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Despite the popularity of the "behavioral approach," there is as yet a lack of guidance on the selection and use of appropriate behavioral theories for specific planning purposes. Based on a literature review of 318 articles in spatial planning-related journals, this paper presents a portfolio of behavioral theories by types of behavior, key variables, rules, and research methods. In addition, based on the survey of twenty-two international experts, it cross-validates the findings and highlights particularly appropriate theories for certain types of behavior dealt in related disciplines. Finally, the paper derives discussion points including the applicability of various behavioral theories in urban models such as space and time-sensitive dynamic simulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The amount of empirical research on the extent, causes, and consequences of gentrification continues to expand. This article reviews the methods utilized to delimit and quantify gentrification in the literature. Such measurement is undertaken in order to assess the consequences of gentrification, such as displacement, over various time scales and geographies. Recent research has demonstrated that the use of different quantitative definitions of gentrification may yield conflicting research results, and further, can muddy the waters for policymaking and political discourse. This article critically assesses the breadth of quantitative definitions and offers recommendations for future studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Growing evidence shows cities' climate change efforts can worsen inequities and social injustices. This paper starts to formulate a normative conception of social justice for urban climate change planning. It identifies what dimensions of social justice are articulated and how they are defined in the literature on equity in urban planning for climate change. It shows at least five dimensions are pertinent: creating transformations, promoting the well-being of the socially marginalized, recognition, inclusion in decision-making, and distributive justice. The paper concludes by discussing where further developments are needed to generate a comprehensive account of equitable urban planning for climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community-level interventions through technological updates and connectedness are quite popular within smart city visions. These interventions, under the collective label of smart and connected communities (SCC), promise to increase technology access, services, and the sense of entrepreneurship and organization at the community level. This paper addresses the lack of academic research investigating SCC with regard to its merits and linkages to the debate on smart cities. It reviews the academic literature on conceptions, constituents, and enablers of SCC. It highlights SCC as a concept with more issues and complexity than conventional smart city projects, particularly with regard to soft or human-related factors. While SCC is associated with diverse objectives, there are some basic elements of SCC projects such as a common direction, digitalization, optimization, better services, and participation. This paper also presents a range of critical factors and enablers based on previous studies. These factors include the features of communities and services as well as collaborative and institutional mechanisms. This paper shows the importance of the planning and design tasks in initiating SCC interventions. When designing successful and context-specific SCC projects, it is important to address the contextual environment of SCC through an informed SCC project design. This is particularly relevant for (ill-defined) communities with unconducive institutional context or no cooperation legacies. The success of SCC often depends on engagement and change management within communities as well as the development of context-specific, and often iterative, project designs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Transaction costs," as a well-established theory in New Institutional Economics, has been used to explain and analyze various planning matters for about 30 years since its introduction to planning literature. However, there is no study on how planning-related studies have utilized the theory. This paper conducts a systematic review that aims to develop a better understanding of how transaction-cost theory is used in planning literature. The review shows that while potential contributions and implications of transaction costs have been conceptually discussed in planning literature, the empirical studies have remained limited, particularly concerning the magnitude of such costs in planning systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Infrastructure governance has emerged as a subject of critical interest in the current 'infrastructure turn' whereby fragmented governance approaches sit in tension with complex demands for infrastructure transformations within contexts of multiple intersecting crises. To understand the state of the literature and inform ongoing debates, a systematic review method is used to interrogate a large body of infrastructure governance literature across sectoral boundaries. This review identifies a range of literature gaps prevailing in the areas of infrastructure governance on unceded First Nations land, the societal end goals of infrastructure, and understandings and applications of integrated governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land policy influences how and by whom land is used; therefore, it impacts the efficiency and equity of land use. This paper offers an economic perspective on efficiency and equity as fundamental purposes of planning and land policy. It brings a highly needed mutual understanding between planning and economics, whilst acknowledging the limitations of the theoretical concepts of efficiency and equity in their real-world applications. The paper also provides a solid ground for analysing trade-offs between efficiency and equity of land policy interventions. Situations minimising trade-offs should be of particular interest as they provide opportunities for improvements without necessary sacrifices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban planning has struggled to establish a consensus on what "good" planning looks like and instead grapples with balancing competing planning priorities and perspectives. This paper proposes that planners and planning scholars look to health equity as a guiding "north star." We justify this proposal by reviewing scholarship at the intersection of planning and public health. Drawing from empirical and theoretical work linking urban planning, health, and social equity, we recommend planners adopt participatory and anti-racist practices; implement cross-sectoral strategies beyond the professional boundaries of urban planning or public health; and learn from diverse data sources, research methods, and geographic contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban informality is one of the most hotly debated concepts in the fields of geography and urban studies. However, one narrative that has assumed hegemony and dominated conventional scholarship is the view that it is peculiar to the urban poor or subaltern group. In this paper, I contend that little to no empirical attention has been paid to an essential piece of the conceptual mosaic of informality. I reflect on housing informality by elites or upper-income urbanites and highlight its associated Janus-faced governance approach. I argue that the deliberate disregard and legitimization of elite informal developments pose crucial sustainability implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban areas mediate climate transformations and generate new forms of climate urbanism. Looking at climate action in the twelve fastest-growing cities in China with under one million people, this paper proposes a perspective on urban climate politics 'from elsewhere' that foregrounds the potential role of smaller urban areas in mediating climate transformations. The analysis reveals three climate action strategies that reflect practical, institutional, and personal spheres of climate transformations. Planning action in the personal sphere provides opportunities for urban transformations. A perspective 'from elsewhere' calls for greater attention to planning for diverse change strategies for climate transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban renewal and the built environment have become two of the hottest topics in urban planning studies. Although existing literature has started to examine both of them from different perspectives, a comprehensive review with a bibliometric analysis is necessary to fully reveal the association between them. To overcome these gaps, this paper critically reviews the literature on urban renewal and the built environment and proposes a novel research framework to systematically understand the relationship between them. Based on 155 articles which were published between 2001 and 2020 collected from the Web of Science Core Collection Database, a bibliometric analysis offers the overall development and trajectory of the existing research, and a critical review fully analyzes the relationship between the two topics from three perspectives: main categories of urban renewal, multiple stakeholders, and economic, social and environmental development needs. To better clarify the interaction mechanism between urban renewal and the built environment and guide further research in this area, a future research agenda is also provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beauty has been an important, central concept since ancient times. Over the centuries, its status deteriorated until it became improper for academic discussion. In the last two decades, there has been a call to revisit beauty and aesthetic judgment in some disciplines. However, despite interest in urban design, the integration of beauty in planning theory and practice remains slow and partial. This paper presents the changing relevance of beauty in general academic discourse in four milestones before analyzing literature on planning and follows the changing attitude toward aesthetics. The conclusion points to a possible resurgence of beauty in planning literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although growth management programs have many purposes, a critical one is to contain urban and suburban sprawl. Their efficacy in this regard is not well understood. In this paper, we review a comprehensive set of growth management tools, used by urban planners and policymakers to curb sprawl, starting with the history of the tool, then describing how it works in practice, and finally presenting any available empirical evidence on how well it works to curb sprawl and/or achieve other public purposes. While growth management isn't a panacea for controlling sprawl, it is certainly not the failure implied by critics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The world is experiencing the impacts of COVID-19 pandemic – from lockdown restrictions to economic uncertainty. Though troubling, the COVID-19 crisis presents an opportunity to galvanize support to strengthen urban planning's capacity in Africa. This paper draws on the global response to the pandemic to proffer three lessons that can bolster planning action to respond to health, spatial and socio-economic challenges confronting African cities: (i) recognition of urban planning as an urgent public health activity; (ii) emphasizing urban planning's innate capacity to address health crises; and (iii) citizen engagement to accept planning measures. These lessons are likely to improve urban planning action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As governments and service agencies across the world grapple with chronic rates of homelessness and housing instability, there is a growing need to understand the value that providing secure, stable housing brings to the lives of people who are homeless and the broader community. The complex nature of homelessness is revealed across a variety of academic fields including planning, pharmacology, urban affairs, housing policy, nutrition, psychiatry, sociology, public health, urban health, and criminology. We undertook a scoping review according to PRISMA-P (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-analysis) that mapped the breadth and scale of the evidence-base and identified themes and gaps. We identified 476 reports and after excluding duplicates and ones that did not relate to our criteria, were left with 100 studies from eight countries. Each of them identified benefits and/or changes that occurred when people experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity transitioned into a secure, stable home. Outcomes measured were distributed across a range of domains including physical and mental health, well-being, mortality rates, criminal justice interaction, service use, and cost-effectiveness. Findings varied by degree but overwhelmingly found improvements in all domains once people were permanently housed. Housing provided a foundation for people to envisage a better life and make plans for the future. As one woman who had fled a violent home was quoted as saying: "housing made everything else possible." The research identified savings for taxpayers and the wider community once people left homelessness for the stability of a permanent home, even after factoring in the cost of housing and rental help. We found numerous gaps. For example, there was a prevalence of studies that focused on those who are visibly homeless, in particular chronically homeless men with mental illness and/or substance use issues. Much less research looked at women whose patterns of homelessness are more varied and even less at homelessness involving children and families. Women who had left domestic and family violence were investigated in a very small number of studies and sample sizes were small. Few reports undertook the complex task of quantifying and comparing cost savings. Other notable gaps were older women, older people more generally, refugees, recent migrants, veterans, Indigenous people and those with a disability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban digital twins (UDTs) have been identified as a potential technology to achieve digital transformative positive urban change through landscape architecture and urban planning. However, how this new technology will influence community resilience and adaptation planning is currently unclear. This article: (1) offers a scoping review of existing studies constructing UDTs, (2) identifies challenges and opportunities of UDT technologies for community adaptation planning, and (3) develops a conceptual framework of UDTs for community infrastructure resilience. This article highlights the need for integrating multi-agent interactions, artificial intelligence, and coupled natural–physical–social systems into a human-centered UDTs framework to improve community infrastructure resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proponents of High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes claim the lanes reduce vehicle-trips by encouraging more people to carpool, but the evidence is mixed. This article reviews studies on the impacts of HOV lanes with a focus on behavioral models. This research makes a case for performance measures with direct welfare, congestion, or air pollution effects and focuses on papers that explicitly model carpool formation and allow for induced demand. Papers on individual regions find that HOV lanes may increase or decrease welfare, while more general papers find that the impact of HOV lanes depends on underlying parameters. The Clean Air Act assumes that HOV lanes reduce traffic volume and improve air quality and recommends HOV lanes to areas with poor air quality. This research finds there is no consensus on HOV lane impacts and, that using HOV lanes as a travel control measure may be misguided, but that further research is warranted. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents abstracts of articles related to urban planning which include "Grid plan new towns in the Brazilian coffee frontier," by Alessandro Rosaneli, "Evaluating public space," by Vikas Mehta, and "Urban design plans for downtown San Francisco: A paradigm shift?," by Richard Hu.

This article carries out a meta-analysis on empirical studies addressing cluster–innovation relationships since the 1980s. The results show that (1) clusters have positive effects on innovation; (2) different studies demonstrate heterogeneity in the estimated effect sizes; (3) several moderators are shaping the cluster–innovation relationship, for example, in what industries the cluster specializes, in which geographical region the cluster is located, and so on. This article reveals the cluster–innovation relationships are state-contingent and provides guidance on evaluating whether a cluster strategy can encourage innovation in a specific region. For example, the regression result indicates initiating a manufacturing cluster in a US region is expected to bring about fifteen more patents every year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past forty years, more than 3,800 new towns emerged and accommodated over 150 million urban inhabitants in China, which drew much attention since they were reported as "ghost cities" by media in the late 2000s. This literature review examines existing research and synthesizes current discussions through a meta-analysis. It concludes that existing literature, led by environmental scientists and designers, exhibits two polarized debates around the new towns' uniqueness and the future of ghost cities. Gaps exist in national-scale surveys, criticism of planning methodology, and theories that can explain the current disputes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews the basic concepts of Social Network Analysis (SNA) and its uses in theoretical and empirical planning literature. Continuing a discussion among planning theorists that was initiated at the 2003 ACSP/AESOP Joint Congress, the authors respond to specific gaps identified in papers presented at that conference. Specifically, the authors review the literature on SNA within disciplines related to planning and empirical planning studies using SNA. The authors find that the knowledge base on SNA specifically and network analysis generally is highly fragmented along disciplinary lines, contributing to the critique that it is a fuzzy concept. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study conducts a meta-analysis of empirical studies that have measured the spatial scale of industrial clustering. Two types of scales are examined: the peak scale (at which cluster effects are maximized) and the maximum reach (beyond which cluster effects are undetectable). We find that the scale varies significantly by the unit of analysis, industry sector, country of study, and the sources of cluster effects examined (e.g., knowledge spillovers, localization, and urbanization). Planners and policy makers should tailor the geographies embodied in cluster strategies to match the specific local needs and circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children's participation in urban planning impacts communities. A policy environment supports their participation, yet this is far from mainstream, particularly in areas of greatest vulnerability. This literature review demonstrates what we do and don't know about barriers and enablers to children's participation in urban planning. We identify key themes within participatory methods, processes, and structures that influence urban planning stages and methods and identify the consequences of children's inclusion or exclusion. We then argue for a research agenda that examines institutional impacts on urban planning and decisions that include or exclude children to contribute to a transformation of on-ground practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper surveys the theoretical and empirical research on the causes of plant closures and the types of communities most likely to experience capital disinvestment. The article also explores the impact of a plant closure or mass layoff on the displaced worker and the characteristics of workers who suffer the largest income losses from displacement. One of the most debated policies to assist displaced workers and communities is to require employers to give workers advance notice of an impending closure. This paper reviews the literature on the impact of prenotification on the reemployment success of displaced workers, and finally, it reviews the implications of the above findings for planning practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents abstracts on planning literature which include approaches to empirical work in regional economics, understanding the barriers to social adaptation, and management of large city regions.

This section presents abstracts of papers on city planning published from 2007 to 2008, including "Streets, Sounds and Identity in Inter-war Harlem," by Clare Corbould, "(Re)making the Other, Heterosexualising Everyday Space," by Kath Browne, and "Rankings and Reactivity: How Public Measures Recreate Social Worlds," by Wendy Nelson Espeland and Michael Sauder.