General Evaluation of planning
Planning Principles
According to Harvard University Professor Daniel Gilbert (2006), the human species greatest and most unique ability is to imagine and anticipate objects and episodes that do not currently exist, that is, to plan for the future.
Planning is a noble but underappreciated profession. Planners help communities create their preferred future – good planning makes progress toward paradise while bad planning leaves a legacy of problems and disputes. Planners perform civilization’s heavy lifting by anticipating and resolving community conflicts. Good planning requires special skills and perspectives:
• Most people prefer to ignore problems until they become unavoidable. Planners are professional worriers who seek out potential problems so they can be mitigated.
• Most people look at a problem from a single perspective. Planners are responsible for considering multiple perspectives; they ask “what is best for everybody overall?”
• Most people prefer simple problems and solutions. Planners learn to appreciate complexity, and search for deeper meanings and underlying causes. Planners learn to work with uncertainty and ambiguity.
• Most people consider compromise a sign of weakness and failure. Planners are passionate
about compromise because it resolves conflicts and often leads to better solutions.
• Most people prefer to consider one issue at a time. Planners apply integrated analysis, so
individual, short-term decisions are consistent with multiple, long-term goals.
That is our individual and collective strength. Planners are the coaches. Traditional communities relied on shaman and priests to help maintain balance between the human and natural worlds. In modern communities these responsibilities are borne by planners. Yet, planners often receive little respect. Our successes are taken for granted, and we are often blamed for failures beyond our control. As coordinators of public decision-making planners are lightening rods to criticism. Our role as unbiased facilitators is often misinterpreted as heartless bureaucrats. Stakeholders frequently hold planners personally responsible when dissatisfied with outcomes. Planners need diplomatic skills and a thick skin: if we do our job well we are criticized approximately equally by all sides. A family physician who emphasizes preventive health strategies (reducing tobacco consumption, eating balanced diets, regular exercise, etc.) often provides far greater total benefits with far less total costs than a surgeon who intervenes during a critical illness. Yet the family doctor is considered an annoying nag while the surgeon is considered a hero. Similarly, good planning tends to be undervalued because it prevents problems, so the people who benefit are unaware of their gains. So go forth and toil noble planners! Take heart that your efforts, although underappreciated, are essential to your community’s wellbeing and creation of earthly paradise.
Planning refers to the process of deciding what to do and how to do it. Planning occurs at
many levels, from day-to-day decisions made by individuals and families, to complex decisions made by businesses and governments..
Methodological process of planning
Good planning requires a methodical process that clearly defines the steps that lead to optimal solutions. This process should reflect the following principles:
• Comprehensive – all significant options and impacts are considered.
• Efficient – the process should not waste time or money.
• Inclusive – people affected by the plan have opportunities to be involved.
• Informative – results are understood by stakeholders (people affected by a decision).
• Integrated – individual, short-term decisions should support strategic, long-term goals.
• Logical – each step leads to the next.
• Transparent – everybody involved understands how the process operates.
A principle of good planning is that individual, short-term decisions should support strategic, long-term goals. This requires comprehensive evaluation and negotiation to help people accept solutions that may seem difficult and costly in the short-term. Good planning is insightful, comprehensive and strategic. Planners should strive to truly understand problems, not just a single perspective or manifestation. Effective planning requires correctly defining problems and asking critical questions. A planning process should not be limited to the first solution proposed or the concerns of people who attend meetings. For example, downtown merchants might complain of inadequate customer parking near their stores. This problem can be defined in various ways – inadequate parking supply, too many vehicles, or inefficient management of available spaces – each implying different solutions. Here are questions to ask to help understand this problem:
• How much parking exists, including spaces currently unavailable to customers?
• Who currently uses the most convenient spaces?
• Who encounters this problem, when and where?
• How is parking currently managed (including regulations and prices)?
• What is the cost of increasing parking supply?
• What management strategies could help address this problem?
• Who bears the costs and benefits from potential solutions?
• How well do various solutions integrate with strategic planning objectives?
Planners must manage information flows, including gathering, organizing and distribution (Litman, 2006). Planners should anticipate questions and provide accurate and understandable information, using visual information (maps, graphs, tables, etc.) and appropriate examples. Although a planning process is ideally linear;
1) Data collection
2) Analysis
3) Draft plan
4) Approval
5) Final plan)
Utt (2005), argues that planners “impose their aesthetic sensibilities on the rest of us, the philistine masses. Instead of letting the planners have their way, communities should work to restore and strengthen individual property rights.”. For example, a planner must be able to describe a general concept such as equity or safety, and apply these concepts when evaluating a specific policy or plan.
Economic Social Environmental
Affordability
Resource efficiency
Cost internalization
Productivity
Tax burden
Equity
Human health
Education
Community
Quality of life
Public Participation
Pollution prevention
Climate protection
Biodiversity
Precautionary action
Habitat preservation
Aesthetics
This table lists various sustainability issues.
Planning Concepts
This section describes basic planning concepts, terms and techniques.Planning Framework
A planning framework defines the basic planning process structure. This typically includes the following components.
• Principles – A basic rule or concept used for decision-making.
• Vision – A general description of the desired result of the planning process.
• Problem – An undesirable condition to be mitigated (solved, reduced or compensated).
• Goals – A general desirable condition to be achieved.
• Objectives – Specific ways to achieve goals.
• Scope – The range (area, people, time, activities, etc.) to be included in a process.
• Options – Possible solutions to a problem or ways to achieve an objective.
• Evaluation methodology – The process of valuing and comparing options, such as cost
effectiveness, benefit/cost, or lifecycle cost analysis.
• Evaluation criteria – The impacts (costs and benefits) considered in an analysis.
• Policies – A general course of action.
• Plans – A scheme or set of actions. This may be a strategic (general and broad) or an
action (specific and narrow) plan.
• Programs – A specific set of objectives, responsibilities and tasks within an organization.
• Tasks or Actions – A specific thing to be accomplished.
• Targets – Something specific to be achieved.
• Performance indicators – Practical ways to measure progress toward objectives.
Evaluation refers to the process of determining the impacts of an object, activity, policy or program, and its ultimate value. Economic impact refers to benefits and costs, which also be defined in terms of problems or their opposite, objectives (for example, if Congestion is considered a problem then congestion reduction is an objective). The terms costs and benefits are more quantitative, while problems and objectives are more qualitative, as illustrated below.
Diagram of planning concept
Note: There may be several steps between a planning decision, its land use and travel behavior impacts, and its ultimate economic, social and environmental impacts.
Planning Scale
Functional/Natural Political
Site
Street
Neighborhood
Ecosystem/watershed
Regional
Global
Special service district
Municipality/regional government
State/provincial
federal
Reference
1. Geo-computation and Urban Planning
By
Beniamino Murgante, Giuseppe Borruso, and Alessandra Lapucci (Eds.) (DIU Library)
2. Sustainable Urban Planning
by
Robert Riddell ( DIU Library)
3. Town Planning
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