Land Use Policy 29 (2012) 351–356 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Land Use Policy jou rn al h om epa g e: www.elsevier.com/locate/landusepol Reformulation and assessment of the inventory approach to urban growth boundaries Haoying Han a , Shih-Kung Lai b,c,∗ a Department of Land Management, College of Public Administration, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, PR China b College of Public Administration, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, PR China c Department of Real Estate and Built Environment, National Taipei University, 67, Section 3, Min Sheng East Road, Taipei, Taiwan a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 18 May 2011 Received in revised form 30 June 2011 Accepted 13 July 2011 Keywords: Decision network Plans Decisions Inventory control Urban growth boundaries a b s t r a c t Based on the theoretical framework, in this article we demonstrate how Decision Network can be used to formulate the inventory approach to urban growth boundaries (UGBs) as an application of the planning tool to a general case. In particular, in the inventory approach expansions of UGBs are considered as decision situations, land consumptions as problems, and order sizes of UGBs as solutions. We compare the time- and event-driven systems of the inventory control problem based on the decision network framework. The former in the framework is considered as making single, independent decisions in time, whereas the latter as making multiple, linked decisions in time. Our numerical example shows that the event-driven system is more effective than the time-driven system in that the former incurs less total cost than the former in the UGBs context. The implication is that making multiple, linked decisions, as manifested by Decision Network, would yield more benefits, such as lowering the total cost, to the planner than making these decisions independently. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Introduction Urban planners are usually faced with making multiple, linked decisions, rather than single, independent ones. Traditional deci- sion analytical tools for making single decisions are insufficient for planners to deal with complex urban problems. We have depicted the theoretical and conceptual framework of a planning tool, Decision Network, specific for planners to make multiple, linked decisions (Han and Lai, 2011). In the present paper, we will demon- strate how Decision Network can be used to analyze multiple, linked decisions in a planning context through a general story on expan- sion decisions of urban growth boundaries (UGBs). In the general story, drawing on two inventory approaches to urban growth boundaries, that is, time-driven and event-driven systems (Knaap and Hopkins, 2001), we will use Decision Network to demonstrate that while time-driven systems are commonly practiced, event- systems are more effective in terms of the overall cost of managing urban growth. More specifically, we argue that time-driven systems of urban growth boundaries are equivalent to making independent expansion decisions in time while event-driven systems making ∗ Corresponding author at: Department of Real Estate and Built Environment, National Taipei University, 67, Section 3, Min Sheng East Road, Taipei, Taiwan. Tel.: +886 2 2674 8189x67417; fax: +886 2 8671 5308. E-mail addresses: hanhaoying@zju.edu.cn (H. Han), lai@mail.ntpu.edu.tw (S.-K. Lai). multiple, linked such decisions. We choose the story of urban growth boundaries as an application of Decision Network because UGBs involve multiple actors with complex processes, have sig- nificant effects on urban development, and are widely practiced. Though the literature on urban growth management through UGBs is large, many controversial issues still remain unresolved, includ- ing, among others, the timing and sizes of UGBs expansions. Since our purposes here are to demonstrate how Decision Network func- tions in such complex situations, we do not intend to deal in depth with policy implications of UGBs from the application. In “The conceptual framework” section, we introduce the concep- tual framework of Decision Network. In “The inventory approach to UGBs: a general story” section, we reformulate and compare the time- and event-driven systems of the inventory approach to UGBs based on the decision network framework. In the “Discus- sion” section, we discuss some implications of the results from the comparison. In the “Conclusions” section we conclude. The conceptual framework Decision Network is composed of a network of decision nodes. Like a decision area in the strategic choice approach (Friend and Hickling, 2005), each node is a decision situation with a finite num- ber of options in it (see Fig. 1). Like a choice opportunity in garbage can model (Cohen et al., 1972), each decision situation is associ- ated with four inputs, that is, decision makers, problems, solutions, 0264-8377/$ – see front matter © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.landusepol.2011.07.005