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Regional impacts of resource developments
Book Reviews carried-out. Further evidence, notably that from Canada, strongly suggests that negative impacts to community structure occur when absentee farmland owners amalgamate farmsteads into ever-larger production units. This concern has motivated even more strict regulation than has occurred in the United States (Mage and Lapping, 1982). Readers will find this short book useful and of interest. Its contribution is genuine and conclusions provocative. Perhaps especially noteworthy is its contribution to an understanding of the politics of the small farmer in contemporary America. MARK LAPPING Kansas State University, U.S.A.
References Clifton, J.D. and Smothers, W. Jr (1980) Afien Investment in Georgia’s Agricultural Lands. Agricultural Experiment Station, University of Georgia, Athens. Lapping, M. and Misek, M. (1983) Foreign investment in U.S. agricultural land: a Vermont case study. American Journal of Economics and Sociology 42, 3.
Mage, J. and Lapping, M. (1982) Legislation related to absentee foreign landownership in Canada. Agricultural Law Journal, Fail.
Regional Impacts of Resource Developments, C.C. Kissling, M. Taylor, N. Thrift and C. Adrian (eds), 284 pp., 1984, Croom Helm Australia, Sydney, f18.95
Given that the eleven chapters in this volume were originally presented as conference papers, and indeed, not at a specially-convened meeting, but at the regular 1982 annual meeting of the Australia-New Zealand Section of the Regional Science Association, this book is unusually consistent in the high quality of all chapters, thematic focus, depth of treatment and identification of a common set of issues for researchers and planners. All contributions are scholarly in the best sense, authoritative, with a good balance between discussion and documentation, with each examining critical issues and identifying the difficulties in resolution. This is an excellent book for anyone seeking a ‘state of the art’ publication on the regional impacts of major projects. This unity is all the more remarkable given that the regional impacts scrutinised include such diverse matters as air quality, water demand, environmental planning, transport infrastructure, manufacturing and tertiary sectors, employment, immigrant destinations, population, education and the tribal populations in the most remote region of Papua New Guinea. Given these diverse themes, this reviewer remains startled by the book’s unity. Was it good luck? Or good timing (see below)? Or good editing, four editors, notwithstanding? Or excellent advance organisation of the specialist conference session? Or the special opportunity to select from a much larger number of papers, with another, less-focussed set being published in the regular volume of conference papers? Or a clear demonstration of the value of the RSAANZ meetings which, since the first, held in 1976,
75
have shown a capacity to attract contributors from a wide array of disciplines, with public and private sector researchers being strongly involved as well as those from academe, and with a strong focus on policy-related research? The book is an outcome of all these favourable circumstances. Also. it was unusually well-timed to capture the initial flow of analyses arising from the welter of reports into the impact of the many large projects, mainly in coal mining, power generation and aluminium smelting, commencing in Australia in the 1977-81 period, related to Australia’s low-cost energy resources. The first five chapters provide an Australia-wide perspective, with selected regional examples, on various social and economic impacts of major projects. Johns provides a thoughtful appraisal of regional economic impact analysis noting some deficiencies, especially in relation to the timing of impacts, with the unfavourable impacts often preceding the favourable. Johns provides, at the regional level, a contribution to match the well-publicised debates about the national-level impacts of major resource developments. Anderson’s chapter on the role of the federal government in environmental impact assessment is authoritative but he is less strong than Johns in probing into the underlying policy dilemmas, other than those arising from the divided responsibilities imposed by the Australian federal system. However, in their wide-ranging discussion on the full spectrum of problems confronting education planners, Butler and Harris point out the lack of coordination between departments in one level of government, within Queensland, where even the basic task of information gathering continues to be done separately by each department. Brookbanks discusses the regional consequences of international migration, with close attention to the regional destinations of particular migrant categories and the role of specialist migrant workers in remote regions. Gillett and Robertson use a case study approach in expounding current methods and problems for projecting employment and population growth within development regions. The second section comprises two chapters on overseas experiences. Wallace provides a critical examination of national policy-making in the public funding of transportation services to support remote mining projects in Canada, highlighting the policy dilemmas which are accentuated by uncertainties in assessing the economic performance of any mining project. Given that the same issues have been of major public concern in some Australian states, the lack of any parallel chapter on Australia is the most obvious deficiency in the book. The second overseas study, that by Jackson on the problems confronting the Papua New Guinea government in negotiating the conditions for the development of the Ok Tedi mining project in the inaccessible, undeveloped western province, is of very particular interest. Jackson has played a pivotal role in raising the standard of debate on the dilemmas confronting Third World governments, not only in maximising their ‘take’ from such projects but in deciding between such conflicting goals as regional development versus national benefits, or versus revenue maximisation. Jackson provides a perceptive appraisal of the Ok Tedi context and the paths followed in achieving an outcome which may be satisfactory nationally, but certainly not regionally. The final section focusses on the Hunter Valley, a, developed region with a mature industrial structure, experiencing decline in its traditional manufacturing sec-
76
Book Reviews
ton. but with the sudden imposition of major capitalintensive, resource-consuming. high-impact. lowemployment energy-based projects, commencing in the mid-1970s chiefly in coal-mining, electricity and aluminium smelting. This selective boom had hardly commenced before there was a sharp downward revision of many projects during the 1981-82 recession. Day and Day provide an excellent overview of problems of planning coordination in a complex, rapidly-changing regional context. Their study parallels Jackson’s in its breadth of view and its understanding of the various components affecting the decision process reminding me of Niles Hansen’s comments on contemporary regional planning best being regarded as a learning experience. Day and Day support the unorthodox solution, adopted in the Hunter Valley, of a powerful coordinating unit with direct access to senior political and administrative heads in the state government. In the final three chapters, by far the longest in the book, Dragun, Daly and Jakeman, and Perkins examine issues relating to water demand, atmospheric environment and the regional labour market. Again, each is authoritative and well abreast of current research and policy issues in these problem areas. As elsewhere in the book, the reader is left with a strong impression that the Australian resources boom has spawned a healthy baby in regional impact assessment, capable of undertaking effective analyses and communicating the results in a meaningful way to policy-makers and to the informed public. The book is well produced, with selective use of graphs and tables, but with no maps. This is a striking deficiency in the lengthy section on the Hunter Valley, within which there is much locational detail, including recent developments not readily located even on recent maps. JOHN H. HOLMES Department of Geography University of Queensland, Australia
The Politics of Planning and Development, A.J. Catanese, 231 pp., 1984, Sage, Beverly Hills, f31 cloth, fl5.50 paper
This is a splendidly readable book, full of rich insights which set up a marker for the role and language of planning in the late 20th century. Written by an American and drawing heavily on the recent experiences in the U.S.A., it nonetheless has a transatlantic and, indeed, world-wide message. While this message is still not all that easy to get across, for this reviewer at least Catanese is preaching to the converted: my own book The Politics of Town Planning (Longman, 1982) expressed the same viewpoint that planning and politics were intertwined. Yet how difficult it is for planners and politicians to see that good planning and sound politics are components of the same successful strategy. Catanese is admirably equipped to write his book. A planning academic, he was for several years Chairman of the Milwaukee City Plan Commission and he served on President Carter’s Urban Policy Task Force. In 1974 he published Impossible Dreams: Planners and Local Politics (Sage, Beverly Hills), in which he outlined the roles and functions of the planner in the political process. His latest book is both a sequel and extension of that examination,
dealing with implementation: policy into action.
the process
of translating
The first chapter is a marvellously succinct statement of what is needed by way of changed attitudes. The testament should be read and re-read along the policy corridors of the western world: ‘Planners must deal more adequately with the realities of politics and its inevitable need for compromise, consensus and coalition. On the other hand, politicians need to recognize that there is much in planning that can be used to improve the public good and make for better politics’ (p. 23). For the planner such advice leads to a distinctive style of professional practice, very different from norms established a generation ago. Given a diverse, changing and contradictory public interest, ‘this means that changes and revisions should be eagerly sought rather than avoided. This means that the planner should develop the more recently defined role of managers of change in contrast to the ancient role of master planner. There can be just as much heroism in forging a working compromise as there is in pointing to the light’ (pp. 27-28). And so in the early pages the flag is nailed to the mast. It has been flying there for a long time for some observers, but the absolutism of ‘good planning’ is a siren song in many social, political and cultural systems which still lures many professionals to maintain an arrogant, fundamentalist role in pursuing the art of the possible. The rest of the book may yet convert. Chapters on planning ideology, personalities in the planning process, the importance of communications, the potential and limits of participation and the political economy divide of private and public roles: these, with their intensely revealing case studies, written with frankness and in a racy style, amply reveal the muddy, opportunist waters of planning in practice. British practitioners will not dare to say that things are different in this country, but the book has yet to be written which lays it all bare so admirably. Catanese has a viewpoint, of course, and this may not be shared by observers in countries other than his own. But his allegation that planning in the 1960s and 1970s took on certain approaches which have now got to be shed, will strike many chords in Britain. ‘Planners promised more than they could deliver, and they took too long to produce plans. Planners became too liberal in their political views and lost touch with the dominant political ideology of America. They were beguiled by theorists who were much more interested in rational and intellectual theory than they were in implementation. Planners listened to Marxist scholars who said they could effect equity and justice through planning, but in the process they lost the confidence of the politicians who must effectuate plans’ (p. 196). The author maps out a new role for planning in the politics of optimism, in the culture of American freedoms and opportunities and in the search for a balance between group and individual needs. He also searches for a new relationship between public and private sectors, in a future which will be ‘neither a Big Brother welfare state nor a laissez-faire public-be-damned oligopoly’ (p. 10). Other socio-political systems will throw up different contexts for planning, but in the social democracies of the West Catanese’s plea for closer working relationships between planners and politicians is an important one to hear. GORDON E. CHERRY Centre for Urban and Regional Studies University of Birmingham, U.K.
References Clifton, J.D. and Smothers, W. Jr (1980) Afien Investment in Georgia’s Agricultural Lands. Agricultural Experiment Station, University of Georgia, Athens. Lapping, M. and Misek, M. (1983) Foreign investment in U.S. agricultural land: a Vermont case study. American Journal of Economics and Sociology 42, 3.
Mage, J. and Lapping, M. (1982) Legislation related to absentee foreign landownership in Canada. Agricultural Law Journal, Fail.
Regional Impacts of Resource Developments, C.C. Kissling, M. Taylor, N. Thrift and C. Adrian (eds), 284 pp., 1984, Croom Helm Australia, Sydney, f18.95
Given that the eleven chapters in this volume were originally presented as conference papers, and indeed, not at a specially-convened meeting, but at the regular 1982 annual meeting of the Australia-New Zealand Section of the Regional Science Association, this book is unusually consistent in the high quality of all chapters, thematic focus, depth of treatment and identification of a common set of issues for researchers and planners. All contributions are scholarly in the best sense, authoritative, with a good balance between discussion and documentation, with each examining critical issues and identifying the difficulties in resolution. This is an excellent book for anyone seeking a ‘state of the art’ publication on the regional impacts of major projects. This unity is all the more remarkable given that the regional impacts scrutinised include such diverse matters as air quality, water demand, environmental planning, transport infrastructure, manufacturing and tertiary sectors, employment, immigrant destinations, population, education and the tribal populations in the most remote region of Papua New Guinea. Given these diverse themes, this reviewer remains startled by the book’s unity. Was it good luck? Or good timing (see below)? Or good editing, four editors, notwithstanding? Or excellent advance organisation of the specialist conference session? Or the special opportunity to select from a much larger number of papers, with another, less-focussed set being published in the regular volume of conference papers? Or a clear demonstration of the value of the RSAANZ meetings which, since the first, held in 1976,
75
have shown a capacity to attract contributors from a wide array of disciplines, with public and private sector researchers being strongly involved as well as those from academe, and with a strong focus on policy-related research? The book is an outcome of all these favourable circumstances. Also. it was unusually well-timed to capture the initial flow of analyses arising from the welter of reports into the impact of the many large projects, mainly in coal mining, power generation and aluminium smelting, commencing in Australia in the 1977-81 period, related to Australia’s low-cost energy resources. The first five chapters provide an Australia-wide perspective, with selected regional examples, on various social and economic impacts of major projects. Johns provides a thoughtful appraisal of regional economic impact analysis noting some deficiencies, especially in relation to the timing of impacts, with the unfavourable impacts often preceding the favourable. Johns provides, at the regional level, a contribution to match the well-publicised debates about the national-level impacts of major resource developments. Anderson’s chapter on the role of the federal government in environmental impact assessment is authoritative but he is less strong than Johns in probing into the underlying policy dilemmas, other than those arising from the divided responsibilities imposed by the Australian federal system. However, in their wide-ranging discussion on the full spectrum of problems confronting education planners, Butler and Harris point out the lack of coordination between departments in one level of government, within Queensland, where even the basic task of information gathering continues to be done separately by each department. Brookbanks discusses the regional consequences of international migration, with close attention to the regional destinations of particular migrant categories and the role of specialist migrant workers in remote regions. Gillett and Robertson use a case study approach in expounding current methods and problems for projecting employment and population growth within development regions. The second section comprises two chapters on overseas experiences. Wallace provides a critical examination of national policy-making in the public funding of transportation services to support remote mining projects in Canada, highlighting the policy dilemmas which are accentuated by uncertainties in assessing the economic performance of any mining project. Given that the same issues have been of major public concern in some Australian states, the lack of any parallel chapter on Australia is the most obvious deficiency in the book. The second overseas study, that by Jackson on the problems confronting the Papua New Guinea government in negotiating the conditions for the development of the Ok Tedi mining project in the inaccessible, undeveloped western province, is of very particular interest. Jackson has played a pivotal role in raising the standard of debate on the dilemmas confronting Third World governments, not only in maximising their ‘take’ from such projects but in deciding between such conflicting goals as regional development versus national benefits, or versus revenue maximisation. Jackson provides a perceptive appraisal of the Ok Tedi context and the paths followed in achieving an outcome which may be satisfactory nationally, but certainly not regionally. The final section focusses on the Hunter Valley, a, developed region with a mature industrial structure, experiencing decline in its traditional manufacturing sec-
76
Book Reviews
ton. but with the sudden imposition of major capitalintensive, resource-consuming. high-impact. lowemployment energy-based projects, commencing in the mid-1970s chiefly in coal-mining, electricity and aluminium smelting. This selective boom had hardly commenced before there was a sharp downward revision of many projects during the 1981-82 recession. Day and Day provide an excellent overview of problems of planning coordination in a complex, rapidly-changing regional context. Their study parallels Jackson’s in its breadth of view and its understanding of the various components affecting the decision process reminding me of Niles Hansen’s comments on contemporary regional planning best being regarded as a learning experience. Day and Day support the unorthodox solution, adopted in the Hunter Valley, of a powerful coordinating unit with direct access to senior political and administrative heads in the state government. In the final three chapters, by far the longest in the book, Dragun, Daly and Jakeman, and Perkins examine issues relating to water demand, atmospheric environment and the regional labour market. Again, each is authoritative and well abreast of current research and policy issues in these problem areas. As elsewhere in the book, the reader is left with a strong impression that the Australian resources boom has spawned a healthy baby in regional impact assessment, capable of undertaking effective analyses and communicating the results in a meaningful way to policy-makers and to the informed public. The book is well produced, with selective use of graphs and tables, but with no maps. This is a striking deficiency in the lengthy section on the Hunter Valley, within which there is much locational detail, including recent developments not readily located even on recent maps. JOHN H. HOLMES Department of Geography University of Queensland, Australia
The Politics of Planning and Development, A.J. Catanese, 231 pp., 1984, Sage, Beverly Hills, f31 cloth, fl5.50 paper
This is a splendidly readable book, full of rich insights which set up a marker for the role and language of planning in the late 20th century. Written by an American and drawing heavily on the recent experiences in the U.S.A., it nonetheless has a transatlantic and, indeed, world-wide message. While this message is still not all that easy to get across, for this reviewer at least Catanese is preaching to the converted: my own book The Politics of Town Planning (Longman, 1982) expressed the same viewpoint that planning and politics were intertwined. Yet how difficult it is for planners and politicians to see that good planning and sound politics are components of the same successful strategy. Catanese is admirably equipped to write his book. A planning academic, he was for several years Chairman of the Milwaukee City Plan Commission and he served on President Carter’s Urban Policy Task Force. In 1974 he published Impossible Dreams: Planners and Local Politics (Sage, Beverly Hills), in which he outlined the roles and functions of the planner in the political process. His latest book is both a sequel and extension of that examination,
dealing with implementation: policy into action.
the process
of translating
The first chapter is a marvellously succinct statement of what is needed by way of changed attitudes. The testament should be read and re-read along the policy corridors of the western world: ‘Planners must deal more adequately with the realities of politics and its inevitable need for compromise, consensus and coalition. On the other hand, politicians need to recognize that there is much in planning that can be used to improve the public good and make for better politics’ (p. 23). For the planner such advice leads to a distinctive style of professional practice, very different from norms established a generation ago. Given a diverse, changing and contradictory public interest, ‘this means that changes and revisions should be eagerly sought rather than avoided. This means that the planner should develop the more recently defined role of managers of change in contrast to the ancient role of master planner. There can be just as much heroism in forging a working compromise as there is in pointing to the light’ (pp. 27-28). And so in the early pages the flag is nailed to the mast. It has been flying there for a long time for some observers, but the absolutism of ‘good planning’ is a siren song in many social, political and cultural systems which still lures many professionals to maintain an arrogant, fundamentalist role in pursuing the art of the possible. The rest of the book may yet convert. Chapters on planning ideology, personalities in the planning process, the importance of communications, the potential and limits of participation and the political economy divide of private and public roles: these, with their intensely revealing case studies, written with frankness and in a racy style, amply reveal the muddy, opportunist waters of planning in practice. British practitioners will not dare to say that things are different in this country, but the book has yet to be written which lays it all bare so admirably. Catanese has a viewpoint, of course, and this may not be shared by observers in countries other than his own. But his allegation that planning in the 1960s and 1970s took on certain approaches which have now got to be shed, will strike many chords in Britain. ‘Planners promised more than they could deliver, and they took too long to produce plans. Planners became too liberal in their political views and lost touch with the dominant political ideology of America. They were beguiled by theorists who were much more interested in rational and intellectual theory than they were in implementation. Planners listened to Marxist scholars who said they could effect equity and justice through planning, but in the process they lost the confidence of the politicians who must effectuate plans’ (p. 196). The author maps out a new role for planning in the politics of optimism, in the culture of American freedoms and opportunities and in the search for a balance between group and individual needs. He also searches for a new relationship between public and private sectors, in a future which will be ‘neither a Big Brother welfare state nor a laissez-faire public-be-damned oligopoly’ (p. 10). Other socio-political systems will throw up different contexts for planning, but in the social democracies of the West Catanese’s plea for closer working relationships between planners and politicians is an important one to hear. GORDON E. CHERRY Centre for Urban and Regional Studies University of Birmingham, U.K.