Martin Meyerson's Argumentative Analysis

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In Martin Meyerson’s Building the Middle-Range Bridge for Comprehensive Planning (1956), he advocated a sort of “intelligence function of planning” that provides a “middle-range bridge” between long term comprehensive planning and the daily routine (p. 60). In other words, this sort of planning involves information gathering, scenario creation, testing, evaluation, which may all be implemented on a regular basis to support the governing functions of an urban planner. Meyerson is careful to distinguish his form of planning with that of long-range comprehensive planning, in which he qualifies as to, “commonly reveal a desired state of affairs. They rarely specify the detailed courses of action needed to achieve that desired state” (p. 62). While…show more content…
62). Meyerson is also surprised that the urban planning community has never studied the effects of zoning and its interference on the land market along with certain types of business development on whatever area that might be analyzing. In essence, Meyerson’s model of planning would effectively fill in the gaps of what he saw key deficiencies in a number of objectives, including the dissemination of information to the public for urban development in whatever forms they may take. In Ira M. Robinson’s Beyond the Middle-Range Planning Bridge (1965), he lists the top four planning deficiencies as discussed by Meyerson. These also include, (1) failure to translate a goal-oriented master or strategic plan in any meaningful way. (2) Another failure discussed is the inability to accomplish goals as traced by adopted long-range goals and policies. (3) The final failure includes the inability to evaluate the intended and unintended consequences of such actions as well as other actions implemented in the past (p. 305). Robinson notes that since the publication of Meyerson’s article, there has been a large scale adoption of Robinson’s plan as seen in the 1959 amendment of the 1949 Housing Act as “today it is being used by about 125 cities, including many of the largest ones” (p.

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