Since the 1990s, planning theory has focused on the planning process and the engagement of stakeholders. With increasing technologies, attitudinal changes and transformations in lifestyles, new concepts and themes in planning profession seem to emerge at increasing frequencies. Most appear to evolve over a set of good planning principles that have withstood the test of time. Contemporary concepts usually have trendy labels such as New Urbanism, Livable Communities, Sustainable Cities, Smart Cities, Cool Cities and the latest trend of Placemaking. The overarching question that guides this research is what draws planners to continually redefine and market an age-old, fundamentally basic, concept of creating safe, comfortable and attractive places for people?The purpose of this research is to explore and understand the key characteristics of contemporary concepts in urban planning, through the lens of scholarship and theoretical literature and assess whether these concepts are impacting professional planning practice in Michigan. Hence, this dissertation explored answers to the following research questions: 1) How has professional language related to creating places for people evolved since 1990? 2) To what extent do emerging concepts in Urban Planning differ from one another? 3) What planning principles are targeted through contemporary planning concepts? 4) How often do practicing urban planners in Michigan use planning principles and contemporary concepts in their day to day work? and 5) Is there a gap between theory, as evidenced by the knowledge in scholarly literature, and practice within a Michigan context, as it relates to contemporary planning concepts? Methodology of grounded theory guided this research and qualitative research methods were employed. Content analysis of selected scholarly literature and a survey of practicing urban planners were conducted.Ten significant contemporary planning concepts were identified and explored within this study: Creative Cities, Healthy Cities, Livable Cities, New Urbanism, Placemaking, Resilient Cities, Safe Cities, Smart Cities, Smart Growth and Sustainable Cities. The findings from literature analysis demonstrate that each concept has different focus areas and nuances, however, there are also considerable similarities between concepts. A set of 20 planning principles were derived from the scholarly literature on the 10 contemporary concepts. The most pertinent planning principles are related to accessibility, transportation and mobility; citizen participation and collaboration; and green infrastructure. The survey of professional planners, on the other hand, revealed that the principles most often used in practice were considerably different. Only the principle of citizen participation and collaboration overlapped between theory and practice. The other most frequently used planning principles in practice are facilitation of public education and awareness, interdisciplinary collaboration and public-private partnerships and data driven planning. The survey of professionals also showed that the most frequently used contemporary concept is Placemaking, while some of the other popular concepts were Livable Cities, Sustainable Cities and Smart Growth. The gap between theory and practice is best illustrated by the fact that the planning principles most often used by practitioners were related to the least used concepts in practice, or the principles embodied in the most often used concepts were not cited as the most frequently used principles in practice. This suggests that practitioners may use the trendy concept label with little understanding of the premise or principles related to that particular concept. Interestingly, practitioners use planning principles far more frequently in describing their work than popular contemporary concepts. Furthermore, this research proves that the continuous occurrence and evolution of concepts appears to be more of a theoretical exercise and it is not planning practice that is driving the creation of trendy concepts. This two-stage research of examining the theory behind contemporary planning concepts and the survey aimed to reflect on professional planning practice clearly demonstrates the disconnect between planning scholarship and practice.
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