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Journal of the American Planning Association

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The Effect of Mandated Planning on Plan Quality
A Fresh Look at What Makes “A Good Plan”

Gene Bunnell & Edward J. Jepson Jr.

To cite this article: Gene Bunnell & Edward J. Jepson Jr. (2011) The Effect of Mandated
Planning on Plan Quality, Journal of the American Planning Association, 77:4, 338-353, DOI:
10.1080/01944363.2011.619951

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Problem: What is a “good plan”? Among
their key goals, plans aim to communicate,
influence and engage. Persuasiveness (the
ability to engage and motivate) is, therefore, an
essential plan quality. Unfortunately, all too
many comprehensive plans lack this important
quality. In addition, state planning mandates
intended to strengthen planning can instead
worsen this shortcoming.

Purpose: To develop a methodology to
measure and compare the communicative and
persuasive qualities of plans in states with and
without planning mandates.

Methods: A specially designed protocol was
developed to measure the communicative and
persuasive qualities of comprehensive plans.
Plans of 20 municipalities in states with
planning mandates were compared with those
of 20 municipalities in states without plan-
ning mandates. Statistical analyses of the
results were conducted using the
Wilcoxon–Mann–Whitney (U) test and
simple t tests.

Results and conclusions: Requiring local
governments to prepare plans did not result in
better plans—at least as measured by a
protocol tailored specifically to assess the
persuasiveness and communicative quality of
plans. Plans prepared in mandate states were
much more rigid and standardized than those
prepared in nonmandate states. Nonman-
dated plans also scored much higher in terms
of their narrative and storytelling qualities
than mandated plans. Private consultant
involvement in plan making significantly
increased the communicative and persuasive
qualities of plans.

Takeaway for practice: Plans in all 40
municipalities fell far short of the ideal
communicative and persuasive qualities set
forth in the protocol. The deficiency was
greatest in states with planning mandates.
The involvement of private consultants had a

The Effect of Mandated
Planning on Plan Quality

A Fresh Look at What Makes “A Good Plan”

Gene Bunnell and Edward J. Jepson, Jr.

P
lanning professionals and researchers alike often disagree about what
constitutes a “good plan” (Baer, 1997; Ohm, 2005; Susskind, 1978).
That does not mean good plans are not made. What makes judging a

good plan difficult, of course, is that plans must typically address complex issues
made even more difficult by the conflicting goals and interests of multiple
constituencies. Given the complexity and diversity of planning contexts, there
will never be one best way to plan.

If one community’s good plan might well be another’s recipe for trou-
ble, it is difficult to imagine anything resembling consensus to emerge about
the ideal plan format or strategy, even within a single state. How then
should legislation mandating the preparation of local plans be written?
Allowing adequate flexibility to allow for differences in places, their resi-
dents, and their aspirations might seem in . Yet, if there is too much
flexibility in those mandates, what is the value of the requirement? Is the
mandate truly binding if anything goes?

We begin this article by identifying what we believe are the basic, mini-
mum qualities of a good plan, namely, that it should clearly and effectively
communicate key principles and ideas, and energize, engage, and inspire
residents in support of those principles and ideas. In other words, we argue
that the extent to which plans persuasively connect with readers, and elicit
their positive participation, should constitute the core notion of what consti-
tutes a good plan. We, then, identify specific plan characteristics that we
believe strengthen the communicative and persuasive quality of plans, and
assemble them into a protocol that can be used to score and compare plans
with respect to this core dimension.

positive impact on plan quality, while the
provision of state funding for planning did
not.

Keywords: plan quality, plan persuasiveness,
planning mandates, comprehensive planning,
planning requirements

Research support: None.
About the authors:
Gene Bunnell ([email protected]) is a
member of the AICP and an associate
professor in the Department of Geography
and Planning at the University at Albany,

State University of New York. Edward J.
Jepson, Jr. ([email protected]) is a
member of the AICP and was an assistant
professor in the master of science in planning
program at the University of Tennessee,
which was terminated in July 2009. He is
currently working as a planning consultant.

Journal of the American Planning Association,

Vol. 77, No. 4, Autumn 2011

DOI 10.1080/01944363.2011.619951

© American Planning Association, Chicago, IL.

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Bunnell and Jepson: Effect of Mandated Planning on Plan Quality 339

Preparing persuasive plans is especially important in
localities, where plans are prepared by local governments
led by elected officials, who in turn are heavily influenced
by local public opinion. Persuasion is necessary to “get the
policymaker’s or the public’s attention, to make them
‘listen to reason’ where they are blinded by stereotypes or
by wishful thinking” (Majone, 1989, p. 39).

As the planning profession considers criteria for judg-
ing good plans, we need to consider the effect of mandates
on the quality and character of plans. Do planning man-
dates make plans better, worse, or have no effect in terms
of their communicative effectiveness? To contribute to the
empirical literature on plan quality and the effects of
mandates, we present our study of 40 municipal plans in 4
strategically selected states, two that mandated plans and
two that did not. We found that plan quality scores varied
considerably in all four groups of plans and few plans met
the ideal. Even more significantly, not only did mandates
not in themselves produce better plans, the evidence was
fairly clear that mandates on average were associated with
lower plan quality scores.

The Structure of This Article

We begin by analyzing two professionally accepted
protocols currently for evaluating plan quality, revealing that
they mostly apply objective, technically verifiable criteria
(i.e., whether policies are internally consistent with goals;
whether each policy is clearly tied to a specific goal, or goals;
and whether goals are quantified based on measurable
objectives), and place relatively little importance on assessing
the communicative and persuasive qualities of plans.

We argue that there is a subtle and underappreciated
connection between mandated planning and concerns
about plan quality. The first systematic framework for
evaluating the quality of plans (Baer, 1997) was published
during a period when the number of states passing legisla-
tion mandating plans was reaching a crescendo. Around
the same time, there was a burst of research activity exam-
ining plan quality and the effects of mandated planning on
plan quality. Berke and Godschalk (2009) report that at
least 16 studies of plan quality were conducted in various
parts of the country between 1997 (when Baer’s article was
published) and 2007.

Our article proceeds to consider the question of what
comprehensive plans should contain. We revisit the debate
between Alfred Bettman and Edward M. Bassett (key
drafters of the 1928 Standard City Planning Enabling
Act), as recounted by Kent (1964) over whether laws
authorizing planning should specify the substantive ele-

ments that needed to be included in general plans. Kent’s
opinion on the matter, forcefully expressed in The Urban
General Plan, was that a municipal plan “should be gen-
eral…should be in a form suitable for public debate …
[and] should be available and understandable to the pub-
lic…” (p. 91). More than a half century later, this position
appears increasingly at odds with the practice of state
legislatures, which seem to be increasingly inclined, when
adopting planning mandates, to also specify the required
contents of plans.

The balance of this article reports on exploratory
research examining whether state laws mandating planning
are having a discernible effect on the communicative
quality and persuasive power of plans. To do so, we de-
vised a protocol aimed specifically at assessing the commu-
nicative and persuasive qualities of plans. We used the
protocol to evaluate and compare 40 comprehensive plans
drawn from municipalities in four states, two states that
have mandated comprehensive plans (Wisconsin and
Tennessee) and two that have not (New York and
Massachusetts). The findings of this research, although
far from definitive, indicate fairly clearly that planning
mandates are not increasing the communicative and
persuasive quality of plans and, if anything, appear to be
weakening those important qualities.

Previous Research on Plan Quality

Baer’s (1997) JAPA article on general plan evaluation
criteria set forth a remarkably comprehensive list of criteria
contributing to plan quality. Baer identified 60 criteria,
which he organized under eight main headings: adequate
explanation of context; “rational model” considerations;
procedural validity; adequacy of scope; guidance for imple-
mentation; approach, data and methodology; quality of
communication; and plan format. The fact that Baer recog-
nized that quality of communication and plan format are
important contributors to plan quality is noteworthy. Among
the factors Baer considered in judging plan quality were:

• Are ideas convincingly presented, given the nature of
the audience?

• Are the rationales behind the decisions effectively
presented?

• Are proposals, recommendations, and conclusions
consistent with objectives?

• Is the tone of the document consistent with the
message?

• Are criteria indicated by which the plan is intended to
be judged?

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340 Journal of the American Planning Association, Autumn 2011, Vol. 77, No. 4

• Are the size and format of the plan conducive to the
use intended?

• Are the authors shown (to indicate professional
responsibility, i.e., names of personnel who worked on
the plan, as well as agency or firm names)?

• Are graphics used to best advantage?
• Is the plan attractively laid out?

In many respects, the criteria above specified by Baer were
consistent with the advice offered by Alan Black (1986)
30 years earlier that “[a] plan should be easy to read and
use… The document should be designed so that it is
attractive and written so that it is interesting. It should not
look forbidding or ponderous” (p. 371).

Roughly 10 years after Baer’s (1997) article, Berke,
Godschalk, and Kaiser (2006) developed a plan quality
evaluation protocol designed to grade and rank the quality
of plans on a numerical scale. This protocol lists 60 criteria
(the same number as Baer’s, but not the same criteria)
organized under eight main headings (again the same
number but different headings). This protocol calls for
each of the 60 criteria to be scored either 0 (not identified),
1 (identified but vague), or 2 (identified, clear, detailed).
Summing the scores given to all 60 criteria produces a
point score that presumably represents a measure of the
relative quality of a given plan.

The main difference between the Baer (1997) and
Berke, Godschalk, and Kaiser (2006) protocols is that the
latter places less importance on measuring and comparing
the communicative and persuasive qualities of plans. One
reason for this, we suspect, is that the Berke, Godschalk,
and Kaiser protocol seeks to minimize the amount of
subjectivity that might enter into the act of scoring plans,
as evidenced by the fact that it is largely composed of
objective, technically verifiable criteria. For example,
criterion 3.2 asks, “Are policies internally consistent with
goals wherein each policy is clearly tied to a specific goal
(or goals)?” Criterion 4C.1 asks, “Are goals quantified
based on measurable objectives (e.g., 60 percent of all
residents within 1/4 mile of transit service)?”

Of the 60 criteria in the Berke, Godschalk, and Kaiser
(2006) protocol, only four relate to aspects and qualities
that could be said to enhance the communicative and
persuasive qualities of plans:

• 5.1 Is the plan imaginative, offering compelling
courses of action that inspire people to act?

• 5.3 Does the plan provide clear explanations of alterna-
tive courses of action that enhance community flexibility
and adaptation in dealing with complex situations?

• 6.5 Is plain English used (avoiding poor, ungrammati-
cal, verbose, jargon-filled, unclear language)?

• 6.6 Are clear illustrations used (e.g., diagrams,
pictures)?

As scrupulous as the Berke, Godschalk, and Kaiser
(2006) protocol is in minimizing subjectivity, it is worth
noting that it nevertheless contains an implicit bias in favor
of plans that mandate and prescribe, and against those that
seek to encourage voluntary compliance through the power
of persuasion. Criterion 3.4 of the Berke, Godschalk, and
Kaiser protocol asks: “Are policies mandatory (with words
like shall, will, require, must) as opposed to suggestive (with
words like consider, should, may)?” If most of a plan’s
policies are stated as mandatory, the Berke, Godschalk, and
Kaiser protocol awards 2 points; if some policies are
mandatory, it awards 1 point; if none of the policies are
mandatory, the score is 0.

As technically sound as the Berke, Godschalk, and
Kaiser (2006) protocol is, it could be argued that it has
been developed and put forward without explicitly address-
ing the question of “What are plans for?” Are plans meant
to prescribe what should and must be done, or should they
aspire to persuade and motivate?

Baer (1997) reminded readers that plans can serve
different purposes, and intimated that different kinds of
criteria might be appropriate in assessing the quality of
different types of plans. Among the different purposes Baer
identified were:

• plan as vision,
• plan as blueprint,
• plan as land use guide,
• plan as remedy,
• plan as administrative requirement for federal funds,
• plan as pragmatic action, and
• plan as response to state and federal planning

mandates.

When a plan is prepared in response to a state or
federal planning mandate, or to meet a requirement for
federal or state funds, the criteria most relevant to deter-
mining plan quality clearly relate to meeting the statutorily
required standards and plan elements. A good plan under
such circumstances is simply one that meets the rules.
Persuasiveness, inspiration, and motivational messages
become less relevant. As Baer (1997) observed, “state
mandates are exhaustively—even mind numbingly—
‘rational’ in their detailed requirements for technical com-
petence” (p. 330). Likewise if a plan is intended to serve as
a blueprint or as a land use guide, specifying what should
happen and where, the criteria for evaluating plan quality
would relate to assessing the extent to which “each and
every aspect of the plan…[is] described or mapped or
diagrammed in considerable detail…” (p. 334).

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Bunnell and Jepson: Effect of Mandated Planning on Plan Quality 341

If, on the other hand, the purpose of a plan is to
motivate citizens and their elected officials to seriously
consider how their community might change in the future
and inspire them to commit to a set of policies and actions
aimed at achieving a desired outcome, then different plan
qualities are clearly called for. The criteria for determining
what makes a good plan in such instances would be more
similar to those that might be used in assessing the quality
of vision plans, and would be aimed at assessing effective-
ness in “communicating the vision in an empathetic,
visceral and stimulating way that touches not just the
mind, but the soul” (Baer, 1997, p. 333). Many plans that
score well on the Berke, Godschalk, and Kaiser (2006)
protocol would probably be rated much less highly when
judged against such qualitatively different criteria.

The Rise of State Planning Mandates

One of the most important developments affecting
planning practice in recent decades has undoubtedly been
the increase in the number of states passing legislation
mandating that local governments prepare plans. The
attention planning educators and researchers have paid to
developing criteria for assessing the quality of plans can be
seen as an understandable response to this growing trend.

California was the first state to impose a planning
mandate in 1937, when it passed legislation requiring all
cities and counties to adopt comprehensive plans. It added
requirements for land use and circulation elements in
1955, a housing element in 1967, conservation and open-
space elements in 1970, and seismic safety and two other
elements in 1971 (Burby & May, 1997). Florida and
Oregon passed legislation in 1972 and 1973, respectively,
mandating the preparation of local plans, and requiring
state review and approval of those plans (Daniels, 1999).
Nevertheless, by the end of the 1970s, no additional states
had joined these three states in mandating that local gov-
ernments prepare plans.

However, in the 1980s, in the midst of a development
boom in many parts of the country, state legislatures in a
number of states approved various growth control meas-
ures, including state laws requiring local governments to
prepare plans. In 1985, Maine adopted growth manage-
ment legislation mandating the preparation of local plans,
followed by Rhode Island in 1988. Legislation passed by
Georgia in 1989 mandated regional plans, but left local
plans voluntary (Daniels, 1999).

Five more states adopted legislation mandating the
preparation of plans in the 1990s: Washington State in
1990; Maryland in 1992; Tennessee and Arizona in 1998;

and Wisconsin in 1999. Arizona’s mandate requiring
preparation of general plans applied to cities and counties
with populations above 50,000, as well as cities and towns
with populations less than 50,000 that had been experienc-
ing sustained rapid growth. Wisconsin’s 1999 Smart
Growth Act (1999 Wisconsin Act 9) mandated compre-
hensive plans for municipalities with populations of
12,500 people or more.

A number of states have imposed single-purpose plan-
ning mandates, sometimes in addition to mandating prepa-
ration of comprehensive plans. Municipalities in California
and Florida are required to prepare local plans for natural
hazards mitigation. Local governments in coastal areas of
North Carolina are required to prepare plans to protect
coastal resources (Burby & May, 1997). Washington,
Maine, Vermont, and a few other states mandate that local
governments assure adequate citizen involvement in the
process of preparing plans (Brody, Godschalk, & Burby,
2003). Illinois passed a law in 2003 mandating planning for
affordable housing. “If less than 10% of an Illinois munici-
pality’s or county’s housing stock was classified as affordable,
the Illinois Affordable Housing Planning and Appeal Act
required that local government to make and adopt an af-
fordable housing plan by April 2005” (Hoch, 2007, p. 88).

What Comprehensive Plans Should
Contain

Agreeing on what should be included in a comprehen-
sive plan has historically proven difficult (Kent, 1964). A
number of pages in Kent’s The Urban General Plan are
devoted to discussing a key question that the drafters of the
1928 Standard City Planning Enabling Act confronted
and debated at length. The question, which seems equally
pertinent today, was: “Should the Act specify the elements
that a General Plan needed to contain?” In the end, the
standard act did not specify the elements that needed to be
included in a general plan. Nor could the group agree on
an express definition of a master plan or general plan.

[T]he decision to consciously omit what could be
called an express definition of the general plan from
the Act probably was the result of basic differences of
opinion among the individuals in the group that
drafted the document…Edward M. Bassett believed
that the scope of the plan should be precisely delim-
ited, and that the component parts of the plan
should be specified…Alfred Bettman…argued that
anything that might come to be known as a ‘standard
definition’ of the general plan might lead city-planning

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342 Journal of the American Planning Association, Autumn 2011, Vol. 77, No. 4

commissions throughout the country to do their work
in a perfunctory way, without really thinking for
themselves, and hence might cause them to ignore the
special problems, features, and opportunities that
characterize every community. (p. 45)

It is clear where Kent (1964) stood with regard to the
Bassett–Bettman debate. Indeed, it is striking how little
importance Kent placed on specifying elements that should
be included in a general plan. Kent was much more con-
cerned that a comprehensive plan lay out broad principles
to guide decision making related to land use and develop-
ment, so as to establish the general policy direction of a
community. In Kent’s words, the general plan “should be
general, and should remain general…should be in a form
suitable for public debate…should be available and under-
standable to the public…[and] should be amendable”
(p. 91). In this regard, Kent’s views were similar to those of
Charles Haar (1959), who likened the role played by a
comprehensive plan to that of the U.S. Constitution.

A much more precise conception of what plans should
consist of has seemed to have emerged in recent years.
Evidence of this shift can be seen in the growing number
of states which, in addition to mandating the preparation
of comprehensive plans, have imposed specific requirements
concerning what elements those plans need to contain.
Legislation passed in Wisconsin defines a comprehensive
plan as containing nine required elements: issues and oppor-
tunities; housing; transportation; utilities and community
facilities; agricultural, natural and cultural resources; eco-
nomic development; intergovernmental cooperation; land
use; and implementation (1999 Wisconsin Act 9). Legisla-
tion passed in Arizona mandating plans also specifies the
elements comprehensive plans must include. Plans prepared
by Arizona towns or cities with populations of 50,000 or
more must include 16 specific elements (land use; circula-
tion; open space; growth area; environmental planning;
cost of development; water resources; energy; conservation;
recreation; public service and facilities; public buildings;
housing; conservation, rehabilitation and redevelopment;
safety; bicycling). Plans prepared by towns and cities of
2,500 or less that have grown at an average annual rate of
less than 2% over the past 10 years need only include two
elements addressing land use and circulation (Arizona
Department of Commerce, 2004).

Producing a comprehensive plan composed of a collec-
tion of separate plan elements is the best way to be sure a
plan complies with state requirements, because agency staff
are able to check off the elements contained in a plan (the
check-box approach to plan making). Unfortunately,
chopping up a plan into different elements also makes it

difficult to produce a plan that presents a unified narrative
storyline. Demanding that plans conform to a predeter-
mined framework that is uniformly applied to all munici-
palities also runs the risk of contributing to the production
of look-alike plans that are all structured and presented in
the same way, just the opposite of what one would want to
do if the aim were to prepare plans that convey an appreci-
ation of what is unique about individual communities.

State mandates specifying what functional elements
need to be included in comprehensive plans can also make
plans longer. As Anderson (1995) has observed, “Some
lengthy plans are incomprehensible when considered as an
entity, although each separate ‘element’ in them may be
understandable….it is very difficult to grasp ‘the big pic-
ture’ of what is planned” (p. 17). Moreover, careful reading
of plans composed of discrete plan elements required by
state mandates often reveals considerable overlap and
duplication in content, such as in the material covered in
the land use, housing, transportation, and public facilities
elements.

Opinions in the Planning Field
Regarding Mandates

Thirty years ago, the question of whether it was a good
idea for state governments to mandate that local govern-
ments prepare plans was posed to two distinguished plan-
ning scholars. Mandelker (1978) answered yes; Susskind
(1978) answered no. Since that time, planning mandates
have come much more into the mainstream. Nevertheless,
opinions on the subject among planning educators and
researchers remain divided.

A traditional argument for mandating plans is that, in
the absence of such a requirement, too many local govern-
ments will not prepare them and local decision making
regarding land use and development will suffer as a result.
Another argument for planning mandates is that when
plans are mandated, the result is better plans (Berke &
French, 1994; Berke, Roenick, Kaiser, & Burby, 1996;
Burby & May, 1997). However, such a blanket conclusion
would seem to be open to question. As Norton (2005) has
noted, “While the Burby and May research team found
that North Carolina’s mandate yielded the highest quality
plans relative to other states, they also concluded that none
[italics added] of the states with comprehensive planning
mandates ‘did a very good job of addressing natural haz-
ards,’ including North Carolina’s plans…” (p. 56).

A study comparing voluntary planning versus man-
dated plans in Maine conducted by Pendall (2001) pro-
duced a mixed assessment of the value of mandated

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Bunnell and Jepson: Effect of Mandated Planning on Plan Quality 343

planning. Although planning mandates in Maine suc-
ceeded in getting local governments to produce plans,
Pendall found that plans involuntarily prepared were often
not adopted by local jurisdictions. In contrast, plans that
were voluntarily prepared, with professional and technical
support from the state, were more likely to be adopted.
Pendall concluded that a “combination of incentives,
assistance, and a qualified state agency with professional
staff may produce positive results when compared to an
unfunded mandate with only the lurking threat of legal
action to encourage municipal planning” (p. 163).

Hoch’s (2007) study of affordable housing plans
prepared by local governments in response to Illinois’s
planning mandate also led him to conclude that mandates
alone are not enough.

The results of this study illustrate how local officials’
beliefs justify their indifference and resistance to
planning mandates. When state law requires plans, it
does focus attention and compliance. But planning
requires more than this…Coercion inspires procedural
compliance, but incentives lead to greater commit-
ment. (p. 98)

Despite these findings, some planning educators
remain convinced that much more specific state mandates
are needed. Pivo (1993) has been highly critical of
Washington’s growth management legislation passed in
1990 and 1991 for giving too much discretion to local
decision makers and providing too little state oversight of
local …