Cost-Benefit Analysis

Conflicts enlarge the scope of the considerations that need to be addressed by program and project evaluations. The enlargement of a problem's boundaries may include shifts in the ethical premises used to assign values to the plan's indirect consequences. This review of the conflict generated by a Bay Area Rapid Transit System station's potential land-use impact shows how the relevant issues expand beyond the boundaries ordinarily set in cost-benefit evaluations, and involve reassessment of the ethical premises that should be applied when determining the relative value of alternative land-use plans.