Hemalata C. Dandekar

Commentary: A Multiuniversity Planning Studio at the World Planning Congress An Opportunity for International Planning Education

The need to internationalize planning education is increasingly apparent, but planning programs in the United States have varying capabilities and resources to incorporate an international dimension in their curriculum. Offering a multiuniversity studio and study abroad course in Mexico, in conjunction with the World Congress in 2006, provided an opportunity to collaboratively address this need. The synergies that accrued are worth considering. An argument is made for adopting similar studio efforts as an integral component of future World Planning Congresses.

Rural Planning: General

Rural planning is about developing and protecting physical and human capital and addressing the at times conflicting goals of economic development and resource conservation. It encompasses both the development of agriculture and natural resources – minerals, forests, fisheries, and scenery – and the conservation of these along with improving the access of rural people to infrastructure, education, housing, and amenities. Rural planning aims to bring about economic development, yet maintain the sustainability of renewable resources and reduce income disparities. It has been variously defined, including that it is place-based in focus and pertains to places that are nonurban, small town, and open spaces. The goals of rural planning post–World War II varied depending on the political ideology of nation states that formed the first, second, and third worlds. Forces of globalization during recent decades have erased many of the international differences in rural planning. The current global challenge of rural planning is to build up and diversify the rural economy, reduce inequity, and exploit the land and natural resources in a way that allows renewal and is sustainable.

Hosting an International Conference on Women and Shelter: Pedagogic and Logistical Insights

The experience of hosting an international conference at the University of Michigan on the topic of shelter, women, and development provided the authors of this paper with two kinds of insights. First, there was useful substantive information which broadened our delineation of the subject area addressed. Second, we developed a heightened awareness of university and institutional administration and the logistical issues that must be attended to if faculty/student initiatives are to succeed. This paper extracts some elements of this experience in the areas of substantive inquiry, logistical arrangements, and implications for pedagogy, which may be useful to other academics considering similar activities. In this paper we favor the process issues involved in designing the intellectual content of the conference and its output, believing them to be applicable to other initiatives which seek to weave together pedagogy, research, and action, depending on the culture and the mandate of the host institution.

Rural issues in urban planning: current trends and reflections

ABSTRACT While planning has always had an urban emphasis it has also always been concerned with urban–rural linkages and the interactions between urban and rural as well as with the people, economy, and environment of rural places. This symposium issue of International Planning Studies presents recent scholarship on rural planning from around the world.

Shifts in rural planning in the US and India

ABSTRACT The premise that rural planning is place specific is demonstrated in this paper by tracing the changing emphasis of rural planning in the US and India. Approaches to rural development in the two countries, particularly as pertinent to the agriculture sector, intersected following Indian independence in 1947. Indian planners drew on the experience of the US at inducing changes in agriculture based on scientific experimentation and a government-financed extension system for dissemination and adoption and developed similar systems for India. Salient aspects of rural planning in the two countries are delineated including historical settlement, modern farms, corporate farms, globalization, rural services, poverty alleviation, equity, access, and environmental, economic and social sustainability. Their two trajectories illustrate how the emphasis of rural planning in each country is shaped by the complex specificities of rural places. The current convergence in the US and India on environmental sustainability, communications systems, housing, education, job training, and areas of inequity reflect global trends in rural planning.

Shelter and Development

The importance of access to housing in promoting well-being, enhancing the quality of life, and enabling productivity has been largely recognised and translated into enabling policy. Efforts to create affordable housing for the workforce, largely assumed to be living in nuclear, one-wage-earner families, have been initiated. But left out of this approach has been the plight of those not in the workforce – the elderly and children – and women, particularly single women who are heads of households having dependent children. In such single-women-headed households, entitlement to house offers many benefits that promote the resident’s access to development. The needs of poor-women-headed households are many. The role that shelter, defined as house and surrounding supportive neighbourhood, plays in the well-being and productivity of women and their dependent children is significant. This article points out some reasons why access to housing, broadly defined as shelter, is a key variable in these women’s ability to survive economically and obtain the benefits of development. It notes ways in which policy needs to be formulated to improve poor women’s access to the valuable asset of shelter.

Peter Marris (1927–2007): Planning in an International Context

Over half a century, Peter Marris worked as a sociologist, planning consultant, and professor in England, Kenya, Nigeria, and the United States. Marris began his social research in the East End of London and went on to study family structure, housing patterns, entrepreneurship, and redevelopment in many urban contexts across the world. Throughout his long career he extended his analysis of how the powerful push uncertainty onto the powerless. For an audience in urban planning, he demonstrated how to analyze the personal societal consequences of complex public decisions. For an audience in sociology, psychiatry, and psychology, he connected theories of loss and attachment to broader questions of urban policy. He taught students at MIT, UC Berkeley, UCLA, and Yale to think about these challenging issues. Section I, Life and Work of Peter Marris, begins with a biographical essay by Dolores Hayden of Yale University, who explores how his many books and articles advanced understanding of the complex intersection of private life and public life. This is followed by Charles Hoch’s essay, Planning Theory and Social Change. Hoch, from the University of Peter Marris

Educating First and Third World Development Planners: The Role of Qualitative Evaluations

I was introduced to Dominick’s cafe as a student in 1968. The Department of Architecture, at The University of Michigan, where I had just enrolled for graduate work, was at that time housed in the building that stands across from the cafe. My advisor, Steve Paraskevopoulos, had taken me there to begin my orientation to higher education in the United States. I had never been given this much attention by any faculty member during my five years of undergraduate life at the University of Bombay, not even when I received prizes — and I had won all the ones offered in the College of Architecture — nor when I graduated at the top of my class in the university.