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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Equity gets defined differently by different interests at different times. Public officials think of equity in transportation finance in a very distinctive way from social scientists or transportation planners. This paper examines transportation pricing and finance equity from a variety of perspectives. The authors distinguish transportation finance and pricing equity from other forms of transportation equity and then discuss several competing theories of equity long debated by social philosophers. These theories serve as a basis for understanding the complex and often inconsistent notions of fairness that the public and elected officials have regarding the distribution of public resources and particularly transportation investments. The authors argue that most conflicts over transportation pricing and finance are rooted in philosophical differences over justice and equity and differing notions of the appropriate units of analysis--individuals, groups, or jurisdictions--for evaluating equity. An analytical framework is presented to help planners and policy makers untangle these two issues. This framework transcends the philosophical characterizations of equity to allow for a more practical consideration of transportation finance and pricing fairness. Lessons offered by some recent debates in transportation pricing and finance are considered. The current trend in transportation finance toward dedicated non-transportation-based taxes such as sales taxes, appears to be less fair than marginal cost transportation pricing such as congestion tolls. The authors conclude that while no scheme can satisfy all possible dimensions of equity, it is possible to offer comparative equity assessments of various approaches to transportation pricing and finance, and that efficiency and equity can coexist.

The term "smart growth" has been adopted by many different organizations for an array of very different policies. The term thus may have lost specificity and even meaningful content due to the divergent perceptions and agendas of the organizations using the term. This paper is a preliminary effort to parse the different meanings of smart growth currently in use and to assess the range of approaches and activities now promulgated under the smart growth label. Smart growth statements from ten national organizations with diverged land use agendas are reviewed. Despite their differing agenda, their broad conceptual definitions are found to converge. Turning to implementation efforts, the authors then review 49 documents regarding policies and programs in Georgia and Kentucky. The documents exhibit extreme variety in the meanings ascribed to smart growth. Few of the plans and policies incorporate multiple interventions, which is a key dimension of the smart growth approach as described by the national groups. The review also suggests that there is little reason to assume a great deal of commonality in the implementation process and emphasis between two or more programs sharing the smart growth label.

This paper addresses the importance to planning of understanding human perceptions and responses to environmental change. Supporting literature is discussed within the context of a conceptual model of the process of perceiving and responding to change. A plan for urban expansion in Tucson, Arizona, is presented as an example to illustrate the model and to provide a point of focus for the related literature.

Catherine Bauer, recently designated a "planning pioneer" by the American Instilute of Certified Planners, was a major theorist in the field of planning between 1934 and 1964, a critical era for the profession. Her inf luence rested on a variety of positions that she took in her writing. This paper surveys this work and shows how she focused on five questions treating housing, urban redevelopment, regional planning, suburbanization, social planning, and urbanization in the third world. No one in the profession today is duplicating Bauer's role as an observer and critic of the urban world.