Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science

A population of all possible eight-face polyominoes is generated to represent low-cost house designs. A cost formula is then derived and applied to this population. The effects of cost on the built form of houses are enumerated, and the results suggest one way of exploring the relationship between the process of housing procurement and the architecture of house form itself.

In the research design, iteration between two multiattribute techniques is used to compare their ability to elicit preferences. Each subject used one technique, then a second, and iterated between the two. Previous judgments from each technique were presented as two anchors for each succeeding judgment. The final, converged judgment is an estimate of intended preferences, or at least of constructed preferences. The technique that in its first use yielded preferences closer to the converged preference is therefore the better technique. Three techniques (MUT, AHP, and AHP') were compared in two experiments. MUT was found to be more effective than AHP' and not significantly different from AHP. The results also imply that judgments of ratios between atrribute intervals are more difficult to make than judgments of equivalence of intervals.

The self-organization of cities is studied in terms of synergetics paradigms of pattern formation and pattern recognition. The authors propose a mathematical model that describes the change of populations by migration, changes of profession, and so on, first by a linear model whose deficiencies are outlined. Then a nonlinear model is introduced that is based on the concept of attention parameters as introduced in pattern recognition in synergetics and that allows for a saturation of attention. In this model, a competition between various final patterns occurs. It would seem that the model may allow for the inclusion of planning and self-organized realizations.

Four alternative, hypothetical redesigns of a politically significant landscape are presented to a selected sample of sixteen planning and design professionals (eight male, eight female), considered representative of the sorts of ‘opinion leaders’ likely to respond (in support or indignation) to any such redesign. Additionally, a series of different political agendas are posed, and the respondents are asked to say how well or badly each redesign might meet these various agendas. At a first, superficial level there are affective responses to the designs (like/dislike); these relatively easily expressed attitudes, however, would seem to mask, at a second level, a more diverse pattern of meanings or semantic responses elicited by the redesigns. Such meanings are complex and multidimensional. At yet a further level, both affective and semantic responses emerge from far more complex and varied processes whereby new meanings are formed in the interaction of presented images (the redesigns) and the answering agendas and underlying ‘worldview’ of the observer. A sensitive reading of the voices carrying the various responses can yield significant insights into these processes of the production of meaning, and a key to understanding environmental design and its critical reception. The authors raise problematic issues of privileging particular representations, and of authenticity in representation.

Various authors have attributed many of Frank Lloyd Wright's ideas regarding ornamentation to the advanced design theories which developed out of the eighteenth century enlightenment. However, it also appears that his unique approach to detailing may have equally been a product of his mastery of the triangle and T-square. As reference to this aspect is consistent throughout many of Wright's written works, a shape grammar analysis is presented based on a selection of his rectilinear window arrangements developed betwen 1889 and 1910.

Decisions on planning applications for waste disposal sites are made on the basis of intuitive judgment about need, environmental considerations, and conformity to local policies and plans. Logit models are developed to assess the variables instrumental in the recommendation of the planning officer, and the decision to grant or refuse planning permission by the planning committee. These models reveal that cue utilisation is poor: although decisionmakers believe in complexity, in reality their judgments depend upon just a few major variables.

The Resource Management Act 1991 (RMA) provides a new statutory framework for environmental planning in New Zealand. This Act replaces a plethora of environmental planning and management statutes including the town and country planning legislation. The new Act signals a paradigmatic shift in planning ideology, and perhaps practice. The change is from a ‘town and country’ mode, which was embedded in the wider political economy of the welfare state, to a new biophysical and technocentric planning ethos. This paradigmatic shift is seen as worrying in that it may signal a dilution of social and economic equity considerations which, in our opinion, should be concerns for planning. The analysis of the paper has three parts. The first is a description of the system of urban planning which prevailed in New Zealand until the enactment of the RMA in 1991. The second section is a review of the sociopolitical changes which shaped the new legislation. The third part of the discussion is an overview of the new Act and an analysis of two of its key aspects: the influence of New Right ideology in the legislation; and the approach to sustainable development.