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- Info
Planning in the USA: Policies, issues and processes
| Author: |
Cullingworth, Barry |
| Date: |
1997 |
| Periodical: |
New York, NY: Routledge |
| Abstract: |
This book has two objectives. First, it is intended to give an outline of policies relating to land use, urban planning and environmental protection. Second, it aims to provide an introduction to the policy-making process in these fields. The central concern is with the way in. which policy issues are identified, defined, and approached. The coverage of the book is wide: it includes the nature and limitations of planning and governance, land use regulation, the quality of the environment, growth management, transportation, housing, and community development, as well as an extensive discussion of current environmental issues. The focus is on the problems facing policy-makers in their search for solutions (though the term 'resolutions' is preferred). It also discusses the difficulties of separating facts and values. This is particularly clear with environmental issues where even 'experts' are protesting that their expertise is limited, and that questions of 'risk' have no scientific answers. It is now widely accepted among scientists that determining acceptable degrees of risk is a matter for public policy, not for science. Such professional modesty is increasingly apparent in the professions dealing with environmental hazards, but it is also growing in the professions concerned with urban and land use planning issues. It is against this background, together with an associated mistrust of government, that public involvement in the planning process takes on a new meaning. This book has its origin in my earlier The Political Culture of Planning: American Land Use Planning in Comparative Perspective (Routledge 1993). That book was more narrowly concerned with land use planning and the ways in which its character in the USA differs from that in other countries. This comparative analysis has been replaced in the present volume by a more extensive treatment of the generic problems of planning and by a major section on environmental policy. However, much of the material on various aspect, of US land use planning has been reproduced, updated where appropriate. |
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