An Item Response Theory Model of Inter-Regional Collaboration for Transportation Planning in the United States

Regional governments and regional intergovernmental organizations play an increasingly important role in land use and transportation planning in many countries. In the U.S., regional organizations such as metropolitan planning organizations provide regional forums and institutions to coordinate actions of local government necessary to overcome collective action problems that result from the fragmentation of local authority. Their regional scope allows them to directly address collaboration problems or broker collaborative arrangements among local governments within their boundaries. Nevertheless, the scale of regional problems often extends beyond the boundaries of these regional entities. Thus, collaboration across regional governance organizations is necessary to address problems that have multi-regional impacts, such as large transportation projects. Extant research generally measures regional collaboration based on counts of collaboration actions undertaken, but this does not account for the fact that some are symbolic, while others require resources and commitment. Drawing insights from the institutional collective action framework, we advance an explanation for how regional organizations overcome collaboration risks to participate in collaborative solutions to regional and multi-regional problems. The analysis employs a unique national survey of metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) and adds a novel application of item response theory (IRT) to capture differences in risk or difficulty among collaborative actions. The IRT results offer support for our ICA-based explanation of collaboration commitments. The implications of the findings for theory development and empirical study of RIGOs are discussed in conclusion.

From Impasse to Improvisation: Grand Paris Express as a Negotiation Agent in a Fragmented Metropolis

This article examines a conflict between two narratives for the future development of Greater Paris – the 'just city' versus the 'global city' – embodied in two competing regional rail proposals, one put forward by the Regional Council and the other by the French State. The first, Arc Express, was developed by Regional Council to reduce existing territorial inequity. A counterproposal, the Grand Huit, was formulated by the French state to serve a network of new economic clusters. A political impasse between these conflicting plans, though a prelude to broader institutional transition, empowered new actors in the negotiation of metropolitan planning. It also engendered experimental tools, such as collective territorial development agreements, with which local stakeholders leveraged the state's agenda to achieve their own objectives and gained greater metropolitan citizenship.

City Best Practices to Improve Transit Operations and Safety

Public, fixed-route transit services most commonly operate on public streets. In addition, transit passengers must use sidewalks to access transit stops and stations. However, streets and sidewalks are under the jurisdiction of municipalities, not transit agencies. Various municipal policies, practices, and decisions affect transit operations, rider convenience, and passenger safety. Thus, these government entities have an important influence over the quality, safety, and convenience of transit services in their jurisdictions. This research identified municipal policies and practices that affect public transport providers’ ability to deliver transit services. They were found from a comprehensive literature review, interviews and discussions with five local transit agencies in the U.S., five public transportation experts and staff from five California cities. The city policies and practices identified fall into the following five categories: Infrastructure for buses, including bus lanes, signal treatments, curbside access; Infrastructure for pedestrians walking and bicycling to, and waiting at, transit stops and stations; Internal transportation planning policies and practices; Land development review policies; Regional and metropolitan planning organization (MPO) issues. The understanding, acknowledgment, and implementation of policies and practices identified in this report can help municipalities proactively work with local transit providers to more efficiently and effectively operate transit service and improve passenger comfort and safety on city streets.

Rooting metropolitan planning in critical theory and participatory practices: A university planning experience in Belo Horizonte, Brazil

The paper aims at contributing to the discussion about planning theory and participatory practices in the Global South by focusing on a planning experience for the Belo Horizonte Metropolitan Region, Minas Gerais State, Brazil, led by faculty, researchers and students at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, between 2009 and 2019. The initiative unveils the University autonomy in designing and carrying out the metropolitan analyses and planning proposals, in adopting theoretical principles and methodologies and, in developing an outreach programme tightly linked to education and research, resulting in significant improvements in planning education, innovations in planning methodology and the potential for rooting radical planning practices in the metropolitan context. First, objects and subjects of the experience are introduced, together with the three phases of the process: the drafting of a metropolitan plan known as the Integrated Development Master Plan for the RMBH; the Metropolitan Macro-Zoning; and the review of municipal Master Plans within RMBH. Secondly, the trajectory and influences of Brazilian urban and metropolitan planning are reviewed to the extent that they fed into the experience. The discussion of municipal planning processes leads to an assessment of the experience’s main achievements. The concluding section offers some thoughts on rooting metropolitan and urban planning in critical theory and participatory practices, as a means to contribute to discussions of planning practices in the Global South.

Policy intent meets reality: the conformance of 20 years of metropolitan compact activity centre policy in greater Brisbane, Australia

For two decades, increasing concerns about urban sustainability have driven Australian metropolitan planning efforts to call for fundamental changes to existing urban forms. These changes are intended to develop more compact cities characterised by a poly-nodal network of dense activity centres. In this paper we provide the first long-term, comprehensive evaluation of the implementation of this policy in greater Brisbane. We combine census, employment, Google Street View, and aerial imagery data to evaluate the conformance of greater Brisbane’s nominated activity centres against policy intent and find that the policy has conformed poorly. These results lend support to a growing number of studies that suggest Australia’s market led approach to implementing strategic land use policy is ineffectual.