:UT Arlington Student Planning Association

An abstract I have submitted for the annual meeting of the Society for Social Studies of Science (Montreal, Oct. 11-13, http://www.4sonline.org/meeting.htm). The session is entitled “Towards a Socio-Technical Understanding of Architecture & Urbanism. 2) Reclaiming the city: An STS perspective on urban knowledge and activism.”

The paper stems from my inquiry into the intersection of urban planning theory and the field known as Science, Technology, and Society (aka Science and Technology Studies, STS). Drawing on the disciplines of political science, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, history, and others, STS considers how science and technology shape and are shaped by society.

Jeff Howard

Implications of rapid climate change for urban planning – A reconstructivist STS perspective

This paper focuses on a conundrum of urban planning theory and practice that in the early years of the millennium grows more conspicuous by the day: how to overcome the inertia of prevailing disciplinary concepts, institutions, and political-economic postures predicated on endless spatial, material, and economic growth in order to decisively confront the implications of rapid global climate change. Drawing on the theories of democratic expertise and intelligent trial and error, the paper offers a preliminary survey of the intersection of planning and the reconstructivist mode of STS.

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An abstract I have submitted for the annual meeting of theAmerican Collegiate Schools of Planning (Oct. 18-21, Milwaukee, http://www.acsp.org/events/conferences.html). The session is entitled “Ecological Planning – New Theoretical Approaches for Planning Paper.”

Jeff Howard

Intelligent trial and error as a theoretical framework for ecological planning

Intelligent trial and error (ITE), an extension of political theorist Charles Lindblom’s work on incrementalist decision making, has been developed in the field of science and technology studies as a framework for coping with the inevitable and frequently profound uncertainty inherent in technological development – and for minimizing the frequency and seriousness of mistakes that plague such development. The paper begins by outlining the premise of ITE and briefly reviewing its application in technology studies. The paper then explores ITE’s applicability as a framework for understanding and addressing the analytical and political challenges of ecological planning. If we understand planning as a pivotal species of technological decision making, how might ITE help us (re)interpret the ecologically haphazard character of conventional planning and the significance of the marginalization of ecological planning? How might it help us strategically confront the challenge of making ecological planning sufficiently intelligent to help move humanity beyond the global environmental crisis to which conventional planning has made such an enormous contribution? Answers to these questions, the paper argues, revolve around how these forms of planning approach six strategic considerations – precaution, the pace of feedback, monitoring the pace of scale-up, commitment to flexibility, and incentives for error correction – and, consequently, how planning expertise is conceptualized and politically enacted.

Collingridge, David. 1992. The Management of Scale: Big Organizations, Big Decisions, Big Mistakes. London: Routledge.

Lindblom, Charles E. 1959. “The science of ‘muddling through’,” Public Administration Review 19: 79-88.

Lindblom, Charles E. 1965. The Intelligence of Democracy: Decision Making through Mutual Adjustment. New York: Free Press.

Lindblom, Charles. 1990. Inquiry and Change: The Troubled Attempt to Understand and Shape Society. New Haven: Yale.

Morone, Joseph G., and Edward J. Woodhouse. 1986. Averting Catastrophe: Strategies for Regulating Risky Technologies. Berkeley, CA: University of California.

Woodhouse, E. J. 1988. “Sophisticated trial and error in decision making about risk.” In Technology and Politics, ed. Michael Kraft, Norman Vig. Durham, NC: Duke University, 208-223.

Woodhouse, Edward J. 1983b. “Toxic chemicals and technological society: Decision-making strategies when errors can be catastrophic.” Diss., Political Science, Yale University, Princeton, NJ.

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An abstract I have submitted for the annual meeting of theAmerican Collegiate Schools of Planning (Oct. 18-21, Milwaukee, http://www.acsp.org/events/conferences.html).  The session is entitled “Planners’ Role in Reducing GHG Emissions.”

Jeff Howard

Planning for strong climate protection: Toward a democratic, precautionary footing for planning expertise

The broad consensus that a global climate disaster is underway must be understood as a profound challenge to planning theory and practice: how to move climate protection from the periphery of the profession and the discipline directly into their core. The crisis presents a singular opportunity to examine – and reshape – the political assumptions embedded in mainstream planning expertise. The climate crisis exposes some of the central, largely tacit political assumptions of mainstream planning experts, who have informed, sanctioned, and actively facilitated sprawling, car-dependent, energy-intensive urban and suburban development. Drawing on political-theoretical critiques of scientific and technical expertise, the paper proposes that these assumptions are intimately bound up with a model of the planning expert as technocrat. The paper then argues that if the planning community is to commit itself to greenhouse gas reduction as deep and rapid as the crisis appears to demand, it will require a dramatically different model of expertise: one predicated on marrying experts and laypeople in a more explicitly political and thoroughly democratic fashion than conventional understandings of planning expertise would allow; and one predicated on protection of environment and public health in the face of scientific uncertainty.

Fischer, Frank. 1990. Technocracy and the Politics of Expertise. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Fischer, Frank. 1993. “Citizen participation and the democratization of policy expertise: From theoretical inquiry to practical cases.” Policy Sciences 26: 165-87.

Forester, John. 1999. The Deliberative Practitioner: Encouraging Participatory Planning Processes. Cambridge: MIT.

Myers, Nancy J., and Carolyn Raffensperger, eds. 2006. Precautionary Tools for Reshaping Environmental Policy. Urban and Industrial Environments. Cambridge: MIT.

White, Rodney R. 2002. Building the Ecological City. Boca Raton, FL: CRC.

Woodhouse, Edward J., and Dean Nieusma. 2001. Democratic expertise: Integrating knowledge, power, and participation. Knowledge, Power, and Participation in Environmental Policy Analysis. M. Hisschemöller, R. Hoppe, W. N. Dunn and J. R. Ravetz. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction: 73-96.

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The City of Arlington Public Works Department is recruiting for a summer intern, preferably a graduate student pursuing an MPA. Hourly pay will be $12/hour. Please see attached brochure and circulate as appropriate. Feel free to contact me with any questions.

Cindy Hanna
Operations Analyst II
Public Works & Transportation Department
817.459.6545 direct
hannac AT ci DOT arlington DOT tx DOT us
City of Arlington Intern Brochure

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A post on Grist - http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/2/22/133326/131

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The Urban and Public Affairs Ph.D. program at the University of Louisville has several assistantships available for the 2007-08 academic year. Assistantship support is available for up to four years, and includes a stipend of $18,000 paid over 12 months, plus tuition remission, health insurance, and office space with a computer. In addition, financial support is provided for travel to conferences and, in some cases, for dissertation research.

The Ph.D. program has tracks in (1) Urban Planning and Development and (2) Urban Policy and Administration. We are particularly interested in attracting students desiring to work in areas such as Environmental Policy, Urban Design, Urban Demography, and housing, although potential students with interests in other relevant areas are also encouraged to apply.

For further information, see our web site at http://supa.louisville.edu or write to upa@louisville.edu.

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Program Overview

The Texas Association of Community Development Corporations’s Lone Star Program provides college and graduate students interested in Community Economic Development (CED) with the opportunity to work for a summer with a Community Development Corporation (CDC) in Texas. Interns work with their host CDC to develop a work plan and implement a wide variety of projects in the community development field. In its fifth year, past Lone Star interns report that the internship provided them with valuable work experience and networking opportunities while contributing to organizations that improve the lives of low income individuals and families in Texas.

Timeframe: 400 hours in 10-12 weeks during the summer of 2007
Stipend: $4,000 for undergraduates, $4,800 for graduate students, plus travel costs to and from the internship site.
Application Host deadline: Friday, January 13, 2007
Application Internship deadline: February 27
Application Internship deadline EXTENDED: now due by Tuesday March 6 @ 9am.

Past CDC hosts include:
— Alamo Area Mutual Housing Association (San Antonio)
— Avenue CDC (Houston)
— PeopleFund (Austin)
— CDC of Brownsville
— El Paso Collaborative
— McAllen Affordable Homes
— Neighborhood Housing Services of Austin

Past Intern Projects include:
— Producing a handbook of green building alternatives for affordable housing developers
— Analyzing a CDC loan portfolio
— Creating a management plan for CDC rental properties
— Identifying sites for housing development
— Helping to implement a homebuyer education program

2007 Lone Star Internship Program HOST SITES:
— Brazos Valley CDC/Affordable Housing Corp. (Bryan TX, Region)
— CDC of Brownsville
— Fifth Ward Community Redevelopment Corp (Houston)
— Foundation Communities (Austin)
— FUTURO Communities (Uvalde)
— Housing and Community Services (San Antonio)
— Merced Housing Texas (San Antonio)
— Neighborhood Recovery CDC (Houston)
— People Fund (Austin)
— Samaritan House (Fort Worth)
— TACDC (Austin)

For more information, contact Eduardo Magaloni at 512-916-0508 or via email at eduardo AT tacdc DOT org. To download a HOST application, go to www.tacdc.org/2007LoneStarHostApplication.pdf. To download an INTERNSHIP application, go to www.tacdc.org/2007LoneStarInternApplication.doc.

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Application Deadline: February 27, 2007

Students may volunteer their time at the conference and earn back the cost of the early online registration fee. In exchange for eight hours of volunteer service during the conference, APA will reimburse student members the amount of the early online registration fee. Students must be registered for the conference at the time they apply to be a volunteer and must be student members of APA. Student volunteers are reimbursed upon completion of the eight hours of work onsite.

Once your application is reviewed, you will be notified by e–mail as to your acceptance as a volunteer. APA receives more applications than it can use, so register and apply early to improve your changes. Please note, if you are accepted as a volunteer and you register after the early registration deadline, you will be reimbursed only for the early online registration fee, not the greater fee.

More information: http://www.planning.org/2007conference/students.htm#4

E-mail questions to cbieschke AT planning DOT org.

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Arlington, Texas, 16 February 2007

The University of Texas at Arlington Student Planning Association will sponsor a showing of Truth Be Tolled, a recent documentary film critical of the Trans-Texas Corridor project. The film will be shown at 7 pm, Friday, February 23, in Room 115, University Hall, on the University of Texas at Arlington campus. It will be followed at approximately 8:30 pm by a 30-minute open discussion of the film, the project, and associated issues.

The film presents citizen reactions to the initiative and highlights many of the issues that have proven so controversial in the selling of the project by Texas Governor Rick Perry. This showing will come hard on the heels of a pro-Trans-Texas Corridor talk given in Fort Worth at the Women’s Transportation Seminar luncheon by Phil Russell, Director of the Texas Turnpike Authority Division of the Texas Department of Transportation.

The event is free and open to the public. For further information please contact Kent Hurst at klhurst AT uta DOT edu. For directions to University Hall, please visit the UT Arlington Web site at http://www.uta.edu/maps. Free parking is available the evening of the event in lots to the south and west of University Hall.

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I’ve returned from hearing Phillip Russell, Director of the Texas Turnpike Authority (TxDOT’s toll road division), and have to say that I was charmed. He was a really friendly guy, well-spoken, and politically correct to a fault. He gave a very brief extemporaneous talk (which he’s probably given a thousand times before to similar groups) that generally provided the motivational groundwork for TxDOT’s pursuit of toll road facilities, in general, and the Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC) program, in specific.

There were at least 50 public- and private-sector transportation planners, engineers, and consultants in attendance, not the type of crowd to be particularly hostile to the TTC. He highlighted the need for new funding sources not only to build new surface transportation infrastructure, but also to maintain the roads and bridges we already have. While claiming to be agnostic regarding the manner in which this funding is to be secured, he emphasized that the Texas Legislature, beginning in the mid-199os, has provided an increasing number of financing tools with which to accelerate the development of surface transportation projects and leverage private participation in those initiatives. Whether one agrees with the evolving emphasis on private concessions (and tolls) for these facilities, there is little doubt that the financial need is there. If one grants the need for new capacity, then the only way that we can develop it in a reasonable timeframe (short of raising taxes) is to leverage private capital. What is clear is that the TTC (or some giant infrastructure capacity improvement project) will happen, and that it will probably be funded largely by private (corporate) investment. And in spite of insurances that mechanisms are being written into the contracts for managing the unexpected over the lifetime of these concessions and that all stakeholders will be treated fairly, the TTC will never be uncontroversial.

A few interesting snippets from Russell’s talk and answers to questions:

- Rail components of the TTC will probably be funded with project concession revenues. That is, the high-speed/commuter rail components will only be developed after the roadway facilities have begun generating spendable revenue.

- There will be no non-compete clauses, per se, written into TTC contracts. He emphasized that TxDOT will continue to maintain and expand non-TTC roadway capacity as the need arises, but that they would build into the contracts provisions allowing for negotiations between TxDOT and the concessionaires for issues arising in the course of the concession period.
- Asked to comment on the criticism of the TTC for destroying the connectivity of FM and other state roads, Russell reflected back on the construction of the Interstate Highway System. He suggested that if you were satisfied with the way TxDOT addressed the issue then, then you would probably be satisfied with the manner in which it will deal with the connectivity issue raised by the TTC. And the converse would be true.

All in all, an interesting, though not terribly informative talk. I wish Russell would be in attendance on Friday to rebut more populist criticism contained in “Truth Be Tolled.”

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