Soft-Systems Methodology as Learning and Management Tool

Abstract

It has long been recognized that urban systems are a subset of human activity systems, where decision making entails dealing not only with planning and engineering elements but also with political and social entities. The latter two entities have been neglected in the past, because engineers and planners have drawn heavily from the methods and practice of operations research, systems engineering, and the power of quantitative methods to “solve” practically all urban-planning–related problems. The overall results of the use of these “hard systems” methodologies (HSM) have not been uniformly successful, except in dealing with the simpler cases. In this paper the “soft systems” methodology (SSM) is explained in detail, showing how it can be applied to problems concerned with rational intervention in human activity systems. SSM is an inquiring system used for tackling ill-structured, messy problem situations in engineering and planning. In practice, HSM and SSM complement and supplement each other. An example applied to a transportation planning situation is included. This methodology has proven to be effective and easy to use.