Systems Analysis In Urban Policy Making And Planning

In September 1980, the Special Programme Panel on Systems Sciences of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) sponsored an Advanced Research Institute (ARI) on "Systems Analysis in Urban Policy-Making and Planning" which was held at New College, Univer sity of Oxford, from 21st to 27th September. This week-long meeting brought together 35 invited delegates from most countries of the NATO Alliance to discuss the impact which syst~ms analysis has had and is likely to have on urban affairs. The manuscript was submitted to the publisher in June of 1982. Although the goal of the ARI was to assess the impact of urban systems analysis as seen through the eyes of those closely involved in such work, the meeting also addressed opportunities for future research and development, and therefore in this book we have attempted to synthesize discussions at the meeting with this in mind. But before we describe the structure of this book, it is worth recounting in a little more detail the intentions and organi zation of the meeting, for this has had an important effect on the type of papers produced here, the way they have been written, and the issues they address.

A Systems View of Planning: Towards a Theory of the Urban and Regional Planning Process, Second Edition covers theories of the process of town and regional planning. The book discusses physical change and human ecology; the theory of planning; the variety and entropy of systems; and planning as a conceptual system. The text also describes space and spatial planning; goal formulation in planning; exploratory and normative techniques and intuitive methods in projecting the system; and operational models and their underlying theories. Using linear programming and entropy methods; major aspects of evaluation, program budgeting, cost benefit analysis, and matrix methods; and the spatial method for regional planning are also covered. The book tackles the mixed-programming strategy as well. Engineers, architects, farmers, and foresters will find the book invaluable.

"The systematic presentation of this book follows in a formal way a well established paradigm of the planning process. It deals with the setting of goals, the formulation of alternatives, the prediction of outcomes, and the evaluation of the alternatives in relation to the goals and the outcomes." From foreward.

Widely accepted principles and assumptions of American planning theory come under heavy fire in this refreshing and provocative book. The author's main contention is that, contrary to current supposition, development planning is, in practice, a highly political activity. Professor Rondinelli maintains that it is because the dynamics of the policy-making process are not properly understood that current planning prescriptions are inadequate when they are applied within organizationally complex urban regions. To illustrate his argument, he offers a case history of federally aided redevelopment programs for an urban region in northeastern Pennsylvania that experienced three decades of economic decline. He further believes that existing programs of planning education do not provide the skills, knowledge, and experience necessary for effective management of urban change. Curricula must be reoriented, he says, if planners are to have an impact on future urban and regional development. Finally, he sets forth positive alternatives to current planning processes, stressing the need for planning theory and practice that recognize and cope with the characteristics of the complex policy-making system.