Planning support: from systems to science

Abstract

The role of planning support systems (PSS) in planning practice is still quite restricted, despite explosive growth in the supply of PSS and increased demand from planning practice as a result of the growing complexity of planning tasks. Research in this area must become more focused if this unsatisfactory situation is to be overcome. This can be achieved by developing a coherent research agenda in which the constituting research elements work together in order to rectify the situation as it stands. This paper employs a structured methodology with the aim of realising the start of a PSS research agenda. A number of recommendations for future PSS research can be derived from this tentative agenda. The key recommendation calls for shifting the prime focus from PSS instruments (means) to their support role (goal). When this is achieved, a new and innovative field of study can be established: planning support science.

Infrastructure Development, Residential Growth and Impacts on Public Service Expenditure

“…Bottlenecks to PSS implementation found in the literature include lack of awareness of potential applications (Geertman andStillwell 2009, Vonk et al 2005). Te Brömmelstroet (2012) lists a number of other bottlenecks that suggest PSS are not capable of addressing problems at hand.…”

“…Klosterman (1997) offered several recommendations for PSS components including specific software tools and support for continuous and interactive analysis and evaluation. Nedović-Budić (2000) and more recently Geertman (2013) argue that analysis and problem solving are among the expected capabilities of PSS. Geertman et al (2013) present a collection of papers highlighting the analytical capabilities of PSS.…”

Planning support science: challenges, themes and applications

“…The emergence of digitization, big data, smart cities and the opening of government data repositories have all created new opportunities for PSS to embrace this shift towards the digital paradigm and increase their visibility and uptake as geo-information toolkits which can support a number of urban and rural planning tasks at national, regional and local scales. It is owing to this much widened perspective on PSS that we prefer to refer to the emerging scientific field of planning support science with an emphasis on the goals of support instead of focusing just on the system-side of PSS, the means of support (Geertman 2013).…”

“…Thus, PSS developed in the computer laboratories, frequently by individual or small teams of academic researchers, need to be adapted to the specifics of planning practice, to the intended application and to the context of that application. This adaptation, the intended needs and context of the application and its associated context-sensitive methodology have become a field of research in its own right (Geertman 2006(Geertman , 2013. Of particular relevance therein is an agenda that calls for context-sensitive PSS research which pays more explicit attention to the influence of contextual factors on the support role of PSS in specific planning processes ( Figure 1.2).…”

Planning Support Systems and Task-Technology Fit: a Comparative Case Study

“…Klosterman 1997. However, in the literature the emphasis seems to be on two out of three letters in the PSS abbreviation (Geertman 2013). The first term, 'Planning' is increasingly receiving attention, particularly in more conceptually oriented articles (e.g., Couclelis 2005;Geertman 2006;Klosterman 1997).…”