Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science

Cross-national research is a reflection of international relations, which arose with the creation of national states and their proliferation, in association with the industrial process, since the nineteenth century. It implies spatial comparisons, but comparative research now increasingly incorporates a time dimension as well. Within space-time, historians can contribute to policy evaluation and even formulation. In cross-national research, Britain has an important coordinating role to play, a legacy of its early leadership in the industrial process and its creation of a world economic system. That world role, no longer sustainable economically, is now embodied in the universality of the English language and the excellence of British universities.

A number of questions relating to the design and implementation of research projects in cross-national comparative planning are considered. Given the nature of the subject matter involved, it is argued that the main problems that face analysts in this field arise out of the difficulties experienced in studying phenomena in isolation from their context. Then, possible research strategies that can be adopted to deal with situations of this kind are examined with particular reference to the case-study approach that forms the predominant mode of investigation at the present time. Some implications of this approach are then discussed with reference to the design and implementation of research strategies.

Several cross-national studies are reviewed, to consider their range of objectives and research structures. The emphasis is on studies comparing the United Kingdom with other West European countries. Three categories of objective are proposed: improvement of planning practice, development of planning theory, and promotion of common understanding as a basis for supranational planning measures. Studies reviewed range from one-person studies of one or two other countries to collaborative studies of different scales of complexity. Problems of access, language, background knowledge, comparability, and nationally biased perceptions are discussed. The conclusions relate to the need to limit the objectives, because of the inherent complexities of cross-national work; to acceptance that good contacts form a valid basis for a project; to the value of contrast rather than similarity; to the value of normative researchers; and to the place of linguistic competence and the limits imposed by the use of English.

The article is based on the premise that the practice of planning is heavily dependent on the administrative and legal framework within which it exists. The theme is developed by comparing French and British local government and administrative law. The fragmentation of territorial units and the overlapping of competences in France is noted as is the extent to which administrative law guarantees the stability of the administration and the rights of the individual by fixing legal rules. The impact of these differences is pursued through two development control cases which were departures from plans in force, in which problems of legality appear to have obscured questions of underlying policy.

Two experiments are reported which examine hypotheses concerning architecture as a nonverbal language and the relationship between a nonverbal language and models of the organisation of our experience in cognitive psychology. The class of building studied was the church. In the first experiment subjects were asked to record their first experience after a 0.5 second exposure to thirteen examples of churches and subsequently, when shown the slides again, to record the activity which they thought occurred in the building. Very little evidence was found for a coherent set of experiences resulting from exposure to the buildings, and what structure was apparent was related to physical attributes of the building or the activities that occurred in them and not to the types of experience that would be expected to be related to churches. In contrast, considerable structure was apparent in the activities attributed to the buildings and this was not confined to recognising all the buildings as churches.

In a second experiment Rosch's model of category formation through overlap of attributes of examples with the attributes of a prototype was investigated with an expanded series of churches from the first experiment (twenty-eight versus the thirteen in the first experiment) through ratings of goodness of examples and interest. Ratings of interest were included because of the importance this concept holds in theories of aesthetics and to determine whether other types of categories than goodness-of-example-based categories also existed. Clear evidence was obtained of a prototypical structure for both sets of ratings.

A number of multivariate geometric models [unfolding, nonmetric multidimensional scaling (MDS), and the additive clustering model (ADCLUS)] were fitted to the data from a previous paper to examine questions relating to the nature of the attributes of the experience of churches (dimensions versus features), the identity of the attributes, the prototypicality of the categories, and the appropriateness of each of the models for the data. Clear evidence of prototypicality was obtained and it was found that the goodness-of-example and interest ratings formed overlapping categories. The MDS and ADCLUS models both fitted the data to exhibit meaningful dimensions and clusters. These revealed different levels of meaning in the data and allowed an interpretation of the results in terms of the identity and nature of the attributes of the goodness-of-example and interest categories. The implications of these results are discussed for both architecture and cognitive psychology.

In this paper the authors describe the application of the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to energy-policy formulation. The objective is to develop policies for a ‘low energy’ scenario for China. The authors explain how China can achieve its goal of quadrupling the gross value of industrial and agricultural production by the year 2000 while only doubling its energy production.

Rapid urbanization in the Third World is exacerbating problems of water supply, flooding, and water pollution, as well as rendering more difficult the provision of such basic services as sanitation. Although fundamental to human welfare, these water-related issues seldom play a major role in guiding urban development. This paper is a description of a water resource-constrained, land-use planning model suitable for use in the developing world. The model allocates population among city subareas and specifies the type of sanitary service and level of water supply to be provided. The core of the model consists of a multiobjective optimization component linked to a rainfall-runoff simulation submodel. The program from the optimization model serves as input for the simulation of the flood regime under the given development conditions. Goal achievement is then evaluated, and reformulation of the optimization model is undertaken if desired. Specific applications include the determination of optimal residential-sector expansion, such as the case of locating sites-and-services projects. An example is given using lexicographic linear goal programming.