Environmental Evaluation

How can the quality of environments be evaluated? This book describes ways of assessing the perceptions and experiences of the users so that planners, designers, and managers may take them into account. Ervin Zube first presents the problem of environmental evaluation in the context of public policies promulgated for the planning, design, and management of urban, rural, and wild environments in North America. After a brief history of US environmental policy, he goes on to consider the differences between policy mandates for evaluation and the actual conduct of evaluation studies. He identifies three stages as important for assessment: the ‘inventory’, or evaluation of existing environments; consideration of alternatives, or evaluation of possible future environments; and, after the plan is implemented, the design or management programme, or evaluation of the modified environment. He illustrates his points with reference to actual evaluations of environments from housing projects to Niagara Falls, at each of these stages, considering each case study in the relevant policy context. Applied behavioural and social scientists and all those in the planning and design and management professions will find this a useful text.