ABSTRACT
Quantitative methods have become a standard component of the planning curriculum, as they serve three major purposes for practicing planners: they help us understand why cities grow and decline; they provide us with procedures to forecast the values of important variables around which we build plans for the future; and they allow us to track our progress in meeting important global and local goals. This chapter provides an overview of the potential structure and content of a course on basic quantitative planning methods, either in short or semester-long versions. It explains the interrelations between different types of quantitative tools and describes the utility of each type, as well as describing how recent and continuing advances in technology have facilitated the use of such tools.
