planning case study pdf

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14 Cities, People, and Processes as Planning Case Studies

Eugénie L. Birch is the Lawrence C. Nussdorf Professor of Urban Research at the University of Pennsylvania.

• Published: 18 September 2012
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This article examines the importance of case studies in urban planning. It explains that case studies are used to analyze urban behaviors in the political arena, in neighborhoods and in other places, and in providing exemplars of best practices in physical planning. The article describes the nature of case studies used in urban planning and the pattern of their application. An analysis of representative studies reveals several patterns, including an effort to develop cases that translate knowledge into action, that pay attention to place or the physical dimensions of a question, and that have a tendency to revisit and re-evaluate a phenomenon which has been studied at an earlier time.

since urban planning focuses on creating communities of lasting value, the use of case studies to illustrate the various elements needed to achieve this goal comes naturally to many researchers. Whether looking at the finished product or the knowledge required to foster the public and private decision making for the desired outcome, case studies are an appropriate research strategy for this practice-based discipline. As with other clinical fields like medicine or law, advancing knowledge calls for laboratory work. While the human body (or an animal substitute) or a courtroom is the physician's or lawyer's lab, the city (or the urban environment) is the urban planner's lab. In these arenas, knowledge results from studies that translate to and from practice, adding to theory that, in turn, informs other studies and practice. The associated lab-based techniques for planners take many forms, ranging from statistical analysis of large databases to assessments of smaller units or cases. This research rarely encompasses controlled experiments requiring random assignment samples, but tends to engage in quasi-experimental or comparative projects, often case-based work.

The discussion that follows examines three topics. They are the nature of case-study research and its application to urban planning; patterns in the use of case-study research in urban planning; and some effects of case-study research on urban planning. Table 14.1 , Some Examples of Case Study Research Arranged Chronologically by Type, serves as a guide to the numerous references in the text.

1. The Nature of Case-Study Research and its Application to Urban Planning

Case studies fall into three general categories according to Robert Yin, the authoritative compiler of case-study research methods (Yin 2009 , 47–52). The first category, exploratory , seeks to understand a problem or questions in general. The second, descriptive , details phenomena from which to draw lessons. The third, explanatory , endeavors to develop causal relationships. Sometimes a researcher begins a project intending to undertake one kind of case study and ends up with another. For example, Lee Rainwater, in the preface to Behind Ghetto Walls, Black Family Life in a Federal Slum (1970, vii), explained “This … study began as a study of the problems in a public housing project, Pruitt Igoe in St. Louis [descriptive], and ended as a study of the dynamics of socioeconomic inequality [explanatory].”

Or, a researcher may use a case study to disprove a theory. Oxford University professor Bent Flyvbjerg ( 2006 , 228) reported that he approached his study of Aalborg, Denmark, thoroughly ingrained through university instruction in the belief that planning decisions would be transparent, inclusive, and in service of the free market, but when observed in the field, he found the opposite. This experience led him to refine the Yin typology, enumerating four nonexclusive kinds of case studies: “extreme” or “deviant,” chosen to dramatize a point; “critical,” selected to verify or disqualify a particular condition; “maximum variation,” used to show the range of types of phenomenon; and/or “paradigmatic,” created to highlight general qualities, rules or behaviors of the subject in question (Flyvbjerg 2006 , 232). To this list, Yin later added two other types: “revelatory,” offering insights not previously available; and “longitudinal,” covering a span of time (Yin 2009 , 47–52).

1.1 Application to Urban Planning

Case-study research in urban planning revolves around such questions as uncovering phenomena to be considered in formulating urban public policy; describing the decision-making processes in urban planning; and providing exemplars of what the authors consider best practices, frequently focusing on urban design or physical development. (An extensive discussion of these types of studies follows in the section of this chapter entitled “Patterns of Case-Study Research in Urban Planning.”)

As with all research, whether case study or quantitative database analysis, a research design involves four decisions: (1) what question(s) to ask; (2) what data will answer the question(s); (3) how to collect the data; and (4) how to analyze the data. The characteristics that differentiate case-study research are in the answers to questions below.

What Questions?

In general, the scientific method guides the planning scholar. He or she couches research in one or more hypotheses or propositions related to current theory. She can develop questions only after acquiring some prerequisite knowledge: a firm grounding in existing literature pertaining to the immediate area of study, awareness of contributions from associated disciplines, and familiarity with what is happening “on the ground” or in practice. Only then can he hone in on the key issues, gaps, or discrepancies that shape the project. In addition, the researcher articulates the anticipated findings as a means to structure the design and the subsequent discussion of the findings.

In case-study research, an iterative process is quite normal—that is, after completing the research, the author may revise his or her questions. In Divided Cities, Belfast, Beirut, Jerusalem, Mostar and Nicosia , authors Jon Calame and Esther Charlesworth ( 2009 ) originally posited that urban managers who prevented sparring (and more dangerous activities like killing) by partitioning off discordant areas in ethnically and religiously divided cities would not cause permanent damage but, rather, achieve peace. They found, however, something quite different: while managers gained respite by separating antagonists, they ruined the social contract among residents because they were masking, not curing, “a profound, longstanding problem in a short-term temporary way” (5).

To determine data needs, the researcher identifies the study's goals and defines its objectives and time frame. At the same time, he or she decides whether to pursue a single or multiple case(s) based on the nature of the work (e.g., exploratory, descriptive, or explanatory) and a judgment about the effectiveness of specified types of case(s) (e.g. representative, extreme, and/or with variation) in answering the questions. For example, Mark Rosentraub ( 2010 , 13), in Major League Winners, Urban Change and New Destinies for Downtowns , chose his cases as representative with variation, noting, “This book is about the balance achieved by successful leadership in several different cities and the positive economic outcomes that took place …[in order to identify] the opportunities available to other cities.” In contrast, Divided Cities authors Calame and Charlesworth ( 2009 , 2) selected extreme cases in order to “expose what lies in store for a large and perhaps growing class of cities on a trajectory toward polarization and partition between rival communities.”

Above all, researchers have a clear understanding of the “unit of analysis” (what they are going to study e.g., a group, a process, a development project) and the boundaries (or time frame e.g., specified decades, months, etc.) to be covered. For example, in The Future of Old Neighborhoods , Bernard Frieden ( 1964 ) questioned current thinking on “gray areas” that dismissed these older central-city districts as economically and socially obsolete by identifying, tracking, and proving the usefulness of inexpensive housing in such neighborhoods in New York, Los Angeles, and Hartford between 1950 and 1960. In Mega-Projects: The Changing Politics of Urban Public Investment , Alan Altshuler and Daniel Luberoff ( 2003 , 2) wanted to explore the trajectory of “the political impulses that generated mega-projects of the 1950s and 1960s,” so they concentrated on “three inter-related mega-projects: highways, airports and rail transit systems … during the second half of the twentieth century” to gauge decision-making processes in each.

At the very least, regardless of the number or type of cases included in the research design (as is discussed below), the data will include a chronology of events relevant to the subject under study, a step that includes reviewing primary and secondary documents, identification of the key actors or stakeholders, quantitative and descriptive information that helps establish the context of the case, interviews of people who can clarify various elements of the case, site visits and/or personal observation of meetings or other events relevant to the case, and collection of assessment information that will assist in judging the outcomes of the case.

1.2. The Single Case

The decision to have one, or more than one, case is closely related to the goals of a given study. A single case, while offering depth, calls for careful marshaling of information to tell a story that has broad application as is illustrated in the examples below. While researchers have the luxury of making deep probes and being immersed in one place, they still have to organize the material to demonstrate its contribution to theory—that is, its ability to produce knowledge that may be applied elsewhere.

For example, Martin Meyerson and Edward Banfield ( 1955 , 11), in Politics, Planning and the Public Interest: The Case of Public Housing in Chicago , investigated “how some important decisions were reached in a large American city.” In their research design, they established clear criteria for their unit of analysis, “decisions,” by choosing a certain kind (the siting of public housing); a certain type (“we take into account decisions only if, and only insofar as they have to do with ‘politics,’ ‘planning,’ or ‘the public interest’ “)—concepts that they define in a twenty-six-page appendix; and a certain class , noting that, at the time, siting was not only “big business,” but also “suggestive for certain classes of issues” such as a sewage disposal plant, a tuberculosis sanatorium, a superhighway, or even a church or a school (14, 303–329,12). In establishing the broad application of their work, they were bold (“many other governments resemble that of Chicago”) but circumspect:

The reader should be cautioned, however, against inferring that the political history of public housing in other cities has been identical with that of Chicago … the Chicago experiences should sensitize the reader to certain influences and relationships which are likely to be found, although not in the same form, in most other cities. In short, acquaintance with what happened in Chicago may give the student of the public housing issue some indication of what to look for in other cities . [italics added] (11–12)

Many other studies of public housing siting and its effects ensued, including Arnold Hirsch's ( 1983 ) Making of the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago 1940–1960 and Lawrence Vale's ( 2000 ) From Puritans to the Projects: Public Housing and Public Neighbors . A more recent single case study, Nicholas Dagen Bloom's ( 2008 ) Public Housing That Worked, New York in the Twentieth Century dissected the New York experience between 1934 and 2008. Like Meyerson and Banfield, Bloom seeks to show the reader a different story than his predecessors, one that includes, but goes beyond, siting to explore management policies as an explanatory force for the success of public housing in a large American city.

In the single-case arena, several works take one city as the unit of analysis and explore the outcomes of different public policies in that city. Examples are Colin Gordon's ( 2008 ) Mapping Decline, St. Louis and the Fate of One American City , which looks at St. Louis to study the effects of a single type of action: evolving housing and renewal policies over decades. Similarly, Birch and Wachter's ( 2006 ) Rebuilding Urban Places After Disaster, Lessons From Katrina , reviews one city, New Orleans, and but investigates the role of the several different types of policies—economic to educational—in aiding recovery efforts.

1.3 The Single Embedded Case

A researcher may choose another approach: the single case with embedded subunits that receive more or different attention, in order to illustrate a phenomenon that has variation within it. This method goes beyond a simple numerical count or statistical attempt to create causal relationships used by many social scientists pursuing complex problems to add nuances and depth to the overall case or argument that the author is presenting. In the late 1950s, anthropologist Oscar Lewis ( 1959 ) formulated the “culture of poverty” theory based on studying five Mexican families. He argued that the poor had “a way of life that is passed down from generation to generation,” that contributed to their economic and social marginality (Lewis 1959 , xlii–lii). He tested this idea using an embedded single case in La Vida: A Puerto Rican Family and the Culture of Poverty in San Juan and New York (1965) by focusing on one family that contained five households—three living in Puerto Rico and two in New York City. In this manner, he captured the varied forms of behavior associated with the “culture of poverty” concept and argued that it was a behavioral type that had several manifestations depending on household composition and location.

Similarly, when political scientist Alan Altshuler ( 1965 ), studied city planning in the Twin Cities (Minneapolis/St Paul), in The City Planning Process: A Political Analysis , he used the embedded single case study. While he focused on “the city planning process,” he analyzed how city planning decisions were made in creating four types of plans (a comprehensive plan for Minneapolis, a land-use plan and hospital site for St. Paul, and an interstate freeway routing plan for the two cities). In using several examples or subunits as evidence, he challenged reigning planning theory (rational decision making), arguing that it was an ineffective model because it neglected to account for local political behavior. Jeffrey Pressman and Aaron Wildavsky ( 1973 ) would follow the same approach in Implementation, How Great Expectations in Washington Are Dashed in Oakland , a study of the U.S. Economic Development Administration's employment programs in Oakland California that tracked the expenditure of a $23 million allocation for four types of infrastructure investments (airport, marine terminal, industrial park, and roads) in case studies of the individual projects to test the outcomes, measured as job creation. Here, the authors focused on such issues as individual program achievements and explanations for their failure to meet projected goals.

Urban design researchers also make use of the embedded single case study. For Jonathan Barnett ( 1974 ), in Urban Design as Public Policy , New York City zoning is the overall topic and its city-shaping power is the concern. He documented the effects of two newly invented devices—the plaza bonus and the special district—and showed how they played out in various development projects. For Allan B. Jacobs ( 1995 ), in Great Streets , the “street” is the unit of analysis and fifteen exemplary thoroughfares in Europe and North America distinguished by their dimensions and patterns of use are the subunits.

In a more recent study, Heatwave, A Social Autopsy of a Disaster in Chicago , sociologist Eric Klinenberg ( 2002 ) used an embedded single case study that employed mixed methods to question whether the more than 485 heat-related deaths in six days in Chicago in July 1995 affected everyone equally. (Notably, this crisis produced more than twice as many deaths as the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.) Through statistical analysis, he discovered that impoverished, elderly minorities had the highest rates; but with further scrutiny, he saw that poor, elderly black men suffered disproportionately. To explain this phenomenon, he then studied comparative spatial data—place of residence and crime rates—to conclude that the black victims who lived in high-crime neighborhoods remained in their overheated apartments, while others, especially low-income Hispanics whose neighborhoods were safer, were less housebound and, consequently, had lower mortality rates.

1.4 The Multiple Case

A researcher selects a multiple case study design to show repeated patterns, variation in patterns, and exceptional examples of patterns to achieve balance (geographic, size, etc.) among exhibited patterns and to offer more ample descriptions and explanations of complex phenomena, all in the effort to enhance generalization from the data (Stake 2006 , v; Yin 2009 , 54). Two examples are Peter H. Brown's ( 2009 ) America's Waterfront Revival, Port Authorities and Urban Redevelopment and Mark S. Rosentraub's ( 2010 ), Major League Winners, Using Sports and Cultural Centers as Tools for Economic Development . Here, each author employed four (Brown) to five (Rosentraub) cases to illustrate types of urban planning in postindustrial cities.

In each of these cases, the authors developed hypotheses about their subjects from a combination of research, observation, interviews, and experience. Brown, as a former city employee, had noticed that the Philadelphia Port Authority had a surplus of land owing to its relocation of facilities to accommodate containerization, and he decided to investigate how this change had affected how it and other port authorities perceive their missions, hypothesizing that they had become urban developers. Rosentraub, through research for an earlier book, Major League Losers, The Real Cost of Sports and Who's Paying for It? (1999), detected a change in municipal approaches to the construction of sports facilities, hypothesizing that some appeared to be using stadiums as anchors for reinvention and growth.

1.5 The Embedded Multiple Case

Like the embedded single case, the embedded multiple case presents several cases dealing with a particular question, with additional attention given to other details within the cases. For example, when Larry Buron and colleagues ( 2002 ) undertook HOPE VI Resident Tracking Study, A Snapshot of Current Living Situation of the Original Residents from Eight Sites , they selected a large sample of residents from projects in varying degrees of completion (two completed and fully reoccupied, four partially reoccupied, and two under construction) to review four features (the residents’ housing conditions, neighborhood quality, social environment and employment, and hardship and health). They tested the basic assumptions of the HOPE VI program—notably, that original residents’ lives, as judged by the four elements, would be improved. However, since the cases were so varied with regard to their progress, the treatment of residents was also varied—factors that the researchers discussed in detail.

1.6 The “Mini” Multiple Case

In contrast to these approaches, Edward J. Blakely and Mary Gail Snyder's ( 1997 ) Fortress America: Gated Communities in the United States and Robert E. Lang and Jennifer B. LeFurgy's ( 2007 ) Boomburgs: The Rise of America's Accidental Cities offered many “mini” case studies to describe a new settlement type that they each identify by studying empirical data. Blakely and Snyder focus on gated communities that numbered more than 20,000 at the time of their research (7); Lang and LeFurgy, on “boomburgs”—large (100,000 population) incorporated places, not core cities, that were housing one-in-nine suburban dwellers and having double-digit growth between 1970 and 2000 (6, 19). Each team explored a large question—Blakely and Snyder studied the nature of community (29); Lang and LeFurgy looked at the dynamics of metropolitan change (20)—by marshaling “mini” cases that contributed to the description of the overall case (gated community or boomburg), as well as analysis of the phenomenon under study. In this fashion, they captured the issues in the types of places by developing a “mosaic” that formed each case study. For example, in their exploration of the pace and quality of boomburg development, Lang and LaFurgy identified future build-out as an issue. They used survey research to tally their places’ plans (ranging from promoting compact development to resisting densification) and provided brief examples of each.

1.7 Edited Multiple Case Studies

Finally, some scholars produce edited collections of case studies. Lawrence J. Vale and Thomas J. Campanella ( 2005 ), in The Resilient City, How Modern Cities Recover From Disaster , used eight cases to identify the characteristics found in places that survive natural and manmade disasters; and Bishwapriya Sanyal ( 2005 , xxi), in Comparative Planning Cultures , has his contributors generate “thick descriptions of planning practices in various countries” in order to “demonstrate whether there are core cultural traits … which differentiate planning efforts in different nations.” In these types of collections, the editors take responsibility for comprehensive cross-case analyses. Vale and Campanella provided a well-argued concluding chapter that not only used the cases to present a model of the stages of recovery (from emergency to reconstruction) but also commented on key characteristics of the recovery process, ranging from observations about every place experiencing physical recovery of one sort or another to conclusions about opportunism and opportunity as well as governmental and human resilience (2005, 335–53). Sanyal took a different tack, employing a long introductory chapter to set up the cases and then let the cases tell the story (2005, 3–63).

As can be seen from this description of the design of case-study research, the choice of cases and their number depend on the authors’ abilities to demonstrate that their research designs answer their questions credibly. There is no “right” answer to whether one or more than one case is appropriate. Researchers with a social science inclination tend to select multiple cases, believing that more examples will offer greater proof of the existence of a given phenomenon. Their training, often based in quantitative analysis, supports this approach. Researchers with an inclination toward history or ethnography tend to gravitate to the single case, believing that rich description will enable the reader to apply the resulting knowledge to his or her circumstances with a deeper understanding of the context and conditions of the case.

What Data Collection Methods?

As part of the design for a project, the investigator conceives a research protocol outlining the types of data sought and the methods of collection. Having such a protocol ensures that other researchers can replicate (or critique) the approach, and in the case of multiple case studies, assures uniform treatment of each. The objective is to develop a portrait or tell a story about each case by collecting basic descriptive data, developing a chronology, and identifying key actors and actions. Data can come from many sources, including censuses, specially generated surveys, participant observation, interviews, review of primary and secondary documents, field work, and/or mapping and spatial analysis employing GIS or other methods.

For example, the contributing authors to The University as Urban Developer, Cases and Analysis , edited by David C. Perry and Wim Wiewel (2005), used primary and secondary documents, interviews, personal accounts, and maps to tell their stories. Saskia Sassen ( 1991 ), in The Global City, New York, London, Tokyo , relied heavily on databases from the International Monetary Fund, U.S. Department of Labor, United Nations Centre on Transnational Corporations, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Metropolitan Government of Tokyo, United Kingdom Department of Employment, and other organizations.

How to Analyze the Data?

Having gathered the data for the cases, the researcher returns to the original questions and/or propositions to interpret the evidence, the most important and creative function of any research project. As mentioned earlier, case approaches allow researchers to reformulate their questions as information-gathering progresses. In some quantitatively based multiple-case projects, often those related to program evaluation, the researcher has set up measurable outcomes and can discuss them. For example, when Briggs, Popkin, and Goering ( 2010 ), in Moving to Opportunity, The Story of an American Experiment to Fight Ghetto Poverty , organized the study to cover five cases and to report on whether families who moved from de facto segregated public housing to racially integrated communities fared better in terms of housing quality, employment, and education than those who chose other alternatives (staying in public housing, moving within the city, etc.), they established a “controlled” experiment that allowed for quantitative analysis of the outcomes. (They found, however, that so many unanticipated factors influenced the outcome that they had to qualify their findings with descriptive explanations.) In other studies with little or no quantitative data, the researcher assesses features or characteristics, or he or she identifies patterns that bear on the original research questions. Brown ( 2009 ), Rosentraub ( 2010 ), and Calame and Charlesworth ( 2009 ) are examples of this type of assessment.

Depending on the type of case study or studies that have emerged, researchers will report exploratory, descriptive, revelatory, or explanatory findings, aiming to demonstrate elements that contribute or disprove the theoretical framework on which the study is based. They offer an “analytical” (not statistical) generalization—that is, the mounting of the empirical findings of one or more case studies to prove, disprove, or amplify previously developed theory. A necessary goal is to produce results capable of replication because only through replication is theory robust (Yin 2009 , 38, 54). Single case analysis is straightforward, as the researcher analyzes the evidence to point out key aspects of the case, leading to general assertions; multiple case analysis calls for cross-case observations relative to the general questions, again pointing out the commonalities and differences (Gerring 2007 ). Focusing on a single place, Ram Cnaan ( 2006 , 274–92) explored religious congregations in Philadelphia to demonstrate the pros and cons of their contributions to social welfare in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Using an embedded, multiple case study approach, Sassen ( 1991 ) marshaled evidence to argue that the rise of global cities as centers of finance represented a shift in their definition and role from hosting manufacturing and production to enabling or financing such functions worldwide, asserting “It is this combination of a new industrial complex that dominates economic growth and sociopolitical forms through which it is constituted and reproduced that is centered in major cities and contains the elements of a new type of city, the global city” (Sassen 1991 , 338).

Most cases in urban planning aim to inform the future, while some—notably the explanatory and paradigmatic—attempt to predict or affect future decision making directly. Briggs, Popkin, and Goering's ( 2010 ) Moving to Opportunity is an example of the latter, while Beatley's ( 2000 ) Green Urbanism, Learning from European Cities is an example of the former. A common impetus is a desire to identify qualities that contribute to the creation of communities of lasting value. One example is The Portland Edge: Challenges and Success in Growing Communities , edited by Connie Ozawa ( 2004 , 304), who writes:

The purpose of this volume was not simply to tell “The Portland Story.” We had hoped that by doing so, however, we would add to larger discussions about how to recover, sustain and create strong communities. We offer no recipes … nonetheless it is clear that the level of livability in Portland is no accident… . [W]e have identified a few key ingredients of a strong community.

A more recent effort is Joan Fitzgerald's ( 2010 ) Emerald Cities, Urban Sustainability and Economic Development , which endeavors to blend European and U.S. cases to provide inspiration for formulation of a national policy on the subject.

2. Patterns in the Use of Case-Study Research in Urban Planning

As evident from table 14.1 , urban planning scholarship has relied heavily on case studies over the last fifty years. Organized according to six types of approaches ranging from single cases to edited multiple case study collections, the table supports five observations beyond the general statement that, regardless of discipline, urban researchers use cases extensively. First, many urban planning scholars employ case studies as a vehicle to translate knowledge into action. Second, case study approaches allow urban planning scholars to provide the evidence, depth, and detail about place that other methods do not capture. Third, case study authors have taken on a wide range of roles, from participant observer to dispassionate analyst. Fourth, revisiting a phenomenon over time occurs in urban planning case-study research. Fifth, the professional biography stands out as a distinct type of case study for urban planners and deserves attention in the future.

Case Studies Serve as Vehicles for Translating Knowledge into Action

Planning scholars either explicitly articulate their motivation to inform or improve urban planning or implicitly do so through their work. Further, case studies provide “road maps” regarding context, chronology, key actors, and/or crucial decision points, offering readers searching for models or solutions to the same or similar problems a means to compare and test their own situations. While there is never any “best way” to translate knowledge to action, at the very least, case-study research adds a layer of information or best practices to assist decision makers, who will also rely on other types of information, whether it comes from quantitative research, experience, professional group interactions, or other means.

Examples of the value of case studies are found in the work of Herbert Gans ( 1959 ), Jane Jacobs ( 1961 ), William Whyte ( 1980 ), and Mark Rosentraub ( 2010 ), who have uncovered information that changed perceptions about the urban environment or activities occurring in cities. Martin Meyerson and Edward Banfield ( 1955 );, Bent Flyvbjerg ( 1998 ); Brent Flyvbjerg, Nils Bruzelius, and Wernter Rothengatter ( 2003 ); and Lynne Sagalyn ( 2003 ) have successfully shown the behaviors and actions of key actors in urban planning activities, while Martin Meyerson ( 1963 ), Jonathan Barnett ( 1974 ), Jerold Kayden ( 2000 ), Timothy Beatley ( 2000 ), Alexander Garvin ( 2002 ), and Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson ( 2009 ) provide exemplars for improving physical planning. Barbara Faga ( 2006 ) describes participatory processes and Allan Altshuler ( 1965 ), Charles Hoch ( 1994 ), and John Forester ( 1989 ) contribute ideas about practitioner operations. Hoch ( 1994 ) has full-scale portraits of typical planners, while Forester's ( 1989 , 163–208) contributions with regard to cases are restricted to a final chapter, “Supplement on Planning Education: Teaching Planning Practice.” Finally, Timothy Beatley ( 2009 ), who provided a firm foundation for “green urbanism,” defined the knowledge-to-action process as “telling stories—innovative efforts at moving cities and urban neighborhoods in the direction of sustainability, at finding ways to build economy, reconnect to place and environment, and at once to enhance quality of life and reduce ecological footprints.”

Case-study approaches allow urban planning scholars to provide information about place that other methods would not capture. Since case-study authors examine the physical manifestations of a wide variety of urban phenomena, they offer contextual details about places that are often lacking in purely quantitative studies. Depending on the subject under study, they may explain the geography (e.g., terrain, climate), locational characteristics (e.g., street layout, neighborhood or housing conditions), or the interplay of demographic factors and place (e.g., segregation) that are explanatory or have an effect on the outcomes. When Lynne Sagalyn ( 2003 ) dealt with the redevelopment of New York City's Times Square, in Times Square Roulette , she detailed relevant characteristics of the area (e.g., parcel size, ownership patterns, zoning requirements, accessibility to transportation, land values), its location in the NYC theater district, and other factors that influenced subsequent public and private decision making that explained the success of this particular development project. Similarly, Timothy Gilfoyle ( 2006 ) deconstructed the spatial aspects (e.g., location, acreage) that affected the events and decisions that resulted in the design and creation of Chicago's famed Millennium Park. Others have shown the physical imprint of pressing social, economic, and environmental issues. For example, legal scholar Charles Haar ( 1996 , 2005 ) explored both the ramifications of the Mt. Laurel I and II cases on New Jersey settlement patterns owing to court remedies for residential racial discrimination and outlined the physical effects of legal efforts on the cleanup of Boston Harbor. Capturing urban ethnic strife, John Calame and Esther Charlesworth ( 2009 ) mapped its varied expression is such forms as walls, gated districts, and other elements in the cities of Belfast, Beirut, Jerusalem, Mostar, and Nicosia. Some examine existing or potential public policy related to transportation, land use, regional planning, growth management, and the potential for political alliances. Michael Bernick and Robert Cervero ( 1997 ) and Cervero ( 1998 ) surveyed transit-oriented development; Douglas Porter ( 1997 ) covered U.S. regional planning efforts; Patsy Healey ( 2007 looked at innovative planning in several countries in Europe; and Myron Orfield ( 2002 ) demonstrated the economic and social commonalities among suburbs in a study of twenty-five metro areas.

Case-Study Author Roles Range from Witness to Dispassionate Analyst

The presence of the author as a witness takes different forms. Jonathan Barnett ( 1974 ) and Allan Jacobs ( 1978 ) represent first-person, active participants who are “reflective practitioners,” taking time to scrutinize their practical experiences and share the results. SchÖn ( 1983 ), Herbert Gans ( 1959 , 1967 ), Oscar Lewis ( 1959 , 1965 ), Gerald Suttles ( 1968 ), and Elijah Anderson ( 1999 ) are participant observers, inhabiting the communities they are studying in order to understand them. Jane Jacobs ( 1961 ) also lives in the community and uses her daily experiences to articulate desirable urban qualities. Unlike the sociologists, she does not focus on ethnographic concerns but, rather, on the effects of the physical environment on behavior and well-being. More remote are Lee Rainwater ( 1970 ), Joel Garreau ( 1991 ), Peter Brown ( 2009 ), and Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson ( 2009 ), who use field observations to supplement work that relies on many other forms of data and that places them at arm's length from their subjects.

Some Case Study Authors Revisit Phenomena

An author or co-authors may engage in longitudinal case studies that show how a phenomenon fares over time. For example, in the 1970s, Oscar Newman ( 1972 ) crafted “defensible space” design principles to reduce crime in public housing. More than twenty years later, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, he (1996) evaluated their application in a three-case study project. Two years after the publication of the notorious “Moynihan Report” or The Negro Family, The Case for National Action (U.S. Department of Labor 1965 ), Lee Rainwater and William Yancy ( 1967 ) looked at the stir it had created. (The Moynihan Report asserted that high levels of black male unemployment negatively affected family lives and led to a “tangle of pathology” that undermined black society.) Fifty years later, Douglas Massey and Robert Sampson ( 2009 , 12) reassessed the uproar again, arguing that the fallout contributed to avoidance and consequent lack of rigorous analysis of the “unpleasant realities of ghetto life,” consequently leaving the conservative explanation (welfare dependence created the observed pathologies) unchallenged for more than twenty years until William Julius Wilson ( 1987 ), in The Truly Disadvantaged , provided an alternative explanation (structural changes in the economy). Other works followed Wilson's, breaking the blockade of silence by liberal scholars.

The Professional Biography as a Type of Case Study Needs More Attention

Life stories focusing on people's careers illustrate the environment, character, and decision-making patterns of leaders who have shaped urban places. Exemplary are Robert Caro's ( 1974 ) biography of Robert Moses, a subject recently revisited by Hillary Ballon and Kenneth Jackson ( 2007 ) in a massive exhibit and catalogue Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York ; Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor's ( 2000 ) study of the first Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago, M. Jeffrey Hardwick's ( 2004 ) portrait of Victor Gruen and Nicholas Dagen Bloom's ( 2004 ) tracing of developer James Rouse's career highlighting his role in the creating Columbia, Maryland, festival malls and the Enterprise Foundation. Notably, there is a dearth of biographies of mid-twentieth-century city planners, including Kevin Lynch, Martin Meyerson, Lloyd Rodwin, Harvey Perloff, and others (Birch 2011 ), leaving an important gap to be filled by scholars in the future.

An important note here is that journalists often write professional biographies that differ in tone and analysis from those written by scholars. The journalist's approach tends to focus on the immediate story more than the context, while the scholars give much attention to placing the subject in a larger picture of his or her times. In the journalist group are Caro's book on Moses and Buzz Bissinger's ( 1997 ) portrait of Mayor Ed Rendell in A Prayer for a City ; among the scholar-generated offerings are Nicholas Dagen Bloom's ( 2004 ) Merchant of Illusion ( James Rouse) and Wendell Pritchett's ( 2008 ) Robert Clifton Weaver and the American City: The Time and Life of an Urban Reformer . Edited biographical collections are another version of this approach. Representative are Donald Krueckeberg's ( 1983 , 1994 ) pioneering work that includes portraits of more than twenty leaders and Scott Gabriel Knowles's ( 2009 ) recent book on Edmund Bacon, featuring several authors with different perspectives on a single person.

3. Some Effects of Case-Study Research on Urban Planning

The impact of case-based research becomes evident with the passage of time, allowing for the dissemination and application of findings. Two types of outcomes are evident, displayed as follows: (1) the translation of the new knowledge into practice; and (2) the stimulation of new research. Examples of the translation of the new knowledge into practice are evident in many arenas. William H. Whyte's ( 1980 ) Social Life of Small Urban Spaces , a study of public plazas in New York City, and Jane Jacobs's ( 1961 ) Death and Life of Great American Cities , an explanation of urban design successes also focused on New York City (primarily Greenwich Village) achieved widespread readership and reshaped city planning practice in New York and beyond. For example, New York City rewrote the public plaza sections of its zoning ordinance in response to Whyte's findings as did many other cities (Kayden 1996; Birch 1986 ).

Both textbooks and practice are infused with concepts that first saw life in case study monographs. Martin Meyerson and Edward Banfield's ( 1955 ) exploration of urban decision making in Politics, Planning and the Public Interest advanced planning theory, especially with regard to a nuanced definition of the public interest, that value that planners, through their code of ethics, pledge to pursue. Similarly, Alan Altshuler ( 1965 ) turned the rational planning model on its head. Herbert Gans's ( 1959 ) The Urban Villagers, Group and Class in the Life of Italian Americans transformed ideas about community life in slums, a theme that has been deepened through the ongoing work of other ethnographers like Elijah Anderson. Bernard Frieden ( 1964 ) The Future of Old Neighborhoods helped put a halt to slum clearance and successfully promoted rehabilitation. The zoning techniques that Jonathan Barnett ( 1974 ) put forward in Urban Design as Public Policy have been replicated in cities throughout the United States.

An example of the second type of outcome, stimulation of new research, is the seminal work of Sir Peter Hall ( 1966 ) in World Cities . Attributing the term “world cities” to Scottish scholar Patrick Geddes, Hall (7–9) was the first writer to operationalize the concept by defining world cities as places “in which a disproportionate part of the world's business is conducted, … [that are] national centers not merely of government but also of trade, … centers of population [with] … significant portion of the richest of the community, [and] … the locus of manufacturing and luxury goods, entertainment and culture.” Hall selected seven places, or “world cities,” to examine, analyzing the drivers of growth, current problems, and their solutions, and arguing that they represented the wave of the future whose stories provided lessons for urban planners. He chose the case studies from places that varied by function (political and financial capitals), by spatial arrangement (nuclear and polycentric), and by geographic location (Europe, Asia, North America). He found that “in every city … growth brings problems; but those problems may vary in intensity according especially to the internal disposition of functions and land uses within metropolitan regions” (234). From the data, Hall identified, quite presciently as it turns out, two categories of concern: the spread of the suburbs and the future of the downtown (237–42). He thus alerted his readers to what to “look for in other cities” (as Meyerson and Banfield [ 1955 , 12] had suggested a decade earlier in discussing the usefulness of case studies) and established an important agenda for subsequent research.

In the years to follow, scholars would flesh out the concerns highlighted by Hall in three significant streams of inquiry. The first focused on suburbs and sprawl, the next on downtowns, and the last on large-scale regions. The suburban literature spanned early studies that gauged the effects of suburbs on social behavior, such as William H. Whyte's ( 1956 ) The Organization Man , based on Park Forest, Illinois; and Herbert Gans's ( 1967 ) The Levittowners Ways of Life and Politics in a New Suburban Community , focused on community life in one of the nation's first, postwar, mass-produced subdivisions, Ann Forsyth's ( 2005 ) Reforming Suburbia, The Planned Communities of Irvine, Columbia and The Woodlands explored three master-planned places. Later works addressed public policies designed to shape suburbs as exemplified by Gregory K. Ingram and colleagues’ ( 2009 ) Smart Growth Policies: An Evaluation of Programs and Outcomes , which employed quantitative measures supplemented by mulitiple case studies, and Myron Orfield and Thomas F. Luce Jr.'s ( 2010 , xiii) Region, Planning the Future of the Twin Cities , which combined in-depth data analysis represented graphically in a number of GIS maps “to think more clearly about the socio-economic polarization that is occurring in the region,” and to decide what to do about it.

The second stream explored downtowns, especially the decentralization of central business district functions. Edge City, Life on the New Frontier by Joel Garreau ( 1991 ) redefined the idea of downtown through the investigation of nine “new urban centers” characterized by five elements (5 million square feet of leasable office space; 600,000 square feet of leasable retail space; more jobs than bedrooms) and perceived as one place, nonexistent thirty years ago. About a decade later, Edgeless Cities by Robert E. Lang ( 2003 , 2) challenged Garreau, employing multiple “mini” case studies to identify a new pattern of places that are downtowns “in function in that they contain office employment but not in form because they are scattered … contain isolated office buildings or small clusters of buildings of varying densities over vast swabs of metropolitan space.” Other works have focused on the actual downtown concept and its changing activities. These studies, as they were published over time, sequentially referenced their predecessors to demonstrate change. They include John Rannells's ( 1956 ) The Core of the City , which tracked traditional central business district (CBD) functions in Philadelphia; Bernard Frieden and Lynne B. Sagalyn's ( 1989 ) Downtown Inc., How America Rebuilds Cities ,which portrayed changing retail formats in Pasadena, Boston, San Diego, Seattle, and St. Paul; Roberta Gratz and Norman Mintz's ( 2000 ) Cities Back from the Edge; and Eugenie L. Birch's ( 2005 ) Who Lives Downtown? , with their many small case examples, that show the new residential and entertainments components of the twenty-first century 24/7 downtown.

The third stream examines large-scale regions. The literature is extensive, but four recent works are representative: Roger Simmonds and Gary Hack ( 2000 , 3, 183–93), in Global City Regions, Their Emerging Forms , compared eleven large-scale places closely linked by economic activity but exhibitingcontrasting features, including infrastructure, regional organization and cultures of governance. Peter Hall and Kathy Pain's ( 2006 ) The Polycentric Metropolis, Learning from Mega-City Regions in Europe , showcased eight places that have become mega-city regions in work that is closely related to thinking about mega-regions in the United States, fostered by Jonathan Barnett and colleagues ( 2007 ) in Smart Growth in a Changing World , Catherine Ross ( 2009 ) in Megaregions, Planning for Global Competitiveness and Arthur Nelson and Robert Lang ( 2011 ) in Megapolitan America .

As it turns out, Hall's three streams of inquiry are closely related. The suburban work informs state and local dialogues on community life, sprawl, and urban design. Public and private decision makers are shaping downtown investments based on researchers’ findings. The study of large-scale places is now influencing national policy discussions in such infrastructure discussions as those revolving around high-speed rail, as a recent scan of the America 2050 ( http://www.america2050.org/ ) and the U.S. Federal Rail Administration ( http://www.fra.dot.gov/Pages/2325.shtml ) Web sites indicate.

4. Conclusion

Urban planning scholars employ case-study research widely to pursue a range of questions related to the field, including analyzing urban behaviors in the political arena, in neighborhoods, and in other places and providing exemplars of best practices in physical planning. They have done so for more than fifty years. And as they have worked, they have evolved several types of approaches, ranging from the single case monograph to the mulitiple case edited collection. In the process, they have pursued rigorous and replicable research designs whose formats have been repeated in the work of successive case-study researchers and whose protocols have been formalized in case-study textbooks (Yin 2009 ; Seale et al. 2008 ; Stake 2006 ). An analysis of representative studies reveals several patterns, including an effort to develop cases that translate knowledge into action, that pay attention to “place” or the physical dimensions of a question, and have a tendency to revisit and reevaluate a phenomenon that has been studied at an earlier time. Important gaps in case study research such as in the special format, biography, exist. Finally, case-study research has yielded important outcomes, influencing both practice and ongoing research.

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Cities, People and Processes as Planning Case Studies

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When, in 1999, this journal changed its name from Scandinavian Housing and Planning Research to Housing, Theory and Society (HTS), it explicitly put theory in the centre of the academic field of housing studies. The comma between “housing” and “theory” is also telling: the editors’ goal, from the start on, was not so much to develop a theory of housing, but to provide space for social theories applied to the field of housing. Now, in respective Focus articles in the journal’s 20th year of publication, a past and the current editor of HTS revisit the debate on the need for a theory of/about/from and one could add in and for housing. Clapham chiefly picks up on Kemeny’s plea for theoretically-based and – he adds – policy-relevant research. In the second Focus article, Ruonavaara discusses different relations between theory and housing research and concludes that a general theory of housing is not possible, but that we should strengthen our efforts in constructing theory about housing and making sure this feeds back into the different disciplines whose theories we “borrow”, so we can pay back with interest, to use a housing metaphor. Basically, both papers revolve around the question: what kind of theory for what kind of housing research? As both authors acknowledge, it is hard to define “theory” as there are many possible conceptualizations of theory. I would add that not only one’s preference for and use of theory is influenced by an ontological and epistemological position, but that, indeed, one’s conceptualization or definition of what constitutes theory depends on an ontological and epistemological position. However, even within a single philosophy of science, for instance the positivist tradition, it is possible to find many different conceptualizations of theory. For some positivists it is a mathematical model, for others it is simply a generalized outcome of previous research, although the latter should really be labelled “empiricism” rather than “positivism”. In economics, these generalizations are often referred to as “stylised facts” – a concept that I like, despite my general discomfort with mainstream economics. For economists, the stylized facts can be refined or falsified, but the assumptions underlying them are rarely up for grabs. Yet, it is this set of assumptions that forms the core of mainstream economics, that most economists unfortunately take for granted – that is, outside of the debate – while it is here that neoclassical economic theory is really at work, often affecting those beyond the confines of neoclassical economics. Social scientists like Clapham and Ruonavaara, whose work would not suggest a positivist ontology or epistemology, define theory as “collections of concepts about the real world that facilitate explaining, predicting or intervening” (Clapham, This issue, p. 172); and social theory as “a discourse that consists of a set of linked (a) concepts and (b) propositions to be used for hypothetical (i) re-description, (ii) explanation and (iii) interpretation of all or some subset of social entities, relations and processes” (Ruonavaara, This issue, p. 181, my emphasis). What strikes me in both definitions is a positivist undertone and the lack of attention to “understanding” in the Weberian meaning of verstehen. Weber’s verstehen was explicitly stated as a rejection of sociological positivism and economic determinism. Verstehen instead focuses on understanding the meaning of action from the actor’s point of view. To Weber, the trick was to combine explanation and understanding. Bourdieu (1993) even argued that comprendre (understanding) is a necessary condition for explanation. Both were sceptical of testing hypotheses or using theories to predict or intervene. Yet, Bourdieu in particular was not necessarily sceptical of empirical work and of the great social theorists of the twentieth century he was arguably the one who was most invested in empirical research. Clapham and Ruonavaara both appear to be choosing definitions of theory that are open to different traditions, but in their efforts to be inclusive they appear to be excluding more interpretative conceptualizations in favour of positivist-inspired ones. Perhaps the “positivist paradigm” is more common in the social sciences than Clapham leads us believe. Whereas positivists tend to work from a model of social science where research is linear and cumulative, and therefore, results in ever-greater knowledge of the social world, other philosophies of science deny the very possibility of ever getting close to knowing everything about the social world. What Ruonavaara calls a (grand) theory of housing, for Clapham is desirable and possibly even attainable. I beg to differ, not simply because this is “questionable”, as Ruonavaara argues, but because I don’t believe that there is a finite amount of knowledge (a typical positivist assumption). I believe the more we know, the less we know we know. More empirical research does not lead to getting closer to finite knowledge, nor is it useless, but it contributes to showing how we now know a little more about an even bigger unknown social world, even if this does not always result in turning unknown knowns into known knowns but rather into discovering new unknown knowns where previously these were unknown unknowns.

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In either the field of architecture or urbanism, empirical approach has always served as a crucial tool that helps architects and urban designers identify and process a problem. Especially in urbanism, this methodology has been widely used to gain data that would later be analysed to help establish a theory, a system or a design principle. This essay would examine how empirical approach has been applied to urbanism studies.

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JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Policy Press at the University of Bristol is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The future of planning This content downloaded from 130.88.99.156 on Sun, 15 May 2016 23:18:50 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

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