Raymond J. Burby’s research while affiliated with University of New Orleans and other places

Protecting people from harm caused by nearby heavy industry is an old, and almost forgotten, goal of city planning. In this case study of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, I show that industrial pollution is a serious source of con cern for nearby residents, who are dispropor tionately black. Analysis of factors associated with concern about neighborhood safety indi cates there is much that local planners can do, in cooperation with industry and state and federal regulators, to lessen fears about indus trial land uses. These findings provide the foundation for a discussion of policy options that planners can apply in dealing with heavy industry, once they realize that industrial uses are still a serious source of distress, particularly for poor and minority communities.

The environmental justice movement has focused national attention on alleged inequities in the way hazardous industrial facilities are sited and regulated, but has paid less attention to the consequences of pollution for the quality of life in industrialized areas. This article examines racial differences in how people perceive pollution, how these perceptions affect their lives, and what planners can do about inequities in exposure to industrial pollution. Interviews with over 750 low- and moderate-income households show that black households are more concerned about industrial pollution than are white households. Anxiety about pollution translates into the perception that the quality of life in communities is deteriorating. Thus, black households who are exposed to industrial hazards suffer in two ways. Compared to white households they are more exposed to health hazards, and their heightened concerns translate into a lower quality of community life. Local government planners tend to view environmental pollution as a federal and state, rather than a local problem. But we suggest a number of important steps local planners can take in concert with the residents of industrialized areas that will reduce concern and lead to a better quality of life for all residents.

Hurricanes, typhoons, tsunamis and other storms force thousands to flee coastal regions every year. In many cases, resort areas have been severely damaged and tourists placed in jeopardy. This article examines ways tourist businesses can and already have protected holiday-makers from coastal storm hazards through emergency evacuation and other measures. Using data from a sample of large and small hotels in New Orleans, Louisiana, we find considerable variation in protective behaviour. To explain this variation, we look at how perceptions and preparedness differ by both managerial and organisational characteristics. We then suggest a variety of measures that can be taken by hotels in coastal resort areas to reduce risk.

Cooperative policies hold out promise of art improvement over coercive mandates as ways to enhance implementation of intergovernmental programs. By treating subordinate governments as regulatory trustees and emphasizing substantive compliance, the cooperative mandates avoid the onerous aspects of heavy-handed regulatory federalism. Our comparison of state hazard-mitigation policy in Florida and in New South Wales, Australia addresses procedural and substantive compliance under the two forms of intergovernmental policies. When local governments are Mot committed to state policy objectives, the coercive policy produces better results as evidenced by higher rates of procedural compliance and greater effort by local governments to achieve policy objectives. When local government commitment exists, the cooperative policy produces substantive results that are at least the equivalent to the coercive policy. Moreover, over the long run cooperative policies may have greater promise in sustaining local government commitment. The dilemma is to figure out how to motivate lagging jurisdictions that seem to require a coercive policy, while not straightjacketing leading jurisdictions that are capable of thriving tinder a cooperative regime.

This article examines coercive and cooperative approaches to implementing state urban erosion and sedimentation pollution control programs. State administrators report serious shortfalls in their ability to control sources of pollution, but comparison of more and less successful programs provides evidence of what states can do to make programs more effective. Key ingredients for a successful state effort include the use of coercion with both the private sector and local government, adequate staffing, application of severe sanctions when violations of state standards are detected, and provision of technical assistance. Many state programs lack one or more of those elements, which explains their inability to adequately control urban erosion and sedimentation pollution.

This research investigates how states influence development management, in a study of 176 communities in five states. First, state planning mandates improve the quality of local plans. Second, communities with good plans and planners committed to state policies adopt strong development management programs with land use controls, site design requirements and other techniques. Third, general planning mandates have little impact on planners' commitment to state objectives, while single-purpose state mandates do. These findings suggest that planning mandates are effective, but that greater attention must be given increasing planners' commitment to state policy objectives, through complementary mandates or those features of planning mandates that build commitment. -Authors

The National Flood Insurance Program emphasizes building elevation requirements to protect property from flood damage and to limit continued increases in national flood losses. Economists believe that the cost to elevate buildings will shift some development to flood-free locations. This article provides evidence that elevating buildings to NFIP standards does indeed reduce losses, but that adding additional elevation requirements will have little effect on the rate of increase in floodplain development. Instead, these requirements must be supplemented with regulation of floodplain land use. -Authors

Impact assessment skills are used in a variety of ways in planning practice, reflecting expansion in society's concern with externalities associated with growth and development, improved methods for predicting impacts, and wider acceptance of impact mitigation as a goal of growth management. This article reviews the status of impact assessment in planning pedagogy and describes a new way of teaching this subject. At present, few planning education programs address development impact assessment in a comprehensive way. Instead, most curricula either have courses dedicated to teaching methods related to a few categories of impacts, such as environmental or fiscal, or treat impact assessment in passing in courses that cover broader subjects. Here I argue that a comprehensive impact assessment course can have several advantages, and I present the design of such a course and report on initial classroom experience with it. The course combines instruction on causal relationships between characteristics of the built environ ment and a variety of impacts with the use of computer-based models to give students first- hand experience with predicting impacts and testing alternative mitigation strategies.