The Case for Case Studies

Architects study historical precedents. Law is strictly based on past cases.  Business schools highlight the successes and failures of existing business models. The case study form of education is common to many professional schools, yet planning professionals and students have very little by way of case study resources. 

Many planning students have lamented that they are reinventing the wheel every time they begin a project. They have no way of researching “best practices” within a particular area of planning, unless they’ve heard of a specific project before (and can therefore dig through periodicals and libraries to find out what may or may not have been published on that project). Policy case studies have been developed, but these typically reside in policy school libraries and fail to address the design process or physical implementation of a project. 

As mentioned in the Research Challenges section of this website, there is the additional need for sophisticated critical analysis of urban planning and design projects, particularly with respect to their evolution over time.  What impact does a plan have on a community or on the environment after 5 years, 10 years, 50 years? How has technology changed since a project was implemented?

I have come to the conclusion during the course of this research that a collection of Urban Ecology case studies would be valuable to academics and professionals alike. And since a broader public understanding of urban ecological issues will be crucial in creating a sustainable future, an online collection of these case studies would be even more valuable.

A few organizations currently include case studies on their websites, however in most of the examples below the cases are limited to the specific topic with which the organization is concerned. Please see the Conceptual Recommendations area of this site for potential case study organizational models.