This article provides an overview on the current debate on evaluation in urban planning. An initial evaluation state of the art is presented in three parts: the evolution of evaluation theory and methods, the contemporary planning debate around different perspectives and paradigms, and the nature and extent of evaluation practice in planning. The second part of the article focuses on the growing emphasis on urban form issues in different planning systems. This comprehensive literature review provides the background to support the authors' proposal for a set of general principles to evaluate the implementation of urban plans. Keywordsplanning evaluation, urban form, plan implementation, ongoing assessment methodologiesIn the beginning of the second half of the twentieth century, planning became progressively associated with the rationalcomprehensive model. One of the distinctive features of this then new way of thinking was the integration of evaluation in the plan making process. In a specific planning situation, the decision maker would consider all possible courses of action, according to a number of established ends, identify and assess all the consequences following from the adoption of each course of action, and then select the most preferable alternative. Another feature, distinguishing the rational paradigm from the classical paradigm associated to Patrick Geddes's survey-analysis-plan, was the new way of considering the physical dimension of the city. While in the classical paradigm the emphasis was on the city-the survey works, the analysis of collected data, and the preparation of a plan intended to control the future of the city-in the rational paradigm the focus was on the process and the method, leading to an unintended devaluation of the city as the planning object.This article focuses on the evaluation of urban planning, providing a review of the state of the art and a number of recommendations to improve its practice. When a growing number of studies and advances in planning evaluation are being disseminated, a comprehensive and up-to-date review of this field seems particularly relevant. An underlying concern throughout the whole article is the consideration of urban form as a fundamental theme in planning and in planning evaluation.The first and the second parts of the article contain a literature review. The review on planning evaluation is structured in three parts: an analysis of the evolution of evaluation theory and methods covering the second half of the twentieth century, an overview of the contemporary debate on evaluation in urban and regional planning, and a first reflection on evaluation in planning practice.Closely following Alexander (2006c) and Khakee (2003)'s approaches, we analyze the evolution of evaluation throughout the past fifty years from three different perspectives: a policy program perspective, a planning theory perspective, and a welfare economics perspective. The identification and the characterization of the first and of the second traditions highlight the development...

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The implications of urban form on energy have long been present in international debate, whether considering travel patterns or thermal comfort in buildings. The urban environment is a result of a set of intertwined attributes, the understanding of which is often unclear. The energy trade-offs between urban form attributes haven’t received proper attention. Research remains sectorial, considering buildings and transport in isolation. In order to allow for a comprehensive analysis of this relationship, this article reviews urban attributes with energy relevance. A collection of attributes and metrics is gathered from the literature for incorporating urban form in urban energy analysis.

Despite the potential advantages of a closer link between planning evaluation and programme evaluation , both fields have been developed independently. This is mainly due to significant differences between them, particularly in terms of historical background, evaluation scope and contexts, the articulation between theory and practice, and the timings of evaluation. This article advocates bridging the gap between these two fields, and presents the Plan-Process-Results (PPR) methodology as an example of, and a contribution to, this bridging process. PPR is a methodology for evaluating planning and plan implementation, integrating elements from three types of planning evaluation, based on rationality ex-ante, performance and conformance.