Measuring Quality in Planning: Managing the Performance Process

by Matthew Carmona, Louie Sieh

This book How can a non-distortionary, objective and comprehensive system be developed in order to measure the quality of planning? This is an important question in order to avoid the situation whereby those aspects of the planning service which are difficult to measure are devalued, simply because they do not lend themselves to easy measurement. Examining this conundrum provided the basis for the research project on which this book is based. These questions have been recognised by governments across the world and are beginning to be addressed in policy developments and in management practice. However, the fundamentals of performance measurement in planning are by no means well-understood, let alone practised, leading to the situation whereby much performance measurement is highly distortionary and can act against the drive to deliver better quality planning. It is the purpose of this book to address the complexities and - as far as possible - to cut through the tangled web of thinking that has dogged performance (or quality) measurement in planning, and in the public sector at large.; Through research that draws extensively from experience in the UK, but also from practice and theory from around the world, the book concludes by making the case for a holistic approach to quality measurement that address equally the three key dimensions of planning product, service and organisational quality.

Kindle Edition

First published September 9, 2004

About the author

Matthew Carmona is an architect, planner and researcher based in the United Kingdom. His research focuses on the process of design governance and management of Public Space. He has taught at the University of Nottingham and The Bartlett, the latter since 1998.
Carmona serves as the chair of the Place Alliance, a collaborative alliance for place quality that he helped in founding in 2014. He regularly works as an advisor to governments in the UK as well as in other countries. He was the Specialist Advisor to the House of Lords Select Committee on the Built Environment in 2015.
In 2015, Carmona received the RTPI Academic Award for Research Excellence and in 2016 (for the Place Alliance) the RTPI Sir Peter Hall Award for Wider Engagement. In 2018, Carmona received the AESOP Best Published Paper Award for his work on the governance of design. In 2021 he was awarded the Athena City Accolade and in 2022 he received the RTPI Sir Peter Hall Award for Excellence in Research and Engagement for work on the treatment of design in English planning appeals. He is the European Associate Editor for the Journal of Urban Design and since 2003 has written a quarterly column for Town and Country Planning as well as his own blog Urban Design Matters. Carmona has published thirteen books and has written numerous articles.