The effects of place meanings and social capital on desired forest management outcomes: A stated preference experiment

Planners and managers responsible for public-trust resources are often faced with making difficult value-laden decisions requiring trade offs between alternative, and often competing, outcomes. To make more informed decisions within volatile socio-political climates, resource managers and planners need an understanding of the benefits local community members would like the resource to produce, and an understanding of the social and psychological factors that influence those preferences. In this research, we focused on two increasingly important factors – social capital and place-based social–psychological attachments – that influence public preferences for management outcomes. We conducted a stated preference field experiment on residents living in three forest related communities within Southern Appalachia in the Southeastern United States. The experiment elucidated responses to hypothetical management plans designed to produce distinctly different outcomes. The results reveal ecologically focused management plans were the most preferred, much more so than plans designed to produce aesthetic, recreational, or economic outcomes. The data also reveal both individuals’ stocks of social capital as well as their place-based social–psychological attachments influence evaluation of competing management outcomes. Our methodological approach and empirical findings advance both the analytical approaches used to study multiple use public resources and existing knowledge regarding how social and psychological factors influence individuals’ decision-making processes.     

Integration for sustainable catchment management

Sustainable catchment management requires increased levels of integration between groups of natural and social scientists, land and water users, land and water managers, planners and policy makers across spatial scales. Multiple policy drivers, covering urban and rural communities and their relationships with land and water use, have resulted in the need for an integrated decision making framework that operates from the strategic national scale to the local catchment scale. Large gaps in integration between policies are resulting in uncertain outcomes of conflicting and competing policy measures. The need for further integration is illustrated by little or no reductions in nitrate and phosphate levels in surface and ground waters in England and Wales. There is a requirement for natural scientists to consider the socio-economic setting and implications of their research. Moreover, catchment system level science requires natural and social scientists to work more closely, to provide robust analysis of the state of the environment that fully considers the bio-physical, social, political and economic settings. The combined use of spatial technologies, scenarios, indicators and multicriteria analysis are increasingly being used to enable improved integration for sustainable catchment management.     

The “deliberative bureaucrat”: deliberative democracy and institutional trust in the jurisdiction of the Finnish planner

This article seeks to elaborate on Forester’s notion of the planner as a “deliberative practitioner”, aiming to add sensitivity to the institutional conditions of planning, focusing especially on Finland. In terms of trust, the concept of deliberative practitioner mostly focuses on interpersonal trust as a planner’s resource in mediating particular interests. Thereby, when applied to the Finnish context, institutional trust may be undermined as a key resource for the Finnish planner’s jurisdiction, justifying his/her proactive role and authority in bringing broader concerns to the planning agenda. This undermining prevents the acknowledgement of important institutional resources that the Finnish planner has in coping with the tensions between communicative ideals and neoliberal realities. A more context-sensitive and institutionally responsive theory of communicative planning is needed to help the planning professionals and other stakeholders conceive the deliberative ideals as supportive for the planners’ institutionally strong agency. Hence, the notion of the “deliberative bureaucrat”. The article seeks to develop an outline for such a theory by drawing upon studies of legal culture, the sociology of professions, deliberative democracy theory and the concept of trust.     

Preparing to Plan: Collaborative Planning in Monteverde,Costa Rica

Broad community-scale, collaborative planning processes can help stakeholders develop trust. However, planners should also consider ways to develop trust before embarking on larger community processes. When relationships are fostered between community organizations through smaller planning exercises, those relationships can lead to unexpected and innovative outcomes. Such partnerships lead to independent projects as well as to more effective participation in formalized, broad-based planning. The central components of small working sessions and of their process include allowing relationships to develop over time, creating alternative narratives in the context of community conflict, and validating local knowledge in formal planning discourse. What our experience tells us is that although trust can be built in large, formalized processes, when community members learn to work together beforehand, that earlier groundwork facilitates more effective participation in later projects. Planning as discussed here is iterative and supported by local NGOs in Monteverde, Costa Rica.     

Community Planning for Small-Quantity Hazardous Waste Generators

Only recently has the small-quantity generator of hazardous waste come under federal or state regulation. The wastes produced by these generators, however, pose serious threats to health and environmental resources in almost every community. Local planners should and can design preventive strategies to deal with management of these wastes. Such strategies should include problem assessment, education programs, technical assistance to generators, and revision of local land use policy to prohibit improper disposal practices. This article presents new information useful to planners in assessing the problem in their communities, and it suggests elements of a planning approach to control the small-quantity hazardous waste stream.     

The Crisis of Trust and Planning

Trust, it has been argued, has been declining in government, institutions and professions. For some, this has become significant enough to diagnose a “crisis of trust”. Planning systems and planners have not been immune from this growing sense of mistrust which not only has implications for planners as professionals, but also for planning as an activity. This article explores the consequences of the “crisis of trust” for planning and planners. In doing so, it sets out to understand why this crisis has arisen, and identifies four main theses (the rise of the risk society, the rise of the pluralistic society, the rise of the rights-based society and the rise of advanced liberalism). Each thesis is discussed in relation to general changes in society and the implications for planning and planners. It is concluded that whilst narrow views of trust may help us focus on individual and community relationships, a wider notion of trust may be valuable for its focus on values and common goals. Furthermore, problems of the rise of auditing and systems of control especially within the context of advanced liberalism and the rise of the pluralistic society are identified as having particular purchase on both the decline of trust in planning and how we might seek to restore trust.     

保障房社区的邻里关系:影响因素与对策建议

伴随着保障房项目的大规模建成与交付使用,我国住房保障工作的重点正逐步转向规划建设与后期管理并重,而保障房社区的邻里关系状态是该小区后期管理水平和效果的集中体现。针对北京市 4 个典型保障房社区居民开展调查访谈,以了解典型保障房社区内居民邻里关系现状;应用 Ordered Logit 模型,对邻里关系的影响因素进行了分析。研究发现:居民在社区内的朋友越多,对邻居的信任程度以及参与社区活动的意愿越高,则其邻里关系越好;而其收入越高,邻里关系反而越差。结合与一线社区管理人员的访谈和研讨,以及对相关国际经验的总结梳理,提出了改善邻里关系的具体对策建议。     

Industrially Harvested Peatlands and After-use Potential: Understanding Local Stakeholder Narratives and Landscape Preferences

Recent years have witnessed much debate on the turn towards community within landscape management and planning. This is particularly evident in the European Landscape Convention which asserts the legitimacy of local preferences and citizen involvement in policy processes. This paper explores a bottom-up perspective on people–place relationships in a changing landscape, through assessing the after-use potential of industrially mined peatlands in Ireland and the rehabilitation of degraded landscapes. The mining of the peatland resource has a longstanding tradition in Ireland, however, significant attention has now focused on exploring market and non-market uses of remains after harvesting has finished resulting in a cutaway landscape. We argue that local people's everyday experiences of the landscape is a legitimate form of knowledge and should provide a key input into deliberative planning and management processes. Drawing largely on an interpretive research approach, we assess key local narratives in relation to harvested peatland landscapes and explore local people's after-use preferences. There appears to be strong support among the local community for amenity/biodiversity after-uses, which are currently not reflected in public policy debates. We review people–place relationships and discuss the role of ethnographic research in a peatland context as well as defining the relevant stakeholders. Finally, conclusions are developed to identify wider lessons for people/place relationships within the context of landscape management and planning.     

Public Real Estate Management and the Planner's Role

This paper views the possible role for planners in an emerging field: management of publicly owned real estate. The research demonstrates that expertise among current public real estate managers lags behind the private sector, resulting in a nonlevel playing field that may lead to a shortfall in meeting policy objectives. This study uses both published literature on real estate management practice and a survey of 30 municipal and regional public property managers to document the expertise gap. Results show that while municipalities and regional agencies conduct activities similar to their private sector counterparts, such as leasing and joint development, they often lack the decision framework to evaluate them financially. An opportunity exists for planners to step into a leadership role in public property management. In order to accomplish this, planning education should include more training in real estate accounting, data base management, market analysis, and finance.     

GIS in the Urban Landscape: reconfiguring neighbourhood planning and design processes

Landscape architects have been using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) primarily for large-scale applications such as regional, environmental, ecological and natural resources planning and management. GIS applications are explored for the smaller-scale urban landscapes of communities and neighbourhoods. It is described how a community-based GIS was used in a participatory neighbourhood planning process to enhance communication between planners, community groups and local residents. This case study, which reflects on the experience of a design team at the University of Illinois at Chicago, found that a community GIS was highly useful for urban landscape and design, particularly when augmented with a variety of other computerized and non-computerized techniques. In this case free-hand sketching by a trained artist and three-dimensional software that could create representations of the designs as they were in process were incorporated. This combination of tools proved effective for increasing community understanding and participation in the designing and revitalization of their neighbourhoods.