Sketch planning applications in transport and urban planning

The historical trend for the use of computer models in planning applications has been for increasing complexity, with a concomitant increase in the level of resources needed to implement them. Time, people and cost are the primary resources. The ability to use refined but more complex models diminishes as these resources are constrained. Thus the greater power of a complex model may be shackled by its inappropriateness for a given application in an environment of limited resources. The information technology of the 1980s gives planners some new, powerful and unfolding tools for tackling their problems. These tools include personal computers, linked to flexible information and data management systems, interactive graphics, and data analysis packages. Two outcomes of these developments are discussed in this paper: (a) the rapid, wide ranging and in depth examination of a planning problem and the database assembled in its consideration; and (b) a new respectability for electric modelling, which brings the 'back of the envelope' model into serious professional use (a).