Abstract
Although participatory planning has become a well-established emphasis in the planning field, planners often find that land-use outcomes conflict with community goals, resulting in a dissatisfied citizenry. I argue that these conflicts often result from disconnects between steps in the planning process, which tend to occur in instances where the “baton” of implementation passes from one document or one agency to the next. I identify four common areas of disconnect within the planning process, propose explanations for each of the disconnects, and suggest ways to overcome this tendency for the planning process to break down.
Introduction
Why do we, as planners, elected officials, and citizens, make plans? We plan because we care about the future of our communities, we have opinions about what should happen there, and we think the plan can help make that vision a reality better than would simply letting the real estate market take its course (Hopkins 2001, 26). Over the past two decades, planners have made serious efforts to improve the process by focusing attention on collaborative planning (Healey 1992; Innes 1996; Burby 2003) and methods to improve plan quality (Berke and French 1994; Dalton and Burby 1994; Burby and May 1997). Despite good intentions, the influence of many plans ends almost as soon as they are adopted, since their recommendations never advance through the implementation process to regulation and enforcement (Calkins 1979; Talen 1996b; Brody and Highfield 2005).
There are several reasons for this lack of follow-through. First, there may be a fundamental conflict between agreed-upon goals, making full implementation impossible, or different agencies involved in the process may have different goals (Meyerson and Banfield 1955, 270, 274). Another important reason for such difficulties in implementing plans results from the fact that the planning process involves a series of handoffs—passes of the baton—between different individuals, decision-making bodies, and documents. These handoffs all serve to move the original community vision for the plan through adoption to implementation. The fact that so many people and documents are involved can make for a dynamic and collaborative process. But plan implementation, like many other policy implementation processes, is complex, “involving numerous participants, a host of differing perspectives, and a long and tortuous path of decision points that [have] to be cleared” (Pressman and Wildavsky 1973, 94). As Pressman and Wildavsky explain, each additional “decision point” and “clearance” (agreement) in the process, each additional step and individual actor or agency, introduces complexity (1973, xxiv). This complexity can mean that sometimes the baton gets dropped along the way, decreasing the effectiveness of the plan and resulting in land-use outcomes that do not reflect the original community vision.
In this exploratory paper, I propose four places within the local governmental comprehensive planning and implementation process where disconnects are likely to occur. While acknowledging the complexity of the implementation process, I suggest that planners focusing attention on the specific points in the process that involve handoffs may improve the eventual agreement between goals and outcomes. I assess the usefulness of the concept of these disconnects using four case studies of recent planning processes in Michigan townships and find that disconnects seem to be occurring in these places and indeed having a disruptive effect on implementation. I then propose ways to overcome these tendencies for the planning process to break down, with the hope that focusing attention on these disconnects will increase implementation success and, accordingly, the legitimacy and impact of plans.
Review of Plan Implementation Literature
Studying plan implementation is methodologically complex (Talen 1996b, 255), both because the plan implementation process takes place over many years, even decades, making it difficult to decide how much time to give a plan before judging its effectiveness (Baer 1997, 332), and because plan implementation involves a wide range of actors, both public and private, and often multiple layers of government. For these reasons, studies that attempt to evaluate an entire implementation process are relatively rare (Calkins 1979; Talen 1996a; Brody and Highfield 2005), although, as I will discuss, such studies are becoming more common. Beyond methodological complexity, a larger problem for planning may be that our understanding of plan implementation is often incomplete because many implementation studies overlook the important spatial aspect of land-use planning (Talen 1996b, 251). Since Talen’s 1996 review and critique of plan implementation literature, several studies have attempted to address the spatial nature of plan implementation evaluation. I base the following review of plan implementation literature on her 1996 typology, with particular emphasis on these more recent, explicitly spatial, studies.
Evaluation Prior to Plan Implementation
Any policy implementation process involving multiple steps and multiple actors quickly becomes complex, as is analyzing such a process (Pressman and Wildavsky 1973). One way of taming the complexity of the plan implementation process is by breaking the process down into stages. However, a common result of this approach has been to focus on one stage to the exclusion of understanding the process as a whole (deLeon 1999, 23). For example, many quite valuable implementation studies have focused on analyzing planning documents while deemphasizing analysis of outcomes.
Many of these studies have tended to focus on explaining variation in and effects of plan quality. Plan quality analysis commonly includes measures of goal articulation, data comprehensiveness, and implementation mechanisms (Norton 2005a, 2008) because it is believed that plan quality can help explain whether plans are implemented: higher quality plans should lead to more thorough implementation (Dalton and Burby 1994; Knaap, Hopkins, and Donaghy 1998; Norton 2005a). Other studies, while still focusing on plan quality, have framed implementation itself differently, looking to local plans for evidence of the implementation of state-imposed plan element requirements (Berke and French 1994; Burby and May 1997; Berke et al. 2002). The plan quality literature provides an important foundation for studies that focus on plans’ effects on outcomes, since it is vital to be able to benchmark plans in terms of their completeness, coherence, and explicitness, but these studies typically do not include such analysis themselves.
Evaluation of Planning Practice
Many implementation-related studies of planning behavior have focused on stakeholder involvement and public participation because the authors hypothesize that high-quality public participation is associated with higher levels of plan implementation (Berke and French 1994; Baer 1997; Wondolleck and Yaffee 2000; Burby 2003; Bengston, Fletcher, and Nelson 2004; Kartez and Casto 2008). Conversely, a plan developed without community buy-in will sit on the shelf either because of lack of interest or because of political backlash (Norton 2005a, 55). However, even a planning process with seemingly reasonable levels of public participation can serve to disempower local participants who are not part of an elite, or who fail to communicate in the “right” way (Tauxe 1995). These studies form an important first step in evaluating the implementation process, as they help identify what is to be implemented through the planning process: the community vision.
Policy Implementation Analysis
Almost forty years ago, Pressman and Wildavsky called attention to the fact that evaluation research of policy implementation was almost nonexistent (1973, xxi). In their view, implementation meant accomplishing the goals set out in a policy. The two concepts, policy and implementation, were necessarily conjoined, as a policy that was never implemented was worth little (Pressman and Wildavsky 1973, 143). Implementation of a policy was so complex, however, involving many actors, decisions, and agencies, that we should be “pleasantly surprised” when a policy actually got results (Pressman and Wildavsky 1973, xxi). To moderate the complexity for analytical purposes, public policy and political science researchers have long focused on the “policy process” by which policies and laws are enacted and carried out. Lasswell (1951) first articulated the notion that the policy process is made up of discrete steps and proposed a “delineated, sequential policy process framework” (deLeon 1999, 21) with which to analyze a complex process involving many actors. This approach breaks the policy process into discrete steps by which a policy is enacted and implemented, and allows a more manageable focus on one or more individual stages (Jenkins-Smith and Sabatier 1993, 2; Baer 1997; Kelly and Becker 2000, 19-20; Berke, Godschalk, and Kaiser 2006, 318).
Evaluation of the Implementation of Plans
In many ways, policy implementation analysis was a natural fit to evaluate land-use plans, since plans often contain or lead to policies of their own. But there continued to be a debate in the literature over whether performance or conformance-based criteria should be used to evaluate plan implementation in this category, since the two approaches conceptualize differently how we should measure the impacts of plans (Laurian et al. 2004; Brody and Highfield 2005; Norton 2005b).
As planning implementation scholarship began, some planners borrowed from Pressman and Wildavsky’s (1973) concept of implementation, in which there should be a direct relationship between goals and outcomes. This came to be called a conformance-based approach to plan implementation. Others conceptualized implementation differently, emphasizing process rather than outcome, and held that the plan may be considered implemented if it is referenced and/or consulted during subsequent planning decisions (Alexander and Faludi 1989). In other words, the plan should influence thinking around land-use decision making, but its implementation should not be judged on strict adherence to its goals. Both approaches are still used to evaluate implementation, sometimes in combination with each other (Berke et al. 2006), although a conformance-based approach is often more quantitative and more actionable (Laurian et al. 2004, 472) and may enhance planners’ influence when conformance-based standards are used to evaluate implementation (Berke et al. 2006; Berke, Godschalk, and Kaiser 2006).
Although planners had begun to focus their attention on implementation, using techniques from policy analysis, Talen noted in her 1996 critique of planning scholarship around implementation that “planners have not yet developed an equivalent ability to link plans and outcomes” (252). Because of the spatial nature of plans, “assessing the implementation of spatial, physical development plans requires the development of unique—perhaps undiscovered—methodologies” (Talen 1996b, 253). Since then, with the help of new spatial analysis technology, an emerging body of literature has begun to make the important connection between policy implementation and spatial impacts of plans and policies.
One of the first attempts at a spatial approach to analyzing plan implementation was that of Alterman and Hill in 1978, long before Talen’s article appeared, which involved a hand-drawn grid of cells to compare planned land use and actual outcomes in Israeli municipalities. They found that the land-use plans were substantially implemented, and suggested that the relatively high level of implementation might be partly explained by the plans’ relative simplicity and the simplicity of the implementation process (Alterman and Hill 1978, 282). It took many years after that for the availability of GIS to reduce the labor intensity of land-use change analysis enough for it to become commonly done (Li and Yeh 2004; Brown et al. 2005), but the connection between plans and land-use change still needed to be made explicit.
In 1996, looking at broad development patterns, Nelson and Moore found that implementation of Oregon’s statewide growth management policy was much more effective in regions dominated by a strong central city; in other areas, the spatial patterns of development were much less consistent with the statewide land-use policy (253). More recent studies that focus on the relationship between plans (as opposed to policies, as in Nelson and Moore) and spatial outcomes, which Baer refers to as “post-hoc evaluations” (1997, 332), have often used the permitting process as a proxy for implementation. By understanding and mapping the location of granted permits (e.g., wetland permits), they determine whether officials are directing development in accordance with their adopted plans (Laurian et al. 2004; Brody and Highfield 2005, 161; Berke et al. 2006). Permitting data may be problematic in evaluating implementation, however, since permits issued may not reflect the actual buildout (Chapin, Deyle, and Baker 2008).
A few recent studies have attempted to include the spatial dimension of plan implementation while avoiding the problems associated with permits by taking a parcel-based GIS approach to assess land-use conformance with a stated goal, in one case a state mandate (Chapin, Deyle, and Baker 2008) and in the other a local future land-use plan (Loh 2011). Both of these parcel-based implementation evaluation approaches found widespread nonconformity with the plans’ stated goals.
In summary, there is a very well-developed literature dealing in depth with individual pieces of the plan implementation process, from participation to plan quality to permitting. Planning scholars are starting to incorporate the spatial component of implementation analysis called for 15 years ago by Talen (1996b). Borrowing from public policy, planners also understand well, at least in the abstract, the role of complexity in implementation. But what we still lack is an overall conceptualization of how complexity enters the planning process and, accordingly, where problems are most likely to arise. In the next section, I offer one such approach.
Four Potential Disconnects in the Local Planning Process
Local governments that choose to plan and zone must attempt to carry out a complex planning process that offers ample opportunity for breakdowns. The process involves members of the public, officials from at least three levels of government, developers, and several separate documents that are supposed to be consistent with one another and work together. The process is supposed to go something like this: First, citizens and other stakeholders (which can include business owners, NGOs such as housing or environmental groups, other government agencies such as housing authorities or transportation departments, public or quasi-public institutions such as churches and universities, and representatives from other levels of government, to name a few) help create a unified vision for the community’s future. Planners and officials draft plan goals and objectives based on that community input and their analysis of previous plans and community conditions and forecasts. Within the plan, planners set out implementation steps to guide future government action. After appointed and elected officials approve the plan, they implement the plan, both by making land-use decisions that conform to the goals and future land-use map and by amending the zoning ordinance text to include language recommended in the plan. Finally, officials enforce the zoning ordinance through the site plan approval process and ongoing monitoring efforts. Eventually, when conditions have changed because of time or other external events, the process begins again.
This process contains several elements that are known to hinder effective implementation. Within the process, there are many decisions and agreements involved, each one increasing the complexity of the process and making implementation less likely (Pressman and Wildavsky 1973, xxiv; Alterman and Hill 1978, 282). Decisions around goal setting, plan language, implementation responsibilities, and ordinance adoption and enforcement all require an investment in implementation for the process to move forward. The necessity of agreements between public participants and appointed officials, between officials and staff, between elected and appointed officials, and developers and staff also increase the complexity of the process.
Given all this complexity, it is hardly surprising that the process often fails to produce outcomes that are consistent with plans’ original goals (Meyerson and Banfield 1955, 270; Pressman and Wildavsky 1973). But local planning processes, as outlined above, do usually follow a predictable course of events (even though individual political circumstances and sources of conflict may differ). This is where the concept of the disconnects may help. Each of these points of disconnect requires an individual or body to act to move the process forward. If there is no action, there is no mechanism by which implementation can occur. Perhaps by focusing on these few critical points in the process—the points of decision or agreement—when forward progress is apt to be stalled by conflict or inaction, we could achieve greater conformance between goals and outcomes, thus making our planning exercises more legitimate and more valuable.
The following diagram (Figure 1) of the comprehensive planning process identifies four opportunities for disconnects in the process, labeled 1, 2, 3, and 4: places where the handoffs in the master planning 1 relay fail to occur, disrupting the intended chain of implementation between the goal and the desired outcome. The first two potential disconnects take place within the plan-making phase of the planning process. The second two potential disconnects take place in the implementation phase of the planning process.
The four potential disconnects in the planning process: Each dashed arrow represents a point where the planning process could break down
First, there may be a disconnect between the true desires of community residents and the stated goals: a handoff must occur between stakeholder priorities and what is formally recorded as part of the public participation process. Complexity is introduced here by the sheer number of potential stakeholders who must come to enough of an agreement on goals toward which the process can move forward. This is often a problem of process. 2 In an ideal process, community stakeholders come to consensus around goals in a visioning session organized by the planners and Planning Commission (Innes 1996). Once the Planning Commission has gathered community feedback, its members, with the help of staff planners or planning consultants, write the plan goals and objectives. If the visioning session or other forms of community input are absent or of poor quality, the resulting goals are unlikely to reflect true community preferences (Arnstein 1969). Even in an apparently successful public participation process, however, it is possible for input to be dominated by a subset of residents with a particular viewpoint when among the community at large there are actually conflicting opinions (Tauxe 1995; Fiorina 1999; Hibbard and Lurie 2000, 192). On some particularly controversial issues, even a well-designed process will not produce consensus, thereby creating the potential for resident dissatisfaction with the resulting goals. Finally, even in an ostensibly well-functioning process, the different actors and agencies involved may tacitly have different agendas and goals (Meyerson and Banfield 1955, 270), which can eventually cause problems as those agendas and goals conflict with each other.
The second potential disconnect, between plan goals and suggested implementation steps, occurs when the Planning Commission and planners write the plan. This handoff is between two processes, the visioning or public participation process and the plan writing process. It requires taking the feedback of the first process and agreeing on and turning it into actionable goals. Complexity is introduced here by the necessity of the Planning Commission agreeing on goals and staff translating them into actionable implementation steps. This disconnect may be thought of as a problem of not having the capability to write a good plan. Implementation steps may be missing from the plan or be inconsistent with goals, perhaps because of poor plan writing or a lack of awareness about the plan’s purpose (Norton 2008, 18). The goals themselves may conflict with each other, which may lead to the absence of implementation steps (because it becomes clear that both goals cannot be implemented) (Meyerson and Banfield 1955, 269-70, 73). Of course, implementation may still occur without the inclusion of implementation steps in the plan. The inclusion of such steps, however, if sufficiently specific, can make it much easier for the Planning Commission to take action.
The third potential disconnect is between suggested plan implementation steps and codification in the zoning ordinance. Since master plans in most states have the weight of guidelines rather than law (Baer 1997, 335), they must be implemented through changes in the zoning ordinance if the township or city wishes to enforce their recommendations. Therefore, a handoff must occur between the goals and implementation steps of the plan and the ordinance language that codifies them. Complexity is introduced here by the requirement for approval of the legislative body, which is often much more subject to changing political currents. While the impetus for amending the zoning ordinance may originate from the Planning Commission, the Township Board/City Council, or staff planners’ amendments to the zoning ordinance are typically approved by the Planning Commission, and then submitted to the Township Board/City Council for ratification. Amendments to the zoning map may be initiated by the municipality or by landowners wishing to change the zoning of their land. The involvement of the legislative body in this step means that the third potential disconnect often has its roots in politics, as Planning Commissioners and elected officials may have different priorities.
The final potential disconnect is between zoning ordinances and enforcement. There is, then, a handoff between the bodies that write and approve zoning ordinances and those who monitor outcomes. If zoning ordinances reflect plan goals but are unevenly enforced, meaningful implementation will not occur (Burby, May, and Paterson 1998). Enforcement can happen at the Planning Commission level, when staff and the Planning Commission approve site plans, but also at the building inspector or zoning official level, when the official works on site to ensure compliance with ordinances and codes. This may be an issue of resources, but it is also a problem of administration. Complexity is introduced here as the municipality must decide how aggressively it will pursue violators, in effect deciding how well to implement the last step. As we will see, completely uniform enforcement is often not an option for low-capacity communities.
Methodology
This study proposes four places where the planning process is likely to break down, using case studies to test and illustrate the model. In this study, the cases are township planning processes. Focusing on these small-town planning processes provides two advantages. First, planning in small communities, while still complex, may involve a smaller number of actors, stakeholders, and issues than comparable processes in larger cities. This relative simplicity may make the process easier to understand (Alterman and Hill 1978; Sabatier 1999, 4). It also allows us to see democracy at work, since the processes and officials involved are relatively accessible. In addition, local planning is ubiquitous in the United States: it happens in every state, even in states where the “locality” is the county. This ubiquity means that the issues that arise within the case study planning processes can suggest the presence of similar issues within other local planning processes.
Case Study Selection
A case study is “an intensive study of a single unit for the purpose of understanding a larger class of (similar) units” (Gerring 2004, 341). The task of a case study is also to “illuminate a decision or set of decisions: why they were taken, how they were implemented, and with what result” (Yin 1994, 12, quoting Schramm, 1971). Furthermore, particularly of relevance to this study, case studies can also “show the process involved in causal relationships,” rather than merely identifying them (Hodkinson and Hodkinson 2001, 6), and “engage with complexity” (Hodkinson and Hodkinson 2001, 2). For each of the case studies, this study aims to illuminate the decision-making processes undertaken by township planners, officials, and staff that led to the construction of the master plan and its implementation. Using a multiple case study design in which cases are selected for theoretical replication, rather than literal replication, means that we would expect the results of each case study to vary, but for “predictable reasons” (Yin 1994, 46). 3 In this study, I expected that planning processes conducted under more challenging conditions would exhibit more disconnects than those conducted under less challenging conditions.
In choosing the four case studies, I hypothesized that the planning processes that might exhibit the most disconnects would be those conducted under some sort of stress, such as immense growth pressure (Brody and Highfield 2005), or those conducted with the fewest resources (Arendt 1987; McGrain and Baumer 2004). I therefore selected the case studies for maximum variation along two axes: growth pressure and planning capacity (see Table 1). I define planning capacity as the amount of professional and budgetary resources available to a government to carry out the planning process, measured by the number of planners on staff, number of years since last comprehensive plan update, and township millage rate. 4 Growth pressure is measured by the number of building permits issued in the six years prior to the beginning of the study (from 2000 to 2006). See Table 5 for each township’s planning characteristics.
Case Study Townships
For each hypothesis it is important to acknowledge that the reverse could be true. Communities undergoing a massive population explosion could have every incentive to closely manage their planning and development processes lest things spiral out of control. Low-capacity communities might actually experience fewer disconnects because their processes entail less complexity than those of larger communities with more actors (and higher capacity) (Pressman and Wildavsky 1973; Alterman and Hill 1978). For example, elected and appointed officials and staff in small communities with low planning capacity might take on multiple roles, thereby ensuring that handoffs occur because the same individual is responsible for more than one step in the process.
Implementation studies must address several methodological issues: a time lag between the adoption of a plan and any observable effects, the fact that plans may be updated without regard for the unfinished business of earlier plans, and the problem of multi-causality, whereby in evaluating implementation efforts only the researcher ignores the myriad of other forces at work within and outside the jurisdiction (Adams 1994; Talen 1996a; Baer 1997). This study seeks to mitigate the complexities and limitations inherent in implementation-related studies, and increase validity, by taking a dual approach to data collection and analysis (Kirk and Miller 1986, 30). The issue of multi-causality is addressed through interviews where local officials and planners introduce local knowledge of development, political, and economic trends that influence plans and implementation, and make explicit the role of the plan in the process. Plan and ordinance analysis helps create a picture of a community’s intentions and how thoroughly it has gone about making those intentions reality.
Interviews
I conducted three or four interviews in each of the four case study townships for a total of thirteen. In each township, my minimum requirement was to interview at least the planner and one Planning Commission member, but I was able to interview additional sources in all of the townships. Following Rubin and Rubin (2005), these interviews can be thought of as a blend of investigative interviewing and elaborated case studies, in which I was interested primarily in finding out what happens during the planning process in a particular township and also in learning the broader meaning of the process to the individual and to the community.
I first asked each interviewee about his or her own role in the planning process, the role of the body to which he or she belonged (Township Board, Planning Commission, staff, consulting firm), and the effectiveness of that body. I then asked about the master plan: how the most recent update process had worked, what the level of public participation had been, what were the major changes from the previous plan, whether there had been a unified vision in the township, or whether there had been controversy around major goals. I asked about how the plan was used during meetings and land-use decisions and followed up by asking the interviewee to walk me through the decision-making process for a recent major project or land-use decision to illustrate how the process worked in that community from start to finish.
Interviews were then coded according to several concepts or themes that were either identified as important beforehand or emerged as recurring topics brought up by the interviewees themselves (Holstein and Gubrium 1995; Rubin and Rubin 2005). Some of these themes included the role of the planner, the role of the Planning Commission, public involvement, views on the proper role of the master plan, and the role of the Township Board. Answers on these topics across the four case study communities were compared in a matrix.
To get another perspective on the planning issues raised in the interviews, I also looked for court cases where a judge, an independent third party, gave an opinion on planning in the township. This was primarily important in Macomb Township, where officials’ assessment of their planning process differed from the judgment of the court.
Master Plan and Zoning Ordinance Document Analysis
Building on Norton’s (2008) content analysis approach to plan evaluation, I identified in every plan each goal related to land preservation or land development. 5 Next, supporting goals and objectives and implementation steps in the plan were identified, or their absence was noted. Finally, the zoning ordinance was evaluated for evidence that the township had implemented the goals and objectives. Table 2 shows a sample evaluation form for Erie Township’s master plan. The form records the goal language, and identifies associated objectives, action items, and any mention of an implementation schedule or specific implementation responsibilities.
Plan Evaluation Protocol for Erie Township’s Farmland Preservation Goal
Note: Text elsewhere in plan describes potential harm of large-lot, strip residential development (pp. 3-4); actually, a lot of good discussion of the importance of preserving farmland and rural character, and the most common threats to those objectives. PDR = Purchase of development rights; TDR = transfer of development rights.
Geographic and Political Context
The four case study communities are all townships in southeast Michigan. The civil township is a mainly Midwestern form of local government, a county subdivision of unincorporated areas. Compared with cities, townships have fewer service provision responsibilities and reduced powers of taxation. Like cities, townships may conduct their own planning and zoning. In Michigan, most townships are six by six square miles, based on the old survey township boundaries drawn up in accordance with the Land Ordinance of 1785. As the state has become more urbanized, especially in the southeast, it has become increasingly difficult to distinguish suburban townships from cities; some townships have populations of more than 100,000. There are still many rural townships, however, where land uses are dominated by agriculture. Tables 3 and 4 show some key population and demographic characteristics of the four case study communities. Table 5 shows the planning characteristics of the townships. It is important to point out that of the thirty townships initially surveyed during the selection process, the highest number of staff planners was three. More than two thirds of the townships had no staff planners.
Case Study Township Population and Growth Estimates
Case Study Township Demographics
Source: U.S. Census 2000, Southeast Michigan Council of Governments.
Case Study Township Planning Characteristics
Source: Southeast Michigan Council of Governments (building permits); State of Michigan (millage rates).
Note: Millage rates are the rate at which property taxes are levied on real property. A mill is 1/1000 of a dollar. These millage rates include requests from entities such as schools and libraries for millage monies approved by voters.
A wealthy suburb of Detroit, West Bloomfield Township is almost completely built out. Its existing land use primarily consists of single-family homes (around 55%) and recreation/conservation uses (around 18%) mainly located around the Township’s many small lakes. There is a small area of strip commercial and office uses at the southern end of the Township, and some commercial uses on the Township’s western border. West Bloomfield Township has a full-time planning director on staff. Urban uses currently occupy about 65% of Macomb Township’s land. The remaining 35% is made up of agriculture and open space. Since the rate of new housing construction has slowed all across the country, but especially in the Midwest, these farming areas may remain undeveloped for a few more years. Macomb Township employs two part-time consultants who maintain offices in the township hall and, in effect, serve as staff.
Erie Township’s existing land-use composition is primarily farming with some residential development via lot splits. There are a few areas with larger subdivisions, a small area of dense commercial and residential development known as Erie Village, and some cottage development along the Lake Erie shoreline. Erie’s day-to-day zoning activities are carried out by a building inspector/zoning administrator. The Township has an intermittent relationship with its planning consultant.
Almost 40% of Howell Township’s land is currently used for agriculture. Another 35% is single-family homes on larger lots of two acres or more. There is some commercial and higher density residential development around the City of Howell in the southern part of the township. Howell Township uses a planning consultant, and its zoning activities are carried out by the elected township clerk who is also the zoning administrator.
Results: The Four Disconnects in Practice
I suggest that disconnects most often occur in places in the planning process where complexity increases (where the process requires handoffs between documents, people, or both) (see Figure 1). First, the preferences of the community at large may not be reflected in the master plan goals, either because of a flawed or absent visioning process (including a process dominated by a particular interest group), or because the results of the visioning process did not drive the goal formulation (Type 1). Second, a disconnect may also occur within the master plan itself (Type 2). Goals may be poorly worded, vague, or conflicting, or the plan may not list any actionable implementation steps. A third disconnect can happen when the township government acts on the plan, or fails to act (Type 3). The township government directly implements the plan in two ways, by approving or denying rezoning requests, and by amending the zoning ordinance text and zoning map to reflect the master plan goals. 6 This disconnect may occur if the Township Board makes decisions on rezoning requests that conflict with the future land-use map, or fails to update ordinances that conflict with the plan’s stated goals and objectives. Finally, the government or staff may selectively enforce or not enforce ordinances (Type 4) for reasons such as cronyism, lack of awareness of problems, or lack of funds for legal fees. Ordinance enforcement includes both inspecting for violations and reviewing site plans for compliance with all applicable ordinances. Table 6 shows the occurrence of the four disconnects in the actual planning processes of the four case study townships.
The Four Disconnects in Practice
Disconnect 1 – Visioning Process
Erie Township did not conduct a public participation process for its most recent master plan update (P. Richardson, personal interview, 2007; M. Eidelson, personal interview, 2008). Aside from regular open meetings, “in terms of substantive public input during the process, it was nil” (M. Eidelson, personal interview, 2008). Howell Township, after a dismally low turnout for its recreation plan input day, decided to forego any formal visioning process for its master plan (C. Eaton, personal interview, 2007; R. Hotaling, personal interview, 2007). In the cases of both Erie and Howell Townships, despite being excluded (or at least not formally included) from the planning process, residents made their wishes known through other avenues, exposing the Type 1 disconnect in each process.
Macomb Township held a charrette for its Macomb Town Center Plan, and conducted a survey for its recreation plan, but did not have a separate public participation process for its master plan update. The combination of these two processes apparently made enough of an effort to gather community feedback that the master plan adequately reflected public priorities (J. Schmeizer, personal interview, 2007). West Bloomfield Township also held a charrette, in this case for its master plan. Initially, turnout for public planning events was good, although the planning process dragged on so long that by the end “everybody was sort of worn on public participation” (D. Plachcinski, personal interview, 2007). However, on balance, West Bloomfield involved a committed group of citizens in its process which led to plan goals that accurately reflected community priorities.
In Howell and Erie Townships, however, because of the absence of a participation process, plan goals and citizen preferences were misaligned. In both townships, groups of citizens later reinserted themselves into the process to push land-use decision making in a different direction than called for in the plan. Howell Township has created several special assessment districts (SADs) to pay for new water and sewer service. These water and sewer districts influence the location of planned higher density development on the future land-use map. When Howell Township created Sewer and Water District No. 8, it had to hold the public meeting in the high school gymnasium to accommodate the “lynch mob” that turned out (T. Thomas, personal interview, 2007). According to Planning Commission and Township Board member Todd Thomas, residents were angered by the connection fees they would have to pay, but also by the growth the new sewer district would accommodate. Residents who moved to Howell for the “rural atmosphere” were dismayed to find out about the plans for development at three units per acre in the new utility district (T. Thomas, personal interview, 2007).
Community opposition to the sewer and water districts did not stop them from being constructed. Township officials did not believe that they were able to either deny developers’ requests for utilities or cajole developers into paying for the new districts. As Clerk and Zoning Administrator Carolyn Eaton put it, “it's my understanding that if developers like that who have all these huge parcels come in and if we do not provide water and sewer and go forward with the district, we could be sued for not doing it” (C. Eaton, personal interview, 2007).
The paradox of newer residents of rural areas opposing the type of growth that allowed them to move there is a common one. In Howell Township, those voices were not incorporated into the master plan, presenting another disconnect, between public opinion and master plan goals (Type 1). It is unclear whether a real effort at a public participation process would have mattered in terms of the built outcome, since previous participation-generating efforts on the part of the township met with general apathy on the part of the public. Regardless of whether or not conservation-minded township residents participated, the township sees its job as responding to developers’ requests. As Carolyn Eaton said, “because you go by the acreage, the developers do have more say than just somebody on one acre with a house” (personal interview, 2007).
Although Erie Township’s Planning Commission Chair Paul Richardson says that township residents want to keep their community rural (personal interview, 2007), at least some landowners were unhappy with the perceived development restrictions that conservation zoning put on their land (described in detail under Disconnect 3 below). This disconnect between public opinion and plan goals may be partly attributed to genuine ambivalence in the community around the issue of farmland preservation versus development potential. It is certainly common for farmers to oppose farmland and open space preservation efforts (Puppim de Oliveira 2005). In Erie’s case, however, it cannot be said that the township did due diligence to meaningfully involve the public in the master planning process (M. Eidelson, personal interview, 2008). If township officials had made a greater effort to both gauge public opinion and gain public buy-in, the ensuing ordinance might have been less ambitious, but more enduring. On the other hand, conservation-minded residents might have come out in droves to demand an ordinance that helped preserve Erie’s rural character, and Township Board members might not have felt the need to capitulate to pressure from the farmers. Without a public participation process, there is no way to know for sure.
Disconnect 2 – Plan Writing
The second disconnect occurs within the master plan itself, either because the goals do not make sense, conflict with each other, or are not followed by any actionable implementation steps. In West Bloomfield Township, the master plan goals call for residential densities that contradict those of many existing developments in full compliance with the current zoning ordinance. Macomb Township’s goals are difficult to locate, and the plan itself suggests that they may be ignored in future decision making (Macomb Township 2002, 71). They are not followed by any implementation steps.
Howell Township’s plan exhibits internal inconsistency. The plan lists the goals “preserving and protecting rural character” and “encourage the use of open space in all developments for a useful purpose and preserve or conserve natural open space, including wetlands, woodlands, and flood plains” (Township of Howell 2003, 16). Related objectives include “preserving existing natural resources” and “encouraging development which preserves open space and prevents urban sprawl” (Township of Howell 2003, 17). However, the plan lists no specific implementation steps to achieve these goals and objectives and further states, “Howell Township, being dominantly a rural open land use type of area, does not currently feel the need for open space planning for open land preservation, conservation and use” (Township of Howell 2003, 188). The language in Howell’s environmental goals is fairly standard for rural master plans, but there is no evidence that the township takes these goals seriously and these goals and objectives are not followed by any implementation steps.
Disconnect 3 – Local Government Actions
The third disconnect occurs when the Planning Commission, Township Board, or other regulatory body (such as a Zoning Board of Appeals) takes actions that contradict the plan goals and objectives, or simply fails to implement its recommendations. Plans are implemented in three immediate ways (here I ignore, for the moment, ordinance enforcement which is a step removed). First, the planner or Planning Commission may look at the plan’s text to see if a proposed development or land-use designation change fits the intent of the plan’s goals and objectives. Second, the Planning Commission or Township Board may look at the future land-use map to see if a proposed rezoning falls into the appropriate future land-use category. Third, the Planning Commission may recommend that the Township Board amend the zoning ordinance to include provisions recommended in the plan, such as an open space subdivision option, a mixed-use district, or a requirement for sidewalks. 7
In Erie Township, the Planning Commission initially followed through on one of the master plan’s most important recommendations, creating an agricultural conservation district. Despite its strongly worded zoning ordinance intent, however, the minimum lot size in the AC district is one acre, which is unlikely to result in significant agricultural preservation (Arendt and Brabec 1994). According to Erie’s planning consultant, Mark Eidelson, who wrote the master plan and helped amend the ordinance, when the township created the Agricultural Conservation district it required a 0.1 dwelling units per acre (the equivalent of ten-acre minimum lots). This district included a cluster option with density bonuses for preserved agricultural lands or open space. At some point, the political pressure from farmers to do away with the new provisions became too much for the Township Board, and they changed the ordinance to a one-acre minimum (M. Eidelson, personal interview, 2008). The ordinance thus contradicts the goals of the comprehensive plan.
In Macomb Township, a history of actions inconsistent with the master plan caused the Township to have to accept a residential development it did not want and had not planned for. An airport in the planned industrial area was sold to a developer who requested a rezoning from industrial to commercial and residential. The Township refused the rezoning request since it was incompatible with the master plan, and would remove a large amount of the Township’s planned industrial area. The developer sued. At first glance, this incident appears to be a case of the Township acting properly to uphold its master plan: the planning process at work.
The court, however, ruled against the Township for several reasons, two of which have direct bearing on the planning process. First, the court found that the township “does not and has not master planned land for commercial and agricultural uses. Essentially the Township has used and is using an ad hoc, case specific, approach with respect to the planning, zoning, and development of agricultural and commercial properties.” 8 This is exactly the type of behavior that the master plan is supposed to preempt, by laying out guidelines (or even a blueprint) for future rezoning decisions. This criticism of the Township’s past rezoning decisions is repeated later in the document:
Moreover, the trial court found that the defendant had demonstrated a significant willingness to modify or deviate from the master plan on an inconsistent basis, as most significantly demonstrated by the already existing incompatible land classifications adjacent to the subject property. (p. 8)
In other words, the Township had already approved rezoning requests for nearby properties that were equally incompatible with the master plan. Therefore, the Township Board was being inconsistent when refusing Grand/Sakwa’s request. Furthermore, much of the land planned for industrial uses was not in fact zoned industrial, but agricultural, which permits moderate-density residential development (one dwelling unit per acre). That land could be developed as residential without any rezoning, although the township’s planner (the individual is not named) testified that if the landowner decided to exercise that option, “the Township would initiate proceedings to rezone the property to industrial in order to prevent the development” (p. 4). This, again, is not how the planning process is supposed to function. If the government has a strong interest in a certain area developing in a certain way, it may rezone the property to accommodate the desired future uses. Dashing in to prevent a landowner from developing his or her property according to the current zoning creates an atmosphere where the government creates uncertainty rather than alleviating it. Property markets function best when all the players know what to expect.
In the recent past, then, Macomb Township has made decisions, including amendments to the zoning ordinance, that both create and fail to reasonably preempt incompatibility with the future land-use map. This inconsistency has weakened the Township’s position when defending itself against challenges to its land-use decisions.
Disconnect 4 – Ordinance Enforcement
The fourth potential disconnect occurs when the Township Board, city council, Planning Commission, zoning administrator, or ordinance enforcement officer fails to enforce the zoning ordinance. This disconnect may be manifested in several ways. One possibility is failure to carefully review site plans to ensure compliance with setbacks, landscaping, parking, and other requirements enumerated in the zoning ordinance. Another is approving uses in zoning districts where they are prohibited. A third is failing to bring the police power to bear on property owners who violate zoning or nuisance ordinances such as erecting illegal signs or running illegal businesses in a residential zone. In this study, I primarily looked for evidence of oversights in the site plan approval process; I did not conduct a wider survey of ordinance enforcement practices. That ordinance enforcement via the police power can sometimes be a problem for local governments was suggested by Howell Township Clerk Carolyn Eaton, who mentioned that the township could not afford to pursue legal action against every violator of ordinances, and thus had to focus efforts on the most egregious cases (C. Eaton, personal interview, 2008).
Discussion
Most planning and policy researchers agree that implementation of plans and policies presents a challenge. It is often difficult to see how plans impact land use, and to understand why the process often does not work. This study aims to help with the latter problem: if we know that implementation problems often occur, can focusing on places where the process is most likely to break down help us achieve a more coherent process that, in turn, should produce more conformance in land use? 9 Tracing the planning process from start to finish and identifying disconnects can tell us how these problems occurred, or if the disconnects, in fact, represented problems. A close examination of this process can also suggest the reasons for these disconnects. In choosing the case studies, I hypothesized that communities with high growth pressure and/or low planning capacity would exhibit more disconnects in their planning processes. I did find some evidence for these hypotheses. The township that might have been expected to demonstrate the fewest disconnects in its planning process, since it had relatively high planning capacity and low growth pressure, was West Bloomfield. West Bloomfield’s planning process did, in fact, only exhibit one disconnect: a mistake in the comprehensive plan that ignored current allowable residential densities in the zoning ordinance. The other three townships, each of which had to contend with high growth pressure, low capacity, or both, showed evidence of disconnects at two stages of the process.
Howell and Erie, the two low-capacity townships, both skipped the public participation process for their comprehensive plans, leading to later problems implementing the plan. For Erie, this was clearly a fiscal decision, directly related to capacity (fiscal resources). In Howell, though, the decision not to have a public participation process, outside of regular open meetings, was attributable to a belief that it would not be well attended except, perhaps, by a few people with particular agendas. In Howell Township, an attitude of accommodation toward developers was partly motivated by a desire to avoid lawsuits that the township could not afford.
Growth pressure also seemed to play a role in creating disconnects in both Howell and Macomb Townships. In Howell Township, growth pressure led to a disconnect between citizen preferences and land-use outcomes that surfaced later after the plan was approved without a public participation process. Without such growth pressure, the land-use outcome would have likely been the same slow, piecemeal large-lot residential development the township had experienced for many previous years, which was more in line with what residents expected and wanted. It would have been less important that the township approve a robust plan based on high-quality community participation.
Demand for residential land use in Macomb Township was the highest in the state for several years in a row. The Township’s response was, for the most part, to approve rezonings from agricultural to residential land uses as fast as they were able, on an ad hoc basis. When they finally reached the point of trying to reserve some land for future industrial development, their prior practice of inconsistency with the master plan served them ill in the eyes of the court, leading to another major disconnect between the plan and the outcome. It seems likely that the extremely high level of growth pressure contributed to these disconnects.
In identifying and explaining disconnects in the planning process, it is worth examining whether these disconnects actually represent problems for the communities. We might, for example, see a disconnect in the process that is of no consequence in the end, or one that actually produces a better result for the community. I argue that, in general, disconnects do cause problems (or provide evidence of problems). In Erie Township, for example, the plan recommended an innovative agricultural preservation district that was implemented in the zoning ordinance. However, the farmers (and the rest of the general public) were left out of the process. One interpretation is that the farmers’ later exercise of political clout was unfortunate, since it weakened significantly the agricultural preservation legislation that had been put in place. Another interpretation is that their involvement righted a wrong, and made the township’s ordinances more in line with what citizens wanted. Still, if the first disconnect had not occurred—in other words, if Erie’s Planning Commission had had a meaningful public participation process at the beginning of the plan revisions—citizens might not have had to elbow their way into the process later.
As mentioned in the literature review, there is an ongoing discussion among planning researchers as to the meaning of implementation. Some assert that implementation means following each aspect of the plan to the letter, which means treating the plan like a blueprint. Others think the public act of carrying out the planning process is the most important part, and the plan should be treated as a set of general guidelines. The lack of conformance discovered in this study should be of concern to those in both camps. If one believes that plans are blueprints, deviations are a problem and, in this study, there are many. Most people recognize that there needs to be some room for flexibility; however, there are practical implications of nonconformance. By acting inconsistently, or by approving a master plan that is inconsistent with reality, the community weakens its position in the power relationship with developers, at least in the eyes of the legal system.
This study also found practices that would worry those who attach more importance to process, since a majority of the townships did not conduct the community visioning sessions that are a hallmark of the collaborative planning process. In Erie and Howell Townships, groups of residents inserted themselves into the process post hoc, to protest decisions the Planning Commission and Township Board had already made. In Erie Township, the farmers made their opinions known by putting political pressure on elected officials to revoke an ordinance, not because the Planning Commission involved them in the master planning process. In Howell, residents turned out in numbers sufficient to fill a school gymnasium to protest a new utility district that would accommodate higher density. In Macomb, township officials paint a picture of a generally disinterested populace; at least, they did not cite any examples of spontaneous public involvement. But if a Planning Commission does conduct a legitimate public participation process, then makes ad hoc decisions, the Planning Commission circumvents goals and objectives that are supposed to be agreed on by the community at large.
These events suggest that disconnects do mainly represent problems in the planning process, rather than neutral or positive additions. Some of the problems could be easily avoided in the future, such as making sure each master planning process begins with an inclusive visioning session. Others, such as improving plan writing, are more difficult to resolve. In the conclusion, I suggest some ways to overcome them.
Conclusion
It is well documented that the process of adopting and implementing policies is complex, and that this complexity decreases the chances that a given policy will be fully implemented. Complexity can be introduced when a decision needs to be made, when different groups in the process have different goals, and when agreements need to be reached to move forward. With each additional layer of complexity, implementation becomes less likely. Planners have long realized that this concept of how policy implementation may work or break down is equally applicable to the planning process, and many individual pieces of the process are well understood, including participation, planning practice, plan quality, and some recent efforts at spatial analysis of land use versus plans. But as Talen (1996b) points out, an overall understanding of how implementation (or the lack thereof) in planning affects actual land-use outcomes has been lacking.
This article contributes to filling the gap in the literature by offering a conceptualization of how complexity enters the planning process (handoffs) and suggests explanations for why the process might stumble at these points (disconnects). This conceptualization improves on previous efforts by including the entire planning process in its scope, since attention to only one part of the planning process at a time misses the overall journey from goal to outcome, with its attendant complexity. In fact, complexity is an inherent part of the planning process as handoffs occur and the plan moves from goals to implementation steps to ordinances to development (see Figure 1 above). For a plan goal to be fully implemented as an ordinance applied to actual development, community stakeholders, planning commissioners, planning staff, and elected officials must be involved at different stages to move the idea from an articulated goal to implementation steps to an ordinance to enforcement.
Although it may sometimes be difficult to tell when a plan is being implemented consistently, it is often easy to tell when it is not: stakeholders protest if the original goals they agreed on are circumvented. By paying particular attention to places where there is a handoff between one actor and another (such as between stakeholders and staff in Figure 1, no. 1, or between elected and appointed officials in Figure 1, no. 4) or between documents (such as between the plan and the zoning ordinance in Figure 1, no. 3), planners and researchers may be able to help move the process past those places to the next phase in the implementation process. Awareness of the potential disconnects seems to be a necessary if possibly not sufficient condition for avoiding these gaps between goals and outcomes.
The evidence presented here through the case studies supports both the existence and significance of the four disconnects. This limited study suggests that this concept is promising, and could be helpful to practitioners and researchers interested in improving the efficacy of the planning process. Future research should test whether a program of deliberate attention and action to move the planning implementation past each of the disconnects improves the efficiency and efficacy of the planning process. For example, appointed and elected officials and staff could participate in a training program about the implementation process and the potential disconnects, which would emphasize the actions to be taken at each step, such as listing implemenAtation steps, responsibilities, and a timeline in the plan document. Communities could also identify a staff person or official in charge of shepherding the plan through the process. This research should also more explicitly explore the relationship between each of the disconnects and the spatial outcomes of plans, preferably at a larger scale. It would be particularly useful to be able to understand if successful efforts to “connect the disconnects” have a measurable effect on land-use conformance with plans.
Footnotes
Appendix
List of Interviews
| Township | Interviewee | Position |
|---|---|---|
| Erie Township | Paul Richardson | Planning Commission Chair |
| Mike Demski | Building Inspector and Zoning Administrator | |
| Mark Eidelson | Planning Consultant | |
| Howell Township | Carolyn Eaton | Township Clerk and Zoning Administrator |
| Todd Thomas | Township Board Member and Planning Commission Representative | |
| Robert Hotaling | Planning Consultant | |
| Macomb Township | John Brennan | Township Supervisor |
| Mike Koehs | Township Clerk and Planning Commission Representative | |
| Jerry Schmeizer | Planner/Planning Consultant | |
| Greg Windingland | Developer | |
| West Bloomfield Charter Township | Doug Plachcinski | Planning Director |
| Nicholas Lomako | Planner working with a developer | |
| Stuart Brickner | Township Board Member and Planning Commission Representative | |
| Other | David Birchler | Planning Consultant |
| Rod Arroyo | Planning Consultant |
Acknowledgements
I was fortunate to have an earlier draft of this article reviewed and discussed at the 2009 JPER Writing Workshop for New Scholars. I gratefully acknowledge the helpful comments and suggestions of Michael Brooks, Megan Gough, Dan Marcucci, Laura Schatz, Rayman Mohamed, George Galster, and anonymous reviewers. I also thank the local officials and planners quoted in this article who generously shared their time and experiences to help me understand the planning processes in their communities.
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research author was a Graham Environmental Sustainability Institute Graduate Fellow at the University of Michigan during the development of this research.