The Case for Case Studies

Architects study historical precedents. Law is strictly based on past cases.  Business schools highlight the successes and failures of existing business models. The case study form of education is common to many professional schools, yet planning professionals and students have very little by way of case study resources. 

Many planning students have lamented that they are reinventing the wheel every time they begin a project. They have no way of researching “best practices” within a particular area of planning, unless they’ve heard of a specific project before (and can therefore dig through periodicals and libraries to find out what may or may not have been published on that project). Policy case studies have been developed, but these typically reside in policy school libraries and fail to address the design process or physical implementation of a project. 

As mentioned in the Research Challenges section of this website, there is the additional need for sophisticated critical analysis of urban planning and design projects, particularly with respect to their evolution over time.  What impact does a plan have on a community or on the environment after 5 years, 10 years, 50 years? How has technology changed since a project was implemented?

I have come to the conclusion during the course of this research that a collection of Urban Ecology case studies would be valuable to academics and professionals alike. And since a broader public understanding of urban ecological issues will be crucial in creating a sustainable future, an online collection of these case studies would be even more valuable.

A few organizations currently include case studies on their websites, however in most of the examples below the cases are limited to the specific topic with which the organization is concerned. Please see the Conceptual Recommendations area of this site for potential case study organizational models.

URBAN LAND INSTITUTE (Mixed-Use Deveopment Case Studies) One must be a member of the Urban Land Institute to access full case study texts, however anyone can browse the short abstracts for all the projects compiled within this database. The projects included are exclusively real estate developments in urban areas, and are divided into Commercial/Industrial, Residential, and Mixed-Use categories. Each case is created and maintained by the ULI itself.
THE ECOLOGICAL CITIES PROJECT (Watershed Case Studies) The Ecological Cities Project is in the process of creating a set of urban stream management case studies, nine of which are already listed here. They have taken diverse projects and done an in-house analysis and presentation of the information, however they also link users to other websites or organizations associated with each particular watershed.
TRUST FOR PUBLIC LAND (Brownfields/Urban Parks Case Studies) The Trust for Public Land has built up a running list of “Brownfields to Parks” developments and keeps this list, rather inconspicuously, under their “City Parks” link. Current examples are described in narrative form but older entries follow a very clear bulleted format. They even provide a contact person and phone number for each site should users want to call for more information.
U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY (Brownfields Cleanup Case Studies) The EPA has a tremendous amount of ecological information throughout their website, including lists of case studies which they refer to as “Success Stories.” Write-ups for each project are available for download as PDF files, and specifically for Brownfields projects the EPA provides a great map with which one can search geographically for specific sites.		(Return to Top)