Ellen M. Bassett

Innovation and Climate Action Planning

Problem: Cities play a fundamental role in the production of greenhouse gases and, as a result, are places where proactive mitigation and adaptation can occur. While increasing numbers of municipalities have revised or developed climate action plans (CAPs), our understanding of the impetus to plan for the climate challenge, processes for creating climate plans, and their resultant form remains limited. Purpose: We analyzed municipal CAPs to understand both their processes and their products, including the extent to which they represent innovation in planning. We ask the following questions: 1) Why do localities decide to undertake climate action planning, and what are the plans’ chief drivers and obstacles? 2) How have localities structured their climate action planning processes? 3) How frequently are particular types of actions included in local CAPs, and how do localities determine which to adopt? Methods: We read and evaluated the content of 20 CAPs from municipalities of a range of sizes and locations using a scoring matrix, reconciling coding differences. We also interviewed 16 individuals associated with 15 of the plans and coded notes from these interviews to identify themes relevant to the processes of plan development. Results and conclusions: There is great diversity in what constitutes a CAP. Some plans are motivational documents, while others are extremely detailed implementation plans with concrete goals, clear objectives, and well-reasoned methods. The decision to prepare a CAP reflects the existence of local political will and leadership, which also influences the planning processes used, the form of the resultant plan, and the actions it identifies. We found CAPs to rely heavily on well-known land use and transportation solutions to the climate challenge such as enhanced transit, compact community design, and green building codes, to be implemented both by local government and the broader community. Informants reported that their CAPs favored actions that were highly visible (e.g., tree planting) or produced immediate results (e.g., energy or cost savings from weatherization). Takeaway for practice: The CAPs we studied were special-purpose plans, and planning departments and planning commissions were not central to plan development in the majority of cases reviewed here. We advise professional planners to involve themselves more in CAP processes. Research support: We obtained funding for this project through a faculty enhancement grant from Portland State University.

Retrieving the Baby from the Bathwater: Slum Upgrading in Sub-Saharan Africa

Drawing on project experiences over a thirty-year period and academic literature, this paper focuses on the question: what has worked in slum upgrading in Africa? We find that efforts to regularize land titles to confer de jure security of tenure have not been encouraging. By contrast, infrastructure investment efforts have performed better—they have conferred de facto security of tenure and also ameliorated living conditions. Over time project-based learning and microlevel innovations have helped improve upgrading performance. To create broader and sustainable benefits, however, upgrading needs to go to scale. We propose an upgrading strategy with the following elements—a programmatic approach that links slums to citywide systems, is channelled through government, and combines a community-demand and participation approach with supply-side constraints and rules of access.

Living Conditions, Rents, and Their Determinants in the Slums of Nairobi and Dakar

Using data from 3,715 slum households in Nairobi and Dakar, we find living conditions for tenants are worse than for owners, although tenants pay significant rents. Compared to Nairobi, both nominal rents and living conditions are higher in Dakar. Despite differences in respective slum rental markets, determinants of rent in both cities are strikingly similar. Analysis suggests that tenure mix—proportion of tenants to owners—affects what is available for rent and overall living conditions. Ensuring a certain proportion of housing is owner occupied may be instrumental for delivering greater choice for tenants and better living conditions for all slum residents. (JEL R21)

The living conditions diamond: an analytical and theoretical framework for understanding slums

What constitutes a ‘slum’ is much debated in the urban poverty and affordable housing literature. We argue that a focus on living conditions can help clarify this and present a framework, the living conditions diamond, for detailing living conditions and determining how the settlements we deem ‘slums’ compare with each other and with nonslum settlements. The diamond distils living conditions into four dimensions: (i) tenure, (ii) infrastructure, (iii) unit quality, and (iv) neighbourhood and location. This framework depicts conditions in graphic terms enabling comparison of conditions within and across cities. The diamond moves us beyond the notion that slums are homogeneously poor in quality, and facilitates analyses that can reveal why they differ. Settlements in Nairobi, Kenya and Dakar, Senegal are compared.

Influencing design, promoting health

This article provides details of the goals and accomplishments of the Land Use and Health Resource Team composed of public health officials, planners, researchers, extension agents, advocacy organizations, and the development community. The team seeks to understand local land use and health relationships, increase community engagement, and facilitate positive change in policies and the built environment. The teams action plan is (1) research local land use and health relationships; (2) undertake public education and community mobilization; (3) identify interventions, seek funding, and pilot tools to integrate health and planning; and (4) monitor outcomes. In 2005, the team produced a report presenting a picture of local conditions related to health and the built environment. Findings were unveiled at a stakeholder conference, and local best practices and future actions were discussed. A geographic information system-based health impacts tool for use by planners in site plan review was developed. Funding was obtained to facilitate neighborhood organizations to complete self-assessments and develop interventions related to community environments, physical activity, and healthy eating. The team achieved initial goals of creating partnerships and spurring awareness. Future activities include wider field testing of the health impacts tool, participation in a health-oriented master planning process, and monitoring change in health risk behaviors related to changes in the built environment.

Pursuing Equity and Justice in a Changing Climate Assessing Equity in Local Climate and Sustainability Plans in U.S. Cities

Despite interest in the importance of social equity to sustainability, there is concern that equity is often left behind in practice relative to environmental and economic imperatives. We analyze recent climate and sustainability action plans from a sample of twenty-eight medium and large U.S. cities, finding that few made social equity a prominent goal of their plans, although there is a discernible trend in this direction. We present case studies of three cities that incorporated social equity goals, concluding that sustainability planning efforts provide strategic opportunities to pursue equity goals, especially where capacity exists among community-based actors to intervene and participate.

Collaborative Planning for Clean Energy Initiatives in Small to Mid-Sized Cities

Problem, research strategy, and findings: A growing number of small to mid-sized cities are implementing initiatives to promote energy conservation, efficiency, and renewable energy use in their communities. We need to better understand how these cities have approached this issue and the processes by which they adopt clean energy initiatives. We surveyed representatives of small to mid-sized cities to identify the types of clean energy initiatives they have adopted, the processes by which they were developed, and the obstacles encountered along the way. We also conducted 10 in-depth interviews with representatives of targeted high- and low-adopter cities. While many of the cities are aggressively pursuing clean energy opportunities in their municipal operations, far fewer are taking action to promote clean energy community wide. The high-adopter cities that have developed community-wide clean energy initiatives often did so using a variety of community engagement and stakeholder outreach methods. Takeaway for practice: Local officials who wish to promote clean energy use should start with energy efficiency and renewable energy investments for municipal facilities. Subsequent community-wide clean energy programs should focus initially on incentives for local residents and businesses, and should be framed in a way that emphasizes both environmental and nonenvironmental benefits. These initiatives should be developed through collaborative planning strategies, which can help educate residents about the benefits of clean energy initiatives, create dialogue with stakeholders who would be affected by these new initiatives, and introduce valuable outside expertise to the planning process.

Framing the Oregon Land Use Debate An Exploration of Oregon Voters’ Pamphlets, 1970-2007

While there has been extensive examination of the property rights movement, there is little research into the way we talk (and fight) about property rights and community planning in the public sphere. Using a content analysis approach, this study analyzes language and argumentation about land use planning in the state of Oregon as contained in arguments over ballot measures published in the state’s voters’ pamphlets. The debate is bifurcated: initially a fight over the locus of control, recent contestation has been over the impacts of the system. A variety of themes were deployed in arguments over time; “fairness” appears only in 2000. Using insights from cognitive linguistics, the article argues that planners need to develop a nontechnocratic language that expresses the values central to planning.

All Sound, No Fury? The Impacts of State-Based Kelo Laws

The 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Kelo v. City of New London, Connecticut (545 U.S. 469 (2005)) was one of the Court’s most controversial decisions in the first decade of this century and without a doubt the most controversial in the areas of takings, land use, and property rights. That this is true can be verified by the breadth of media coverage about the case and the extent of state legislative action following the Court’s decision (see Sagalyn 2008 and Nadler et al. 2008 for discussions of media coverage; Jacobs and Bassett 2010a and 2010b and Castle Coalition 2007 for data on state legislative action). As of 2010, 43 states have passed so-called state-based Kelo laws.

Urban Governance in a Devolved Kenya

In 2010 Kenya adopted a new constitution that ushered in an ambitious decentralization reform, known as devolution. The country has established 47 autonomous counties with executive and legislative branches. Under the reform, cities and urban areas have been reclassified using population thresholds that have lead to the elimination of virtually all urban local governments. Using primary data drawn from document/legal analyses and key informant interviews, this chapter presents a case study of devolution as it is unfolding in Kenya, with a particular focus on the implications of the reform for the country’s rapidly growing urban areas. By eliminating urban local governments, devolution has ironically reduced democratic representation and raised potential obstacles to effective urban management and for the governing of cities in general.