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Scientific Reasoning and Methods in Urban Planning

Tschangho John Kim
International Regional Science Review 2013 36: 36 originally published online 18 April
2012
DOI: 10.1177/0160017612441365

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Planning

Tschangho John Kim1

Abstract
In all of his numerous publications, Andy Isserman has consistently advocated the
development of new and suitable theories and methods for planning for the future.
The purpose of this brief article is to reflect Andy Isserman’s scientific contributions
to Urban and Regional Planning and to reaffirm the need to search for and develop
appropriate scientific reasoning and methods to solve urban and regional issues in
the Information Age.

Keywords
research and development, urban and regional spatial structure, regional science and
planning education, land use planning

Introduction
The purpose of this brief article is to reflect Andy Isserman’s scientific contributions
to Urban and Regional Planning and to reaffirm the need to search for and develop
appropriate scientific reasoning and methods to solve urban and regional issues in
the Information Age. By ‘‘scientific reasoning,’’ I mean the principles of reasoning
relevant to the pursuit of scientific activities that include experimental design,

1
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Champaign, IL, USA

Corresponding Author:
Tschangho John Kim, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, 111 TBH, 611 Taft Dr, Champaign, IL
61820, USA
Email: tjohnkim@uiuc.edu

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Kim 37

hypothesis testing, and the interpretation of data for explaining, predicting, and con-
trolling empirical phenomena in a rational manner.
In 1976, I accepted a position at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.
I arrived in Champaign in early August to look for a house while my family waited
back in New Jersey. Upon arrival, I met Andy who offered a room in his house in
which I lived during my search. This initial contact marked the beginning of an era
filled with lengthy conversations with Andy on the subject of scientific reasoning
and methods in Urban and Regional Planning.
In all of his numerous publications, Andy has consistently advocated the devel-
opment of new and suitable theories and methods for planning for the future. ‘‘We
could begin to develop the theory that we need in planning, theory with implications
for the future, theories that are useful in anticipating change rather than the usual
social science theory that seems to fit what has recently occurred but can tell us
so little about what will happen next’’ (Isserman 1985, 491). Andy’s main message
to planners was ‘‘think big and make big plans’’ (Isserman 1985, 488). His research
sought to accomplish that mandate by searching for theory of and theory in planning,
defining what planning ought to be and what appropriate scientific methods should
be developed for making and implementing plans (Isserman 1977, 1985; Isserman
and Lever 1993).

Urban Planning
The Bureau of Labor Statistics of the US Department of Labor describes urban and
regional planners as those who ‘‘develop long- and short-term plans for the use of
land and the growth and revitalization of urban, suburban, and rural communities
and the region in which they are located. Before preparing plans for community
development, planners study and report on the current use of land for residential,
business, and community purposes. Their reports include information on the loca-
tion and capacity of streets, highways, airports, water and sewer lines, schools,
libraries, and cultural and recreational sites. They also provide data on the types
of industries in the community, the characteristics of the population, and employ-
ment and economic trends. Using this information, along with input from citizens,
planners try to optimize land use for buildings and other public facilities. Planners
prepare reports showing how their programs can be carried out and what they will
cost.’’1
The American Planning Association defines good planning as that which ‘‘helps
create communities that offer better choices for where and how people live. Plan-
ning helps communities envision their future and helps them find the right balance
of new development and essential services, environmental protection, and innova-
tive change.’’2
Urban Planning is both a science and an art. It involves elements that exist in arts
such as history, and planning theory and philosophy. Political science is a science,
and therefore if one does not follow the scientific method, he or she will not achieve

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38 International Regional Science Review 36(1)

acceptable results. But, successful politicians and good public policies are often
the result of the artistic use of scientific conclusions, rather than the product of a sci-
entific process. Likewise, successful planners and good plans for a city are the
results of the artistic use of rational conclusions based on scientific reasoning and
methods. At the same time, developing an urban and regional plan requires pro-
cesses, assumptions, rational methods, and conclusions like a scientific inquiry,
and a regular reexamination of past assumptions, methods, and conclusions. There
are objective criteria by which to evaluate planning actions and planning actions
that do not meet set criteria. Surely, aspects from both science and art are required
to develop urban and regional plans.
In this article, I would like to examine what scientific reasoning and methods
have been missing in plan making in the past and to highlight what scientific
reasoning and methods ought to be deployed when developing plans for future
cities.

Missing Scientific Reasoning and Methods in Plan Making

Zoning: How to Represent the Public’s Interests?
New York City (NYC) adopted the first zoning regulation in 1916, which
became the blueprint for zoning for the rest of the country. NYC further
developed more complex zoning regulations on floor-area ratio, air rights, and
density-specific needs of neighborhoods. In 1924, the Standard State Zoning
Enabling Act was enacted by the US Department of Commerce and accepted
by most states with almost no change. The US Supreme Court upheld the con-
stitutionality of zoning ordinances in 1926. Houston has no zoning ordinances
and voters there have rejected efforts to implement zoning three times: in
1948, 1962, and 1993. However, many private properties in Houston have ‘‘deed
restrictions’’ that limit the future uses of land and that have effects similar to
those of zoning systems.
Typical zoning regulates what activities are acceptable on particular lots such as
open space, residential, agricultural, commercial, or industrial. It limits the densities
at which those activities can be performed, the height of buildings, the amount of
space structures may occupy, the location of a building on the lot according to set-
backs, the proportions of the types of space on a lot, and how much open space,
paved space, and parking must be provided. Some commercial zones even specify
what types of products may be sold by particular stores.
Zoning profoundly affects the welfare of the citizens in a city and we have
witnessed both its positive and negative aspects through past litigations. A host
of scientific reasoning and methods are to be exercised to develop zoning regula-
tions that enhance the welfare of the citizens the most (Kim 1978). Some critical
questions that need to be answered before developing zoning regulations include
the following:

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Kim 39

 Whose welfare is to be enhanced by the proposed zoning?

 How can we derive zonings that enhance the welfare of all stakeholder groups?
 What are agreeable criteria?
 How can we build a zoning model that enhances the welfare of the entire
community?

Can Two-Dimensional Planning Models Help with Planning?

The most important difference between a city and a rural community is the intensive
use of land. In any economic establishment, lower structures have been preferred
over high-rise buildings as long as the cost of access to work places is not prohibitive
(Gordon and Richardson 1997). And yet the reason that skyscrapers exist in a city is
due to the scarcity of land. This fact calls for three-dimensional planning models
(Rho and Kim 1989), however, there are no operational three-dimensional planning
models that exist.
More than ever, three-dimensional planning models are needed to research and
plan for a sustainable city. Conventional wisdom says that a compact city is more
energy efficient than a city of similar size with dispersed patterns of land use and
lower densities. The transportation costs for horizontal movements would certainly
be higher in the latter. However, no one has yet carefully analyzed nor documented
any verification of this conventional wisdom.
High-rise buildings require additional resources to maintain and operate
the elevators, deliver water to the full height of the building, and remove large con-
centrations of waste. For example, the activities conducted within the Empire
State Building use 181,000 gallons of water, produce about 35 tons of waste, and
consume 0.1 million kilowatt-hours each day. The annual cost for energy for the
building is estimated to be $11.6 million.3 Willis Tower in Chicago uses a total
annual energy equivalent to 187,500 barrels of crude oils.4 Two-dimensional
models of urban planning are unable to properly analyze urban activities since
two-dimensional models cannot capture the three-dimensional nature of urban
activities (Kim 1986).
The following questions, utilizing scientific reasoning and methods, are neces-
sary to develop operationalized urban planning models for sustainable cities:

 What welfare criteria are to be included in the model to evaluate policy objec-
tives for the benefit of the citizens in a city?
 Should three-dimensional urban activities, that is, the intensive use of land, be
modeled in a normative or positive framework?
 How will urban activities and supporting transportation systems be integrated to
enhance the welfare of the city as a whole?
 What kind of model is needed to seek out land use and transportation plans that
consume the least energy?
 How can such a model be developed?

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40 International Regional Science Review 36(1)

Planning for a Megacity: How to Reconcile Conflicting Interests between the

Individual City and the Megacity?
The Los Angeles Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) has jurisdiction over
122 incorporated cities. The Washington Council of Governments (COGs) is com-
prised of twenty-one local governments surrounding our nation’s capital, plus area
members of the Maryland and Virginia legislatures, the US Senate, and the US
House of Representatives. While each individual city has its own right to plan, a
major function of the MPO and COG is to coordinate plans for the enhancement
of the welfare of the system as a whole.
A typical MPO and COG has the mission to enhance the quality of life and com-
petitive advantages of the metropolitan region by providing a forum for consensus
building and policy making; implementing intergovernmental policies, plans, and
programs; and supporting the region as an expert information resource. MPOs and
COGs provide a focus for action and develop sound regional responses to such
issues as the environment, affordable housing, economic development, health
and family concerns, human services, population growth, public safety, and trans-
portation. Under the home rule, however, MPOs and COGs are very ineffective
governance systems from a planning viewpoint in reconciling multiple decision-
making authorities.
There are a host of matters to be coordinated for the system as a whole. For exam-
ple, transportation networks do not stop at city boundaries, air pollution does not
recognize jurisdictional boundaries, and work and home locations are frequently not
in the same city. To make effective plans for megacities, scientific reasoning needs
to be exercised and methods must be developed to answer many critical questions
including the following:

 How are holistic solutions planned across multijurisdictions?

 How can a balance between two conflicting concerns, that is, the welfare of the
megacity and the interests of the individual city, be planned for?

In answering those questions, scientific reasoning and methods developed in game

theory and operations research could shed light on many issues. Many megacity
issues can be formulated using the theoretical framework of Stackelberg’s leader–
follower game where the MPO is the leader and each city is a follower. Many such
issues could also be formulated in multilevel programming problems.
The most effective transportation plans at the megacity level are not necessarily
the sum of the most effective transportation plans for the individual cities. For
example, the total minimum travel cost of a system as a whole in a megacity is not
the sum of the minimum travel costs of the individual cities. Knowing that each
individual city’s transportation plans are usually based on findings regarding a
traveler’s perceived minimum cost travel patterns, an example of a multilevel
programming model could be:

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Kim 41

 Upper-level objective function: minimize total system’s travel time.

 Lower-level objective function: minimize individual city’s total travel time.
 Subject to: minimize each traveler’s perceived travel time.

In both of the examples above, the system’s optimum can be found assuming that
MPOs and/or COGs function as the leader while preserving each individual city’s
functions as a follower, but maximizing each individual city’s welfare.

Newly Emerging Scientific Reasoning and Methods for

Future City Planning
I would like to address two major trends that affect the shape of future urban space:

 Global urbanization trends.

 Emerging new technologies.

Global Urbanization Trends

According to the United Nations, more than half of the world’s population lived in
urban areas in 2010 and the world population will reach 8.2 billion by 2030 with
more than 60 percent of this total expected to live in urban areas. This means it is
necessary to build new cities over the next twenty-five years or to expand the exist-
ing metropolitan areas to form megacities that can accommodate 1.65 billion addi-
tional urban residents. This rapid trend is the result of many complex economic,
social, demographic, and political factors and poses unprecedented challenges to
the functioning of cities and the quality of life for urban dwellers. The resources
needed for accommodating new urban dwellers will be enormous. Therefore, an
important question arises: Can an urban area be sustainable?
The problems caused by the greater dispersal of urban activities, which has led to
increased distances from the home to the workplace, shops, schools, and leisure
facilities, can be mitigated by pervasive use of ubiquitous access technologies. Con-
gestion caused urban Americans to travel 4.2 billion hours more and to purchase an
extra 2.9 billion gallons of fuel for a congestion cost of $78 billion in 2005. In addi-
tion to a higher cost in time and money, traffic that is slowed by congestion causes a
great deal of pollution. While those emissions kill 30,000 people each year in the
United States, car collisions killed an additional 40,000 in 2007.

Emerging New Technologies

A plethora of information and communication technologies (ICTs) are available and
alternative new technologies are emerging. Ubiquitous access technologies provide
relatively new sets of concepts, practices, and standards. The emergence of these
technologies need to be understood within a broader context of both paradigm

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42 International Regional Science Review 36(1)

changes in computing technologies—from centralized to distributed, mobile, and

ubiquitous computing—and the advancement of ICTs including ubiquitous
geographic information, radio-frequency identification, location-based services,
global positioning systems, and sensing technologies.
The advancement of ICTs over the last few decades has negatively impacted soci-
ety and created a digital divide. Before the division, most people shared much of the
same information. Now, however, people without access to ICTs can be isolated and
live in nonintersecting worlds with distinct sets of socioeconomic patterns. Ubiqui-
tous access technologies will positively impact society on a large scale if it becomes
pervasive and provides access to more powerful tools for more people in more
places. These technologies could motivate people to interact with one another and
connect the digital apartheid that typically segregates space and places.

Summary and Conclusion

In 2007, the National Academy of Engineering identified the twenty greatest tech-
nological achievements of the twentieth century as listed in a footnote.5 All of these,
with the possible exception of spacecraft, have affected our modern day lives,
particularly those of urban dwellers. The relationship between urbanization and
technological change has not been entirely a function of technological variables.
Nonetheless, there are numerous examples where technological variables signifi-
cantly changed the urban development patterns.
Cities have been established and developed for various defensive, economic, and
political reasons in the past. Whatever the cause for the establishment of a city, it is a
major place for both producing and consuming technologies. A modern city is a
place where all available science and technologies are deployed and realized. This
is a major reason to employ interdisciplinary and integrated approaches when mak-
ing plans for cities as Isserman has advocated and asserted (1977, 1985); incorpor-
ating the scientific reason and methods from other disciplines will maximize not
only the welfare of the citizens of individual cities but also the welfare of the resi-
dents of the entire metropolitan area.
Urban planning includes a study of urban society and the way people live in it.
The lessons gained from the formulation of zoning regulations, the limitations of
two-dimensional models to properly map urban areas, and the failure to develop
suitable methodologies for making plans that enhance the metropolitan area as a
whole while maximizing the welfare of individual cities, all call for the adoption
of available scientific reasoning and methods including newly emerging technolo-
gies and/or development of suitable scientific methods to be utilized for planning
for future cities.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article.

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Kim 43

Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of
this article.

Notes
1. Accessed on January 20, 2012, www.bls.gov/oco/ocos057.htm.
2. Accessed on January 20, 2012, http://www.planning.org/aboutplanning/whatisplanning.htm.
3. Accessed on January 20, 2012, http://www.esbnyc.com/tourism/tourism_facts.cfm?CFID
¼26581266&CFTOKEN¼60379676.
4. Accessed on January 20, 2012, http://01941e2.netsolhost.com/icon/documents/Icon%20
News%20Release%20-%20Announcement.pdf.
5. They are Electrification, Automobile, Airplane, Water Supply and Distribution, Electronics,
Radio and Television, Agricultural Mechanization, Computers, Telephone, Air Conditioning
and Refrigeration, Highways, Spacecraft, Internet, Imaging, Household Appliances, Health
Technologies, Petroleum and Petrochemical Technologies, Laser and Fiber Optics, Nuclear
Technologies, and High-performance Materials. Accessed on January 25, 2012, http://
www.greatachievements.org/.

References
Gordon, Peter, and Harry W. Richardson. 1997. ‘‘Are Compact Cities a Desirable Planning
Goal?’’ Journal of the American Planning Association 63 (1): 95–105.
Isserman, Andrew M. 1977. ‘‘Planning Practice and Planning Education: The Case of Quan-
titative Methods.’’ Bulletin of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning 15:1–7.
———. 1985. ‘‘Dare to Plan: An Essay on the role of the Future in Planning Practice and
Education.’’ Town Planning Review 56 (4): 483–91.
Isserman, Andrew M., and William F. Lever. 1993. ‘‘A Tale of Two Centres: Case Studies in
the Institutional Evolution and Survival of Urban and Regional Studies.’’ Urban Studies 30
(2): 229–36.
Kim, T. J. 1978. ‘‘A Model of Zoning for a Metropolis.’’ Environment and Planning A
10-6:1035–47.
———. 1986. ‘‘Modeling the Density Variations of Urban Land Uses with Transportation
Network Congestion.’’ Journal of Urban Economics 19:264–76.
Rho, Jeong Hyun, and T. J. Kim, 1989. ‘‘Solving a Three-Dimensional Urban Activity Model
of Land-Use Intensity and Transportation Congestion.’’ Journal of Regional Science
29 (4): 595–613.

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