Plan 6050 Description

Prerequisites: Open to graduate students. Required core course for graduate Urban and Environmental Planning Students.

Course Description: Methods of planning analysis, many with a strong quantitative component, will be explored through their application to the planning and policy issues of a metropolitan area. Planning has adapted methods from many related disciplines: demography, urban and regional economics, quantitative geography, environmental and sustainability analysis, statistics, survey research and public finance to name a few. This course will cast these into a dual framework of “planning and policy” and “planning research”. The former involves structuring problems, anticipating outcomes and evaluation. The latter involves exploration, discovery, structuring and knowledge building. Topics include: Exploratory analysis and mapping of census data, projection and forecasting of population and economic trends and the associated public service needs, component or sector modeling, concept mapping, decision theory, time series comparisons, cost-benefit analysis and spatial interaction analysis. Each week will consist of a mixture of lecture and workshop activities. In addition, a dedicated computer lab workshop will occur weekly to focus on computational and digital presentation skills.

Pedagogical Intentions: Analytic methods in planning often originate in either the inductive or deductive approaches to developing knowledge. In practice these become blended. Consequently there is a dual focus on how planners can use numbers to assist in making comparisons and discover patterns on one hand and then use that knowledge to reason from means to ends in a deliberative and evaluative process. Further, data are the result of a socially constructed set of definitions and measurement. Consequently while the manifest activity in the course is developing a facility with quantitative methods, mapping, modeling and evaluation, the secondary, but equally important activity, is to appraise the underlying values implicit in those methods. Clear professional communication to different audiences often involved in planning will also receive emphasis.

Learning Objectives: By the end of the course, students should be able to:

· Identify the different dimensions of Policy Issues and their interconnections

· Write research and professional reports clearly

· Present qualitative and quantitative results verbally and graphically through charts and maps.

· Identify multiple sources of secondary data useful to planners

· Use spreadsheets for the management, modeling and presentation of data.

· Use GIS software to map thematic data for small geographic areas.

· Perform simple spatial analysis of population, housing, transportation and facility data.

· Have a familiarity with wide range of methodological concepts and terms planners have adapted.

· Identify common mathematical models used in planning analysis

· Work effectively in group settings.

· Give a competent professional verbal presentation.

Requirements: Achievement of the learning objectives will be assessed through several means.

There will be three or four group projects and a series of individual exercises during the course of the semester.

There will be 200 points distributed as below:

Group Projects: (100 points distributed among the following projects yet to be determined.)

Public Decision Making Case Study Discussion (not graded)
Policy Issue Scanning (25)
Detailed Comparative Demographic and Housing Analysis (50)
Demographic Forecasting and Synthesis (25)

Individual graded materials (100 points distributed among the following )

County Level Comparison Exercise (10)
Homework Exercises, Quizzes and Tutorials (60)
Written Report on a Data Source and its application. (20)
Participation/collaboration/engagement (10)

Readings:

Bardach , Eugene, Practical Guide for Policy Analysis”: The Eightfold Path, 3^nd ed. 2008, CQPress.

Dankekar, Hemalata C. Planners Use of Information, 2nd ed. APA Planners Press
Peters and MacDonald, Unlocking the Census with GIS; ESRI Press.

Recommended:

Dankekar, Hemalata C. Planners Use of Information, 2nd ed. APA Planners Press
A Statistics Book (TBD) Getting to Know ArcGIS 10, ESRI Press
Berman, Evan M., Essential Statistics for Public Management, CQPress

Macris, Natalie, Planning in Plain English, APA Planners Press

Langer, Creating Spreadsheets and Charts in Microsoft Excel, PeachPit Press

References will be available in the Fine Arts and Scholars Lab libraries.
Electronic Web based articles will also be used.

PLAN 6050 Methods of Planning Analysis