Planning Support Systems Best Practice and New Methods

This book is about a particular set of geo-information technologies known as Planning Support Systems (PSS). It focuses on the adoption and application of PSS in practice. It aims to illustrate best practice and to demonstrate new methods that are being d

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The GeoJournal Library Volume 95

Managing Editor:

Daniel Z. Sui, College Station, USA

Founding Series Editor: Wolf Tietze, Helmstedt, Germany Editorial Board:

Paul Claval, France Yehuda Gradus, Israel Sam Ock Park, South Korea Herman van der Wusten, The Netherlands

For other titles published in this series, go to www.springer.com/series/6007

Stan Geertman • John Stillwell Editors

Planning Support Systems Best Practice and New Methods

13

Professor John Stillwell School of Geography University of Leeds Woodhouse Lane Leeds LS2 9JT United Kingdom [email protected]

Editors Dr. Stan Geertman Utrecht University Fac. Geosciences 3508 TC Utrecht The Netherlands [email protected]

ISBN: 978-1-4020-8951-0

e-ISBN: 978-1-4020-8952-7

Library of Congress Control Number: 2008940138

© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009 No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.

Printed on acid-free paper 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 springer.com

Preface

Planning Support Systems: Retrospect and Prospect It has been nearly twenty years since the term ‘planning support systems’ (PSS) first appeared in an article by Britton Harris (Harris 1989) and more than ten years since the concept was more broadly introduced in the academic literature (Harris and Batty 1993; Batty 1995; Klosterman 1997). As a result, the publication of a new book on PSS provides an excellent opportunity to assess past progress in the field and speculate on future developments. PSS have clearly become very popular in the academic world. This is the fourth edited book devoted to the topic following Brail and Klosterman (2001), Geertman and Stillwell (2003), and a third by Brail (2008). Papers devoted to PSS have been published in the leading planning journals and the topic has become a regular theme at academic conferences around the world; it has even spawned intellectual offspring such as spatial planning and decision support systems (SPDSS) and public participation planning support systems (PP-PSS). However, as Geertman and Stillwell point out in their introductory chapter, the experience with PSS in the world of professional practice has been disappointing. A substantial number of PSS have been developed but most of them are academic prototypes or ‘one off’ professional applications that have not been adopted elsewhere. A handful of commercial off-the-shelf PSS have been created but these systems have been adopted only by a small number of agencies and are rarely used on a routine basis. Geertman and Stillwell offer some important observations on why PSS adoption has been so disappointing but I fear that the obstacles to PSS adoption are inherent in the concepts that comprise planning supp