Journal of Urban Planning and Development

In 1986, ASCE adopted a position paper on the civil engineer's role in new infrastructure, which had been developed by the Land Use Committee of the Urban Planning and Development. Division. The brief position paper is expanded upon herein. The ASCE position is that civil engineers in both the private and public sectors are and should remain significant participants in the development and financing of infrastructure. To maximize their effectiveness, engineers must reach beyond their traditional technical functions and deal more closely with administrative, legal, and financial issues. Civil engineers should participate in streamlining reviews of proposed projects, planning capital improvements, preparing bases for impact fees, developing user fees and cost allocations, utilizing infrastructure management systems, identifying educational needs, and fostering better governmental relations. For most topics, this paper presents examples of involvement by civil engineers. For some topics, criteria are summarized to inform about applicable issues or possible legal challenges. The examples are drawn mainly from the high‐growth state of Florida, but the conclusions drawn have general applicability.

Traditionally, the maintenance of on‐lot wastewater disposal systems has been the responsibility of the homeowner. This paper examines the potential for management of on‐lot systems by a municipal or regional management agency. Such management, because more frequent inspection and pumping of on‐lot systems would occur, promises reduced ground and surface water pollution and reduced potential for public health hazard. Furthermore, such an arrangement can reduce the costs of inspections and pumping on a per‐system basis due to possible economies of scale and management efficiencies. This paper also estimates the annual fee required to support municipal septic system management, with and without the assumption by the municipal agency of all repair, replacement, and rehabilitation costs for the systems under its management. These latter costs are estimated by combining a statistical analysis of failures and repairs over the past 36 years in Amherst, Massachusetts, and the reported costs for typical repair and replacement actions.

This paper describes a model to forecast population categorized by sex, five‐year age groups, and zones. The region under consideration is the Kansai region in Japan, which is disaggregated into 120 zones. Population is estimated as the sum of the closed population and the net social increase. The total net social increase for each zone is estimated on the basis of such variables in each zone as: (1) Demand for labor force determined by industrial developments; (2) increment in labor force; and (3) increment in housing stock. The social increase by sex and age groups is estimated by using the migration rate by sex and age groups (migration pattern) for each zone. One of the main characteristics of the model is that the migration pattern for each zone is taken as one of the endogenous variables which vary according to the development of various socioeconomic activities in each zone. The final test of the constructed model has been performed, and it has been confirmed that the model has sufficient validity. Some of the simulation results are also presented.