Planning for Metropolitan Regions
This course will focus on the regional scale management of the relationships between urban land use, transportation and environmental quality. Background will be provided on local and national trends, related research findings, existing legal and institutional contexts, contradictions in currently espoused solutions, and emerging policy options. Recent work on land use, transportation and environmental quality by community organizations like 1000 Friends of Oregon will be reviewed. Then the following three activities will be implemented in successive offerings of the course to constitute the course's service learning component.

The first activity scheduled for this spring will be to engage students in a multi-media mapping" of the urban automobile wilderness. This will be done in conjunction with Future Moves, a local civic organization advocating balanced approaches to transportation and land use. The purpose is to document photographically the good, bad and ugly aspects of relationships in our urban landscape between cars, pedestrians, bikes, transit, and land use arrangements. The function of this inventory is to illustrate both the adverse implications of auto-dependency as well as instructive examples of how such matters might otherwise be organized. (Some of these photographs will likely be used by Future Moves as it complies a neighborhood visual preference survey.) In a parallel effort, students will create or capture graphic illustrations of transit villages, pedestrian malls and other auto-independent land use designs. They will also create charts and graphs to illustrate relations between vehicular traffic, energy use, suburban land consumption, travel safety and air quality. The photographs and illustrations will serve the interests of Future Moves in its participation with other civic organizations in an emerging alliance dedicated to the promotion of urban environmental quality. A photographic camera, a digital still and video camera, a scanner and a computer laboratory with multi-media software capabilities will be available for use in conjunction with this course.

The second activity scheduled for the subsequent offering of this course is predicated upon the prior development of photographs, graphic illustrations and related educational materials. It presumes that student teams will develop the ability to present to service clubs, community councils and non-profit civic organizations a 40-minute lecture on urban and regional planning issues central to the future of the Utah's metropolitan area. In this manner, student will contribute directly to the objects soon to be pursued by the community education component of the Coalition's Envision Utah project. They will also contribute, through time, to the more general need for public education and dialogue on regional planning issues.

If appropriate, a third activity will be offered. It is predicated upon prior development of community design concepts to promote improved proximity relationships within new and existing parts of the urban fabric – a problem on which Envision Utah is currently focusing. Relevant community design concepts include transit-oriented developments, pedestrian pockets, traffic-reduced commercial zones (traffic cells), and mixed-use urban activity centers. Student teams will work with community organizations like the Assist Community Design Center, Future Moves and any of several community councils, municipal planning departments and urban redevelopment agencies. Students will help define how proximity relationships can be improved at specific sites and neighborhoods within the region where improved accessibility would stimulate new and varied urban activity patterns.
Below I hope to demonstrate how a course directed toward in the first activity will meet the nine criteria for service-learning designation is several specific ways.

1. Students provide a needed service. Photographic documentation, designs, illustrations and charts pertaining to the issue of our urban automobile wilderness will help both Future Moves and the larger community confront a pressing problem and consider what it might well do about it.

2. Service experience relates to the course's subject matter. Readings and class exercises shown on the attached syllabus relate directly to the proposed service learning activities.

3. Class activities stimulate reflection upon the service learning experience and the course's subject matter. The course schedule provides an opportunity for small group discussion of this issue with reports made by each group to the class at large.

4. Learning from both the service activities and the course material is assessed. A term paper is assigned in which students address the linkage between course materials and service activities.

5a. Service recipient's needs are recognized. This has been accommodated through preliminary discussions with the service recipient and will be modified if needed through continued discussions.
5b. Service recipient is involved in service evaluation. While the Director of Future Moves will be given an opportunity to participate in grading student submissions, the more telling evaluation comes with his decision to include or not the submitted materials in his own media presentations.

6. Service is aimed at the civic education of the students. Course materials address issues in the public domain. they promote an awareness of civic values. The proposed service project instructs students in the means for improving public awareness of civic issues and engaging constructively in civic discourse.

7. Service experience is informed by discipliner knowledge. Service projects draw upon disciplinary knowledge in urban geography, urban planning and urban design as identified by the materials in the syllabus and by the instructors grounding in these disciplinary bases.

8. Opportunities for learning from classmates as well as the instructor are provided.
Presentation of course materials and service project work will be done in and through small work groups. This is a setting that facilitates learning from classmates.

9. Required service work will not violate a student's religious, ethical or political convictions. A political libertarian may find the interventionistic and communitarian assumptions implicit in this course an affront to his ethical and political sensibilities. I suspect that adequate advising and self-selection will illuminate this potential problem.

Catalog Description
Theory and problems of regional planning including the spatial organizations of regions, theories of regional development and public policy for the development of regions.

Course Description for Spring of 1998
This course will focus on the regional scale management of the relationships between urban land use, transportation and environmental quality. Background will be provided on local and national trends, related research findings, existing legal and institutional contexts, contradictions in currently espoused solutions, and emerging policy options. Recent work on the regional integration of land use, transportation and environmental quality by civic organizations like 1000 Friends of Oregon will be reviewed. The course will be offered as a service-learning course. The service activity scheduled for this spring will be to engage students in a multi-media "mapping" of the urban automobile wilderness. This will be done in conjunction with Future Moves, a local civic organization advocating balanced approaches to transportation and land use. Our purpose is to document photographically the good, bad and ugly aspects of relationships in our urban landscape between cars, pedestrians, bikes, transit, and land use arrangements. The function of this inventory is to illustrate both the adverse implications of auto-dependency as well as instructive examples of how such matters might otherwise be organized. (Some of these photographs will likely be used by Future Moves as it complies a neighborhood visual preference survey.) In a parallel effort, students will create or capture graphic illustrations of transit villages, pedestrian malls and other auto-independent land use designs. They will also create charts and graphs to illustrate relations between vehicular traffic, energy use, suburban land consumption. travel safety and air quality. The photographs and illustrations will serve the interests of Future Moves in its participation with other civic organizations in an emerging alliance dedicated to the promotion of urban environmental quality. A photographic camera, a digital still and video camera, a scanner and a computer laboratory with multi-media software capabilities will be available for use in conjunction with this course.

Texts
The courses principle text will be:

Anthony Downs (1994) New Visions for Metropolitan America. Washington, D. C.: The Brookings Institute.
James A. Moore and Julie M. Johnson (1994) Transportation, Land Use and Sustainability. Tampa: University of South Florida, Florida Center for Community Design and Research.
Parsons, Brinkerhoff, Quade & Douglas (1997) Making the Land Use, Transportation, Air Quality Connection, Technical Rpt. Vol. 8. Portland: 1000 Friends of Oregon.
These will be supplemented by articles provided throughout the spring quarter.

Evaluation Guideline
Student evaluation will be based upon the following factors: Attendance and participation (10%). Team presentation of course materials (20%). Group multi-media presentation materials submitted (30%). Summary essay on course material and service-learning experience (40%).

Course Schedule
The first five weeks of the course will be spent reviewing texts. The second five weeks will be spend developing materials for a multi-media presentation of issues in regional planning for the client agency. Summary essays will be submitted on the Monday of exam week.