Mark Seasons - Evaluating Urban and Regional Plans; From Theory to Practice

Over the course of my career in planning, Ive often thought about whether planners make a difference. Do we help to advance sustainability? Have our plans worked as we anticipated? How would we know? This book is my response to these questions. It represents two decades of contemplation about, and research on, evaluation generally, and plan evaluation specifically.

The focus of this book is the evaluation of comprehensive community plans the over-arching policy documents that guide the long-term evolution of our communities. By providing a reasonable balance of theory and practice advice, my hope is that planning practitioners and students of planning will consider it a useful and relevant resource as they learn about, develop, and apply plan evaluation models.

Evaluating Urban and Regional Plansis very much a team effort. It represents a tremendous amount of effort and expertise by many people. My thanks go to my colleague Dr. Dave Guyadeen who worked with me to develop the initial proposal for the manuscript. The UBC Press editorial and production teams have taken a rather rough manuscript and created a vastly improved product. Many thanks are due to acquiring editor James MacNevin for his enthusiasm, encouragement, and optimism, as well as his advice about the publication process; to my talented copy editor, Camilla Blakeley, for her exceptional and very fine editorial work; and to production editor Holly Keller, who has done a wonderful job pulling the whole thing together. I would also like to acknowledge the anonymous peer reviewers who provided helpful insights and advice that improved the final book so much.

Finally, I want to thank my family, friends, and colleagues, among them planners, engineers, political scientists, designers, artists, and environmentalists, for their encouragement, support, ideas, and patience. I appreciate it very much.

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