Department of Transportation - planning tools
11th International Conference on Computers in Urban Planning and Urban Management
Key Organization / Institutions
SANDAG
Sacramento Area Council of Governments
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