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About

The Berkeley Planning Journal is an annual peer-reviewed journal published by graduate students in the Department of City and Regional Planning (DCRP) at the University of California, Berkeley since 1985.

Issue cover

Editorial Notes

Introduction

The Berkeley Planning Journal was conceived as a graduate publi­ cation, in the tradition of law reviews, of the Department of City and Regional Planning (DCRP), at the University of California at Berkeley. The editorial board is comprised of graduate students with the assistance of a Faculty Advisory and Review Committee. The journal is to serve as a means for communicating thought and research within the Berkeley community of planning faculty, stu­ dents, and visitors, which we recognize extends beyond the depart­ ment; between this community and alumni; and between the Berkeley planning community and the profession at large. As such it will publish articles and other features contributed primarily by students, faculty and alumni affiliated with the department.

Articles

Housing Policy and Economic Restructuring in the United States

The Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the Jean years of the Depression that followed in its wake, brought about a fundamental transformation in the structure of American free enterprise. The legislation enacted by the Roosevelt administration that put the economy on a new footing, also established the basis for the nation's first systematic housing policy, eventually legislated officiallyas The Housing Act of 1949.

When the economy collapsed, the mortgage system collapsed as well, adding to the depth of the plunge into the Depression. These conditions precipitated massive social protest movements, especially among industrial workers and the unemployed. The dilemma faced by the Roosevelt administration was how to preserve the basic features of the market system, while at the same time incorporate but circumscribe the social protest of millions of Americans. Out of this dilemma emerged a new type of free enterprise system in which the State, for the first time, began to play a decisive role in the operations of the country's financial markets. The other pro­ duct of Roosevelt's actions was perhaps even more significant. This was the establishment of what has been termed "The Welfare State " .

The Future of Social Policy in America

Let me begin with a few excerpts from Los Angeles newspapers, which have caught my eye in the last few days. From the Reader, April 29th:

For almost half a century, General Motors' South Gate assembly plant has been a symbol of industrial America. Located five miles south of downtown Los Angeles, it was long considered one of the company's best plants, producing cars for one of the largest car markets in the world. It provided a decent living for thousands of auto workers and their families while stimulating the economy of South Gate and surround­ ing communities. The plant's workers, many of whom were GM's most senior workers, spent most of their adult lives making GM cars, believing all the while that America's industrial dominance throughout the world would guarantee them a job for life.

The dream was shattered last year, in March, when GM closed the plant for an indefinite period of time, laying off 4,300 workers. Last week, GM announced that the plant would be closed permanently. The deci­ sion wasn't much of a surprise to most workers, for the giant automaker has made it clear that car produc­ tion on the West Coast is no longer part of its long­ term strategy.

Use Value, Exchange Value, and the Need for Public Land-Use Planning

Why should the government be in the business of influencing how our society uses urban and rural land? The answer to this question is important to professional city and regional planners wishing to justify their programs, and to land-use theorists seeking to understand the forces behind land-use patterns.

The allocation of land can be conducted by either public planning or by the private market. Both methods have their drawbacks and advantages. While it is necessary to understand both systems, as they work alone and together, this essay will focus on the market approach. Many would like to see the market used as the primary system for allocating land. In response to this position, this essay will present a critique of the land market and a justification for land-use planning by examining the nature of land as a commodity in market economies.

Agreeing to Disagree: A Three Dimensional Framework for Planning Without Consensus

This essay proposes a structure and process for doing city master planning where there is no consensus on goals. It evolved from an attempt to help the city of Berkeley prepare to revise its Master Plan. Accordingly, our recommendations take into account Berkeley's unusually convoluted and polarized political situation, while affirming that the city's diversity is its richness. The proposal is meant to help Berkeley renew its tradition of innovative, respon­ sive planning. In doing so, the proposal presents a general scheme for helping cities when traditional approaches break down in discord. Key assets of the approach include flexibility, variability, and the capacity to accommodate diversity.

Since the framework is designed specifically for Berkeley's partic­ ular problem context the essay stresses how Berkeley's planning history led to its current planning impasse. The proposal follows, and we conclude with some notes on its implementation and wider applications.

Descriptive and Critical Review of Multiregional Econometric Models of the United States

Many methodological tools exist for use by regional planners and policy analysts concerned with the implications of federal and regional policies for regional economies. Regional and multire­ gional econometric models represent a class of such tools not widely available for public use outside their institutional settings. The purpose of such models is to provide economic forecasting and policy simulations with analytic flexibility. Accordingly, the methods employed in developing econometric models differ sub­ stantially from those of other national or regional analysis methods because they are not consistently subjected to theoretic or account­ ing restrictions. For example, instead of relying solely on export­ base, input-output, or linear programming analysis, the emphasis in the development of econometric models is placed on their ability to model economic behavior empirically. While this may often involve the application of rigid theoretic constructs or accounting frameworks, the charm is that the constructs can be altered or com­ bined to suit the economy as perceived by the modeler, thereby increasing the model's potential value and usability.

Resolving Local Land Use Disputes: A Collaborative Approach

Protracted, often hostile, legal disputes between industry officials, government representatives and environmental protection advocates characterized many federal regulatory efforts in the 1970s. The high financial costs and otherwise unsatisfactory results of litigation-around such issues as siting energy facilities and regulat­ ing mineral exploration in wilderness areas-have motivated government, environmental and industry groups to explore alterna­ tive approaches for resolving their differences.

Critical Issues and Perspectives in Conflict Resolution

The equitable, rational resolution of conflict is unarguably a gen­ eric objective of planning-whether the conflict concerns the appropriate use of physical and social resources or the relative power of individuals in the decision-making process. Thus it is not surprising to find that alternative forms of conflict resolution which promise more optimal outcomes than traditional regulatory and legal mechanisms find their adherents among planning practitioners and educators. However, few question the assumptions on which these techniques are based or fully evaluate the implications of their implementation. This paper presents a critical framework for understanding the potential and limitations of evolving conflict­ resolution methods in planning contexts.

Suburban Office Markets and Regional Employment Growth: The San Francisco Bay Area's 680 Corridor

One of the major changes experienced in the pattern of urban development in the 1970s was the trend toward suburbanization of office space construction. In previous decades, suburbs played a narrower role as bedroom communities. By the 1960s, with the introduction of regional shopping centers, many retail activities had followed residents from the central city to suburban settings.

Office space decentralization in the 1970s is part of a third stage of suburban development-the larger trend towards the movement of jobs from central city to suburb-with manufacturing firms as well as office using firms looking for cheaper land, more space, and a nearby workforce outside of the central city. Before 1970, over four-fifths of speculative office space in the San Francisco SMSA was in San Francisco or Oakland. During the 1970s, 40% of new office space added to the SMSA went to suburbs outside of these central cities.

Metropolitan High-Technology Industry Growth in the Mid 1970s: Can Everyone Have a Slice of the High-Tech Pie

The enthusiasm surrounding high-technology (high-tech) indus­ tries is in part a response to the prospect of future employment growth and to the expectation that these industries will form the basis of self-sustaining local/regional economies. Currently, how­ ever, states and communities compete for high-tech employment with only a vague understanding of the forces governing the diffusion of high-tech development. All too often they use scarce public revenues to attract these industries with little assurance of long-run returns on such investment.

DCRP News

DCRP Notes

Recent PhD Dissertations, Masters Theses and Professional Reports from the Department of City and Regional Planning.

Abstracts and Titles of Student Work

Recent PhD Dissertations, Masters Theses and Professional Reports from the Department of City and Regional Planning.

Theme Section

A History of the Department of City and Regional Planning (1948-1979), Part 1

The publication in 1938 of Lewis Mumford's book, The Culture of Cities, was one of the major events that led to the establishment of the Department of City and Regional Planning on the Berkeley campus of the University of California. At a time when the profes­ sion of city planning was in its infancy in the United States, it inspired a generation of Berkeley architecture and landscape archi­ tecture students to focus their idealism and energies on efforts to improve, protect, and enhance the cities and the natural environ­ ment of the San Francisco Bay region. Influenced and to a consid­

erable extent educated by the events and implications of the Great Depression and World War II, they seemed to have no difficulty during the 1930's and 1940's in finding or organizing useful things to do, and in a relatively short time their efforts led to the expan­ sion of city planning, housing, and community development pro­ grams in the San Francisco offices of FDR's New Deal administra­ tion and in the city and county governments of the Bay Area.

The Berkeley Environmental Simulation Laboratory: A 12 Year Anniversary

When, in 1972, Donald Appleyard, together with Kenneth Craik, received funding from the National Science Foundation to update what had been a rather simple environmental simulator purchased from Yale, both of them had been working in the field of environ­ mental cognition for several years. Appleyard's opportunity to work on the Image of the City project with Lynch and Myer had resulted in the book The Viewfrom the Road. During the course of that project he had experimented with three ways of simuiating the experience of driving along highways: notation systems, perspec­ tive sequences and films produced through a modelscope. The notation system describing the environmental experience was the easiest to develop, and it became common practice in urban design throughout the world. Although they do describe components of the experience, notation systems do so in an abstract way-and they are idiosyncratic. Only the inventor understands his system and no one else uses it. To the public, esoteric notation systems are incomprehensible. Sequences of perspectives are much more understandable. They are not used as much, perhaps because the method is still rather abstract and it takes some work to visualize the sequences as a continuous movement experience. Static per­ spective renderings remain the most common way of simulating environmental experience. However, modelscopes, motion picture cameras, and realistic scale models have the most promising pros­ pects of accurately and realistically simulating an experience of the environment.