The Future Airport Acres Neighborhood
Year 2001
a supplement to The Comprehensive Plan of
Blacksburg, Virginia
The Future Airport Acres Neighborhood
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Dynaplan |
Following State requirements for comprehensive plans for all Virginia counties, a concept of a dynamic planning system was developed and partially implemented in 1976. It was called Dynaplan but it was never funded and was dormant until 2000 when R.H. Giles re-edited notes and documents and has herein begun to attempt to bring its advantages in the era of new technology to the citizens of one neighborhood of Blacksburg, Virginia. Perhaps its potentials and economies can be studied well from the neighborhood scale. Its greatest economies would likely be experienced when a central group (private or governmental) serves major, highly duplicative needs held by all planners within more than 100 counties, towns, and cities of the Commonwealth and adjacent counties and other units. R.H. Giles
Dynaplan produces a paper or hardcopy document if requested for an area such as a neighborhood, town or county. It also is a system within the Internet that is able to produce the came document(s) at the monitor of a personal computer. The result of the computer-based system is that the so-called "plan" is a living entity, a "document" that is potentially undergoing change, being edited and updated and improved, and even having major new additions made to it. The longer its development and the greater the support and involvement of relevant groups, people, and agencies, the more complete it will become. A parallel effort for the private owner of wildlands is underway in The Trevey and in the military system called Guidance based on Giles' work with the environmental plan for the Indian Head Naval Surface Warfare Center, Maryland. The system is potentially changing in size, quality of data and information, scope, and relations (e.g., links) among the chapters and sections. Giles continues to add to the system (November, 2000).
Dynaplan is a response to the often-heard complaints that plans are "those dusty books there on the shelf." Complaints have included that the plans were "out of date before they arrived from the printer." The Dynaplan response is one, we believe, somewhat like that of a newspaper, needed and prized today, but discarded tomorrow.
Dynaplan is a system of people, computers, data, research, reports, users and corrective and adaptive changes. Each part is very important. It has been designed to produce documents that provide sophisticated, state-of-the-art aids to neighborhood-, town-, and county-level planning. [Now it is maintained by an individual, Giles, hopefully, so that it may be transferred and will evolve in the hands of others.] The intent was not to produce documents that were actual plans but aids for and sections of plans. They were conceived as skeleton documents upon which could be formed the knowledge, interpretive skills, and alternatives of local planners, citizens, and advisors. Not just text materials, Dynaplan was seen as a computer system that included software that processed data, presented the results of simulations, and showed optimum solutions given the data and assumptions that are part of every planning process.
Dynaplan was designed to:
One reason for designing Dynaplan was to provide a means by which the areas of Virginia could be assisted in achieving a valid response to the law that required all counties to have a comprehensive plan by 1980. (Some do not have one in 2000ad.)
What Dynaplan Does
Dynaplan does what planners have done for years, that is, produce a document called a "plan." At least Dynaplan can produce a readily updated planning book to replace the outdated and dusty one on the office shelf. Because Dynaplan accumulates data and stores it, planning agencies do not have to start from ground-zero at the beginning of each new plan-revision period. Data are never lost and can be revised, corrected, and, most importantly, added. Equations and understanding of the processes within the system are improved with each new set of data.
The second thing that Dynaplan does is to produce general recommendations. This prescriptive function provides general categories of need and their quantitative deficits. A list of techniques used in other areas to meet these needs is typically presented. This list of needs and solution hints can generate positive, realistic, and creative solutions to local problems for local decision makers. Detailed prescriptions are rarely provided, partially because there is an infinite number of combinations of known solutions and partially because need may generate a unique or truly creative local response and solution. Although not yet programmed, Dynaplan will eventually be able to evaluate the major consequences of changing some specific thing in a town or county.
For example, Dynaplan will evaluate the consequences of a shopping center at site X, a powerline proposed between points A and B, and a law likely to change the acres of crop Q in a county. These are evaluated relative to the county, town, or neighborhood (and later to the planning district or watershed.)
Based on many past experiences, plans change when a large, unforeseen even occurs. An industry located within a county ... the county changes. Am interstate cuts the sole economic base of a small rural county ... the county changes. Operating as a major planning aid, Dynaplan must:
Thus, no past planning effort is wasted even though conditions may change.
There are many types of plans and planning processes. There are plans that are problem-generated, responsive efforts to problems that have arisen because of previous failures. Increasingly, there are needs for efforts responsive to spectacular successes (new cities, new developments, new technology, new wealth and education). Some plans grow from impatience in learning how we might function and learn to do well together. Some are experimental, for some people hold the hope and thirst for improvements. Of course there are plans called "land-use" and these are to address major site specific neighborhood, town and county planning problems. Most of the attention of professional and lay planners is directed to zoning change requests and location decisions for highways, airports, and utility corridors. Nevertheless, some people recognize that the fundamental objectives for planning are dynmaic, changing slowly, and are thus hard to see and name. There are key themes such as urban expansion, education, health interests, fossil energy shortages, and notably in the early 1970's, new attention to environmental concerns of citizens. It is now unmistakable that there are changes, that the towns and cities of the region have been transformed by great wealth, increasing populations, and rapid changes in technology. It is notable also that the difference between the extremes in income and disposable income for people has increased and history tells bleak tales about periods in which this has occurred. Plans are needed. They are one of the major self-adaptive mechanisms for communities, means for assessing problems and applying solutions to prevent dis-economies and chaos. Plans, with little stretch, can become the central feedback mechanism if they are made to be dynamic and active, not passive and past-tense. They can be particapatory, procedures that are more a pull of the future than a push of the past.
The odds are that actions in towns and counties are more similar than they are different. The designers of Dynaplan recognize the need for decisions about actions to be taken though they reject outright a very narrow, site-specific, land-use-only view of planning. Planning appropriately includes social, welfare, aesthetic, health, economic and other factors needed to optimize the total quality of life for citizens living within such areas.
In most location decisions, ownership (or an option to buy) exists. A proposal is advanced to do approximately X on site Z. If permission is granted, X (but usually a modified version) is developed. In some cases, permission to do X is granted, conditional upon changes required by the public planning group. The developer must then decide whether the change is acceptable.
Eventually, Dynaplan will be able to evaluate a site-specific proposal if given its characteristics. It reports a list of likely consequences based on stored knowledge and modeling equations. These consequences of change include, for example only:
Several indices will be produced, including, for example:
Each section of the plan has its own criteria for measuring accomplishments and progress. The functions of Dynaplan produce insight into:
The System The operational in-the-box system is a large word and numbers data base, a large geographic information system, a server (initially that of the Conservation Management Institute of Virginia Tech), code for producing the text of the report, automated forms to collect project-specific information, computational units (statistical analyses, simulations, optimization, expert systems results) producing an "answers file." A user pays fees, gains a password, and enters the website. He or she may read and study it, make printed copies, extract a map, page, or chapter for distribution or study and discussion. An "approved" version of the plan (dated approval) is held as fixed for legal purposed. Approval rates will change with usage and demand. The approved version is relatively constant and stable for legal reasons. Otherwise the active version is continually undergoing correction, revision, and additions. Site specific data are sent to the server and new computations are performed (ColdFusion software is now proposed). Computer graphics (maps as well as many types of graphs) are added and changed as developments occur and on demand.
The Data
Plans are to use US and state data bases, summarized data, satellite images, and a statewide GIS. Dynaplan attempts to use the best possible data consistent with the accuracy, precision, and confidence required for each decision and consistent with the overall balance in accuracy and scale within the system. Data gaps will be identified and various ways sought to encourage research on data collection to meet the needs.
In some areas, data seem needed but are not readily available. Some numbers cannot be gotten in reasonable time or within expected budgets. Where essential, recently developed methods of subjective probability estimation will be used. Typically employing information supplied by experts. High, medium, and low estimated are usually displayed so that the tradeoffs and effect of imperfect estimates and cost of data collection can be appraised.
How the System is Checked and Improved
The staff continually revise, update, and improve the system, seeking new methods and efficiencies. Data are revised as reports become available. New and improved data and bias corrections are requested and solicited from all users.
External reviewers are invited periodically to audit the system.
Input-output checks are requested from agencies to assure that the best and most recent data are employed.
Whatever changes that have occurred in objectives are made at any time. Five-year updates of objective-weights will be requested, and , if longer periods are used, official certification by local authorities is required.
Open-ended criticism is sought. Various technical reports and conference presentations subject Dynaplan to scrutiny of the planning and scientific community.
Conclusion
Dynaplan provides decision aids. It is not a decision maker. It is incapable of assuming authority or responsibility. It incurs no risks, no penalties. It can only include factors and weights available to the system. The reasons why, in some actual runs, a $3 million benefit did not accrue to society may have been that:
As society becomes better attuned to the power of Dynaplan, it is likely to encourage more use of it. Where deviations from the Dynaplan solution are selected, then the stage is set for:
Questions and answers about the planning process that is planned to be used in developing the Plan Supplement for the Blacksburg Comprehensive Plan are available.
This Web site is maintained by R. H.
Giles, Jr.
Last revision: October 17, 2000.