Planning and the Art of the Analytical Process

In celebration of APA’s Planning Month, Project Manager and Senior Technical Advisor Alex Bell reflects on the Accessibility-Based Travel Model & West Station Area Pilot Study project.

When asked what I do for a living, I often fumble for words. I try to explain that I’m an urban planner who knows little about conventional  planning (thankfully my colleagues know a ton about it!). But I’m really an urban analyst striving to use quantitative insights – generated through data analysis and custom tools – to deliver a sense of clarity for my peers, partners, and clients.

My contribution to planning arises from the development of novel analytical frameworks and the demonstration of fresh metrics to offer richer insight into the performance of and interactions among the complex systems that are frequently the subjects of plans and studies. After all, if we want to create and live in cities that work, we need to understand how they work.

In my role as an analyst, I often generate materials that support project stories, but my work isn’t really the story itself. In fact, the analytical process is often deemed too technical or inaccessible to belong within a larger project narrative. When projects are almost exclusively technical in nature, there’s a temptation to overemphasize innovation, novelty, and discovery. These tendencies obscure the art and craft of the analytical process – and the expertise and human motivations of the analysts designing and executing it.

The Accessibility-Based Travel Model & West Station Area Pilot Study Project

The Accessibility-Based Travel Model & West Station Area Pilot Study project illustrates Renaissance’s evolving analysis frameworks that reflect shifting priorities within the planning profession. This evolution always reflects our best efforts to get to grips analytically with the trending issues that resonate with planners and the communities they serve. Our introduced innovations need not impose themselves as a new way of doing things, but they can reframe prevailing thinking on  key topics to better address changing questions and concerns.

In 2019, the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) of Massachusetts set out to develop a sketch travel planning model based on multimodal accessibility, an emerging analytical lens that combines land use and transportation factors to describe the ease with which travelers can reach destinations by different travel modes. Renaissance was retained to lead the study, and I took the reins as Project Manager. The goal was to offer planners an alternative to the regional travel demand model for local area analyses that would be sensitive to fine-grained demographic, land use, urban design, and transportation network and policy details.

It’s worth pausing to remind ourselves how difficult it is to understand how these aspects of place influence travel behaviors. Intuitively, we reckon they affect trip generation, mode choice, average trip length, etc. But tying them together in a comprehensive behavioral model? Let’s just acknowledge that no one on earth has perfected that yet.

Of course, perfection isn’t demanded. Sound, reasonable insight that can inform policy decisions is deeply valuable even when imperfect, especially in complex settings where numerous interests are represented. Our sketch travel model was to be pilot tested in the West Station planning area. Sticking strictly to the technical aspects of model development, Renaissance’s intention was to demonstrate sensitivity to alternative land use scenarios, walk and bike network configurations, transit service schedules, and pricing considerations in travel behavior forecasts. This would give planners critical insights to guide discussions with policymakers and stakeholders.

Our approach built on some of our prior experience using multimodal accessibility measurement and comparing the ease with which travelers could reach key destinations by walking, biking, driving, and transit. Accessibility offers several attractive features for this kind of sketch modeling application.

1. It’s pretty intuitive: the access offered by each mode relative to competing modes has a significant influence on whether travelers opt to use it. 

2. It can incorporate a lot of other variables: access scores generally reflect proximity to destinations and mobility provided over travel networks. In this way, it combines land use and transportation factors in a coherent framework. It can be sensitive to travel time, parking charges, transit fares, tolls, vehicle operating costs, network connectivity, non-motorized facility characteristics, land use mix, and more.

3. We can flex geographies: when we want to understand how highly localized changes like walking directness or land use mix influence travel patterns, we need a granular analysis. Since it can be measured at various scales, accessibility offers the opportunity to achieve that detailed granularity for a local study area, all the while retaining an awareness of regional travel patterns.

The modeling approach and results are summarized here. We developed rich accessibility scores for each major mode of travel that accounted for its unique operating characteristics and costs, providing granular detail in the West Station area while maintaining a regional perspective. The access scores were used to develop behavioral models that also account for traveler socio-economic and demographic characteristics to forecast trip generation, mode choice, and distribution patterns. We also created a post-processing step to estimate where trips by transportation network companies (TNC’s) like Uber and Lyft would be made.

Finally, we constructed the model in a relatively lightweight package for sharing and reuse. We programmed the entire modeling framework using Python and R, well-known data analysis languages. We delivered the full toolkit and workflow for MAPC staff to use in developing and testing alternative scenarios for the West Station area and for use in similar future efforts.

What It Means

Renaissance collaborated with the Boston Region MPO’s Central Transportation Planning Staff (CTPS) to compare our accessibility model’s results against those generated by the regional travel demand model. We found inevitable discrepancies between the two models, particularly within the probability of travelers using non-auto modes in the West Station area. To align the accessibility model results with the regional model, Renaissance introduced some guardrail factors – these were not draconian but helped ensure that discrepancies between the platforms didn’t introduce murkiness where clarity was sought.

The MAPC project demonstrated the effectiveness of multimodal accessibility analysis as a basis for providing insight into travel behavior. There are several reasons to be excited about that:

1. Accessibility is emerging as a common metric in transportation and land use planning applications. By demonstrating the connection to travel behavior, planners can glean at least rough insight into expected travel patterns from their accessibility maps . In turn, this insight can inform context-sensitive facility design, development review processes, and local connectivity investments.

2. One of the major emerging uses of accessibility is supporting equity analyses that describe who has what level of access to key destinations. Here again, the connection to travel behavior allows those analyses to move from simply describing what opportunities are reachable (which is still quite useful) to describing how transportation and land use factors interact with socioeconomic and demographic attributes – and ultimately influencing the utility offered by the complete transportation system.

3. Planners need ways to generate travel insights that don’t depend on travel demand models but offer a comparable level of rigor. That’s because the questions planners often want to answer are difficult to put to most regional travel models and because multimodal travel is increasingly important in transportation planning and infrastructure funding. As planning emphases evolve, it is difficult to adapt legacy travel models that are very useful for their primary intended purpose (highway planning) but often limited for other purposes. The variables to which planners seek sensitivity may not always translate into the regional model’s datasets or operative relationships. As demonstrated in the Boston area, an accessibility-based framework can offer more flexibility to expose those variables and define those relationships in robust ways.

This last point brings me back to the art of analysis – in this case, focusing on model development. It is common for analysts to presume that the best-fitting model is of paramount importance. In doing so, they can deem variables that planners and community stakeholders care about as “not statistically significant.” While we don’t want any noise in our models, we also have no real use for models that can’t respond to our human-centered questions.

For MAPC’s Accessibility Model, we tested innumerable permutations of variables and interactions, challenging ourselves to define logical steps of the process through which critical variables could be operationalized and ensure they behaved intuitively. Sometimes you can’t fit a square peg in a round hole, but we also do well to remember that our models and tools do not represent some quantitative tyranny. Rather, they are extensions of ourselves, imbued with our values, crafted by humans earnestly trying to make the world a better place.

What Does a Healthy City Look Like?

Community Design with Caroline Dwyer

Public health challenges permeate our cities. From streets that discourage pedestrian activity, to inaccessible healthcare facilities, to dangerous intersections, the negative impacts of the built environment erode a strong sense of place and harm our physical and mental well-being.

However, cities also inspire public health innovations. Attempts to fight infectious disease, pollution, and social inequities led to advancements in public sanitation, water systems, and improved public health. There is a clear consensus that cities can facilitate improved quality of life and healthy communities with the right planning and policies. For example, accessible public green spaces and safe, walkable neighborhoods are both associated with reduced stress and mental illness, increased physical and social activity, and improved attention span.

As the global migration to urban areas continues, how can city planners support healthy communities? How can we plan and implement transportation systems, built environments, and public spaces that improve health for all residents?

These questions are at the forefront of the minds of many planners, including Renaissance Planning Project Manager Caroline Dwyer. Caroline and her co-authors explore the relationships between city planning and public health in, “Validating a comprehensive plan scoring system for healthy community design in League City, Texas,” included in Urban Design and Human Flourishing published in March 2021. As the book chapter describes, city planning, urban design, and public health became increasingly disassociated as epidemiological focus shifted from infectious diseases (such as cholera, typhoid, and flu) to chronic diseases (like heart disease) during the 20th century.

Reconnecting Public Health and City Planning

At the dawn of the 21st century, new connections forged between public health and city planning and design. Technological advances have allowed the health impacts of the built environment to be explored and quantified in new ways and new programs, groups, and organizations are emerging in response. One example is Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Healthy Places for Healthy People technical assistance program, managed by the Office of Community Revitalization (OCR). This program builds community capacity, helping to leverage health care anchor organizations and institutions in creating walkable, lively downtowns and neighborhoods and improving community health.  

“Validating a comprehensive plan scoring system for healthy community design in League City, Texas,” posits those comprehensive plans—the guides that provide long-term visions for a city or county’s development and growth—play an instrumental role in determining future built, natural, and social environments and, as such, facilitate vibrant and healthy communities. For example, a comprehensive plan that recognizes health inequities and promotes mixed-use, compact development meets an essential prerequisite toward building a dynamic, health-centric city.

To quantitively explore the inextricable connections between public health and city planning, the article’s authors used the Healthy Living and Active Design Scorecard (developed by Maiden et. al.) to assess the comprehensive plan of League City, Texas, in suburban Houston. The scorecard features three categories:

1.      Overall plan, vision, and strategy: Does the plan’s guiding principles address public health?

2.      Healthy living: Does the plan include goals, objectives, or actions related to healthy living, including mobility, exercise, food, and healthcare services?

3.      Active design: Does the plan support and recognize key features of healthy cities, such as mixed-use and compact development, repurposed older buildings, affordable housing, connectivity between developments, and transit-oriented development?

The resulting study is a fascinating examination of assessing a comprehensive plan’s likelihood in supporting a cohesive, healthy city. This type of proactive and critical self-evaluation of plans can help city officials and planners determine if their own plans contain the building blocks to improving community health. The Healthy and Active Living Design Scorecard also demonstrates the renewed interest in the city planning and public health relationship. At Renaissance Planning, we continue to  challenge ourselves to develop innovative tools deepening our ability to plan for and design healthy cities. And through this innovation we are helping create the next generation of cities that work.

For more information on Caroline’s work, check out Urban Design and Human Flourishing here. You can connect with Caroline on Twitter @plan_splaining or on LinkedIn.

Caroline Dwyer's NPC21 Presentation: A Retrospective

On Friday May 7, 2021 Caroline Dwyer, AICP a project manager with Renaissance Planning moderated a session at the American Planning Association’s 2021 National Planning Conference (NPC21). Joined by Chanelle Nicole Frazier, Chloe Green, Daniel Besinaiz, and Monica Tibbits-Nutt, the session “Confront and Dismantle Discriminatory Workplace Practices” featured background information on ways discrimination is expressed in the workplace, the white, male-centric roots of accepted “professional norms,” and a question-and-answer session with the four panelists focused on their work identifying and breaking down racist, misogynistic, and anti-LGBTQ+ workplace practices.

Caroline designed the session to challenge attendees to think differently about the “norms” we accept and take for granted and to consider how Western, Euro-centric, gender binary norms impact the lives and careers of our non-Western, non-white, non-binary, non-straight peers and colleagues, in everything from hair styles, to clothes, to names, to the food you bring for lunch. For example, if you search the word “professional” in Google Image Search, you are primarily presented with white men and women with shiny, straight brown or blonde hair wearing business suits in conservative colors. But if you search the word “unprofessional” you will see more non-white people wearing bright colored clothes, head scarfs, natural hair styles, and other expressions of personality.

After discussing the roots and impacts of discriminatory professional norms, the session speakers issued a call to action to the over two hundred session attendees. Using the virtual conference’s chat function, session attendees (of culturally dominant groups) were asked to identify one action they would commit to taking, to expose and dismantle discrimination in their own workplaces or (for participants not identifying with culturally dominant groups) to name an action that they believe would be most impactful, that attendees could commit to taking.

Overall, attendees reported that the session was “informative,” “fantastic,” and “amazing.” Caroline is grateful to the panelists who shared their experiences and descriptions of the amazing work they are doing and to APA for hosting an exceptional virtual conference under challenging circumstances.  

Word on the Street: Caroline Dwyer on her presentation for NPC21

We’re thrilled that our own Caroline Dwyer, a project manager at Renaissance Planning, will be presenting a panel within the National Planning Conference 2021 (NPC21). Caroline shares her thoughts about the presentation below, with details about the presentation at the bottom. Thanks Caroline!

∵

On May 7, 2021 at 10 AM (Eastern) I will be moderating a live panel discussion at NPC21 called “Confront and Dismantle Discriminatory Workplace Practices,” presented in coordination with APA’s Career Center and sponsored by APA’s Women & Planning Division.  This session was originally scheduled to be presented at last year’s conference in Houston which, unfortunately,  did not take place as planned due to the COVID-19 pandemic. I’m excited that we’ve been given another opportunity to present this session as our discussion topic remains critically relevant.

 First off – full-disclosure – I’m ashamed to admit that I never considered how cis-gender, white dominant “professional norms” impact people of color and the LGBTQ+ community in the workplace. For those new to this topic “the narrative of white supremacy that underpins professionalism today, playing out in the hiring, firing, and day-to-day management of workplaces around the world… unfolds many ways: in white and Western standards of dress and hairstyle (straightened hair, suits but not saris, and burqa and beard bans in some countries); in speech, accent, word choice, and communication (never show emotion, must sound ‘American,’ and must speak white standard English); in scrutiny (black employees are monitored more closely and face more penalties as a result); and in attitudes toward timeliness and work style.”

 As a student and practitioner of urban planning, I am – of course - aware of the discriminatory practices that are literally baked into the bones of our communities. And as a planner, I am committed to exposing and dismantling these practices without question. But I will be the first to admit that – from my position of privilege (white, cis, educated, financially stable) – I never questioned the exclusive, discriminatory, and deeply damaging roots of the dominant professional norms.

 In 2018, I came across an article called “How Black Women Describe Navigating Race and Gender in the Workplace” by Maura Cheeks and published in the Harvard Business Review. Featuring interviews with ten women of color, this article is full of honest testimony that blew apart my ignorance and opened my eyes to the discrimination, racism, classism, and misogyny perpetuated by what are blithely accepted as professional norms. I’ve revisited, reread, shared, and discussed this article (and others like it) many times in the last four years; sometimes as a personal reminder and sometimes to facilitate understanding in other people (especially white women) like me.

 My awareness of this issue compels me to help others (like me) who are complicit in perpetuating white, western supremacist norms. The session I am moderating is both informational and a call to action. My co-panelists will be answering questions live and sharing their own professional experiences and session attendees will be asked to brainstorm solutions and commit to taking action in their own workplaces. My goal is to provide attendees with the knowledge (and a few useful tools) they need to question and help break down previously unchallenged standards of white, straight, western-dominant professionalism.

∵

Caroline’s presentation “Confront and Dismantle Discriminatory Workplace Practices” will be presented live at the American Planning Association annual conference NPC21 on May 7, 2021, 10 AM (eastern). Panelists include: Chloé Greene (Abt Associates; Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Associate); Monica Tibbits-Nutt (Executive Director of 128 Business Council; Vice-Chair, MBTA Fiscal and Management Control Board; Massachusetts Department of Transportation Board of Directors; Vice- President, Youth Engagement Planning (YEP!)); Daniel Besinaiz (Assistant Planner at Bossier City-Parish Metropolitan Planning Commission; Communications Co-Chair APA Latinos and Planning Division); and Chanelle Frazier (emerging planner and grant writer based in Houston, Texas; Director of Chapter Engagement APA Women and Planning Division). Learn more about Caroline here.

Making Data Visual: Video Q&A with Alex Bell on the Mobility Report Card

This is the kind of report card that I’m excited to see.

The interactive and highly visual data dashboards within the Mobility Report Card for the Durham-Chapel Hill-Carrboro (DCHC) regional MPO helps to clearly tell the story of multimodal transportation performance, reliability, and safety for the Triangle Region.

“This went from a large, complex dataset that was sitting on a shelf – in a thick paper report – to something that people can interact with” says Alex Bell, Project Manager and Technical Director for Renaissance Planning. “There are limited opportunities for innovation in the world of transportation performance metrics where the data and analysis methods are often highly codified.  But with the Mobility Report Card we were able to make the data visible, interactive, more accessible, and easily understandable to a wide range of real users and public groups – and the DCHC MPO were very happy as well.” 

Data around transportation systems are usually collected and synthesized into large paper reports that are often both difficult to understand and not easy to access by the general public. But this report – with its clear story map website, easily digestible chapters, and interactive data dashboards – provides clarity on the far side of complexity.  To learn more about this project visit the Mobility Report Card Project Page.

Watch the Q&A with Alex has he provides a guided tour of the Mobility Report Card.  I give it an A+.   

- By Asa Eslocker with Alex Bell

"This went from a large, complex dataset that was sitting on a shelf - in a thick paper report - to something that people can interact with" says Alex Bell, ...