Elizabeth Howe

The Ethics of Contemporary American Planners

Abstract This article, based on a study of a large, randomly selected group of American planners, looks at what planners think is ethical, and why. Although many planners have similar views about what is ethical, sharp differences are also clearly apparent. Chief among the reasons for these differences is role orientation. Consistently, the most politically oriented planners have a more liberal interpretation of what is ethical than the most technically oriented ones, with a third group—high on both the technical and political dimensions—falling in the middle. Other factors such as political views, attitude towards agency, and propensity to express values in the job were also found to be important in explaining why some planners think differently than others about what is ethical. The implications of these findings are drawn for planning theory, practice, and education.

Role Choices of Urban Planners

Abstract This paper uses a national sample of 614 members of the American Institute of Planners working in public agencies, to look at role choices of planners. It first discusses a two-factor model of role, placing it in the context of existing models of role in planning; and then develops a typology of three roles—the technician, the politician, and the hybrid. Factors which may contribute to the choice of one role over another are then examined, with particular focus on the way planners come to be “hydrids,” since this role has been little explored.

Normative Ethics in Planning

Normative ethics provide guidelines for deciding what makes right acts right. Planners who have written explicitly about ethics have taken a wide variety of approaches-descriptive, analytical, and normative. Normative approaches in planning have been shaped by the dispute in philosophy between two major approaches to ethics. Utilitarianism focuses on the goodness of consequences in deciding what is right. Deontological approaches focus on rules, rights, and actions that are right in themselves. Because neither of these approaches is fully satisfactory by itself; others have been developed that attempt to deal with particular weaknesses. Rule-utilitarianism and intuitionism are discussed here. Either could be thought of as the approach that underlies professional codes of ethics.

Homesharing for the Elderly

Elderly people often have needs which younger people do not have, for financial assistance, security, companionship, and help with activities of daily living These needs can be met in a variety of ways, a number of which involve innovative hous ing arrangements. This article will focus particularly on homesharing as a housing option, whereby older people with room to spare in their homes share their housing with others, either for rent or in exchange for services The study is based on a national survey of administrators of 35 homesharing programs and on in-depth, face to face interviews with homeproviders and live-ins in one program.

Case Management for Homesharing

The use of a formal organization to create and foster informal helping relationships poses case management issues that are unique. This article explores the case management issues that surface within one type of formally-created informal helping relationships-the homesharing match. A typology of homesharing matches is derived, and case management issues specific to each type are discussed using case study data.

Responsive Planning of Social Development Programs in the Third World

Effective planning and implementation of programs and projects has been a consistent problem in third world countries, and never more so than in programs concerned with social development or poverty. Problems stemfrom the administrative structures and styles of implementing bureaucracies that make programs inaccessible to the poor or unresponsive to their needs. Three mechanisms for making program planning and implementation more responsive are social analysis, citizen participation, and decentralization. After analyzing the administrative context in which planning and implementation of programs takes place, this article surveys the large and scattered literature on the arguments for and against these three approaches to reform.

Reviews : ■ Knowledge and Public Policy: The Search for Meaningful Indicators Judith Eleanor Innes Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, New Jersey, second expanded edition, 1990. 367 pp. Appendix, bibliography, index. 9" x 6".

cus on local conditions. The introductory chapter, by Beauregard, makes the connection to earlier theoretical writings (Gordon 1984; Harvey 1985), as well as to studies of local politics, history, and economics. The aim is to show that national industrial change produces metropolitan spatial transformation, conditioned by the &dquo;contingencies&dquo; of local events and personalities. There are three weaknesses to the volume. First, because the papers were separately conceived and written, city-to-city comparisons are difficult, a problem reflected in the introduction and conclusion. Second, the chapters provide too few details to allow readers to match eco-