Effects of data requirements on planning: Case studies of environmental impact assessment and community development block grants

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Requirements for agencies to produce and publish data, according to studies reported on here, can help implement legislated policy, make planning better informed, and encourage public officials to be more responsive to underrepresented interests and broad public concerns. Observers often fail to identify such effects because these data are seldom used directly in decisions. Indeed data requirements have increasingly come to be viewed as little more than wasteful paperwork. Field research on Community Development Block Grant Planning and California Environmental Impact Review suggests that although data do occasionally play a direct role in decisions, the data, along with the system for producing and debating them, have more significant indirect influence by shaping the planning process itself. The data requirements change the taken for granted framework of planning—the standard operating procedures, the leverage of participants, and the values that underlie decisions. The requirements help assure the employment of professionals and the development of data bases, which, in turn increase the analytic activities of the agency and the opportunities and capability of citizens to use data. The requirements also redistribute power, lending authority and legitimacy to planners, giving citizens a place in the discussions, and permitting challenges to the status quo. These changes ultimately reshape the terms of the planning debates as the data and the newly empowered participants call attention to issues, assuring that they are on the agenda, and legitimize the criteria they reflect. Moreover the requirements create a norm that data should be used in discussion.