Informality as a Planning Strategy

Abstract In 1994 an unusual, if not unique, collaborative effort emerged to manage the highly contested and interconnected system of waters, levees, and habitat in the San Francisco Bay Estuary and Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. This CALFED Bay-Delta Program (CALFED) engaged 25 federal and state agencies and representatives of 35 major stakeholder groups and local agencies in a joint search for solutions to Bay Delta problems. It changed how water was managed and produced new practices that persisted until at least 2005. CALFED's collaborative approach is by nature informal, and it coexists uneasily with the norms and structure of formal government. This story illustrates how formal and informal systems are interdependent, yet in tension, across planning, participation, and decision making. Because planners often operate in the interface between the formal and the informal, the story offers lessons that can be applied at many levels of government and for many planning tasks.

[1]  W. Mackenzie,et al.  The Management and the Worker , 2008 .

[2]  Boyd Fuller,et al.  Trading zones : cooperating for water resource and ecosystem management when stakeholders have apparently irreconcilable differences , 2006 .

[3]  Judith E. Innes,et al.  Collaborative governance in the CALFED program: Adaptive policy making for California water , 2006 .

[4]  J. Innes,et al.  Reframing public participation: strategies for the 21st century , 2004 .

[5]  W. Stevenson.  Bureaucratic Landscapes: Interagency Cooperation and the Preservation of Biodiversity , 2004 .

[6]  Catherine Marie Hudzik.  Evaluating the Effectiveness of Collaboration in Water Resources Planning in California: A Case Study of CALFED , 2003 .

[7]  Lauri Boxer-Macomber.  Too Much Sun? Emerging Challenges Presented by California & Federal Open Meeting Legislation to Public Policy Consensus-Building Processes , 2003 .

[8]  J. Innes,et al.  Deliberative Policy Analysis: Collaborative policymaking: governance through dialogue , 2003 .

[9]  Jean Hillier,et al.  Shadows of Power: An Allegory of Prudence in Land-Use Planning , 2002 .

[10]  D. Roush.  Making collaboration work : lessons from innovation in natural resource management , 2002 .

[11]  Bradley C. Karkkainen,et al.  Collaborative Ecosystem Governance: Scale, Complexity, and Dynamism , 2002 .

[12]  Judith E. Innes,et al.  Outcomes of Collaborative Water Policy Making: Applying Complexity Thinking to Evaluation , 2001 .

[13]  P. Wright.  Fixing the Delta: The CALFED Bay-Delta Program and Water Policy Under the Davis Administration , 2001 .

[14]  Judith E. Innes,et al.  Consensus Building and Complex Adaptive Systems , 1999 .

[15]  P. Healey.  Institutionalist Analysis, Communicative Planning, and Shaping Places , 1999 .

[16]  Richard D. Margerum.  Integrated Environmental Management: lessons from the Trinity Inlet Management Program , 1999 .

[17]  L. Susskind,et al.  The consensus building handbook : a comprehensive guide to reaching agreement , 1999 .

[18]  Eugene Bardach,et al.  Getting Agencies to Work Together: The Practice and Theory of Managerial Craftsmanship , 1998 .

[19]  P. Healey.  Collaborative Planning: Shaping Places in Fragmented Societies , 1997 .

[20]  R. Stacey.  Complexity and Creativity in Organizations , 1996 .

[21]  David A. Morand,et al.  The Role of Behavioral Formality and Informality in the Enactment of Bureaucratic Versus Organic Organizations , 1995 .

[22]  Michael Neuman,et al.  Coordinating Growth Management Through Consensus-Building: Incentives and the Generation of Social, Intellectual and Political Capital , 1994 .

[23]  Judith E. Innes,et al.  Group Processes and the Social Construction of Growth Management: Florida, Vermont, and New Jersey , 1992 .

[24]  Patsy Healey,et al.  A Planner's Day: Knowledge and Action in Communicative Practice , 1992 .

[25]  Michael Barzelay,et al.  Breaking through bureaucracy : a new vision for managing in government , 1992 .

[26]  F. Ferrarotti,et al.  On Max Weber , 1991 .

[27]  Manuel Castells,et al.  The Informal Economy: Studies in Advanced and Less Developed Countries. , 1990 .

[28]  James F. Wilson.  Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do and Why They Do It , 1990 .

[29]  M. W. Monroe.  San Francisco Estuary Project , 1989, Proceedings OCEANS.

[30]  D. Kolb,et al.  Planning in the Face of Power. , 1988 .

[31]  M. Reisner.  Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water , 1987 .

[32]  Eugene Bardach,et al.  The Implementation Game: What Happens After a Bill Becomes a Law. , 1977 .

[33]  R. Dahl,et al.  Who Governs: Democracy and Power in an American City. , 1962 .

[34]  Tom R. Burns,et al.  The Management of Innovation. , 1963 .

[35]  P. Blau,et al.  The Dynamics of Bureaucracy: A Study of Interpersonal Relations in Two Government Agencies. , 1956 .

[36]  David Bicknell Truman,et al.  The Governmental Process: Political Interests and Public Opinion , 1951 .

[37]  C. Mills,et al.  The Theory of Social and Economic Organization , 1948 .

[38]  F. J. Roethlisberger,et al.  Management and the Worker , 1941 .