Research Methods in Urban and Regional Planning

Urban and regional planners develop and evaluate plans for communities—the places we live, work, interact, and entertain on a daily basis. Their responsibilities require skills of retrieving, analyzing and presenting data. One of the required courses in all planning programs is planning methods. While teaching such a course we feel the need for a text book that provides an up-to-date introduction to the fundamental methods related to planning and human services delivery. In specific, this book describes methods used in four areas: demographic analysis, economic analysis, land use analysis, and transportation analysis. Many people have been helpful and supportive throughout this endeavor. Up front are our families who understood and supported us during the period. Andrea Yang, Rainer’s wife and also a planner, edited various chapters. David Edelman and Wolfgang Preiser provided suggestions for the content of this book and excellent insights and guidance whenever we asked for. We are grateful for the release time that David Edelman, the School Director, gave us on behalf of the entire School of Planning faculty. We would like to thank Dr. Stefan Rayer, Dr. Chen-Ping Yang and Dr. Zhongren Peng, who took time from their busy schedule to review various chapters. Dr. Rayman Mohamed used some preliminary chapters in his planning methods class and gave us valuable feedback. Their comments and suggestions significantly improved the book.

Dr. Wang is Professor of Planning in the School of Planning at the University of Cincinnati. He holds a Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning from the U. of Pennsylvania, a Masters in Community Planning from the U. of Rhode Island, and an MS in Geo-Sciences and BS in Geography from Peking U., Beijing, China. His research interests are in the areas of environmental planning and GIS applications in planning.

Dr. vom Hofe is Assistant Professor of Economic Development in the School of Planning at the University of Cincinnati. He received his Ph.D. and his Masters in Regional Science from Cornell U. and also holds a Diplom Ingenieur (FH) in Agriculture from the Fachhochschule Weihenstephan, Germany. His research is devoted to the applicability of quantitative methods in planning, particularly for economic analysis.

From the reviews:

"The book is an introductory text aimed at upper-level undergraduates and graduate students ... . The book runs to 430 pages, divided into eight chapters, and includes 97 figures and 139 tables. ... Research Methods in Urban and Regional Planning is likely to stand the test of time and has set a marker for others to follow." (Alasdair J. Rae, URBAN DESIGN International, Vol. 13, 2008)