Randall Crane Blasts into the Blogosphere
Seeks Guest Essays from Fellow Researchers

Earlier this year ITS Los Angeles Associate Director Randall Crane launched himself into the blogosphere with a wide-ranging collection of essays, reflections, questions, and musings about urban planning research. Crane’s blog, located at http://planningresearch.blogspot.com includes topics like traffic and sprawl—subject matter that one might expect from a professor of urban planning. He also ventures off the beaten track—or freeway—to subjects like day laborers in Los Angeles and the plight of Cairo’s Zabaleen—immigrants from northern Egypt who collect the city’s garbage to feed to their cash-crop, pigs, but who are threatened by multinational trash collection firms. Photos and cartoons accompany the essays, which are written in a witty, wry style.

What possessed Crane to go where few planning researchers have gone before? To find out, the ITS Review Online invited him to answer a few questions: 

When did you start blogging, and what prompted it?

I started last February, prompted by several things mentioned in my first post. Though there are also plenty of sites on planning practice and by individual scholars, I haven't seen one specifically on the broader topic of research in the profession. This could suggest to the world at large that planning research doesn't merit the space or effort. The other excuse is that blogs can be a useful way to communicate…If blogs prove a helpful way to converse in this field, perhaps more specialized—or comprehensive—planning research sites will emerge.

So, partly for self-promotion but also to stimulate academic planning discourse of a more immediate and interactive kind. While I definitely harbor concerns about the credibility of many areas of planning research, which in turn limits our influence as an academic field, I am still quite surprised that I was so presumptuous as to try to explore these on the public stage, so to speak. If I had a therapist, he’d be proud. In that vein, I recently described the blog to someone as self-medication. For what condition I do not know but when I get better, I promise to stop.

Unlike the cartoon dog in your recent blog who decides to give up blogging in favor of "pointless, incessant barking," you have stuck with it for six months. Is it a useful exercise in organizing your thoughts for weightier publications down the road? Does it provide a venue for writing about topics that may have no home in academic publishing? Is the freestyle writing more fun than academic writing? In other words, why do you do it?

It is easier to write for a blog audience than other venues, speaking for myself, so several times I have used it to draft things or to get started on them. The tricky part, of course, is that this is both public and publicized. I do go back and correct egregious errors or make trivial edits but it would be reckless to consider these private or unread. I can't neglect quality control altogether (even if it seems I do). So, it has helped get some things off the ground. In that sense, I like to think it stimulates rather than interferes with the sort of productivity my chair and dean care about.

Also, I wouldn't quite describe it as freestyle, exactly. I put quite a bit of thought into the organization of a given essay, especially the longer ones. There are still parameters. This isn't gonzo research just yet.

For those who haven't seen the blog, it follows an essay format, generally. There is a topic, such as the use of land planning for transportation policy, which I attempt to force several pithy observations on. The blog is not a running commentary on current events, or my family (though I am not above posting a picture of the family dog, or my niece who will one day be president of Mexico), or my job, etc. These are short essays on research, which I try to keep conversational in tone and on point.

More fun? If it weren’t fun I wouldn't do it. But part of the fun is the freedom of topic, the immediacy, the lack of editors and deadlines. (As some know, I am not great, psychologically, with deadlines.) It's an easier way to say things in many ways. And it is a soapbox where I don't have to deal with eye contact.

What has been the reaction to the blog from a) faculty and b) students?

Right. The $64k question is whether this is just therapy or if there is demand for the product. I have almost no idea. It isn't as though my ego is so colossal that I don't care; I just don't have any good measure. When I do get feedback, it tends to be very positive, because I suppose people are mainly polite. At times I am amazed by who picks it up; I met a professor in Beijing this summer who teaches in Australia and who wanted to tell me how much he enjoyed my post on Irvine, of all things. Indeed, it has been one of the most common ways people at conferences introduce themselves lately. I may joke about needing to attend to my fan base but must admit it is a good way to meet people.

My students take a look now and then, and perhaps if these essays have any value at all, it may be to graduate students and new faculty. Part of what the blog aims for is to frame questions -- which the formal research literature obviously does as well, but in a less chatty and thus possibly less friendly way.

Most hits (I will have 10,000 in a couple of weeks) are via Google and it is hard to know how many of those find something useful.

How much time to you spend blogging per day/week?

Any given post can take a few hours and I now do a few per month. This is not a daily or weekly thing. It completely lacks that kind of discipline.

Do you advise other academicians to try their hand at blogging? And under what circumstances?

I do, if they care to. The obstacle seems to be a) time and b) effect. They don't see the reward and I understand that. I am actually actively recruiting guest essays on planning research, including transportation, but have had only one taker so far. I would rather have a rotating team of urban researchers, or even one-timers. That would be useful all around but there is apparently more convincing to do. Plus, then I'll have to exercise editorial controls. Yech.

The idea is that we could—in addition to the peer reviewed journals and so on—have less formal yet still useful dialogues and essays that explore research questions. The real goal is to move things forward. Other disciplines seem to do this productively. The key appears to be how to keep those discussions on track, and useful, and appropriately entertaining without getting too cute. It's much like the balance you are looking for in the classroom, which depends both on the material at hand and the audience.

Some academic blogs lack focus or otherwise stray, limiting their long-term appeal. I am not sure how to guard against this.

Another point in favor, perhaps, is how the site serves as an electronic archive. It is not meant to be particularly timely or topical. So if faculty want to write essays or other short works that otherwise would be relegated to obscure out of print locations, a blog can work as an easy to find storage place.

Where do you get ideas for your blog?

There seems to be no shortage of material so far. I have a wide set of interests in urban development. I go to conferences and get ideas there, or read papers I want to use to leverage comments on a question. Yet, with no editor or peer review, I am also aware of the danger in trying to speak with fake authority about things I have nothing useful or interesting or funny to say. I try to keep this in mind. Also, I am trying to use the word "I" less, to keep it less about me and more about it. In a conversation-style monologue, this is harder than it looks.

Any future plans for the blog?

I really do hope to recruit others to submit essays, even recycled ones. Finally, "comments" have been a mixed bag, mainly in that there are relatively few. I'm not sure if this is lack of interest or the material is not provocative enough, or there is simply reluctance to play my silly game by my rules. On the other hand, there have been some very interesting exchanges in some cases—such as on the measurement of sprawl, the discussion of markets versus plans, and the costs of sprawl—which I thought signaled some utility of the format. Give me another six months to see if I can get this to work better according to my plan, or if I change the plan, or what. In the meantime, I'm enjoying it more than expected.