The dissertation examines the effects of community arts and cultural planning on the local arts agencies that organized the planning and upon their communities. Community cultural planning is a structured community-wide, public/private process, that identifes community arts and cultural resources, needs, and opportunities, and plans actions and secures resources to address priority needs. A survey of the entire known population of cultural planning communities was the central research method. An on-site case study was conducted, nation-wide published plans were analyzed, and interviews conducted. Findings confirm that cultural planning is a widely distributed and growing practice. Many plans are wholly devoted to arts development and generally, more recommendations for action are devoted to the problems of arts organizations than to the problems of cities. Cultural planning does however, inspire community arts leaders to appreciate a broader civic constituency and plans increasingly apply the arts to build better communities. The most significant reported effects of cultural planning on local arts agencies were increased agency visibility/credibility, better understood community needs, and increased agency funding. Community effects were more responsive programs and services, increased civic awareness of local arts and culture, improved arts and civic communications, and increased access to the arts. Communities completing cultural plans sustained or increased arts funding in contrast to a national trend of reduced funding. The most significant effect of cultural planning was increased awareness of civic leaders and arts leaders of the potential of the arts to enhance community well being. Cultural planning is not without problems. The combination of ambitious agendas for change, the general lack of prioritization among objectives, ambiguity about who is to be responsible to take what actions, the tendency to not project implementation costs or sources of revenues, attempts by local arts agencies to continue previous programs while accepting new responsibilities, and the commitment of inadequate new funding creates a persistent problem of raised expectations without the resources to meet them. However, cultural planning yields significant benefits both to local arts agencies and to communities and should be encouraged. There are enough risks, that cultural planning should not be required as a prerequisite to funding.

Geographic Information System (GIS) technology is revolutionizing spatial data visualization, handling, manipulation and analysis in planning and related disciplines. The objective of this dissertation was to document the infiltration of GIS and other information technologies into planning schools; to clarify the difference between the GIS Revolution, and the Quantitative Revolution of the sixties; and to highlight and address the theoretical-technological disparities in planning school curricula. A comparison of the GIS Revolution with the Quantitative Revolution confirmed that unlike the large scale models and techniques that emerged in academia during the sixties, GIS technology is not an academic venture. It is a big business, with the software products of commercial vendors driving the teaching and research agendas at U.S. planning schools. The GIS profession has emerged, and there is a high demand for schools to turn out planners with relevant knowledge and experience. The soaring popularity of GIS courses and GIS specialties in planning schools was documented, and the implications of GIS technology for computer and human resources, and for the nature and style of instruction, assignments, studios, research projects, theses and dissertations, is discussed. It was noted that, despite the impact of GIS technology on course offerings, the planning pedagogic model has changed little. In particular, planning theory has remained a core course since its inception in the planning curriculum. A review of course outlines, course content and literature revealed that GIS and planning theory courses do not complement each other. In fact, academic criticism of GIS and related information technologies has further intensified with the barrage of post-positivist philosophies, advanced by many theorists. Given the importance of both types of courses, it was concluded that the theorist-technician dichotomy is counterproductive, and that viable methods of integration must be researched. The concept of links was introduced and exemplified to demonstrate the contexts within which planning theory topics can be integrated with GIS topics.

Since its inception roughly 100 years ago, urban planning has tried to address problems of sprawl, congestion, pollution, and social inequities. Until roughly 20 years ago, these planning attempts were structured by a self-consciously modernist "paradigm." In some cases, modern urban planning was also influenced by left-wing concerns for transcendence of "class" injustices and inequalities. From a Marxist perspective, however, modern urban planning was also, uncritically, structured by modernist essentialisms, both epistemological and methodological. These essentialisms conditioned its focus on certain processes and relations (deemed essential) at the expense of others (deemed inessential), specifically class (in the Marxian sense). One consequence of these essentialisms and foci has been a blindness to the connections between class and the built environment, to struggling and designing policies for justice and democracy in the production process. In the 1970s-'80s, both cities and urban planning underwent tremendous changes. Both liberals and leftists, often citing Los Angeles as quintessential example, have explained these changes as a shift from modern to postmodern ways of using and understanding space. Many liberals and leftists have indeed been critical of postmodern land use and planning for heightened "class" (in a non Marxian sense) polarization, unseen since modern planning's attempts to ameliorate it. Yet in their recognition of and shift to a postmodern paradigm, liberals and leftists have, uncritically, continued to use modernist, essentialist, epistemologies and methodologies. They thus have reproduced conditions under which planners remain unable to see the effects of class and thus unable to help transform it to a more democratic form. This dissertation, in chapter IV, contributes a nonessentialist analysis of urban form, with a focus on class. It decenters the knowledges and issues planners have traditionally deemed essential, putting class on the map of issues addressed by planning. That is, it argues for planning to consider, in addressing urban problems, class, not as some (modernist) key to social change but as one more possible site for bettering urban conditions.

Habitat loss is one of the most serious threats to biodiversity today. A host of natural and human activities, including fire, agriculture, and resource extraction can have profound impacts on the transformation of native habitats. In the Northeast, habitat loss occurs primarily from land use changes from small to mid-scale residential development. Essential to maintaining biological diversity in the Northeast is the protection of important conservation areas from destructive land-use change, especially residential development. In order to maintain biodiversity, communities must set aside vulnerable open space and areas of native habitats. To aid in this it is necessary to predict the vulnerability of areas of conservation interest to development. Through an analysis of land use change, a predictive model can be developed to be used as a tool in the selection and management of conservation areas. An historical land use change analysis was conducted for two counties in Massachusetts, USA. Through logistic regression modeling the variables that best predicted land use change were determined. The most influential land use change variable was found to be the initial land use of the site. The density of buildings in the surrounding area was also found to be a significant predictor. A sensitivity analysis of the logistic regressions showed that these two variables were robust predictors of land use change. Transition analysis was used to further understand the processes of land use change for the two counties. It was found that the transition systems for both areas was not stable over time, which indicates that the mechanisms influencing land use change over time. Transition sensitivity analysis indicates that relatively few of the transitions were sensitive to perbutations of the system. This work will help to better understand land use change in New England. With better understanding of land use change, planners and land managers can make better informed decisions about land acquisition, protection and management to help conserve biodiversity throughout the region.

The contribution of this dissertation is the empirical understanding of the effectiveness of Puerto Rico's investment incentive program. In 1978 the local government enacted a tax incentive law, in an effort to decentralize the location of firms. The goal is to encourage firms to locate in rural/less developed areas outside the San Juan/Metro area. The government divided the island into three industrial zones. In the high industrial zone of the San Juan area, tax exemptions are available for only 10 years, in the intermediate industrial zone for 15 years, and in the low industrial zone tax exemptions are available for 20 years. The focus of the dissertation is to measure the impact of this program in four areas: (1) location of firms; (2) job expansion; (3) forgone revenues, and (4) a comparison of forgone revenues and job expansion benefits. Traditionally, Conditional Logit (CL) has been the methodology used for firm location analysis. However, CL confronts several limitations, and for that reason, I perform a Poisson Regression analysis. This methodology will give the same results as the CL model and, in certain cases related to location decisions, is a better approach since it handles more properly the limitations inherent in the CL methodology. Using Poisson Regression I find that firms tend to locate in a statistically significant fashion at both the intermediate and low zones. I analyze job expansion through Shift-Share (SS) analysis. One feature of SS analysis is its descriptive power when explaining the change in regional employment over time. Based on the Shift-Share analysis, I find that job expansion at both the intermediate and low zones is significantly higher than what would have occurred if these zone would have grown at the same rate of the high industrial zone. Finally, the program has a statistically significant negative impact on government revenues. In general, revenues naturally decline because firms are exempted from paying taxes through the program. This impact is greater within firms locating at both the intermediate and low zones. Nonetheless, forgone revenues are more than compensated, by salaries and wages earned in jobs created by firms.

This dissertation shows that Dillon's Rule, which holds that local governments have no powers except those conferred on them by state constitution or law, is no longer a reasonable basis for limiting the economic development powers of local government in the United States. The Rule was a nineteenth formulation. Economic development, it is now understood, requires local governments to act creatively and be responsive to locally specific conditions and opportunities. However, according to Dillon's Rule, which is the fundamental expression of local government powers in the United States, local governments enjoy neither negative nor positive liberty; they cannot be creative except as authorized by the state. An express purpose of Dillon's Rule was to prevent local governments from fostering or engaging in economic activity that could be undertaken by the private sector. Dillon's Rule was promulgated in the nineteenth century and definitively adopted by the U.S. Supreme Court in the early twentieth century. Judge John F. Dillon, architect of the Rule, argued that the Rule was historically correct, prudent, derived from sound theory, and consistent with precedent. This dissertation critically examines these four arguments in light of subsequent scholarship. It also questions whether the Rule remains useful and concludes that it does not. It contextualizes the Rule showing that its promulgation made sense in terms of the early history of Iowa local government, that its adoption was in keeping with laissez-faire capitalism and Progressivism, and that its acceptance was consistent with the cultural logic of the welfare state. The dissertation uses history to provide a liberation from an embedded formulation. The dissertation is the first work to analyze Dillon's arguments supporting the Rule in the light of subsequent scholarship and participates in “unthinking” the nineteenth century. It contributes to the understanding both of the relationship between planning and power and of the constitutive role that economic development can play in the formation and maintenance of vibrant local communities.

This research examines the dynamic and significant shift in citizen participation (CP) that has occurred in the U.S. over the past forty years, permeating all aspects of community development. Since the era of The Great Society in the 1960s, local governments' broad and widespread citizen participation in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) Model Cities Program (MCP) has evolved into more narrow, function-oriented representation by nonprofits extensively employing the resources of HUD's Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program. The CDBG program was heralded as the key component of the New Federalism in the 1980s and 1990s. Two major platforms of the New Federalism were devolution of regulatory power and privatization of governmental responsibilities. Research indicates that calls for political devolution and privatization of federal government programs precipitated the emergence of the private nonprofit sector's role in community planning and development programs. Increasingly, federal funding (e.g. CDBG) has been channeled into the private nonprofit sector, represented by Community Based Organizations (CBOs) and their derivatives, such as Community Development Corporations (CDCs). Since the Model Cities Program, citizen participation---viewed then as horizontally integrated in the function of "planning"---has extended vertically, with the expanded involvement of CBOs in program conceptualization, program budgeting and activity implementation, arguably to the detriment of general pluralistic citizen empowerment, especially if the nonprofit boards have become more 'elite' in their composition and orientation. Based on the key assumption that citizen participation is generally beneficial to both citizenry and government, this research substantiates the researcher's argument that the nonprofit sector plans and operates governmental programs on a more vertically integrated basis (e.g. conceptualizing, planning, budgeting, and implementation), while more broad-based and pluralistic participation is often marginalized to the public hearing process in the preliminary planning phase. This research study examines that trend and concludes that, if it continues unchecked, the evolution represents a negative transformation of CP. Included in the dissertation is an extensive analysis of the author's theoretical framework---built, in part, on an analysis of the scholarly literature---for evaluating citizen participation and the effects of nonprofit privatization on CP.

Changes in the landscape mosaic are natural, and are ideally associated with fluid and ecologically balanced processes (Forman 1994). Human induced transformations of wilderness landscapes are often conducted to support the clearing of agricultural land and other human dominated land uses. These processes, fueled by rising populations and demands for land, are associated with unbalanced, or unsustainable land use practices which most often result in the fragmentation of natural wildlife habitats (Robinson 1996, p. 111). Declines in wildlife resources are often reflected by overall decreases in the availability of wildlife resources, or in a decrease in the number of species. Either of these processes may serve as indicators of decreased levels of biodiversity. This research explores the roots, justifications, and threats to wildlife associated with national park planning in British Africa. The Lukusuzi National Park Region, located in Zambia's Luangwa River Valley, serves as a case study for the application of the research, through an assessment of three associated areas: (1) The adoption and implementation of national park policies, as examined through an historical assessment, which traces the national park model from the United States to England to British Africa; (2) The identification of physical evidence in the landscape, which is used as an indicator of environmental health in and around selected national park lands (supported by Landsat TM), and; (3) An assessment of the founding principles of landscape ecology and environmental planning, and the potential application of these principles to support conservation initiatives in British Africa. A synthesis of findings from the three themes resulted in the development of an integrated conservation plan, respecting historical and cultural links to the environment; physical landscape characteristics; and ecological and environmental principles. This research offers a unique approach to conservation planning in Africa, by integrating local knowledge collected through empirical observations 'on the ground' with scientific knowledge, collected and processed with modern planning tools (including satellite remote sensing and GIS). The integration of local participation in the management of conservation areas is identified as an integral part of a larger conservation strategy.

In most West European countries in the 1980's significant changes took place in the direction of national housing policies. These policy changes frequently involved a substantial switch of state subsidies away from support for social housing investment towards intensification of market processes. These broad changes in housing policy renewed interest in research that could provide a framework for understanding these events. Indeed, over the past decade housing policy research has generated a number of new concepts and approaches such as privatization, recommodification and the structure of housing provision approach. However, very little theoretical research or development occurred and the field remained dominated by the Convergence Theory paradigm with one challenger: Power Resources Theory. In the case study of Finland that follows it is these two theories that are utilized to examine the meaning and content of changes in Finnish housing policy. The Finnish case study revealed a housing policy sector that contradicted Convergence Theory. Power Resources Theory provided a more relevant framework although its deficiencies suggested that institutional and ideological structures played a more significant role than has been previously acknowledged.

The proposition of this research is that the use of geographic information systems (GIS) is capable of generating significant social benefits and that benefit-cost analysis methods including measures of willingness-to-pay can be an effective approach to the valuation of those benefits. It is based on the assertion that measurement of benefits from the use of GIS, especially those that are non-market based, is not only important and difficult, but highly useful and informative as well. The issues considered include the defining of the economic characteristics of spatial data, an examination of economic methods that have proven to be useful in similar circumstances, the selection of cases that will allow for the results of this study to apply to other cases, and an analysis of the characteristics of environmental applications. This research studies a subset of the full range of GIS applications, those that have to do with the environment. The focus on this sub-set of GIS applications is for two reasons; the nature of complex environmental problems and the range of the benefits that are likely to arise from the use of GIS for environmental planning and management problems. This research has involved the use of both quantitative and qualitative research methods. In each effort at measuring the benefits of GIS detailed information is needed to understand the manner in which the information products are used and to construct a valid approach to measurement. The case study approach offers some desirable features. Its more informal nature offers the potential to gather information that may be useful when seeking to measure non-market benefits. It offers the potential for a series of sequential steps base on information gathered during an initial round of interviews and the ability look at each case in greater detail than might otherwise be possible. The particular approach used in this research involved three levels of interviews. Four key conclusions from this research follow: (1) Methods that rely on measures of willingness-to-pay are useful tools. (2) Efficiency benefits in some cases are not as significant as effectiveness benefits. (3) Measuring only some of the benefits of using GIS is sufficient in many cases. (4) Benefits may occur several organizations or years removed from the original GIS use. In summary this research has resulted in improving methods with which we can study the benefits of using GIS to help resolve complex environmental problems. The case study approach produced results that should be replicable in other studies. It also succeeded to the extent that it was possible to look through this approach and make some observations about broader issues and to generate a number of interesting propositions that could form the basis of other research efforts.