Australian Journal
of
Public Administration
Vol.
XLI,
No.
2. June
1982
URBAN PLANNING, POLICY AND MANAGEMENT*
MAX
NEUTZE
Absrrua:
This paper deals with some important sources of confusion in discussions
of
urban issues. The first part distinguishes urban planning as
a
“future oriented” activity,
from urban management which is primarily concerned with resource allocation. (The
nature
of
urban development
-
interdependence and long life
-
makes
a
long-term
perspective important.) When urban management aims to implement a plan the two are
complementary. Urban policy covers
a
broader range
of
issues. The second part
distinguishes four levels of debate about urban issues: ideological, political, operational
and technical. Frequently debates in urban studies are
not
coherent because the
participants are arguing at different levels and therefore make different assumptions
about what is given and what can be varied.
It
is argued that the various levels form
a
hierarchy
so
that debates at any level need to assume particular positions with respect to
higher level questions. Ideological issues include individual
versus
collective perspective,
capitalist
versus
socialist, the appropriate role of markets and governments and the
relative weight given to equity and efficiency criteria. The examples of political issues
discussed are rationality
versus
group pressure as explanations of government
behaviour, and whether planning
is
mainly
a
political
or
a
professional activity.
Operational issues include the appropriate level of government for carrying out urban
functions and the role of statutory planning and other policy measures. Technical issues
focus
on
predicting the effects
of
policy measures and external changes on cities. The
different levels are illustrated by a discussion
of
policy towards inner city areas.
Introduction
Urban planning is a well established field of activity: it is incorporated in
legislation and is the recognized activity of special purpose public authorities
and a profession with its own training courses and professional organizations.
In recent years people from other disciplines have taken an increasing interest
in urban policy, and have included planning among the aspects of urban policy
under discussion. Planning has also been criticized by those who believe that it
has been ineffective in achieving government objectives. They see the need for
more management of cities and less emphasis on long-term planning. The first
section of this paper distinguishes between planning, policy and management
and shows how they are related.
The second, and larger section
of
the paper attempts to focus the debate
about urban policy by distinguishing the different levels of questions which
different writers have been asking and by showing how they relate to one
another. It seems useful to distinguish ideological, political, operational and
technical questions. People arguing at different levels are unlikely to come to
grips with one another and recognize, let alone resolve, their differences.
Planning, Policy and Management
Among the meanings of the verb “to plan” given by the Oxford Dictionary,
that which comes closest to its meaning in relation to urban policy is “to
*
An earlier draft
of
this paper was presented in the Architecture and Urban Planning section
of
ANZAAS. Adelaide, May
1980.
I
am grateful for comments an3 suggestions from Patrick Troy.
Peter Harrison, Ian Alexander and Hal Kendig.
146
URBAN PLANNING
arrange beforehand”. Planning is essentially an activity that is oriented to some
future result. There is a sense, of course, in which all activities take a certain
sequence: they are planned, carried out and then produce a result. But plans
that are concerned with where urban facilities, services, housing and the like
will be located are
-
or
should be
-
always concerned, not only with the
immediate future but also with the long-term future. Streets, houses, parks,
schools, shops and factories last for a long time and cannot easily
be
moved,
so
it is very important to look well into the future in deciding where, and how large
to build them, and what kind should be built.
Because urban buildings and infrastructure nearly always stay in the same
place for a long time, and because the spatial relationships between them have a
great influence on how
a
city functions, the term “planning” has special
significance for location
-
whether at an urban
or
regional scale. If someone is
known simply as a “planner” it is almost certain that he is a town planner
-
a
“planning authority” is concerned with urban
or
regional planning. Economic
planners, corporate planners and service planners are seen to be special cases.
Of course other kinds of planners, such as transport, water and other service
planners are also concerned with location. The distinctive feature of “planners”
in the general sense,
or
land-use planners, is that they are concerned with the
location of everything
-
all land uses
-
and with the spatial relationships
between them.
The need to plan future locations (land-use) arises from interdependence
-
the best location for housing depends on where jobs are located and vice-versa
-
and from the fact that different facilities are installed at different times and
by different people, firms and public authorities. The “plan” provides for them
all.
If
they are located as a result of separate and independent decisions taken at
different times by different people the spatial arrangement is unlikely to be
particularly efficient or equitable.
It is sometimes useful to distinguish between the making of plans and their
implementation. From a semantic point of view the distinction is sensible.
“Arranging beforehand” is not the same thing as carrying out those
arrangements. From the point of view of division of labour and making use of
diverse skills also, this distinction has advantages. Planning requires vision,
imagination, and an ability to grasp the relationships between different elements
of the urban fabric. Implementation requires hard-nosed bureaucratic skills, an
ability to design and implement controls, to negotiate with government
departments and authorities and to cajole businessmen.
It is not surprising that many planners find the making of plans exciting
and intellectually and aesthetically challenging, but find implementation
a
pedestrian and often disheartening chore. Bureaucrats are impatient with plan-
making. They see
it
as woolly and idealistic and believe that it ignores market
and political realities. Many worthwhile plans gather dust while decisions
about urban development are made in response to current economic and
political pressures, with only
a
cursory bow towards avoiding the worst excesses
that can result from unbridled greed.
Many administrators who have become impatient about the visions of the
planner can still see the need to maintain some minimum standards and
to
make allowance for efficient provision of public services. They have proposed
URBAN
PLANNlNG
147
that we give less attention to planning and more to urban management.'
Management is primarily concerned with the day-today decisions that need to
be made about location. It sees a need for collective (public) decisions and sees
most
of
those decisions to be concerned with resource allocation. Hence the
tendency of the advocates of urban management to redefine planning as
resource allocation in cities.
There is a sense in which plan implementation
is
primarily management,
and giving greater attention to urban management
is
a desirable shift in
emphasis towards implemebtation. Urban management has, in one respect at
least, a broader sphere of action than planning. Planning authorities have never
been very successful in getting the cooperation of those public authorities
responsible for provision
of
infrastructure services and social services such as
education. But urban management regards land-use and service location as part
of the same problem and all grist to its mill.
In
one sense, the advocates of urban management are more guilty of a lack
of realism than the advocates of traditional planning. Except in small centres
where the local authority is responsible for land-use planning and for the
provision of services, there are no authorities in Australia which could perform
the functions of urban management, and therefore there can be no urban
managers. There have been attempts in some State governments to exercise
urban management but they have made little progress to date. These attempts
are taken up again later in this paper.
As
long as urban management is primarily plan implementation it falls
within the traditional planning framework. But if it became independent of
planning, and pursued its own separate objectives such as efficiency in the
provision of services, outside the land-use planning framework, it would
become a series of distinct policies rather than any part of urban planning. One
of the strengths of urban planning is its holistic approach. It includes economy
in the provision of services as one criterion among many in devising plans for
the future shape of cities and regions. Without such comprehensive plans to
provide criteria for their actions, operational authorities are likely to pursue
partial, different and often conflicting objectives.
One of the advantages of urban management, at least in theory, is that it
can include other policy instruments as well as land-use controls
-
the main
tool available in traditional plan implementation. On the other hand one of the
absurdities of the recent discussions of urban management has been the concept
of negotiated planning as an alternative to land-use controls based on adopted
land-use plans. Negotiated planning means the use of the power to control land-
use in negotiating what development rights individual private land owners
might be granted, as a means of achieving other policy objectives. Presumably
the outcome of the negotiations is always uncertain when they begin
so
that the
result, in terms of land-use depends on the bargaining positions of the
negotiators. While this procedure certainly uses land-use controls to achieve
public objectives, usually by requiring contributions in cash
or
kind towards
'Australian National Commission
for
Unesco,
Urban Manugernenr Processes,
Proceedings
of
a seminar held in Adelaide
22-25
August
1977,
Canberra, AGPS,
1978.
URBAN
PLANNlNG
148
the cost of public facilities, it is not part of planning in the sense of “arranging
beforehand”. Negotiated planning might be loosely described as unplanned
planning,
or
controls without planning: “wait and see what development is
proposed and use the power to control land use to make the best deal you can”.
I
would not want to argue in favour of completely rigid land-use planning,
so
that once a plan is adopted it must
be
adhered to, come hell
or
high water.
But
1
would argue that in the trade-off between predictability and flexibility the
long life and fixed location
of
urban development should push urban planning
further towards predictability than most other kinds of planning. To simplify,
planning without management is fruitless, but management without planning is
pointless. Both statements are over-simplified but they do highlight the fact
that each needs the other.
Policy is a much more general term than either planning
or
management. It
encompasses both the objectives sought and the instruments used to achieve
those objectives. Both planning and urban management are instruments used to
achieve policy objectives. The term “planning objective” is simply an
abbreviation for “policy objective pursued through planning”.
At the level of policy we need to be concerned both with those measures
that are directed at influencing
or
controlling location and with those which,
while mainly concerned with other objectives, still have an effect on location.
We also need to ensure that, as far as possible, different measures do not have
conflicting effects. Those who analyze spatial aspects of society and the
economy, and those who make policy decisions, must concern themselves not
only with possible conflicts between different parts of location policy, but also
with the operations
of
the institutions involved in each and with the
complementary and competitive relationships between them. The remainder
of
this paper deals with aspects of urban (that is location) policies, and
concentrates on policies that have been implemented through planning
measures.
The
Debate about Urban
Policy
The debate about urban policy in general and planning in particular has
suffered from the fact that the proponents are often arguing at different levels.2
Some take as given the very aspects
of
policy which others question. Sometimes
economic, social
or
political arrangements are taken as given because the
author approves of them; on other occasions because he
or
she sees
no
likelihood that they can be changed. Few academic authors tell us the reason,
even on those rare occasions when they spell out what they assume.
I
hope that
this part of the paper will help clarify this discussion by assisting readers to
classify policy discussion into one of several levels. At each level there are two
kinds of discussions. The first is analytical: an attempt to understand why
policies have been adopted and what effect they have had. The second is
These reflections arise in part from comments on my own writing
by
Andrew Parkin, “Cities
Without Politics”,
Politics,
16,
1979. pp.291-4; and Leslie Kilmartin and David Thorns,
Ciries
Unlimited,
Sydney, Allen and Unwin, 1978.
URBAN PLANNING
149
prescriptive: recommendations about policy measures that should be adopted
to
achieve a desired objective.
These different levels form part of a hierarchy, in the order of ideology,
politics, operations and techniques. The more general level
of
debate comes
higher in the hierarchy. It is only
if
some agreement can be reached about the
higher level questions that a useful analysis
or
discussion can be carried on at
the lower level.
To
tackle questions about the operations of planning or other
policy authorities, for example,
it
is necessary to take some ideological position
and to make some assumptions about how political influences work. Those
who believe that they are value-free technicians of urban policy may be
unaware of the ideological
or
political positions they are taking but are none
the less adopting particular positions.
Ideology
Views about urban policy differ most sharply at the ideological level.
For
the radical right there should be no such thing as urban policy. Freedom, they
would argue, cannot be maintained if governments interfere with the rights of
the individuals, especially individual property owners.3 Such libertarians
believe that there should be very little government activity in cities. In
particular, questions about distribution should be settled at the national level
and redistribution should occur solely through cash payments. Governments
should not enter into urban policy. Most,
if
not all services could be provided
by private
firms:
or
by cooperation between small groups of families or
property owners. Few urban scholars in Australia take this extreme view,
though there are elements of it in some
of
John Paterson’s writing.’
I
find the
views of the radical right appealing in their consistency but lacking in
humanity. They seem to take a view of the world which is far too individualistic
to
be useful in urban policy debates.
At the other extreme, the radical left is more numerous and more
articulate. They too are not primarily concerned with urban policy as such. In
their view current urban problems are a symptom of inappropriate relation-
ships between capital and labour in production. Without a radical change in
those relationships there is little that can be achieved to improve cities, and
little point in trying. People like Manuel Castells, David Harvey and Ray Pahl
have, in different ways, helped
us
to understand the implications of Marxist
analysis for urban policy.6 In particular they have shown more clearly that
urban questions are almost always simply the manifestation in cities
of
broader
social questions. They have also highlighted the importance of the distribution
of power in determining the way issues are resolved. Although they aim to be
’D.R. Denman.
The
Place
of
Property,
Geographical Publications Ltd., Berkhampstead,
4D.R. Booth, “An Analysis
of
Private Land Use Controls and Private Cities as Systems to
’For example, John Paterson, David Yencken and Graeme Gunn,
A
Mansion
or
No
House,
bManuel Castells.
The
Urban
Question,
London, Edward Arnold, 1977.
England,
1978.
Produce Public Goods”. Ph.D. Thesis, UCLA (University Microfilms. Ann Arbor), 1970.
Urban Development Institute
of
Australia, (Victoria), Melbourne, 1976.
150
URBAN PLANNING
explanatory their theories are difficult to test. In the end one has either to
accept their view of how society functions or to reject it, largely on faith or
intuition. For myself
I
find some of their insights valuable but the implications
of their analysis of society for urban policy difficult to understand and, as far as
I
understand it, difficult to accept.
Even
if
one accepts their analysis of society there are quite pragmatic
reasons why one need not follow their view on policy. The fundamental
changes in production relationships that they advocate seem most unlikely to
occur in Australia. If that is true, they have little
or
nothing to say that is
helpful. The question about how best to provide for collective consumption, of
course, remains.
Between those two extremes are found the majority of policy analysts,
including myself. There is still plenty of room for ideological disagreement even
among those who claim the middle ground, between those who believe that
solutions to urban problems must be sought mainly through government
actions and those who believe that the main problems arise from inappropriate
actions of governments and the general inefficiencies and insensitivities of
bureaucracies.
There is some hope that empirical research can help to narrow the gap
between these two ideological positions (for example, comparisons can be
made between the experience of different countries). But it is unrealistic to
expect too much. One group has an idealized view of the efficiency and
discipline of the market and can see all the shortcomings of bureaucracies. The
other is impressed with the monopolistic and exploitative aspects of private
industry, the inefficiency of the market, shown for example in property
speculation, and the inequity of the distribution of income and wealth the
market produces. It sees government activities as a far better alternative and
often turns a blind eye to their inefficiencies. One reason why it is difficult to
reconcile these two views about the roles of governments and the market
is
that
the ideal situations about which each group enthuses seldom occur. Even
if
they
do occur in another country it is most likely that the results of adopting their
policies would be different in Australia. For example, Australian business
would probably behave differently from American business even
if
it were given
the same freedom, and Australian authorities would be unlikely to perform in
the same way as Swedish authorities even if they were given the same expanded
powers and responsibilities. Indeed it can
be
argued persuasively, as Hugh
Stretton has,’ that the particular roles played by the public and private sectors
are much less important than how each behaves.
Ideological considerations affect the policies advocated even by those who
accept the present broad distribution of responsibilities between government
and the private sector. For example, one of the underlying problems in urban
policy
is
that the demands of individuals for places to live, and of businesses for
places to operate (and where they provide jobs and services) often change more
rapidly than social and physical infrastructure (much of which is provided by
7Urbun Plunning in
Rich
and
Poor Counrries,
Oxford
University
Press,
1978.
URBAN
PLANNING
151
governments) can be moved,
or
wears out and can
be
replaced. Passive
or
adaptive planning, which has been the main philosophy governing Melbourne's
planning, for example, concentrates mainly
on
attempting to predict future
private demands and then meeting the demands for infrastructure that result.
More active planning puts more emphasis on trying to influence,
or
even direct
the demands of private firms into locations where their demands will contribute
to the efficient use of the available infrastructure. One approach takes the
demands that arise in the market as given, the other tries to influence those
demands. Which emphasis is adopted depends on how much a government
wants to encourage growth in employment and how far it believes it can push
firms around without losing them to another city
or
State.
The distinction between radical and conservative views seems to have fewer
clear implications
for
urban policy than the distinction between those who want
a more individualist and those who want a more collective society. Most people
want to conserve some things and to change others. Physical conservation
-
of
natural
or
man-made features of the environment
-
may be best achieved
through radical changes in social relationships. That was the view of the
Builders Labourers Federation. Those who want to change the social system,
either to a more individualist
or
to a more collective one, may see marginal
or
gradual (rather than revolutionary) changes as the way to move towards their
goal.
For
example, people on the radical right argue for reduced government
controls in particular areas and the radical left for a more equal distribution
of
services in urban areas. Radicals of both kinds want to use policy measures not
only to guide and restrict change, but also to stimulate and lead it.
Some people believe that the main objective
of
urban policies is to achieve
a more equitable distribution of welfare by redistributing income, wealth and
welfare from the rich and advantaged towards the poor and disadvantaged.*
For
others the main objective is to improve the efficiency of resource allocation
in both the short and the long term. Economists have long recognized equality
and efficiency as two major social objectives (a third, stabilization, has only
indirect relevance for urban policy). Neoclassical economics holds that, at least
over significant ranges of the achievable levels of efficiency and equality, more
of one can only be obtained at the cost
of
having less of the other.9 The reason
is that they believe that differences in income are necessary to provide an
incentive for owners of resources, including labour, to use them in the most
productive way. Social Darwinists draw on biological analogies to support this
view.10 That viewpoint is challenged by others whodeny that the expectation of
higher income is necessary as an incentive. One of the few empirical tests of this
proposition is known as the New Jersey Income Maintenance Experiment.'' It
showed that placing a floor on incomes had little effect on work behaviour:
"David Donnison with Paul Sato,
The
Good
City,
London, Heinemann. 1980.
9For example Arthur Okun,
Equolity ond Efficiency: The
Big
Trade-off
Brookings
'"Garrett Hardin,
The Limiis
OJ
Altruism,
Bloornington. Indiana University Press, 1977.
"Harold W. Watts and Albert Rees,
The New Jersey Income-Maintenance Experiment.
Vol.
Institution. Washington.
D.C..
1975.
11
Lobour supplv responses,
New
York, Academic Press, 1977.
152
URBAN PLANNING
people worked almost as much even when their incomes were guaranteed.
Economists have tended to ignore the social and psychological satisfaction
people gain from working and contributing to society. Although empirical
studies, including some experiments,Iz can help to resolve these differences in
belief about the need for financial incentives, such beliefs are firmly based in
differences in views about the nature of society.
Whether or not equity and efficiency are competing objectives, the
question of which should be the primary focus of urban policy remains. Those
who are primarily concerned with efficiency give most of their attention to
issues such as traffic congestion, efficient public transport, efficient provision
of
public services, land speculation and the resource allocation effects of taxes and
charges. Those who are primarily concerned with distributive issues will place
more emphasis on policies such as housing standards and housing costs at the
lower end
of
the market, access to jobs and services, variations in levels
of
taxation, and differences in quality
of
services between locations.
Every policy measure both influences the efficiency of the allocation of
resources and affects different groups
of
people in different ways, though often
one of these effects is much more important. The relative importance to
a
policy analyst of the efficiency and equity objectives will affect not only the
choice of policy issues that are analyzed but also the policy measures that are
considered and the relative weight that is given to their allocative and
distributive effects in evaluating them.
An example may help to illustrate the conflict. It is easy to demonstrate
that the present level of congestion on many city roads is inefficient and that
some road users would be prepared to pay significantly more than their current
costs of road-use in the form of a road user charge, while others would not. An
optimal user charge would allow those who value road-use most to use them
under less congested conditions since others would be priced
off
them.
However such a charge would change road-use from being essentially a free
service to being priced. It would allow those who can afford to pay more to use
them and make things more difficult for those who cannot. The final effect on
different groups depends on what is done with the revenue, but there is a strong
likelihood that the poor would be worse off and the rich better off. Therefore
our attitude to charging for the use of congested roads depends, in part, on the
relative importance we place on efficiency and equity objectives.
Politics
Some people believe that governments make most of their decisions on the
basis of a rational analysis of ways
of
achieving agreed objectives and others
believe that policy decisions are mainly the outcome of a struggle between
different groups for power and influence. The differences between these views are
seldom as clear as the ideological differences discussed above. Those who
believe in the power of rational policy analysis generally accept that different
IWernon
L.
Smith, "Experiments with a Decentralised Mechanism for Public
Goods
Decisions",
American Economic Review,
70,
September
1980,
pp.584-99.
URBAN PLANNING
153
groups have different objectives and that any policy measure has different
effects on different groups. The fact that they give little attention to the process
of policy formation presumably reflects a belief that governments are mainly
swayed by rational analysis
-
which examines ways of achieving gains for
particular groups
-
or
at least that their behaviour can be analyzed usefully in
this way. This does not deny the importance and complexity of the political
processes by which such group interests get translated into policy actions, but it
does assume rationality in the long term.
The alternative view is that some groups have much greater power and
influence in the political system than others, and that governments often act to
preserve the power of such groups as well as to pursue specific policy objectives.
The dominant group may be a racial group, capitalists, the ruling class,
or
even
a regional group. Detailed analysis of political processes can help
us
to find out
which groups have been successful in influencing policy, but it is much more
difficult to test very general hypotheses about the influence of capitalists.
People who hold this view are naturally pessimistic about achieving
redistribution through government actions. If governments are under the
thumbs of the rich or the capitalists they are unlikely to carry out more than a
token amount of redistribution.
On a more prosaic level the study of the politics of urban policies can show
how those policies influence the distribution of income, wealth and access to
services between income, racial and ethnic groups and even age groups. Some
policy decisions depend on which department
or
authority is more powerful.
Other policies have been adopted because they benefit a particular minister’s
electorate. This has been particularly important in location policy since some
services
or
facilities can readily be located in marginal electorates.
There is another important respect in which policy analysts differ in their
approach to politics. It has become fashionable to stress that planning is a very
political activity since planning actions and decisions always favour some
groups at the expense of others. Those who regard planning as primarily a
redistributive process see it as a way
in
which the relatively poor can use their
political strength to lessen the economic disadvantages they suffer relative to
the wealthy. Planning and other aspects of urban policy are among the items on
the agenda in the struggle for shares of the product of society.
Some others, who also regard redistribution as an important part of
planning, take a quite different approach. They see it more as a professional
and less as a political activity. To them, the planner shares with the social
worker and the housing manager a responsibility for assisting the weak and
powerless. Their approach also is altruistic but, since they rarely ask the poor
directly what they want, it tends also to be paternalistic. This approach seems
especially suitable in relation to the very poor who are unlikely to
be
either
numerous enough
or
skilled enough to exert much political muscle.
This somewhat old-fashioned approach has real limits since
it
does nothing
to redistribute power to poor people
so
that they can determine their own
future. Doing good by stealth can only last as long as the electorate can be
misled, and appealing to the altruism of the powerful depends on their
benevolence. At best it can
be
professional, compassionate and effective; at
worst insensitive and degrading like some
of
the worst public housing. The
154
URBAN PLANNING
election of a radical right government,
or
cutting of funds in periods of
economic stringency can spell the end of such policies.
Mobilizing the poor politically involves alerting everyone, including the
rich, to the distributional results of planning. Where the majority of voters have
middle or higher incomes, as they do in Australia, forcing planning even further
into the political arena may reduce rather than improve the ability of planning
authorities to use planning to improve the conditions of the poor. Those on
middle incomes may combine with the rich to force planning measures that
disadvantage the poor. It is difficult to assess the likely results. How far have
the failures of planning resulted from an incorrect analysis of the likely results
of policy measures and how far from the actions of powerful groups whose
well-being and wealth they threatened? If the former has been the main reason,
then the professional/ paternalistic approach can be held responsible
for
much
of the failure, but if it was the latter (opposition from the rich and powerful)
this approach may be better than politicization
of
planning issues. But it is only
through the exercise of political power that any permanent redistribution can
occur, and even minority groups,
if
they become active, can exercise a good
deal of power.
Operat
ion
If agreement can be reached about the ideological and political
assumptions it is useful to begin to discuss operational questions about how to
implement urban policies and what kinds of institutional arrangements are
most appropriate for their formulation and implementation. There are a large
number of questions here.
I
want to focus on one particular area that
I
have
already introduced in discussing urban management: the distinction between
operational and statutory planning.
The only way in which traditional land-use planning can be implemented
is
by formulating and getting community and then government acceptance of
statutory plans, which then provide the main criterion for the exercise of land-
use controls. If a change in land-use is consistent with the land-use plan it is
permitted; otherwise it is not allowed. The procedure seems simple. The
preparation of plans is, in theory at least, open and participatory since the plan
is exhibited, can be objected to and is subject to public hearings. It is
democratic in that the whole process is under the control of local governments
or
State government authorities. The rights of individual land owners are
protected through rights
of appeal at both the plan approval and the
development application stages.
Statutory planning should not be idealized. Neither the preparation
of
draft schemes nor the administration of development controls allows
for
either
openness
or
participation:
on
the contrary these procedures are secretive and
open to manipulation by those with “inside knowledge”. The appeals system
tends to become legalistic, costly and timeconsuming and the planning issues
are often lost to sight.
Statutory planning has encountered endless difficulties in attempting to
control land-use and implement land-use plans. Some of the reasons
for
its
difficulties are easy
to
identify. Statutory planning decisions frequently oppose
URBAN PLANNING
155
market forces. They often reduce the profits
of
individual land owners and
developers compared with what they could make if the controls were relaxed.
(It is arguable, of course, that their profits, as a group, would be even lower if
there were no statutory planning, but this does not deter a particular developer,
whose profits depend on a particular zoning decision, from trying to get it.)
There is one particular difficulty that might be overcome by a different,
operational approach to planning. Land-use plans include, at least implicitly,
plans for future development of a wide range of urban services including
transport, education, health services and open spaces. Since the appropriate
location for these and other services depends on both the present and future
location of housing, commercial and industrial areas, joint planning is
obviously sensible. Unfortunately different services are provided by different
departments
or
authorities that are responsible to ministers who are equal in
rank to the minister for planning and more senior in the government hierarchy
than local councils. Many were well established before land-use planning
became a serious activity of governments. They jealously guard their
autonomy. Unlike private land owners, they are not required to get approval
from the planning authority for their developments.
Operational planning
is
primarily oriented to planning, scheduling and
installation of government services. It has
so
much potential for helping
governments to achieve their location objectives that a number of attempts
have been made to develop it into a coherent operation and to link it to
statutory planning, While statutory planning works through controls that are
essentially indicative and negative, operational planning acts through positive
activities: urban investments of governments. It can include the whole public
sector role in urban investments and servicing: public land development, public
housing, provision of industrial estates and sites for shopping centres.
While such a step may seem rational and efficient it can only be taken if a
high level of coordination can be achieved between the different responsible
governments, authorities and departments. This is a formidable organizational
problem in itself even without the jealousies among, and competition between
authorities. Nevertheless, some progress is being made and there is certainly
now a greater awareness of the problems and the possibilities of operational
planning.
Operational planning is mainly concerned with the implementation of a
particular plan which contains its own ideological assumptions. It is not
surprising that the whole issue seems beside the point to those who are
primarily concerned with the redistribution of power, and seems downright
dangerous to those who do not accept the ideological assumptions on which the
plan is based.
Techniques
It is really only when most of the ideological, political and operational
aspects of urban policy have been agreed that those technical questions that
have preoccupied many academics and consultants should be considered.
Many technical studies claim to be neutral with respect
to
ideological, political
and operational issues. But in reality the “technical” solutions they have
156
URBAN
PLANNING
proposed have ideological, political and operational implications that are
hidden from view rather than exposed and defended. Most of the technical
aspects of policy analysis revolve around two questions: first, what are the
likely changes in the city in the future, especially as it grows; and secondly, how
would it respond to various external changes and specific policy measures?
Urban models are mostly designed to answer those questions.
A
few, especially
in the transport field, are more ambitious and aim to sort out which policy
measures will give the best results, judged by some simple criteria. These in
particular have implications for each of the higher levels.
It is fairly fashionable now to say that most of these models, and especially
those that aimed to model the whole city, have borne very little fruit. This
includes the transportation models which cost millions of dollars to calibrate
and had some general influence on the spending of many more millions of
dollars. The reasons for their failures are fairly obvious. They are all based on
a
view of a city as a system. That in itself simply says that its various aspects are
highly interdependent. But the models, like all models, are necessarily based on
a grossly simplified abstraction of the urban system. Urban model-building
requires more knowledge than we have of which are the important relation-
ships that need to be incorporated in the model.
I
would argue that general
models of cities are impossible. There are too many important relationships to
be incorporated into a manageable m0del.1~ They have, of course, taught
us
something about the complexity of cities and some simpler, partial models have
proved more useful.
The comprehensive models were built on very shaky foundations in
another respect as well. There has not been enough research for
us
to specify
accurately all the relationships that form the building blocks for the models; for
example, we do not understand adequately the factors that influence where
people choose to live and where they choose to work. In the interests of
technical virtuosity the “experts” built models with strong internal logic that
were based on an inadequate understanding of the real world they were trying
to explore. The models reflected their authors’ greater interest in techniques
(for example, the intellectual fascination with entropy maximization) than in
real policy questions.
Disillusionment with the results
of
large model building is not limited
to
studies of location. In economics many of the econometric models that filled
the pages of the best journals are seen now to have produced disappointing
results.15
Even
if
they had worked in terms of their own objectives they would have
contributed little to policy. First, they have seldom regarded the distributional
results of policy measures as important enough to predict, though this is less
true of some recently developed simulation models of the housing market.
Secondly, they could at most help with plan-making; they have little to
contribute to the perhaps more important field of plan implementation, though
‘]Max Neutze,
Austrulian
Urban
Policy,
Sydney, Allen and Unwin,
1978.
chapter
10.
I4Hugh Stretton,
op.
cit.
IsRichard Lipsey, “World Inflation”,
Economic
Record,
55.
1979, pp.283-96.
