Automated Planning and Acting

Automated Planning and Acting
Author: Malik Ghallab
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 373
Release: 2016-08-09
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 1316720551

Autonomous AI systems need complex computational techniques for planning and performing actions. Planning and acting require significant deliberation because an intelligent system must coordinate and integrate these activities in order to act effectively in the real world. This book presents a comprehensive paradigm of planning and acting using the most recent and advanced automated-planning techniques. It explains the computational deliberation capabilities that allow an actor, whether physical or virtual, to reason about its actions, choose them, organize them purposefully, and act deliberately to achieve an objective. Useful for students, practitioners, and researchers, this book covers state-of-the-art planning techniques, acting techniques, and their integration which will allow readers to design intelligent systems that are able to act effectively in the real world.

Automated Planning and Acting

Automated Planning and Acting
Author: Malik Ghallab
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 373
Release: 2016-08-09
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 1107037271

This book presents the most recent and advanced techniques for creating autonomous AI systems capable of planning and acting effectively.

Actor Networks of Planning

Actor Networks of Planning
Author: Yvonne Rydin
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2016-02-12
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1317502345

Planning is centrally focused on places which are significant to people, including both the built and natural environments. In making changes to these places, planning outcomes inevitably benefit some and disadvantage others. It is perhaps surprising that Actor Network Theory (ANT) has only recently been considered as an appropriate lens through which to understand planning practice. This book brings together an international range of contributors to explore such potential of ANT in more detail. While it can be thought of as a subset of complexity theory, given its appreciation for non-linear processes and responses, ANT has its roots in the sociology of scientific and technology studies. ANT now comprises a rich set of concepts that can be applied in research, theoretical and empirical. It is a relational approach that posits a radical symmetry between social and material actors (or actants). It suggests the importance of dynamic processes by which networks of relationships become formed, shift and have effect. And while not inherently normative, ANT has the potential to strengthen other more normative domains of planning theory through its unique analytical lens. However, this requires theoretical and empirical work and the papers in this volume undertake such work. This is the first volume to provide a full consideration of how ANT can contribute to planning studies, and suggests a research agenda for conceptual development and empirical application of the theory.

Planning Matter

Planning Matter
Author: Robert A. Beauregard
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 263
Release: 2015-11-03
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 022629742X

City and regional planners talk constantly about the things of the world—from highway interchanges and retention ponds to zoning documents and conference rooms—yet most seem to have a poor understanding of the materiality of the world in which they’re immersed. Too often planners treat built forms, weather patterns, plants, animals, or regulatory technologies as passively awaiting commands rather than actively involved in the workings of cities and regions. In the ambitious and provocative Planning Matter, Robert A. Beauregard sets out to offer a new materialist perspective on planning practice that reveals the many ways in which the nonhuman things of the world mediate what planners say and do. Drawing on actor-network theory and science and technology studies, Beauregard lays out a framework that acknowledges the inevitable insufficiency of our representations of reality while also engaging more holistically with the world in all of its diversity—including human and nonhuman actors alike.

Fuzzy Planning

Fuzzy Planning
Author: Gert de Roo
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2016-04-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1317131142

Many of the key notions associated with spatial planning are essentially ’fuzzy’ in their nature. For example, while almost everyone accepts ’sustainability’ as an important goal of planning, the actions of the actors involved can render the achieved ’sustainability’ minimal, or even counterproductive. Putting forward an innovative way of looking at planning problems and policies, this volume suggests actor-consulting is important in addressing the fuzzy nature of planning. A tool to address differences in understanding, actor-consulting is based on an analysis of actor motives, perceptions and contributions. By inviting all actors to express their desired, actual and potential contributions to achieving an agreed outcome to a local policy issue, decision-makers have a means to develop their goals in line with the roles, motivation, perception and behaviour of the various actors involved. Including contributions from Patsy Healy, Johan Woltjer, Don Miller and Karel Martens, the book presents a variety of case studies which demonstrate the use of the actor-consulting model in addressing planning issues.

Shared Agency

Shared Agency
Author: Michael Bratman
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2014
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0199339996

Human beings act together in characteristic ways that matter to us a great deal. This book explores the conceptual, metaphysical and normative foundations of such sociality. It argues that appeal to the planning structures involved in our individual, temporally extended agency provides substantial resources for understanding these foundations of our sociality.

Linear Planning to Reduce Regional Inequality

Linear Planning to Reduce Regional Inequality
Author: Rossella Moscarelli
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 134
Release: 2023-04-24
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 3031292839

This book explores the advantages of a linear model of planning in reducing regional inequalities. Linear planning, commonly discussed in the past as a method which plans the development of the city, is completely redefined here in the form of a design approach inspired by projects shaped by linear routes, such as cycle or walking paths. Such concept is applied to the urgent topic of territorial marginality which specifically neglects rural and mountainous areas and recently is coped by European and National policies. The analysis of these policies demonstrates the necessity of alternative strategies equipped to deal with both the internal and external causes that determine the critical conditions in these fragile environments. By implementing the concept of linear planning in these contexts, this book proposes to enlarge the perspective of traditional policies contrasting the regional inequalities that usually determine the design of projects just within the boundaries of the marginal areas. Cycle and walking paths are experimental cases of linear planning as they have not been influenced or formed by political boundaries and therefore are able to equally involve both the central and marginal zones. This book presents a review of current issues such as regional inequalities, with attention to their related policies, as well as an analysis of the concept of linear planning as seen through the study of one of the most famous cases of a walking path—the Way of St. James in Spain.

Acting on Ethics in City Planning

Acting on Ethics in City Planning
Author: Elizabeth Howe
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 428
Release: 1994
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

How do practicing planners understand the ethics of their profession? What do they do when confronted with ethical conflicts in their day-today work? How can the planning profession help planners make ethical decisions? In this insightful, lively, and compassionate book, Elizabeth Howe explores how planners define ethical issues and make ethical choices. Howe is not concerned with a distant or abstract ethics but rather with the actual ethical dilemmas planners face in everyday practice. This book is about real people making difficult choices in real situations. The cases Howe examines derive from nearly 150 hours of personal interviews with 96 professional planners, and responses to follow-up questionnaires. One planner, for example, realized that complete and accurate reporting of a technical analysis would have politically damaging consequences. Another found that her promise of confidentiality to a developer conflicted with her commitment to fairness and an open planning process. For a third, loyalty to elected officials was at odds with his deeply held belief that the public interest would be furthered through construction of affordable housing. To what extent did planners define these as ethical issues, what did they think about them, and how did they act? Howe's answers to these questions are perceptive and revealing. In Part I, she probes the nature of ethical issues through a hierarchy of principles including lawfulness, justice, accountability, and serving the public interest. Part II reveals that planners' actions vary considerably depending on how they view the role of planners (from technician to activist) and on their approach to ethics. She explores the determinants of ethical action in Part III. This book should be read by every practicing planner wondering how others deal with the workaday world. It is required reading for every student seeking a glimpse of the profession outside the classroom. And it will inform and reward all those concerned with the necessity of acting on ethics in an imperfect world.