A CHOICE THEORY OF PLANNING

PLANNING THEORY AND TECHIQUES

ABHISHEK JANI (01) 10/26/2013

First Semester Master of Urban and Regional Planning Department of Architecture Faculty of Technology & Engineering The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Vadodara.

Guided by:- Neha Sarvate

ABSTRACT
A choice theory of planning emphasizes planning profession in terms of set of conceptual values, planning purposes, planning characteristics, planning process, value formulation, clients, responsibility, analysis, means identification etc. The theory also suggest about the new methods to be adopted by various institution for the betterment of student and so rethink about the various aspects of planning beyond physical planning. The theory also states that the present structure of planning profession is not sufficient for a planner to make his/her vision broad in terms of interlining the different subjects.

INTRODUCTION
A choice theory of planning describes what is planning? How it is done or says how it should be done? Planning is set of procedure. This theory analyse the planning and identifies the steps of the procedures. Further this shows the steps in field were planning is practiced.

UNDERSTANDING PLANNING AND CHOICE THEORY

Planning can said as the process of determining future action with different number of choice. Here determine means finding out and assuring. Thus appropriate meaning is used for making judgements concerning preferred states it followed that planning goes as per the decided goals. Here action means specific or particular so the question of general ends and particular/specific means arise. Thus from this definition, action is the outcome/output of the planning efforts. Therefore, theory of planning is made to problems of effectuation. The choices containing planning process are made at three levels: Section of ends and criteria, identification of alternatives including general suggestion (prescriptive) and selection of decided alternative, guidance to action forward. Alternative is important and gives particular planning its special character. Each choice needs the exercise of judgment. Judgement permits planning. Alternative is important and gives particular planning its special character. The achievement of ends, exercise of choice, orientation to the future, action, comprehensiveness are some of the necessary components of planning acts. Each choice needs the exercise of judgment. Judgement permits planning. Planner faces realities and concerns, and as he strives to identify appropriate courses of action, the planner engages in choice at three fundamental levels. These jointly constitute the

process of planning. They are: value formulation, means identification, and effectuation. They are the necessary and sufficient steps constituting planning. Each represents an

analytically useful category, for associated with each step are distinct methods of operation and problems of theory. Value formulation is an important step in planning process. Dealing with values is based on distinction between fact and value. Facts and values are closely related. The separation of fact and value in itself requires certain assumptions and possibly violation of the dictates of reason. The planner deals with facts to predict the nature of the future. Such predictions take account of a variety of different factors in the environment as well as likely effects of alternative controls. Such predictions permit comparison with

conditions that are desired. Knowledge of gaps between desired and predicted conditions may suggest the nature of further controls needed. Values exist in a hierarchy. The

hierarchical relation of values provides a means for whatever testing of values is possible. A given value may be viewed both as a means and an end. Values are inescapable elements of any rational decision-making process or of any exercise of choice. Since choice permeates the whole planning sequence, a clear notion of ends pursued lies at the heart of the planners task, and the definition of these ends thus must be given primacy in the planning process. Planners role is to identify distribution of values among people, and how values are weighed against each other. To do this, the planner must determine relevant client groups. The planner, as an agent of his clients, has the task of assisting them in understanding the range of the possible in the future and of revealing open choices. He does this in two ways: one involving facts and the other, values. Planner cannot, as an agent of his clients, impose his own ideas of what is right or wrong. The planner should consider values from two perspectives: first, as the clients internal states of valuation: second, externally, as the entities which are valued. The final product of the value formulation stage of planning should be alternative sets of objectively measurable goals and criteria. Objective measures are prescribed first because they limit the possibility of abuse through arbitrary decision. Second, if an objective of planning action is to achieve ends, then the ends selected must be achievable.

UNDERSTANDING THEORY THROUGH EXAMPLE OF CURITIBA, BRAZIL

Further to understand theory this example explains its possibility or connection with reality. Curitiba is the capital city of the State of Parana in Southern Brazil. The city is located about 250 kilometres [150 miles] southwest of Sao Paulo near the coastal mountain range. Current data shows a population of some 1.6 million distributed within city limits of about 430 square kilometres [165 square miles] and a total metropolitan area population of some 2.2 millioni. This city shows how values and approach can change the existing situation and future. They approached it as a city for people, not for cars. This shows that they give more importance to the people of the city and also to environment. There is nothing special about Curitiba's history, location or population. Like all Latin American cities, the city has grown enormously - from 150,000 people in the 1950s to 1.6 million now. It has its share of squatter settlements, where fewer than half the people are literate. Curibita's secret, insofar that it has one, seems to be simple willingness from the people at the top to get their kicks from solving problems. Those people at the top started in the 1960s with a group of young architects who were not impressed by the urban fashion of borrowing money for big highways, massive buildings, shopping malls and other showy projects. They were thinking about the environment and about human needs. They approached Curibita's mayor, pointed to the rapid growth of the city and made a case for better planning. Jaime Lerner was one of these architects. In 1971 he was appointed mayor by the then military government of Brazil. Given Brazil's economic situation, Lerner had to think small, cheap and participatory which was how he was thinking anyway. He provided 1.5 million tree seedlings to neighbourhoods for them to plant and care for. ('There is little in the architecture of a city that is more beautifully designed than a tree,' says Lerner.) He solved the city's flood problems by diverting water from lowlands into lakes in the new parks. He hired teenagers to keep the parks clean. He met resistance from shopkeepers when he proposed turning the downtown shopping district into a pedestrian zone, so he suggested a thirty-day trial. The zone was so popular that shopkeepers on the other streets asked to be included. Now one pedestrian street, the Rua das Flores, is lined with gardens tended by street children. Orphaned or abandoned street children are a problem all over Brazil. Lerner got each

industry, shop and institution to 'adopt' a few children, providing them with a daily meal and a small wage in exchange for simple maintenance gardening or office chores. Another Lerner innovation was to organise the street vendors into a mobile, open-air fair that circulates through the city's neighbourhoods. Concentric circles of local bus lines connect to five lines that radiate from the centre of the city in a spider web pattern. On the radial lines, triple-compartment buses in their own traffic lanes carry three hundred passengers each. They go as fast as subway cars, but at oneeightieth the construction cost. The buses stop at Plexiglas tube stations designed by Lerner. Passengers pay their fares, enter through one end of the tube, and exit from the other end. This system eliminates paying on board, and allows faster loading and unloading, less idling and air pollution, and a sheltered place for waiting - though the system is so efficient that there isn't much waiting. There isn't much littering either. There isn't time. Curitiba's citizens separate their trash into just two categories, organic and inorganic, for pick-up by two kinds of trucks. Poor families in squatter settlements that are unreachable by trucks bring their trash bags to neighbourhood centres, where they can exchange them for bus tickets or for eggs, milk, oranges and potatoes, all bought from outlying farms.( The Green
exchange was introduced in 1990, this scheme was to encourage the poor to recycle their waste in return for food produce or bus transport tickets. This has proved to be a valuable service for the poor as they live in favelas which are hard for the recycling team to access. They deliver their waste to a collection point and exchange for goods. The programme costs the same as landfill but has the advantage of improving their health, reducing litter and creating jobs. 30,000 people benefit from this scheme.)

The trash goes to a plant (itself built of recycled materials) that employs people to separate bottles from cans from plastic. The workers are handicapped people, recent immigrants, alcoholics. Recovered materials are sold to local industries. Styrofoam is shredded to stuff quilt for the poor. The recycling programme costs no more than the old landfill, but the city is cleaner, there are more jobs, farmers are supported and the poor get food and transportation. Curitiba recycles two-thirds of it garbage - one of the highest rates of any city, north or south. Curitiba builders get a tax break if their projects include green areas. Jaime Lerner says, 'There is no endeavour more noble than the attempt to achieve a collective dream. When a city accepts as a mandate its quality of life; when it respects the people who live in it; when it respects the environment; when it prepares for future generations, the people share the responsibility for that mandate, and this shared cause is the only way to achieve that collective dream.'

CONCLUSION
The planner deals with values to discover which future conditions are presently desired for the future is, in the first instance, purely a matter of values. Often planners first predict the nature of the future, then help set in motion programs that fulfil this prophecy, and thus limit mens aspirations. Planners should not let such predictions about the future limit the range of choice, for controls can alter the future and can make predicted outcomes improbable.

REFERENCES
Theory part was summarised from an article by Paul Davidoff and Thomas A. Reiner A choice theory of planning Example part was Summarised from an article by Donella Meadows 'The city of first priorities'