Updating his previous books on planning and growth management, John DeGrove examines the evolution of smart growth systems in nine key states across the country: Oregon, Florida, New Jersey, Maine, Rhode Island, Vermont, Georgia, Maryland, and Washington. The chapters identify the major issues that precipitated the adoption of new systems; pinpoint the key stakeholders in new legislation; describe the features of various growth management systems; outline the implementation records; and examine the political prospects of future systems. DeGrove traces the evolution of legislation and planning efforts to contain sprawl patterns of development so that sustainable natural and urban systems can be established and maintained over time.

Planning is not a technical and value free activity. Planning is an overt political system that creates both winners and losers. The Planning Polity is a book that considers the politics of development and decision-making, and political conflicts between agencies and institutions within British town and country planning. The focus of assessment is how British planning has been formulated since the early 1990s, and provides an in-depth and revealing assessment of both the Major and Blair governments' terms of office. The book will prove to be an invaluable guide to the British planning system today and the political demands on it. Students and activists within urban and regional studies, planning, political science and government, environmental studies, urban and rural geography, development, surveying and planning, will all find the book to be an essential companion to their work.

In this innovative book, ten executive politicians with backgrounds in planning from around the world dissect their own political careers. Reflecting on the often structural impact of their work in political decision-making, they also consider the translation of their experiences back into academic life or professional practice.

A text which focuses on the relationship of local politicians and professional planners in the planning process, adopting a conceptual framework within which a series of case studies is analysed. It shows that where power is limited or diffuse, or liable to change, policy making can be uncertain or inconsistent. The book covers a wide range of planning policy, including transportation and land development and because the author has had both academic and political experience this gives his work a unique emphasis.

Planning is a battleground of ideas and interests, perhaps more visibly and continuously than ever before in the UK. These battles play out nationally and at every level, from cities to the smallest neighbourhoods. Marshall goes to the root of current planning models and exposes who is acting for what purposes across these battlegrounds. He examines the ideological structuring of planning and the interplay of political forces which act out conflicting interest positions. This book discusses how structures of planning can be improved and explores how we can generate more effective political engagements in the future.

“Sprawl” is one of the ugliest words in the American political lexicon. Virtually no one wants America’s rural landscapes, farmland, and natural areas to be lost to bland, placeless malls, freeways, and subdivisions. Yet few of America’s fast-growing rural areas have effective rules to limit or contain sprawl. Oregon is one of the nation’s most celebrated exceptions. In the early 1970s Oregon established the nation’s first and only comprehensive statewide system of land-use planning and largely succeeded in confining residential and commercial growth to urban areas while preserving the state’s rural farmland, forests, and natural areas. Despite repeated political attacks, the state’s planning system remained essentially politically unscathed for three decades. In the early- and mid-2000s, however, the Oregon public appeared disenchanted, voting repeatedly in favor of statewide ballot initiatives that undermined the ability of the state to regulate growth. One of America’s most celebrated “success stories” in the war against sprawl appeared to crumble, inspiring property rights activists in numerous other western states to launch copycat ballot initiatives against land-use regulation. This is the first book to tell the story of Oregon’s unique land-use planning system from its rise in the early 1970s to its near-death experience in the first decade of the 2000s. Using participant observation and extensive original interviews with key figures on both sides of the state’s land use wars past and present, this book examines the question of how and why a planning system that was once the nation’s most visible and successful example of a comprehensive regulatory approach to preventing runaway sprawl nearly collapsed. Planning Paradise is tough love for Oregon planning. While admiring much of what the state’s planning system has accomplished, Walker and Hurley believe that scholars, professionals, activists, and citizens engaged in the battle against sprawl would be well advised to think long and deeply about the lessons that the recent struggles of one of America’s most celebrated planning systems may hold for the future of land-use planning in Oregon and beyond.

Mastering the Politics of Planning shows how planners and policy analysts can actively manage the implementation of their plans--and so ensure their success. It reveals how such political skills as networking, conflict resolution, and coalition building are as important as technical expertise in determining whether a plan will succeed or fail--and reveals ways planners can develop these skills.

American cities are increasingly turning to revitalization strategies that embrace the ideas of new urbanism and the so-called creative class in an attempt to boost economic growth and prosperity to downtown areas. These efforts stir controversy over residential and commercial gentrification of working class, ethnic areas. Spanning forty years, Latino City provides an in-depth case study of the new urbanism, creative class, and transit-oriented models of planning and their implementation in Santa Ana, California, one of the United States’ most Mexican communities. It provides an intimate analysis of how revitalization plans re-imagine and alienate a place, and how community-based participation approaches address the needs and aspirations of lower-income Latino urban areas undergoing revitalization. The book provides a critical introduction to the main theoretical debates and key thinkers related to the new urbanism, transit-oriented, and creative class models of urban revitalization. It is the first book to examine contemporary models of choice for revitalization of US cities from the point of view of a Latina/o-majority central city, and thus initiates new lines of analysis and critique of models for Latino inner city neighborhood and downtown revitalization in the current period of socio-economic and cultural change. Latino City will appeal to students and scholars in urban planning, urban studies, urban history, urban policy, neighborhood and community development, central city development, urban politics, urban sociology, geography, and ethnic/Latino Studies, as well as practitioners, community organizations, and grassroots leaders immersed in these fields.

Higher education leaders and their teams should always seek to add value to their decision-making processes. Planning, Policy, and Politics in Higher Education: Tools to Help Leaders Make Strategic Choices provides a strategic decision-making model and specific tools to help maximize the opportunities for making successful choices. The model was introduced by Dr. Anderes in the book Navigating Through Turbulent Times: Applying a System and University Strategic Decision Making Model. It is built on the use of new tools, including a planning and assessment framework, future scans, an issue analysis inventory, and decision matrix. The new tools in combination with a strong strategic planning process, transparency for all constituencies, and high quality information focused on the future and globally gives leaders the greatest opportunity to make thoughtful choices aligned with their primary goals. The strategic decision-making model consists of six components: 1) Creating an organizational mentality committed to strategic thinking, 2) maximizing the amount of high quality historical data and information for analyses to inform decision makers, 3) routinizing the use of globalized scans of the future integrated with other decision-making information, 4) supporting ongoing strategic planning processes, 5) ensuring transparency to incorporate all key constituencies in planning, and 6) implementing a planning and assessment framework that allows leaders to weigh and filter information into thoughtfully constructed strategic alternatives and action plans. The success of the model is based on the integration of all components, with strategic thinking permeating all aspects of decision making. Board, system, and university leaders and their teams will benefit from the use of the strategic decision-making model in crafting well-informed choices. They will have greater confidence in supporting those choices to the myriad internal and external constituencies they serve. The planning outcomes will be derived from a set of new and expanded resources that provide greater organizational certainty in the final choices. The certainty in the choices will be based on the exhaustive use of the tools in translating strategies into key outcomes and the increased capacity to measure success in meeting board and institutional goals.

Politics and Conflict in Governance and Planning offers a critical evaluation of manifold ways in which the political dimension is reflected in contemporary planning and governance. While the theoretical debates on post-politics and the wider frame of post-foundational political theory provide substantive explanations for the crisis in planning and governance, still there is a need for a better understanding of how the political is manifested in the planning contents, shaped by institutional arrangements and played out in the planning processes. This book undertakes a reassessment of the changing role of the political in contemporary planning and governance. Employing a wide range of empirical research conducted in several regions of the world, it draws a more complex and heterogeneous picture of the context-specific depoliticisation and repoliticisation processes taking place in local and regional planning and governance. It shows not only the domination of market forces and the consequent suppression of the political but also how political conflicts and struggles are defined, tackled and transformed in view of the multifaceted rules and constraints recently imposed to local and regional planning. Switching the focus to how strategies and forms of depoliticised governance can be repoliticised through renewed planning mechanisms and socio-political mobilisation, Politics and Conflict in Governance and Planning is a critical and much needed contribution to the planning literature and its incorporation of the post-politics and post-democracy debate.