Area studies and comparative politics: Planning & urban affairs

As pursued in the United States, area studies and comparative politics traditionally have dealt with the politics of countries and global regions other than the US.

What'a here

This subject guide for urban affairs and planning identifies principal resources for most research in the field at Virginia Tech.

Resources listed on this landing page are grouped into Essential databases for accessing scholarly literature in the field; Background information sources; Contact information for the subject librarian; and tabs identifying Additional information.

Parts of this guide are also available in Bruce Pencek's other subject guides: Data sources for social research; News/journalism/streaming media; Advice for searching/citing/engaging scholarly literatures; and Accessing VT Library resources from off campus.

Essential: most literature-searching will start here

North American City Reports
This database is available on trial only through March 3, 2023.The North American City Reports module in Policy Commons preserves the full text of over five million pages of surveys, budgets, statistical records, case studies, planning documents, training manuals, policy guidelines, reports, and news from the five hundred largest cities in North America. It also includes select materials from hundreds of related agencies and non-governmental organizations. Please provide feedback on this database.
Urban Studies Abstracts from EBSCOhost
- This link opens in a new window
Indexes citations and abstracts of journal articles on all aspects of urban studies, 1973-present. Use GetVText link to get to full-text articles online or to order via ILLiad.
ULI Development Case Studies ULI Case Studies showcase innovative approaches and best practices in real estate and urban development. Each case study provides detailed information about the ideas, plans, performance, and lessons learned for an exemplary and often award-winning development project. Each also includes project facts, timelines, financial data, site plans, and photos. You must sign in with the library's member login and password access all ULI case studies and briefs from 1994 to present; contact the VT Ask a Librarian service for the password.

HUD User Managed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Office of Policy Development and Research (PD&R), HUD User hosts research, publications, and data sets in housing, community development, and more.

Environment Complete from EBSCOhost Environment Complete indexes citations, abstracts, and full-text articles from journals, conference proceedings, and books on the agricultural, biological, social science, and technological aspects of the environment. Full text available in HTML and PDF. The database allows limiting to peer-reviewed journals. 1888-present.
- This link opens in a new window
Environment Complete contains more than 1,957,000 records from more than 1,700 domestic and international titles going back to the 1940s (including 1,125 active core titles) as well as more than 120 monographs. The database also contains full text for more than 680 journals, including many of the most used journals in the discipline, such as Environment (back to 1975), Ecologist, Conservation Biology, etc. Additionally, Environment Complete provides full text for 120 monographs, such as Encyclopedia of World Environmental History (3 volumes), Advances in Water Treatment & Environmental Management, etc.
CAB Abstracts from CAB Direct CAB Abstracts indexes citations and abstracts from journals, books, reports, handbooks, conference proceedings, field notes, and theses in agriculture, life sciences, natural resources, veterinary sciences, applied economics, nutrition, tourism, and the environment. Includes the CAB Abstracts Archive. Some full text available as PDFs. 1910s-present.
Public Administration Abstracts from EBSCOhost Public Administration Abstracts indexes citations and abstracts of articles from public administration journals. 1974-present.
- This link opens in a new window
ProQuest One Business Expanding on the former ABI/Inform, ProQuest One Business is an important source for scholarship and the trade press about management of public and nonprofit organizations, organization theory, organization behavior, and other areas where social science intersects business. ProQuest One Business indexes citations, abstracts, and full text news articles, market, industry reports, country reports, downloadable data sets, dissertations, business cases, working papers, annual reports from North American companies, and company profiles and histories. You can limit searches to peer-reviewed journals. Full text provided in HTML and PDF. 1971-present.
ProQuest developed a new business subject thesaurus as well as a new corporation thesaurus for ProQuest One Business. All documents included in this collection were reindexed, using these new thesauri. In addition, all company, industry and country reports were reindexed allowing you to limit your search to specific content that must appear in the reports like e.g. a SWOT analysis or a financial forecast. This makes it significantly easier to get more precise and relevant results.

For several thousand companies ProQuest One Business offers special portal pages - so called Company Overviews - and each of these pages provides you with direct access to different types of material for the respective company:

Company Overview
Recent News from Major Publications
Company Reports (grouped by type of information)
All Content for this Company (a bibliometric graph)
Scholarly Journal Articles
Magazines and Trade Journal Articles
Related Companies in this Industry

Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals from EBSCOhost Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals indexes citations, abstracts, and full-text articles in architecture and design from American and international scholarly and trade journals, popular magazines, and publications of professional organizations. In addition, this database also provides citation records for architects' obituaries. Full text, when available, is in PDF and HTML. 1800s-present.
Architecture, Art & Design databases from ProQuest This database indexes citations and abstracts for journal articles, books, and dissertations (in full text PDFs) across multiple architecture, art, and design databases on the ProQuest platform. Use the Databases link at the top of the screen to change which databases are searched. You can limit to peer-reviewed sources.
Art & Architecture Complete from EBSCOhost Art & Architecture Complete indexes citations, abstracts, and some full text from journals, magazines, trade publications, and books covering all aspects of art and architecture. It also includes a large image collection. 1901-present.

Find background in urban affairs and planning

Routledge Handbook of Planning Research Methods by Silva, Elisabete A. Healey, Patsy Harris, Neil
Call Number: HT165.5 -- .R688 2015eb
ISBN: 9781317917038
Publication Date: 2014
Handbook of Local and Regional Development by Pike, Andy; Rodriguez-Pose, Andres; Tomaney, John
Call Number: HD82 .H27525 2010
ISBN: 9780203842393
Publication Date: 2010
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (2d ed) by James D. Wright, ed.
ISBN: 9780080970868
Publication Date: 2015
Comprises over 3,900 articles, commissioned by 71 section editors, and includes 90,000 bibliographic references as well as comprehensive name and subject indexes; more than 80 percent of the chapters are new or updated since the original text. Both its format and integrated chapters encourage discovery and map contexts and connections within the social and behavioral sciences. Some experts prefer the first edition (2001).

Gale Ebooks
Gale Ebooks is a collection of searchable ebook reference works. You can search within a particular work or across the entire collection. Individual articles from these sources are presented in HTML and PDF. Illustrations, photos, maps, and multimedia content is often included.
SAGE Research Methods Online
- This link opens in a new window
Allows you to explore the concepts and mechanics of social research to design research projects, understand particular methods or identify a new method, conduct research, and write up your findings. With its focus on methodology rather than disciplines and sophisticated search options, SRMO can be used across the social sciences, health sciences, and more. Incorporates full-text content from over 720 books, dictionaries, encyclopedias, handbooks, and articles. SRMO incorporates specially commissioned instructional materials illustrating the application of particular methodologies:
- videos,
- sample cases,
- practice datasets.
The Methods Map is an exciting and innovative visualization tool that can be used to discover relationships between methods, to discover new methods and to find content related to them. Underpinning the Methods Map is a new taxonomy of social science research methods, developed by SAGE, and containing over 1,400 unique terms.

The Methods Lists are lists of content within the product that our users have selected and want to share through this product. You can create your own lists, either for private use, or to share with others on the site.

The Little Green Books are our famous series, Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences. This entire series is available on SAGE Research Methods, with additional tools across the site to filter your search on just these titles.

Temporary, trial access only -- use while you can

The University Libraries at Virginia Tech regularly secure short-term, trial access to online resources in order to gauge their appropriateness to our university's teaching and research missions. These trials run in October, February, and sometimes April. Most trials run 30 days.

Trials are listed in a sidebar in the main Databases A-Z directory.

Each entry includes a link to a user survey. I and other subject librarians invite you to email us your detailed assessments of resources. Responses from the Virginia Tech community are vital to the library's deliberations about whether and when to acquire or enhance databases and the like.

As appropriate I will list trials and user survey links a resource trials tab in this and my other libguides. Entries for trials I may include in the body of my libguides will go away when the trial period ends.

Social Sciences & History Librarian

Bruce Pencek

Email Me

Contact:

Newman Library (MC 0434)
Office #3050
560 Drillfield Dr
Blacksburg, VA 24061
Email is the best way to contact me with questions or appointment requests.

Office hours (walk-in and/or Zoom): T 1-3:00 pm, W-Th 2-4:00 pm (Eastern time), and by appointment.
- virginiatech.zoom.us/j/95623507981

(540) 231-2140

Subjects: Humanities and performing arts, Social sciences and education

Ask a Librarian

Interlibrary Loan Services

All current Virginia Tech students, faculty, and staff, regardless of your location, may request through ILLiad for materials:

not owned by Virginia Tech (books, articles from journals and conference proceedings, book chapters, standards, and technical papers)
owned by Virginia Tech but are unavailable for use (print books)
owned by Virginia Tech and available in print (scans of articles from journals and conference proceedings, book chapters, standards, and technical papers)

We ship requests via UPS to users outside the immediate Blacksburg area (Montgomery, Giles and Pulaski counties).

Articles, book chapters, and many technical papers are delivered in PDF format to your ILLiad account. Occasionally, due to copyright restrictions, a paper copy of an article or standard is held for your at the Newman User Services Desk or sent o the mailing address listed on your account.