Berkeley Planning Journal

This year marks the tenth anniversary of the Berkeley Planning journal. The end of a decade marks a good time to reflect on its past and future significance for readers, authors, editors, and the field of planning.

The early 1980s were marked by questions about the boundaries, limits, and significance of the field coupled with a search for new paradigms. Founding editor Hilda Blanco, now on the faculty of Hunter College, wrote: "Planning is a major human practice, on the par with science or art, indispensable and ever expanding in niodern society." The founding editors wanted to push the field beyond its tra· ditional focus on land use. They envisioned a Berkeley spirit or style of planning that drew from broad intellectual traditions, made a close connection to the social sciences and social research, and had a so­ cial conscience, expressed in an early rejection of the planning pro­ fession as merely technical expertise, its critical attitude towards es­ tablished institutions, and its strong advocacy for social justice.

This article examines the evolution of Texas economic de­ velopment policy during the 1980s as a movement toward, and subsequent undermining of, what Peter Eisinger termed "the entrepreneurial state." Based on interviews with economic development practitioners, the article ex­ plores the history and outcomes of the effort in Texas to shift policy attention and public resources towards small and medium-sized farms and businesses in non­ metropolitan areas. It concludes that entrepreneurial strategies have become institutionalized in state law and embedded in local practices. However, the leadership and innovative programs for direct intervention pursued in the

1980s fell victim to statewide politics and institutional con­ straints so that such strategies today are only a minor part of overall non-metropolitan development efforts in Texas.

This article describes a three-part model for comprehensive ecological planning for urban communities. It reviews the history of accounting, from the measurement of material wealth to the measurement of complex physical systems characterized by multiple energy flows. Models of sustain­ able ecosystems, Meier argues, must account for the flow of information and the generation (or loss) of new knowl­ edge within and between communities, which challenges the conservative principles of monetary and energy-based forms of accounting. Sustainable outcomes, Meier argues, should also be measured in terms of increasing numbers of voluntary transactions, qualitative redistribution of human time and attention, and overall improvements in the qual­ity of life.

Mandates for water-quality improvement have forced regulators and planners to confront the problem of urban runoff, still an important source of water pollution. This ar­ticle discusses those mandates and how to meet them, and provides examples of ongoing nonpoint water pollution control programs in the San Francisco Bay Area. These examples suggest that cleanup of urban runoff may require more comprehensive regional planning to encourage a de­velopment pattern conducive to pollution control.

Very high speed rail may be a competitive mode of trans­ portation for California's future. This article presents an evaluation of the economic and comprehensive benefits and costs associated with such an endeavor. The results indicate competitive comprehensive rates of return and a potential for project self-financing, suggesting that such a project merits serious consideration by the State.

On September 14, the editors of the Berkeley Planning journal met with eight professionals and scholars to discuss a body of work we called "the new urbanism." This design movement has captured the attention of public officials, planners and citizens alike in recent years. We asked the participants to read at least two of four influential books and a recently published critique, to serve as a touchstone for the discussion; the result was a far-ranging discourse on the promise, pitfalls, and politics of urban planning and design in the 1990s. The participants brought very distinct concerns and first-hand experiences to the table. While agreeing that the new urbanism offered a much­ needed step in the right direction, they divided on whether its ideas, as now articulated, speak to the systems and attitudes that shape and divide suburban and urban communities today. Overall, we believe the participants pushed the discussion of this new movement onto

important ground.

What are the implications for development in the Third World in light of the widespread intellectual retreat from Marxist theory and practice in recent years? This essay offers an answer to this question by focusing on the current debate concerning the rise of a new inter­ national division of labor (NIDL). The debate over the NIDL has much significance given the growing interpenetration of various re­ gional and national economies in an increasingly integrated global economy. But while one can safely argue that integration with the global economy is now essential to economic growth, the terms of the debate over that process appear to have shifted to the mechanism and conditions of integration for hitherto isolated economies. This essay will delineate the trajectory taken by the NIDL debate to date and will suggest how an historical-structural approach in the Marxist tradition, provides opportunities for furthering the discussion.

The essay first provides a brief overview of Marxist theories of Third World development, including the ideas of Marx, Lenin and key post-World War II dependency theorists. Next, it highlights key points of continuity and discontinuity between these older theories and the current debate on the NIDL. The essay then concludes with a discus­ sion of both the structural and historically determined economic and political constraints on the incorporation of the Third World into the NIDL before setting out some questions for future research.

Editors' note: We received a partially legible diary regard­ ing one individual's struggle into the information age. We've included those passages that were legible (many appeared stained by water-we believe tears to be the cause) and coherent (in some places it does babble on a bit). The diary was handwritten (gasp) on unlined paper. We expect only the worst has befallen this poor misguided individual-just another casualty statistic on the informa­ tion superhighway.

Recent PhD Dissertations, Masters Theses and Professional Reports from the Department of City and Regional Planning.