Journal of Planning Education and Research

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Book Review: Xavier de Souza Briggs Democracy as Problem Solving: Civic Capacity in Communities
across the Globe. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008. 374 pp. $28.00 (paperback). ISBN 978-0-262-02641-3
Troy D. Mix
Journal of Planning Education and Research 2011 31: 109
DOI: 10.1177/0739456X10390197

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Book Reviews 109
The final chapter of Conservation Communities deals with
the management and stewardship of open lands. Of the various
options for owning the open space, a homeowners’ asso­
ciation or land trust are the most common, although in some
cases individuals, businesses, or local government owns the
land. The choice depends to a large degree on how the land
is going to be used: for agriculture, community gardens, habitat
preservation, recreation, or some combination of uses. Here
McMahon introduces the tools that are commonly employed
to protect open land: conservation easements, land transfers,
restricted conveyances, and covenants, codes, and restrictions.
The book contains a number of brief profiles of conser­
vation developments throughout its pages—snapshots of
places that have applied conservation subdivision practices.
And 50 percent of the book is devoted to ten detailed case
studies of conservation developments. These are well-illustrated
profiles that explain the rationale for each development, the
process through which each occurred, and the results as well
as challenges, lessons learned, and transferability to other
sites. Four case studies are located in the West; four are in
the South, and two are in the Midwest. The community sites
range widely in size, from 170 acres at Tryon Farm in Indiana
to 20,000 acres in the Santa Lucia Preserve in California. At the
end of each case study is a chart that provides project statistics,
including acreage, number of lots, lot and house prices, and
development costs. This information will be particularly
valuable to developers. Unfortunately, McMahon provides
only cursory descriptions of the immediate surroundings of
the featured case study developments. In some cases, the
context and connectivity are obvious (e.g., the Homestead
Preserve in Virginia is adjacent to a well-known resort and
surrounded by the George Washington National Forest); for
others, they are not.
In the book’s first chapter, McMahon argues that conser­
vation communities are not “elitist,” citing two case studies
that provide some housing specifically for people of “moderate
means” or “modest incomes.” Yet from the descriptions and
pictures of the case study communities and some Web search­
ing, it appears that most of the conservation developments
are quite expensive places to buy land or homes. Although
some of them are reasonably priced—say, with house prices
between $325,000 and $500,000, as in Tryon Farm, Indiana,
and Hidden Springs, Idaho—many have a minimum lot price
of $200,000. A few, like Balsam Mountain Preserve, North
Carolina, and Storm Mountain Ranch, Colorado, are extraor­
dinarily expensive, with lot prices of more than $2 million.
It stands to reason that if the fundamental reason for creating
a conservation community is saving valuable resources,
whether natural, cultural, scenic, or recreational, there will
be a high premium on the lots. Although it may be true, as
McMahon argues, that the principles of conservation develo­
pment apply to communities for people of “modest incomes,”
these generally do not provide what we think of as affordable
housing. It might have been instructive to compare some of
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the conservation development case studies with projects
that have been developed through the Vermont Housing and
Conservation Board or Massachusetts Community Preservation
Act, for example, where conservation and affordable housing
are congruent goals.
Overall, the balanced perspective of the book should
ensure its appeal to developers, planners, elected officials, land
trusts, and students. In Ed McMahon style, the book features
abundant instructive sidebars and text boxes outlining key
points (for example, “Overcoming Obstacles to Conservation
Development,” “Urban Growth Boundaries,” and “Reasons for
Restoration”). These provide shorthand information that may
be useful particularly to students or others unfamiliar with
conservation or the conservation design process. Conser­vation
Communities is well written, but its pale gray text may be a bit
of a strain on older eyes. This is a minor weakness when
balanced with the rich color illustrations and layout. Overall,
McMahon’s latest book is a worthy addition to the literature on
community planning and design and already shows signs of
being a Urban Land Institute (ULI) best seller.
Reference
Arendt, Randall. 1999. Growing Greener. Washington, DC: Island
Press.
Xavier de Souza Briggs
Democracy as Problem Solving: Civic Capacity in Communities across
the Globe. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008. 374 pp. $28.00
(paperback). ISBN 978-0-262-02641-3
Reviewed by: Troy D. Mix, University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign
DOI: 10.1177/0739456X10390197
In Democracy as Problem Solving, Xavier de Souza
Briggs, associate director of the Office of Management
and Budget in the White House and associate professor of
sociology and urban planning at MIT, uses six case studies
to investigate civic capacity—the ability to “devise,
decide, and act collectively to improve our lives” (p. 11).
These case studies demonstrate the capability of govern-
ments, NGOs, and citizens around the world to make
progress on important planning problems, and they show
democracy hard at work—complete with wicked prob-
lems, conflict, collaborative efforts, and progress on “non-
routine” projects that promise the real “social impact . . .
citizens hope for” (p. 8).
Briggs’s perspective on democracy occupies a middle
ground between conceptions of democracy as a competitive,
winner-take-all struggle and democracy as a deliberative pro-
cess aimed at reaching broad consensus on policy. Deliberative
democracy focuses on creating and sustaining community
110 Journal of Planning Education and Research 31(1)
dialogue to arrive at ideal public solutions. Prominent examples
are communicative planning, which emphasizes creating shared
understandings, and social capital, which views community
associations as training grounds for widespread political
engagement. Studies of regime theory and pluralism typify
democracy as competition, with public and private stakeholders
seeking to gain and maintain influence over public policy.
Briggs’s framing of democracy as problem solving is dis-
tinctive. First, it identifies the ability to solve problems as
the true test of democracy. While other studies have looked
for democracy in the daily delivery of services and mainte-
nance of the status quo, Briggs seeks it in those moments when
major public problems lead to concerted, cross-sector efforts.
Second, in this pragmatic viewpoint, civic actors must draw
from both competitive and deliberative conceptions of democ-
racy to make progress. For instance, deliberative approaches
to establish a community’s vision might be followed by politi-
cal bargaining to implement policy in the face of resistance.
The case studies cover planning for quality growth in the
Salt Lake City region, redeveloping the slums of Mumbai,
strengthening regional economies in Pittsburgh and São Paulo,
and providing social services to children and families in
San Francisco and Cape Town. Confronted with such an eclectic
mix, some readers might be skeptical that Briggs could deliver
on his promise to help readers “understand the process of build-
ing and using civic capacity in specific, revelatory contexts
[while providing] lessons for other contexts” (p. 23).
Yet the book succeeds. Creating an accessible format, Briggs
organizes the case studies into three sections: growth manage-
ment, economic restructuring, and human development. Each
section starts with a literature review that provides a valuable
context for understanding its two case studies. Briggs offers
detailed accounts of the history and problem-solving process
in each place, with brief, concluding summaries drawing key
lessons. Readers may pick only the topics that interest them,
such as growth management, but such selective readers should
be sure to study Chapter 12, where Briggs neatly summarizes
overall findings.
The six case studies reveal three broad lessons about civic
capacity. Lesson one: regions must play the civic hand they
are dealt. Envision Utah successfully framed the need for qual-
ity growth in terms that rang true to the region’s Mormon settler
heritage and, in doing so, brought widespread legitimacy to an
initiative previously branded as an affront to private property
rights. Efforts to improve social service delivery in Cape Town
depended, for better or worse, on the strong “culture of bureau-
cracy and control” built up during apartheid (p. 268). Briggs
stresses the crucial roles civic intermediaries can play in com-
munity problem solving. Whether philanthropies in Pittsburgh,
advocacy organizations in San Francisco, or a regional business
organization in São Paulo, these intermediaries develop out of
a region’s historical context and perform a variety of bargain-
ing, facilitating, and public education roles that purely public
or private sector actors may be unable or unwilling to do.
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Lesson two: planners and civic leaders should adapt strategies
to fit the circumstances of evolving initiatives and avoid fixating
on any one problem-solving approach. Whereas São Paulo’s
young institutions have been able to operate on a largely con-
sensual basis while taking steps toward regional coordination,
unilateral action might be necessary to make the hard choices
involved in economic restructuring. In San Francisco, Coleman
Advocates used “pressure politics” to secure stable funding
for children’s services through a ballot initiative but had to
concentrate on details of program administration to make sure
the hard-won funds created positive outcomes for children.
Lesson three: strategic action can improve the odds of suc-
cess, but regions cannot ensure results on complex public prob-
lems. Decades of economic restructuring efforts in Pittsburgh
have yet to achieve a breakthrough in recapturing regional
prosperity. Similarly, the scale of housing needs in Mumbai’s
slums far outpaces the ability of well-intentioned efforts. Rec-
ognition of local limitations is not an excuse for civic inaction.
On the contrary, civic capacity lays the groundwork for regions
to seize opportunities and move past conflicts when conditions
for success emerge.
The six cases represent a broad range of democratic gov-
ernance possibilities, reinforcing the argument that Briggs’s
findings about civic capacity can be generalized. However,
Briggs readily admits that he was “not confident we know what
civic capacity is in distinct contexts” (p. 23). He purposefully
selected case study regions engaged in prominent problem-
solving efforts and used a grounded theory approach to draw
from many theoretical perspectives and “build accounts that
fit the data” (p. 23). Hence, the book contributes a general frame-
work, what I have summarized as the three broad lessons, not
a detailed and cohesive theory of how civic capacity works.
This general framework is a significant contribution to
scholarship and practice, but more can be done toward devel-
oping a robust theory of civic capacity. Case study research
often requires a choice between studying many cases to arrive
at broadly applicable findings and examining fewer cases inten-
sively to gain deep, contingent insights. The six case narratives
in Democracy as Problem Solving comprise fewer than two
hundred pages. A promising research design would focus on
three regions with initiatives in two shared problem domains,
for instance, economic restructuring and social services initia-
tives in Pittsburgh, São Paulo, and San Francisco. Such case
studies would help distinguish differences caused by the policy
problem from those unique to a place.
Briggs’s contributions to outlining the important elements
of civic capacity outweigh any lack of theoretical detail.
Practitioners who participate in designing, implementing, or
collaborating on major policy initiatives, whether as govern-
ment, NGO, or private actors, can draw insights from the
procedural obstacles, missteps, and successes presented in
the case studies. The literature reviews offer guidance for
scholars interested in growth management, economic devel-
opment, social services, or the broader governance themes.
Book Reviews 111
Briggs’s call for making “decisions as accessible and inclu-
sive as possible and . . . producing outcomes . . . recognized
as promoting legitimate interests and values” (p. 312) pro-
vides a useful test for planning, implementing, and assessing
collective action.
The six case studies illustrate democratic problem-solving
at work, but they are not offered as models of best practice.
Whether solutions have been reached in these cases remains
unclear. Nevertheless, Democracy as Problem Solving pro-
vides noteworthy examples that help planners understand,
cope with, and navigate tricky environments. The case studies
demonstrate that heeding Burnham’s call to “make no little
plans” often requires acting when the need for action is clear
even if solutions are elusive or unattainable.
Tim Halbur and Nate Berg
Insider’s Guide to Careers in Urban Planning. Los Angeles, CA:
Urban Insight Inc., 2009. 117 pp. $24.95 (paperback).
ISBN 978-0-9789329-4-7
Reviewed by: Robert B. Kent, California State University, North-
ridge
DOI: 10.1177/0739456X10388020
Pitched as an “insider’s guide,” this slim volume provides an
introduction to a broad range of jobs/careers related to urban
planning. The book opens with an inspirational forward on
the excitement and rewards of a career in planning by Rich-
ard Florida and an introduction with some practical advice
on career strategies by one of the book’s authors, Tim Halbur.
The body of the book is organized around six chapters, each
focused on a broad job/career category. These are planning,
design, development, transportation, politics, and research.
The first chapter, on planning jobs, is the most extensive, and
ten different job types are described here. The remaining
chapters are much shorter and include just two to three job
descriptions each.
Each chapter follows a standard format. A brief, one-half-
page synopsis of the broad job category is provided at the
beginning of each chapter. Then, subsequently, each of the
specific jobs/careers addressed in the chapter is introduced
by a one-page overview of its characteristics and followed
by an interview with an individual who works in the field.
These practitioner perspectives usually run two pages and
include a picture of the individual and a list of websites of
significant employers. The employer listings cast a broad
net. These include listings from across the United States and
from nonprofit organizations, governmental agencies at all
levels, consulting firms, and all manner of businesses linked
to urban planning. Each section concludes with a sample job
description drawn from a recently published employment
advertisement and a list of more resources, including addi-
tional readings and contact information for pertinent
professional associations.
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The book concludes with a series of detailed tables, each
focusing on one of the six broad job/career categories and
listing two or three recently advertised positions for each of
the jobs detailed in the chapters. Each includes specific
information on job titles, locations, salary ranges, and prior
job experience required.
This book has several notable strengths. The firsthand
perspectives from individual practitioners are one. These
accounts provide the reader with a personal take on the satis-
factions as well as the challenges of each of these job/career
categories. The authors also have taken a broad view of plan-
ning and planning careers, and this, too, is helpful. Academic
training in planning frequently focuses largely on the public
sector and nonprofit planning while often giving short shrift
to the private sector or even the role of politics in the field.
The authors address this by including many job/career
options in these areas, for example, planning commissioner,
for-profit developer, and journalist. The inclusion of sample
job advertisements, significant employers, and additional
resources for each job category is beneficial as well.
These strengths notwithstanding, the book does have some
shortcomings. The most significant relates to the relative
absence of information or advice on several key issues related
to career planning. Little is said about planning education at
either the undergraduate or the graduate level. Nor do the
authors provide much guidance on the importance of intern-
ships or strategies to enhance career advancement in the field.
The short one-half-page vignettes that describe the job cate-
gories covered in each chapter, for example, planning, design,
and so on, are too brief and do not provide an adequate level
of detail for the reader. Other issues are less significant. For
instance, the inclusion of a short two-page contribution by
Paul Smoke on “planning in developing countries,” as part of
introductory materials prior to the body of the book, is odd
and seems misplaced. While useful, this could have been
placed more appropriately at the end of the book, included as
an appendix, or formed part of an entire new section on plan-
ning careers in international development. In addition,
although not quite explicit, the volume reflects somewhat of
a promotion for the publisher’s business interests, Planetizen.
All the sample job descriptions are drawn from advertise-
ments posted to the company’s website, and at the conclusion
of the volume, readers are encouraged to visit the site and to
sign up for its free “weekly Jobswire newsletter.”
In sum, this is a useful volume for urban planning stu-
dents and faculty. Students, especially those who are
beginning to wonder about eventual employment in the field,
will find this an especially valuable book, and faculty mem-
bers will find it useful as a quick office reference when
advising students on career options. However, this book is
not sufficient on its own as a complete guide to career plan-
ning, and a second edition of the book might well be
expanded to include more information on planning educa-
tion, internships, and career advancement. Nevertheless, it