{"id":296,"date":"2017-06-07T14:25:55","date_gmt":"2017-06-07T14:25:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ajhassoc.com\/?p=296"},"modified":"2018-02-01T16:21:40","modified_gmt":"2018-02-01T16:21:40","slug":"what-i-learned-when-taking-a-planning-theory-class-many-years-ago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ajhassoc.com\/index.php\/2017\/06\/07\/what-i-learned-when-taking-a-planning-theory-class-many-years-ago\/","title":{"rendered":"What I Learned When Taking a Planning Theory Class Many Years Ago"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry\">\n<p>Kermit Wies, at the 2016 Innovations in Travel Modeling Conference, gave a plenary speech that was honest, soul-bearing, and depressing.\u00a0 He was lamenting about the inaccuracies of travel models and his inability to defend them.\u00a0 Kermit is not alone.\u00a0 Many travel modelers have experienced this sinking feeling that their model might be spewing out seriously wrong information.\u00a0 Thus, we can explain the overwhelming disinterest in back-casting as a validation method.\u00a0 We know the back-cast will look bad, so why expose old wounds?\u00a0 Maybe a dose of planning theory might just make us improve our self-images.<\/p>\n<p>When in the UCLA planning program, I was required to take a course in planning theory from John Friedman.\u00a0 Friedman has been hailed as one of the foremost planning thinkers of the last 4 decades.\u00a0 At the time of my course, Friedman had just written <em>Retracking America: A Theory of Transactive Planning<\/em>. The key to getting an \u201cA\u201d in Friedman\u2019s class, I was told by a previous-year student, was for me to regurgitate his concepts in my own words.\u00a0 Unfortunately, Friedman wrote so abstractly that I had almost no idea of what he was trying to say.\u00a0 In spite of the fact that the Planning program at UCLA (it was not yet a department) shared a physical and administrative home with the Architecture program, Freidman was reacting against a philosophy of planning as espoused by Daniel Burnham and others with architectural backgrounds who defined urban planning in the early part of the 20<sup>th<\/sup> century.\u00a0 My only hope was to go back to Friedman\u2019s sources in the sociological and political science literature and pray they explained things more clearly.<\/p>\n<p>I was particularly drawn to the writings of Charles Lindblom and his disciples.\u00a0 Lindblom was perhaps best known for his 1959 article with the amusing title, \u201cThe Science of &#8216;Muddling Through\u2019\u201d.\u00a0 There was something about Lindblom\u2019s incrementalism that resonated with me.\u00a0 Incrementalism is now weakly embedded into today\u2019s LRTP process, but it is poorly understood by planners and citizens alike.\u00a0 An incrementalist just assumes that long range plans will fail to materialize as intended.\u00a0 This is something us more experienced transportation planners have witnessed often in our careers.\u00a0 There are too many unanticipated events.\u00a0 It is nonsensical to think that we can convincingly model the impacts of transportation improvements over a 30- or 40-year time horizon.<\/p>\n<p>I am not trying to imply that modeling future transportation systems is doomed to failure.\u00a0 I am instead saying that it matters little whether we can correctly make that 40 year forecast with any degree of accuracy. \u00a0An incrementalist will also tell us that 30- or 40-year forecasts are preposterous, prima facie.<\/p>\n<p>From time to time I have tried to write out the case for \u201cincremental forecasting\u201d, but each time I met with resistance from editors or co-authors.\u00a0 My last attempt was excised from an early draft of NCHRP Report 765.\u00a0 I may never be able to publish a full exposition on the subject because my writing doesn\u2019t seem to be any less muddy than Friedman\u2019s.<\/p>\n<p>When I took systems analysis as an undergraduate I learned the first day that systems were composed of components.\u00a0 A component in the parlance of transportation planning is a \u201cproject\u201d.\u00a0 And I can tell you for a fact that project-level forecasts can often be quite satisfying.\u00a0 Creating a system-level forecast from a sequence of project-level forecasts would not be simple; nor would it get us much closer to a solution for our quandary without some fundamental changes in our thought processes and our conversations.<\/p>\n<p>We need to make the incremental nature of planning far more integral to all our procedures, including forecasting.\u00a0 There are different ways this can happen.\u00a0 Most importantly, we need measures and vocabulary to show how mistakes accumulate over time through weak assumptions about scenarios, misspecifications of our alternatives, and inaccuracies in our theories of travel behavior.<\/p>\n<p>I am not suggesting a lowering of expectations.\u00a0 I <em>am<\/em> saying that we need a style of forecasting that does not unreasonably and irresponsibly raise expectations in the first place, but still fulfills the needs of long range planning.<\/p>\n<p>If you believe I am on the right track or can otherwise contribute to this discussion, please speak up.<\/p>\n<p><em>Alan Horowitz, Chapel Hill, June 7, 2017<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kermit Wies, at the 2016 Innovations in Travel Modeling Conference, gave a plenary speech that was honest, soul-bearing, and depressing.\u00a0 He was lamenting about the inaccuracies of travel models and his inability to defend them.\u00a0 Kermit is not alone.\u00a0 Many travel modelers have experienced this sinking feeling that their model might be spewing out seriously &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-planning-theory","category-travel-modeling","anons"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - 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