Journal of Planning Education and Research

Faculty quality assessment methods of the National Research Council study of research doctorate programs are applied to U.S. urban and regional planning graduate programs. Findings suggest that about one-half of planning faculty actively publish and that there is considerable concentration of both publication and citation activity among a relatively small group of scholars and schools. Accredited and nonaccredited schools show substantial differences, as do doctoral degree-granting schools compared with master’s-only schools. The strengths and weaknesses of faculty quality measures used are discussed, leading to a call for other studies using different measures.

In the past two decades, cash-strapped countries in Sub-Saharan Africa have been unable to provide even rudimentary primary education systems. User fees for primary education have become common, as has the intervention of parent-teacher associations (PTAs), which requires further fees. A look at the relationship between PTAs and local government in Jinja, Uganda, demonstrates that the de facto decentralization of the provision of primary education to PTAs provides an opportunity for building political accountability; when parents bring resources to the table, governments must share resources and responsibility and relationships of accountability emerge. These relationships are threatened by the new universal primary education (UPE) policy for which Uganda has few resources and little accountability. Current UNESCO initiatives for establishing UPE in Sub-Saharan Africa call for participation and accountability but may ignore the potential for accountability and improvement through partnerships between governments and PTAs.

The literature about service learning in planning education contains a wealth of insights from practitioners at large research universities in urban settings. Very little has been written about experiences in rural areas. The Environmental Studies Department at St. Lawrence University has experimented with several strategies for service learning in rural northern New York. As a type of service learning, the research seminar offers several advantages over conventional internships and community-based independent study. These advantages are critical in rural areas of sparse population, where few agencies exist. Case studies involving conservation easements, community planning, and historical preservation demonstrate that some agencies derive real benefits from service learning. The case studies also illustrate the following lessons: the research seminar can engage a variety of planning issues and organizations; it is helpful, though not necessary, if sponsoring organizations articulate needs, but they should not anticipate preferred results from research; university staff should pay close attention to the sociopolitical context of participating agencies and ensure that students are fully immersed in the community; and service learning can make tangible contributions to the quality of rural life, thereby making these areas more attractive for residents who wish to stay.

This article compares the opposite fates of two voluntary regional councils in similar substate regions of Michigan and evaluates their effectiveness as planning mechanisms of the new regionalism. Organizational development strategies and consensus building drove the survival and partial success of one council but reduced its policy effectiveness. A climate of mistrust emanating from virulent localism and idiosyncratic events undercut the other council’s organizational capacity and policy effectiveness and led to its demise. Implications of these cases as “weak” examples of new regionalism are discussed.

This study investigates the relationship between social connections and collective civic action. Measuring social capital in eight Phoenix, Arizona, neighborhoods allowed the authors to determine that individuals with strong social bonding (i.e., association and trust among neighbors) are more likely to take civic action. However, while social capital lessens the relationship between an individual’s social status and the likelihood of taking action, it does not eliminate the positive relationship. The analysis also suggests that bonding and bridging are distinct forms of social capital that have some different antecedents

Most graduate planning programs offer a specialization in environmental planning, yet there has been little recent discussion of environmental planning pedagogy. This article draws on the results of a survey of planning educators to determine trends and patterns in environmental planning curricula. It develops an explanatory model for predicting the learning expectations for various types of knowledge that are part of environmental planning education in U.S. and Canadian planning programs. This model uses individual, organizational, and curricular characteristics to predict the substantive environmental planning topics taught in graduate planning programs.

This article concerns the equity dimension of partnerships between disadvantaged communities and local governments and private sector firms to provide basic services and amenities. It examines the necessary conditions for fulfilling the expectation that such partnerships can serve the interests of the poor and the critical role of state in intervention to level the playing field for such a partnership. In the context of decentralizing third world governments, the article highlights conceptual inconsistencies underlying public-private partnerships that lead them to deliver results opposite to those they claim. The article points to the ambivalent and even deceptive core of such partnerships that enables their effective operation as a form of privatization, advancing the interests of the private sector and the market under the banner of sharing power with the poor and the state.

Following Calavita and Krumholz’s answers to conservative attacks on planning, this commentary offers another way to promote planning in public discourse. Transaction cost theory (TCT) debunks the “planning versus markets” dichotomy, relieving planning advocates from claiming the need for public intervention, an argument that encounters frequent skepticism. TCT makes the case for planning in three ways: (1) rejecting generalizations, it focuses debate on specific cases; (2) breaking the link between planning and government, it disarms conservative critics; (3) it provides an authoritative theoretical base for answering neoliberal attacks on public planning. Convincing people that planning (not only as public intervention) is necessary and enhances their welfare is an argument that can be won.