Bradley Flamm

Suitable Housing Placement: A GIS-Based Approach

The intent of this paper is to operationalize some aspects of local sustainability in a suitable development scenario and to compare its energy-use and environmental impacts to trend development. After a discussion of suburban sprawl, local sustainability, and the current state of the Pennypack Creek Watershed in the Philadelphia metro region, these residential location scenarios are presented. The latter were created using geographic information systems software and are based on projections from the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission. The impacts of the scenarios on energy use, air emissions, greenhouse gas emissions, water quality, and biological integrity were estimated with very few data, and the effect on the value of generic ecosystem services was assessed. The suitable development scenario was 29% better in terms of energy use and air and greenhouse gas emissions, 2.4% worse on water quality, and 2.6% better with respect to biological integrity. Given its net beneficial results, recommendations for policies to engender suitable development are made, and an outline of an implementation plan is proposed. Thoughts regarding refinements of the present work and the applicability of the methods used here to other watersheds conclude the work.

Public Transit Catchment Areas: The Curious Case of Cycle–Transit Users

The coordination of bicycle and transit modes has received close attention from public transit planners and researchers in recent years as transit agencies around the world have installed bicycle racks on transit vehicles, implemented bicycles-on-trains policies, and made other efforts to facilitate bicycle-transit integration. Many planners presume that the catchment area for transit is enlarged by these efforts, but geographic changes in the size of catchment areas have not been documented effectively. The research project reported in this paper assessed the distances traveled on bicycle by cycle-transit users (CTUs) and included (a) those who used bicycles as a means of access to transit stops and stations and (b) those who bicycled to and traveled on transit with their bicycles. A mixed-methods approach was employed, with a literature review; a survey of CTUs in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and San Francisco, California; and telephone interviews with a subset of survey respondents. Responses in the two cities made it possible to define CTU characteristics and behavior in detail. The responses highlighted two intriguing findings. First, transit catchment areas could be much larger for CTUs than for traditional transit users who accessed transit buses and rail on foot. Second, the concept of a cycle—transit catchment area was seen to be complex because of the variety of travel opportunities that cycle-transit coordination policies presented to transit riders. CTUs took advantage of larger catchment areas to reduce their travel costs, and they used those catchment areas in curious and less predictable ways.

Book Review: Engineering Philadelphia: The Sellers Family and the Industrial Metropolis

could be envisaged, with a need to acknowledge that the European Union and national governance frameworks and constitutions present a wide range, but also suggested or required, models of regionalism. Thus, the literature and discussions Thibert uses are drawn overwhelmingly from North America, which is not a problem, but it does bring out the nature and form of the differences on the two sides of the Atlantic. It would be interesting, therefore, if the concept of “virtual regions,” introduced and applied by Herrschel (2012), had been recognised in the study of cross-border Niagara– Buffalo. Similarly, the lessons from Greater Montreal could have been contrasted with the plans for Greater Manchester in England where the concept of a powerful mayor for a city region is being proposed by the national government. After his dissection of the formation, development, and success of collaborations in these three regions, Thibert summarizes the lessons in two concluding chapters. In comparing the documentary and interview evidence, he argues that the central state has a critical role to play in initiating, enabling, financing, and lending credibility to regional collaborations; and each of these are particularly significant given the natural inherent reluctance for lower levels to lose powers to others at the same or higher levels in the hierarchy. Nevertheless, there are often opportunities and essential roles for policy entrepreneurs to assume active roles in these collaborations, though the state is usually essential in ensuring that policies are enacted. Counter to this, it is demonstrated that there are often negative impacts of top–down strategic interventions, with limited or nonsustained partnerships on the one hand, and ineffective but planned collaborations on the other, fooling local elected officials that by acting together they are “tackling the region’s metropolitan problems and making a difference,” even when nothing is actually being achieved (229). In his final comments, Thibert returns to a key argument he has followed throughout: the process of collaboration may be more important as an outcome in the long run than any movement toward regionalism itself. By extension, he then suggests that crisis is required to promote effective regional collaboration by policy makers and other interested groups, recognizing the common problem and so being able to take advantage of shared knowledge and practice across the region. As an urban planner, with a key interest in environmental issues and protection, he identifies natural disasters and catastrophes through climate change as being potential drivers for regional collaboration. In concluding that “trust and good will” are essential in successful collaboration and cooperation, and that these cannot be imposed, his findings are consistent with those in other studies of industrial clusters, partnership working, and coherent economies and societies. This book is engaging, deepens the literature from a position informed by being an active urban planner, and provides a contribution that enlightens the reader on the three specific examples while also offering wider insights and opportunities for further research and understanding. The potential to research contrasts and similarities between models and practices of governance within and between North America and Europe are also enhanced by this study. This book should be of interest, and a worthwhile addition to the bookshelf, of urban and regional analysts in academia and in policy-making circles. It should be consulted at least by early career researchers, master’s, and doctoral students in planning, economic geography, and urban and regional studies as a model of how to transform their dissertation into a book with impact.