Cultivating regional cultural competency: Exploring the presence of place-based exclusion and representation in urban planning research.

摘要

This thesis explores geographic patterns of representation in scholarly and professional planning literature within the conceptual framework of cultural competency. Literature counts were collected with a systematic review of eleven years of articles published by The Journal of the American Planning Association, Planning magazine, and The Journal of Urban History; using ArcGIS, counts were then mapped against demographic variables selected as cultural proxies to establish visual correlations between levels of representation and certain types of communities. Based on the foregoing methods the thesis concludes that the South, and the Deep South in particular are under-represented regions in the planning literature. The implications of this under-representation are discussed using examples from Alabama. The conclusion offers concrete recommendations for the planning establishment to sponsor more effective and communicative planning in under-represented regions.