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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 August 2014
This paper results from a larger study of capital budgeting and programming in Philadelphia. Our intention here is to present some findings bearing upon the role of long-range planning primarily, though not exclusively, in metropolitan governments.
Much, though surely not all, of city planning today is directly related to capital programming. This is especially so in large cities for at least three major reasons: basic physical plant and utilities are often run down or obsolescent for a complex of historical reasons; many routine programs are “capital-intensive” and are becoming more so under the impact of new technology and professional standards; and urban renewal has entailed an increasingly entrepreneurial approach to land-use planning. Capital programming itself is a process of separate budgetary decision on capital items, however defined. The rationale for the separate decision process values “planning” highly and emphasizes fiscal planning of outlay that is loan-financed and physical planning of projects distinguished by “lumpiness” and/or longevity. It follows from these considerations that the planning and programming of physical improvements cannot be sharply separated from the remainder of municipal policy. City planning as applied to capital programming has to do not only with land use but with most functional programs and with fiscal policy.
While some long-range municipal planning will probably take place in the line departments, the focal point of planning is likely to be the review and assembly of the overall capital program, at which point fiscal, programmatic and land-use planning all come into play even if the principal competence and concern of the planning agency is in land-use planning. The planning agency can be conceived as performing any or all of the four roles of research, integration, allocation, and provision of the long view. While conceptually distinguishable, these roles tend to merge in the practice of capital program review.
1 An excellent treatment, with references to the not voluminous literature, is Burkhead, Jesse, Government Budgeting (New York, 1956), ch. 8.Google Scholar
2 For the first view, see Dunham, Allison, “A Legal and Economic Basis for City Planning,” Columbia Law Review, Vol. 58 (1958), pp. 650–671.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a thoroughgoing statement of the second view, see Tugwell, Rexford G., “Implementing the Public Interest,” Public Administration Review, Vol. 1 (1940), pp. 32–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3 See, e.g., Perloff, Harvey S., “Education of City Planners: Past, Present and Future,” Journal of the American Institute of Planners, Vol. 22 (1956), pp. 186–217 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and the rejoinder by James M. Lee, “The Role of the Planner in the Present,” ibid., Vol. 24 (1958), pp. 151–157. See also Henry Fagin, “Organizing and Carrying Out Planning Activities within Urban Government,” ibid., Vol. 25 (1959), pp. 109–114, which appeared after completion of our study and while this article was in a draft.
4 Though “rationality” is among the slipperiest of terms, we use it here to imply clear-cut and central decisions about goals (usually based upon research into alternatives and consequences) and the more-or-less rigorous “suboptimization” of such decisions at lower administrative levels. The term embodies meanings often given to “coordination” and “efficiency,” and emphasizes long-range perspectives. On “efficiency,” see Herbert Simon, Administrative Behavior, 2d ed. (New York, 1957), ch. 9.
5 See Lindblom, C. E., “Policy Analysis,” American Economic Review, Vol. 48 (1958), pp. 298–312 Google Scholar, “Tinbergen on Policy-making,” Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 66 (1958), pp. 531–538, and “The Science of ‘Muddling Through,’” Public Administration Review, Vol. 19 (1959), pp. 79–88; and McKean, Roland N., Efficiency in Government through Systems Analysis (New York, 1957), Part II.Google Scholar
6 We are not aware of any written statement to this effect, but several students of municipal government have expressed this view to us. For treatments of the Philadelphia experience, see Levine, Aaron, “Philadephia Story: A New Look,” New York Times Magazine, 07 14, 1957, p. 8 ff.Google Scholar; and Bacon, Edmund N., “Capital Programming and Public Policy,” Journal of the American Institute of Planners, Vol. 22 (1956), pp. 35–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The authors are executive directors of, respectively, the Citizens' Council on City Planning and the Philadelphia City Planning Commission.
7 The principal city-wide groups concerned with capital programming are: The Citizens' Council on City Planning; the Philadelphia Housing Association; the Health and Welfare Council; the Chamber of Commerce; the Bureau of Municipal Research-Pennsylvania Economy League; and the Greater Philadelphia Movement (and its auxiliary, the Citizens' Budget Committee). Some idea of the concerns of these groups can be gained from their titles. The last-named (GPM) is a prestigeful and primarily businessmen's organization which has conceived and strongly supported a number of policy and capital improvements; its subsidiary (CBC) is primarily a fiscal watchdog agency. The leading interests of the other organizations broadly include: tax-consciousness, government organization and reform, welfare and social service, urban renewal and housing, industrial promotion and renewal, and citizen involvement in planning. Some of these agencies reach into the neighborhoods directly or through affiliates.
8 For a recent study see Reichley, James, The Art of Government: Reform and Organization Politics in Philadelphia (New York, The Fund for the Republic, 1959).Google Scholar
9 See Moak, Lennox L., “Background and Principal Features of the Philadelphia Charter,” Appendix 1-A of Lyon, Leverett S., ed., Modernizing A City Government (Chicago, 1954)Google Scholar; and Joseph S. Clark, Jr., “Experience with Philadelphia's New Charter,” ibid., Appendix 1-B.
10 Space precludes extensive documentation of the point here, though we have made a number of measurements in terms of funds and projects. Many changes are made between the second year of any capital program and the year following when it becomes a capital budget; and changes measured from the more remote years of capital programs are even more numerous and sizeable even though the most remote years are “filled up” to the $25 million ceiling on annual tax-supported city funds. In the 1959 capital budget no department's appropriation differed (up or down) by less than 13% from the previous year's schedule; 6 departments showed changes of more than 30% and one department of more than 100%. Eleven departments are included, and the net dollar changes tend to hide a number of project changes. Most projects and appropriations, moreover, are amended during the executory period of capital budgets.
11 For a representative statement in the literature of public administration, see Simon, Herbert A., Smithburg, Donald W., and Thompson, Victor A., Public Administration (New York, 1950), ch. 20, esp. pp. 442–447.Google Scholar The prevailing Philadelphia view is expressed in the following editorial comment on an issue between City Council and Planning Commission: “… the Planning Commission is only doing its job when it reshuffles priorities. Its purpose is to consider the City as a whole, and to balance desirable capital spending ideas against each other, and against the amount of money which may be spent. Without overall planning, the Commission would have no function. City building would then descend to pork-barrel tactics….” The Evening Bulletin (Philadelphia) 27 October 1958.
12 Members of the subcommittee are the Managing Director, Finance Director, Director of Commerce, and Development Coordinator.
13 These observations apply only to the Commission's work in capital programming. Some in-formants have argued that, as the outline and specifie requests of capital programs have matured and become familiar, less detailed Commission consideration is necessary to control of the program. This argument would not, however, appear to affect our conclusions about the Commission's role in relation to its ex officio members and its staff, and several informants who are very close to the Commission agree with our conclusions.
14 This conclusion rests upon testimony of some Btaff members of the Division and of other divisions, and upon our own comparisons of the recommendations of the Comprehensive Planning Division with the Planning Commission's final capital program document.
15 Though perhaps peculiar to Philadelphia, it may be worth noting that there are differences in orientation toward capital programming within the Planning Commission relating to function and background. Thus, the Projects Division relies upon administrative contacts and “informed judgment”; the Comprehensive Planning Division is interested in more abstract and categorical analysis; the executive director relies a good deal upon personal identification with the city and upon esthetic and fluid rather than categorical and abstract approaches; and the Commissioners' approaches appear to be quite individual.
16 The Charter provides that each district shall contain approximately 10% of the population by the decennial census, and the districts are, in fact, fairly equal in population. The total voting population of the city is about 1 million, so the districts are quite populous.
17 One Democratic Councilman-at-large, who lives in a district now represented by a Republican, told us that he is under constant pressure from his party leadership to “represent” that district, and that he takes great care to avoid being labeled as the Councilman from that district in order to preserve his independence and breadth of view.
18 For a recent discussion, see Meyerson, Martin and Banfield, Edward, Politics, Planning and the Public Interest (Glencoe, Ill., 1955), chs. 3, 9–11.Google Scholar
19 The Evening Bulletin (Philadelphia) 12 November 1958, p. 24.
20 Space precludes a detailed discussion; but examination of Council's decisions, and a comparison of them with those of the Planning Commission and administration, bears out the thesis put forward here.
21 Downs, Anthony, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York, 1957).Google Scholar Downs' simplified theoretical model does not include separated governmental powers, however; and it appears to deal mainly with operating expenditures, or, at least, reasonably divisible expenditures.
22 Cf. the discussion in Leverett Lyon, op. cit., ch. 4. There Gilbert Y. Steiner, discussing the advantages of election at-large versus election by districts, suggests that the “city-wide” interests that are alleged to prevail over “local” interests in councils elected at-large are chiefly interests in tax reduction, whereas the “local” interests tend to favor projects. Three citizen organizations in Philadelphia are primarily based upon tax and fiscal concerns; Council's leading fiscal monitor is elected at-large.
23 On the “alternative budget” proposal see Lewis, Verne B., “Toward a Theory of Budgeting,” Public Administration Review, Vol. 12 (1952), p. 42 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
24 For a classical statement in the planning literature that planning means (1) applying the factor of adjustment and coordination among competing ideas, specialties and pressures, (2) supplying the long-range view and counteracting the pressures of the moment, and (3) research and data-gathering free from the pressures of the moment, see Bettman, Alfred, City and Regional Planning Papers (Cambridge, 1946), ch. 5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
25 There have been continuing overhead efforts to sharpen project cost estimates relative to both capital and operating budgets, but these efforts are of a different order from formal criteria for decision, though they might facilitate their use.
26 A striking example occurred as late as 1955 when, as a result of State and City inspections, some 24 bridges were declared unsafe, facing the administration with a choice between closing down important parts of the City's circulation system or repairing the bridges immediately at a large sacrifice to the rest of the capital program. The second alternative was chosen and the current capital budget and capital program were drastically revised to accommodate the deferred maintenance. Ultimately, some of the bridges were simply posted with weight limits and remain to be repaired.
27 For example, such programs for the Streets Department total about $3.5 million annually within the $25 million limit, and have deviated by more than $25,000 from that total in no year save 1955 (on which see the previous note). The programs are: grading and new paving; street openings; street lighting; unallocated engineering services; traffic signals; road construction and paving in Fairmount Park; construction of traffic islands.
28 For an argument, on this basis, for narrowing the content of capital programs in New York City to primarily land-use-related items, see Mosher, Frederick C., “Fiscal Planning and Budgeting in New York City,” in Report of the New York State-New York City Fiscal Relations Committee (New York, 1956), pp. 65–84 at pp. 80–81.Google Scholar
29 The comprehensive plan did appear in 1960. It is too early to assess its effect on capital programs, but it may be noted that its statements as to goals and levels of service tend to be broad ones.
30 Compare the discussion of the effectiveness of “comprehensive” planning and its relation to governmental organization in Meyerson and Banfield, op. cit., pp. 273–275.
31 On the organization of planning see, e.g., Walker, Robert A., The Planning Function in Urban Government, 2d ed., (Chicago, 1951)Google Scholar; Henry C. Fagin, op. cit.; and Fagin, and Norton, C. McKim, “Physical and Fiscal Planning,” in New York State-New York City Fiscal Relations Committee, Report (New York, 1956), pp. 85–94.Google Scholar The last is most expressly aimed at capital programming.
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