ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the views of a series of research projects concerning environmental assessments in water resources and highway planning conducted during the 1970s. It provides an overview of the perspective and descriptive lines of inquiry that have been followed in the environmental assessment research at Stanford. The chapter presents a number of impressions regarding the kinds of issues that will require careful attention if environmental considerations are to move from being "something the regulations require" to being in the main stream of infrastructure planning. It offers a number of observations based on the descriptive analyses of planning by infrastructure agencies. The chapter presents a number of observations regarding how some infrastructure agencies have gone about integrating environmental factors into their planning. It demonstrates that infrastructure agencies can learn a great deal from each other regarding effective organizational design, interagency coordination, and public involvement.
