I recently dusted off my master’s thesis (typewritten) and scanned it into a PDF file. The topic, technology adoption by urban planners, is still of interest to me but the types of technology have changed dramatically since 1985. For my thesis I surveyed all California city and county planning agencies to ask about their adoption of computer technologies. With a quite respectable response rate of 81% (403 out of 497) I was able to show the state of computer use by planners, which existed in only about 60% of planning offices at the time. It was also interesting to note that nearly half of the planning offices felt computers were only having a moderate impact on the planning profession. I have to assume that much has changed in the past 30 years. (Click to view thesis).
