Specialized Roles of Computers

Despite the demise of the comprehensive simulation model, throughout the 1970s the planning function remained dependent upon computers for certain specialized tasks. Many regional planning agencies continued to use computers to prepare population and economic projections. Several continued to use the computerized EMPIRIC model (first used in the early 1960s to project changes in the demographic structure of the Boston region), which allocates total regional population growth to smaller areas. Many cities computerized their land record systems, linking them to routinized work performed by assessment offices and building departments. Computers were also used for transportation, housing, recreation, and fiscal impact studies. Several cities, including New York, Milwaukee, and Edmonton (Canada), began to develop computerized mapping systems for parcels, buildings, streets, utility lines, zoning attributes, and other information.

If computers and the ambitious proposals to use them generated boundless enthusiasm among planners during the 1960s, the 1970s provided a more fundamental foundation for productive computer use in the planning field. Computers proved themselves to be helpful, even indispensable, tools for many important planning applications. Nevertheless, their use in planning practice remained constrained by a computer technology that continued to emphasize large-scale systems—which required specialized expertise to utilize effectively and which remained too expensive for the budgets of typical planning departments. Widespread use of computers within the planning field would have to wait until a more accessible and affordable technology emerged.

TEXT 9

Microcomputers: The Second Computer Revolution

By the late 1970s, such a technology did emerge. The progressive miniaturization of electronic components over the last 25 years had produced enormous improvements in computer technology, yet computers remained mysteriously complex to those who did not work directly with them. Besides being enormously expensive, the computers required climate-controlled conditions, stable power supplies, and highly trained attendants. Consequently, they usually stood behind closed doors.

The microcomputer changed all that. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, using recently developed miniaturized components, assembled a small computer in their basement and called it Apple. Soon a huge new industry was producing millions of new computers every year. They were selling for less than a few hours' worth of computer time on a typical computer of the mid-1960s and approaching the larger, older machines in performance.

The cost and size of computers had actually declined rapidly and regularly since they were introduced, well before microcomputers emerged as a factor. Such technological advances had vastly increased the computing power available to trained personnel and to those with access to such professionals. However, the dramatic impact of the microcomputer revolution can be attributed not to their cost and size, but to a major conceptual shift that accompanied the new technology: The microcomputer revolution is most markedly characterized by the accessibility of microcomputers to those without extensive specialized computer training. Such accessibility reflects an important conceptual shift concerning computers, one that puts control of the machine in the hands of end-users.

SECTION III Texts for Topic Discussion

UNIVERSITY EDUCATION

Glossary of the Key Terms.