Browsing by Subject "Plan quality evaluation"

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We are not planning for equity: an analysis of contemporary comprehensive plans
(2023-12) Ogusky, Adam; Oden, Michael; Paterson, Robert G; Lentz, Roberta; Mueller, Elizabeth
This research analyzes contemporary comprehensive plans for the extent and quality of their inclusion of equity, in addition to analyzing the meanings of equity found in the plans and how such meanings relate to plan quality with regard to equity. Despite the growing importance of equity to planning practice, education, and scholarship, the term remains murky, frequently left undefined and underspecified. Moreover, there is very little research indicating the degree to which equity is included in planning work and how the term is employed. Using comprehensive plans as a proxy for planning practice, this project fills this gap in our knowledge of equity and planning. A sample of 25 large U.S. cities with recently passed comprehensive plans was analyzed using a modified plan quality evaluation rubric. Plans were found almost without exception to be of very low quality with regard to their inclusion of equity. In particular, plans largely failed to define equity and were especially poor at delineating problems with regard to equity, remaining almost entirely silent on current and historical conditions of inequality and injustice in their jurisdictions. However, plans were found broadly to claim an interest in equity despite the poor quality of its incorporation, indicating a wide rhetoric/substance gap with regard to their treatment of equity. To analyze the meanings of equity the plans were characterized according to a typology of theories of justice drawn from the literature on justice from moral and political philosophy. On aggregate, plans tended to be characterized as highly liberal and system-maintaining with regard to their conceptions of equity, which aligned with theories of justice that were conservative (versus ideal), distributive (versus corrective), non-comparative (versus comparative), and individual-oriented (versus group-oriented). Plans that took a view of equity aligned with system change-oriented conceptions of justice correlated with higher quality with regard to their treatment of equity, especially plans that took a corrective justice-oriented view of equity.