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PlaceMaking: Tools for Community Action    
by Roy Chan and Susan Boyd
A Publication funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

This guide provides a starter kit for a community member, city official, planner, or design professional to identify currently available planning tools and to assess their applicability and appropriateness to specific projects or issues, alone or in combination. It builds upon the work being done at PlaceMatters.com and provides a springboard for community action.

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Environmental Simulation: Michael Kwartler Draws People Into Process
by Anna Holtzman
Urban Design Case Studies, Vol. 3 No. 1, January-March 2006.

This article examines the "Community Visioning" process and how the ESC and other firms utilize different technologies with the aim to "integrate grass-roots community involvement into policy-making and planning." After exploring the differences between 2D renderings, 3D animations and Real-time simulations, the article examines a previous project in Santa Fe, Texas (link to project info...), and an ongoing project in Kona, Hawaii.

Just-In-Time Planning: New York + Houston
Architectural Design, Nov/Dec 2005.

"Michael Kwartler counters the rigid determinism of urban planning policy with a just-in-time approach. He describes a new planing, design and regulatory model that harnesses information technologies and emerging planning and design decision support (PDDS), which 'learn' from experience and provide the means to be self-organising and adjusting, responding rather than anticipating or even trying to direct change."

Viewpoint
by George M. Janes, AICP
PLANNING, May 2004

In this article, George Janes critically examines the role of computer-based planning tools and argues for value-neutral design-support systems stating, "use technology. Don't let it use you."

Planning Support Systems: Integrating Geographic Information Systems, Models, and Visualization Tools
by Michael Kwartler, FAIA and Robert Bernard
ESRI Press, June 2001

The chapter "CommunityViz: An Integrated Planning Support System", co-written by Michael Kwartler and Robert Bernard (PriceWaterhouseCoopers) is in this recently published book, edited by Richard K. Brail and Richard E. Klosterman.

Critique:
New zoning proposed for New York needs further refinement
by Michael Kwartler, FAIA
Architectural Record November 2000, 13-21

New York City has been the leading laboratory for zoning experimentation ever since it was the first municipality to develop comprehensive zoning regulations in 1916. A current proposal to revamp its zoning regulations has implications for the larger design and planning community. Included is a controversial idea to provide incentives for aesthetics or good design. As the following essay indicates, the problem may be not just in the goals, but in the process as well

Regulating the Good You Can't Think Of
by Michael Kwartler, FAIA
URBAN DESIGN International (1998) 3(1), 13-21

In this paper Kwartler accepts the view of the city articulated by Lynch in The Image of the City that 'only partial control can be exercised over its growth and form'. He review the practices of New York City in terms of its relationship with 'Regulating the Good You Can't Think Of', from the zoning ordinance of 1916 to the present day. He uses SoHo as an example of a case where illegal individual action became legalized in a subsequent set of regulations and reviews the satisfying approach to control proposed by Babcock and Weaver in City Zoning. He concludes with an examination of the 'thresholds, performance standards and feedback' approach which began in New York and California in the 1960s, the development of which might be called 'just-in-time planning'.