Issue Generating Assessment: Bridging the Gap Between Evaluation Theory and Practice?

Abstract

To bridge the gap between post-modernist planning theory and largely modernist planning practice it is necessary that post-modernist ideas are made practical. The gap between theory and practice is particularly evident in plan evaluation. This paper advances a systemic qualitative approach (the issue generating assessment) for evaluating planning alternatives in city and regional plans. The purpose of the IGA is to identify the main issues that should be deliberated, rather than to choose among the alternatives. An application of this approach in the Jerusalem District shows that while this approach is readily applicable, it will not lead to more meaningful deliberations in the absence of a suitable institutional context and planning culture.

Keywords:

• deliberative planning
• evaluation methods
• Israel
• practice and theory

Notes

1. A similar general sequence can also be found in the PSM literature. See Hammond et al. (1999) for an example.

2. Most of the PSM were developed and applied in managerial contexts, where the number of stakeholders is relatively limited, and arguably it is easier for them to see the importance of participation and hence to commit the necessary personal resources. This is not the case in regional planning contexts, where there are numerous potential stakeholders, and where the fatigue factor noted by Bickerstaff and Walker (2005), may limit the extent of participation.

3. The municipal boundary of Jerusalem includes areas annexed by Israel after the 1967 Six Day War. It transcends the 1949–1967 Armistice line (the green line) in the east. However, to the west of Jerusalem the district boundaries conform to the pre-1967 green line.

4. These do not include the West Bank, to which the Israeli Planning and Building Law does not apply.

5. For a description of the Israeli planning system, see Alterman and Hill (1986). At the time of writing, major changes are proposed in the Israeli system, but these are of little importance for the purpose of this paper.

6. The area west of Jerusalem is mountainous and considered environmentally sensitive. At the same time the secular and wealthy population has been suburbanizing westward. As district plans do not detail intra-urban development, the district plan did not have to contend directly with the most sensitive issues within Jerusalem—most notably the question of Jewish–Arab relations within the city, though it did examine the implications of these issues for the rest of the district. Thus, while the plan did not explicitly address the issue of a large-scale return of settlers from the West Bank to Israel, it did account for a very significant increase in population within the district, thereby arguably addressing the possibility of such a return. Still, the specifics of these issues are marginal for the purpose of this paper, and for sake of brevity, these issues are not further detailed here.

7. The national planning doctrine is a term coined by Shachar (1998) to present the set of broad planning principles of national-level planning (including both national and district plans, which are prepared at the behest of the NPBB). These principles have guided Israeli planning since the early 1990s.

8. This can be seen from the difference between rankings of alternatives by economists vis-à-vis planners that was noted in the previous section.