Over the past twelve plus years, our .rst book Research Methods in Urban and Regional Planning has been used to teach graduate and undergraduate students. During this time, we received a great deal of feedback from students, colleagues and practitioners that the book is good companion for planning methods classes, while also receiving suggestions for future editions. We sought to incorporate many of the valuable suggestions received these past years as we sat down to write a second planning methods book. Chapters from our .rst methods book have been updated to re.ect the availability of newer data. A new section on the Hamilton-Perry model has been added to the chapter on demographic analysis. The annual Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) Origin-Destination Employment Statistics (LODES) data since 2002 have been providing useful information to planners. We have added a section on GIS-based job accessibility analysis to the transportation chapter. We eliminated the chapter on data, data presentation, and statistical anal-ysis based on the conclusion that one chapter cannot suf.ce to provide students with an adequate minimum understanding of planning-relevant statistical techniques. We also abstained from including a chapter on speci.c economic development meth-ods, such as input-output analysis. Though we understand the value of input-output analysis for planning purposes, the method as such is better suited in a book with speci.c foci on economic methods. Also, we decided not to include the chapter from the .rst book that provided a sample application of several planning analysis to a single geographic area. Although this was intended to emphasize the potential integration and connection between these analyses, it tended to be repetitive of portions of other chapters. One of the advantages of not having this last chapter is that we are not bound to using only data for one single region as we did with Boone County, KY in the .rst book. In the second book, we used multiple counties Franklin County, OH, Denver County, CO, Chatham County, GA, and Broward County, FL to name a few.
Over the years, we often asked guest speakers in our methods classes which methods they think are most important for aspiring planners to be prepared to bring to the job. Many of the developer guests indicated the importance of student exposure to the basics of pro forma analysis. Torn between the impossible task of
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explaining pro forma analysis in one chapter and the need for planners to have a basic understanding of this method, we ended up with a chapter on .nancial analysis. The purpose is not to provide the reader with a comprehensive overview of pro forma analysis, but to give the necessary understanding of the time value of money and related .nancial techniques to be able to engage in pro forma analysis. We hope that others may .ll the need for a book for planners entirely devoted to pro forma and other .nancial analyses. With this second of our books on planning methods, we also hope to have addressed what we think was the most important of the comments received these past years, namely to offer this book at an affordable cost to students and practitioners. We strongly believe that textbooks should not break the bank for those interested in buying them, nor should they turn into a lucrative business for authors.
We would like to thank everybody who helped with the book in one way or another. Seunghoon Oh for all the hours he spent collecting data and reviewing individual chapters. Katie Horlander for all her editorial work on the demographic, economic, .nancial, and land use analysis chapters. Melissa and Ellen Wang, who helped out the last minute before deadline to review and edit the transportation analysis chapter. Dr. Stefan Rayer for his valuable advice on demographic methods and his generosity in sharing the much needed data for the cohort-component model with us. Dr. Na Chen for reviewing and editing the transportation analysis chapter. All the students in the University of Cincinnati School of Planning who shared their opinions about our .rst book with us, and who helped with collecting data and proofreading/editing sections of the book. We want to thank our editors for their patience. And of course, our families for everything they have done so that we could actually sit down and bring everything to paper. Finally, we must thank all those who supported us in the very beginning to go down the road of writing a methods textbook and who encouraged us writing this second book.
Cincinnati, OH, USA Xinhao Wang November 2019 Rainer vom Hofe