Publications

Building regionally necessary but locally noxious facilities such as power plants, landfills, waste incinerators and prisons has become increasingly difficult. David Laws and Lawrence Susskind discuss some of the traditional steps involved, including needs assessment, choice of technology, site selection, assessing and mitigating impacts, and management. They provide an alternative approach to facility siting that includes, among other things, seeking consensus, working to develop trust, setting realistic timetables, getting agreement that the status quo is unacceptable, choosing a design that best addresses the problem, and fully compensating for negative aspects of the facility.

It is highly appropriate that some of the finest minds in the planning field-Raymond Vernon, William Alonso, Anthony Downs, and Peter Hall-should be invited to honor Lloyd Rodwin with discussions of national and international forces shaping cities of the future. Few individuals have done more to bring an international perspective to urban and regional planning than Lloyd Rod- win. He created MIT’s Special Program in Urban and Regional Studies (SPURS), which continues to provide a model for cross-cultural collaboration in planning. He pioneered in focusing on the tricky problems of designing new cities to open up lagging regions or channel urban growth. He embarked upon path-breaking comparative studies of both national urbanization policies and explo- rations of de-industrialization in various parts of the world.

Despite the ever-growing literature on the subject, collaborative negotiation techniques are still regarded with suspicion–or simply remain untried–in most traditional collective bargaining situations. In the United States and many other western nations, the rules of the game in labor management negotiations are as well established and predictable as a minuet: present a set of demands far in excess of what you actually want, then bargain down item-by-item; never share information with the other side; threaten job actions, walkouts, and strikes; "poor mouth" the other side and threaten layoffs; etc.

Prisons, half-way houses, AIDS hospices, solid and hazardous waste treatment plants, landfills, housing for low-income families, power plants, transmission lines, sewage treatment facilities–all are "Locally Unwanted Land Uses" (LULUs) in somebody's eyes.

Local concerns about the health and environmental effects of proposed incinerators have made it difficult to site such facilities. Litigation has stalemated the implementation of many new incinerators throughout the United States. While further research on the actual health and environmental effects of air emissions and ash residue from various kinds of incineration is important, it is unlikely that any group will be able to win an incinerator battle because it musters new scientific evidence.

Amendments in 1986 to the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), reflect lessons learned and problems encountered in the first 5 years of Superfund operations, including changes in the way settlements and negotiations operate. Elements of the 1986 amendments favoring settlement including provisions for sharing information about a site with potentially responsible parties (PRPs), developing allocation guidelines, responding to PRP settlement offers, and preferring releases in the form of covenants not to sue. However, other changes may make the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) negotiating task more difficult by allowing the agency less discretion both at the EPA headquarters and at regional levels. As written, the amendments provide the EPA with more detailed guidance and requirements not only with respect to the standards to be met by cleanup but with respect to the methods to achieve those standards as well. In addition, more players, including the states and members of the public, have a role in cleanup decisions under the amendments.