Local Planning: Contemporary Principles and Practice

Abstract

Local Planning: Contemporary Principles and Practice edited by Gary Hack, Eugenie L. Birch, Paul H. Sedway, and Mitchell J. Silver ICMA Press 2009 496 pages ISBN-13: 978-0873261487 Reviewed by Deborah Carey Though I'm back to planning higher education facilities, in previous eight years of my planning career I was a skilled generalist in Office of Community and Economic Development in my town. There I grappled with speaking the language of architects, bankers, engineers, public servants, politicians and citizens. ..in change business (pp. 34, 24). So, I relished tackling Local Planning: Contemporary Principles and Practice published by International City/County Management Association (ICMA) and edited by Gary Hack, Eugenie L. Birch, Paul H. Sedway, and Mitchell J. Silver. work is a collection of chapters from almost 100 municipal, regional, and national practicing professionals compiled to inform planning profession and ICMA membership. While planning for higher education encompasses academic, fiscal, resource, facilities, and infrastructure planning, campus or master planning most often focuses on campus and its immediate outside environs. In United States, we have a long history of small liberal arts colleges and large land-grant universities located in rural settings. Today, however, 82 percent of our public and private higher education institutions are located in urban settings (Sungu-Eryilmaz 2009). As a result, livelihood of these institutions is now intimately tied to possibilities, problems, and opportunities of life outside campus grounds. In Local Planning: Contemporary Principles and Practice, I found rest of story; warp and woof upon which we weave our higher education pattern. volume contains a wealth of sound information, descriptions of cutting-edge trends, and an abundance of follow-up resources. Public planning has many points of intersection with higher education master planning, especially in area of town-gown relationships - those key elements that bind higher education campus (gown) to its community (town). To be proactive in these relationships, higher education institutions are incorporating social and economic programs, managing spill-over effects, and formalizing stakeholder participation and leadership (Sungu-Eryilmaz 2009). Local gives us successful and unsuccessful examples and provides a vast array of tools used to accomplish these aims. It also describes and examines stakeholders in process: developers; bankers; bond holders; community groups; and federal, state, city, and town officiais, administrators, and regulators with whom higher education institutions work. When colleges and universities acquire land and structures to support their mission or immediate growth demands, they often find themselves criticized for development policies deemed unresponsive to neighborhood concerns. A chapter titled The University and City by Anthony Sorrentino specifically details West Philadelphia initiatives of University of Pennsylvania that were created to address surrounding community needs. In Planning in Twenty-First Century, Gary Hack adds that institutions such as universities... are often largest private employers in communities. ..and are leveraging their demand for housing and services, directing their purchasing power into nearby areas, and expanding net of their security forces to cover adjacent areas (p. 107). In Local we also learn from experience of other anchor institutions, such as new Denver International Airport in Colorado. Out of initial friction between city, Stapleton Redevelopment Foundation, and other stakeholders arose a partnership that created a vision and a development framework focused on open space. As Thomas A. Gougeon writes in Stapleton's Public-Private Planning, this effort went well beyond describing a physical framework for redevelopment. …

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