In recent years, environmental justice advocates have made a convincing claim that risky facilities have been disproportionately clustered in poor communities and communities of color. NIMBYism (not in my backyard) has spread from predominantly white, affluent suburbs to poorer communities of color. In this article, we propose a means of addressing environmental inequities and breaking the siting impasse. We think that poor communities of color might use the proposed siting of risky facilities as a basis for negotiating substantial improvements in the well-being of their communities. We propose to embed siting negotiations in the preparation of broader development packages, jointly created with citizens of poor neighborhoods and communities of color, so that health risks are reduced, the environment is improved, and all residents are better off. As far as justice is concerned, the perceived fairness of the process by which risks are communicated and selected, and risk management strategies are devised, is as important as the actual allocation of risk.

Congressional leaders could resolve the most divisive national issues by taking a lesson about consensus from the business world they so admire. To remain competitive most businesses find they cannot afford internal strife. Neither can Congress. Public opinion of the institution is as low as it was before the 1994 election. If Congress doesn’t deal with pressing issues it now faces legislators of both parties will hurt their reelection prospects

During the past decade, support for ADR–alternative dispute resolution–in the federal government has grown with surprising speed, culminating in the 1990 enactment of two federal laws that endorse a whole new approach to the way federal agencies resolve disputes.

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.

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.

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.

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.

As part of an overall program of managing uncertainty in environmental decision making, the Ministry of the Environment of The Netherlands commissioned Environmental Resources Limited (ERL), based in London, to undertake a detailed study of highly publicized but scientifically controversial decisions. The objective was to determine how such decisions may be better managed. Through the examination of 18 selected cases. ERL investigators developed a clear profile of what they termed risky decisions, and identified determining their acceptability as government policies. Combining lessons from the case studies with a detailed survey of management approaches and decision-making techniques, ERL devised a strategy for handling risky decisions more effectively. The Dutch government is now planning a series of risky decision workshops for senior officials, scientists, and policy advisors.

Some American cities demand that developers pay "linkage feeg' (some- times cared exactions) over-and-above required property- taxes. Presumably, these are meant to cover short-term costs and "social impacts" that exceed the development's expected tax pay- ments. The level of linkage payments in each city is determined either through case-by-case negotiations (as in Boston) or by the application of a formula that assumes an average charge per square foot (as in San Francisco). My aim in this column is to review the strengths and weaknesses of these two approaches, then describe still another approach that I think will produce superior negotiated development agreements.

Negotiation in real estate development situations involves a diverse set of actors, from city officials and bankers to community groups and contractors. While many negotiations reach a successful conclusion, it is not unusual for difficulties to arise which can impose costly delays.

The Center for Real Estate Development at MIT asked members of the Public Disputes Program (PDP) at Harvard Law School to prepare a briefing for members of the real estate community reviewing common negotiation problems, particularly those related to mediation, faced by developers and to suggest strategies for dealing with these problems. Part of this briefing paper suggested some general rules about when and how to use mediated negotiation. In addition, it outlines the pitfalls associated with the mediation approach.

Mediation is not a panacea. Some development disputes are, for all practical purposes, impossible to resolve through face-to-face negotiation, even with a mediator. Such disputes are likely to end up in court. However, we do think that litigation can be avoided much more often than it is now. Moreover, we believe that mediation can produce agreements that all the parties involved will consider to be fairer, more efficient, wiser, and more durable.

We need to do a better job of documenting and evaluating the dispute resolution experiments currently underway.

All too often, documentation and evaluation are nothing more than an afterthought — the focus of attention only when it is too late to record what actually happened. Typically, evaluation consists of less-than-critical reflections by the participants, intervenors, or funders with the most at stake. And, even when documentation and evaluation are handled by independent observers, such efforts tend to be framed according to the observers' interests, and not with reference to overarching questions at the frontier of theory-building in' the dispute resolution field. These are formidable obstacles to improving practice.

What was once the profession of labor mediation and arbitration and the field of industrial relations is now the profession of dispute settlement and the field of conflict resolution. Labor relations and industrial relations are alive and well, but the profession and the field of which they are a part have expanded into a great many other areas, such as environmental dispute resolution

It is just as important to adopt the wisest possible regulations when government intervention is necessary as to reduce the level of government involvement. The focus of government intervention should be on balancing public and private interests. Current administrative processes are time consuming and expensive, often leading to extended court battles because of their adversarial nature. The adversarial process encourages the parties to discredit each other's scientific or technical evidence, which can lead to politically expedient but technically or economically unsound decisions. The author cites three demonstrations which will illustrate the merits of the negotiated approach to resolving those regulatory conflicts which deal with the distribution of gains and losses.

The National Institute of Dispute Resolution (NIDR) is currently providing multi-year matching grants to five experimental state offices of mediation. At a recent meeting hi Washington, D.C., the directors of these offices and key state government officials exchanged ideas and reviewed recent activities and future plans. The session was extremely encouraging–thus far, it looks as if the state office idea is working.

Scholars, government officials, and practitioners have expressed concern over the weaknesses of the federal rulemaking process and the time it often takes to promulgate rules. Given the many instances in which rules have been challenged in court, both the process of rulemaking and the regulations produced seem to have lost legitimacy in the eyes of many regulatees.

There are more than 75 well-documented cases of successful dispute resolution in the public sector (and a great many more that are less well-documented). The evidence attesting to the merits of non-adjudicatory approaches to dispute resolution is mounting rapidly