Edgy Planning Issues

By Reid Ewing

The dictionary defines edgy in two ways: (1) tense, nervous, or irritable and (2) at the forefront of a trend, new and unusual in a way that is likely to make some people uncomfortable. Of course, this column uses the term in the second way. Recent issues of the Journal of the American Planning Association contained "edgy" articles that raise the question of how planners can be effective in the face of social change.

I asked a couple of graduate students at the University of Utah to categorize articles published in two leading planning journals, JAPA and the Journal of Planning Education and Research, as well as the tracks of sessions at recent planning conferences. Looking at materials from 2001 to 2014, they concluded that edgy isn't exactly a term that applies to planning research (see table).

But there are signs of change. In 2013 in JAPA, Karen Trapenberg Frick reviewed the challenges posed by Tea Party and property rights activists to regional planning efforts in two case studies: the Plan Bay Area in San Francisco and a one percent sales tax increase for transportation projects in the Atlanta region. (The article was a JAPA Article of the Year, one of two that year.)

Opposition tends to occur when planning is thought to restrict individual rights (for example, threatening property value or development options) and when local government autonomy is threatened by regional planning efforts. Trapenberg Frick was interested in the arguments made by Tea Party and property rights activists, the tactics they used, and ultimately how planners changed their plans and processes.

After collecting information through social media, websites, blogs, field research, public meetings, and in-depth interviews, Trapenberg Frick found that both planners and the opposition groups were quick to dismiss each other's claims. Thus, she offered three recommendations for planners:

• address plan impacts on fiscal issues, property rights, and property values, as these are often at the root of concern for activists in opposition
• be more transparent, particularly in how public involvement helps to shape the plan in question
• conduct more research on the planning process at multiple levels and different geographies, and pay attention to how social media affects the process.

Another edgy topic came from Michael Smart and Nicholas Klein, also writing in JAPA in 2013. They investigated social connections within gay and lesbian neighborhoods (which they defined as neighborhoods with a large share of households with same-sex partners or heads of household) and how those can influence travel. They hypothesized that partnered gay and lesbian residents of gay and lesbian neighborhoods have shorter nonwork trip distances than their straight neighbors or than gays and lesbians living outside of gay and lesbian neighborhoods.

The researchers' models bore out the hypothesis for gays, and suggest that straights living in the same neighborhoods also make shorter trips (though not as short as gays). Gays tend to cluster around recreational sites, social spaces, shops, bars, restaurants, and jobs that they are drawn to. According to the authors, "Planners have a role to play in supporting gay and lesbian neighborhoods, in part because they are the kind of communities we often seek to create with smart growth and other policies."

Another new concern for planners is the medical marijuana industry, which has been legalized in 23 states and Washington, D.C. (Recreational marijuana use is legal in four states: Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington, plus in D.C.). As a result, planners are grappling with land-use issues related to medical marijuana dispensaries. (For more, see "Pot Report" in the July issue of Planning.)

In JAPA in 2014, Jeremy Nemeth and Eric Ross investigated how local jurisdictions regulate MMDs and whether regulation results in the equitable distribution of these facilities. A 2010 Pew Research poll showed that although 73 percent of adults are in favor of medical marijuana legalization, 44 percent say "not in my backyard." Dispensaries are thus regulated in a manner similar to liquor stores and other nuisance land uses, which means that they are disproportionately located in areas with large low-income or minority populations.

The recommendations that follow from this study, one of the first to investigate the equity implications of MMD regulations, are to consider whether dispensaries should be treated and zoned as locally unwanted land uses — LULUs, in planning parlance. The study also urged planners to realize that zoning, more so than proximity buffers, contributes to the inequitable distribution of MMDs.

All three studies address potential challenges and provide helpful insights to placemaking and regional planning. It remains to be seen how planners will adjust their planning processes, including public engagement, to accommodate the evolving planning field.

Typical Topics

Over the past dozen or so years, the topics covered in the journals were standard planning fare, with housing and community development slightly leading, followed by the planning process and the law. More recently, JAPA and JPER have been a bit edgier — and that's a good thing.

Reid Ewing is a professor of city and metropolitan planning at the University of Utah, an associate editor of the Journal of the American Planning Association, and an editorial board member of the Journal of Planning Education and Research. More than 40 past columns are available at www.plan.utah.edu/?page_id=509.