Good planning vs reality - are we really making a difference?

[michaelskis]

There are lists of fundamental principles that are preached in the hallowed halls of planning schools across the country. Cul-de sacs are bad, walkable neighborhoods are good, Wal-Mart is bad, mixed-use downtowns are good. The list could go on and on, but we have all heard the platitudes of what is, and is not, good planning.

Much like everyone else, I came out of planning school with a belief that this ideology was the way go to and then I saw the political and practical sides of things. Grid streets are great, but the state won’t allow that many stream crossings, mass grading is bad, but if they build on it as is, yards will flood after every rain, mid-block crossings help create walkable downtowns, but DOT says they are too close to the curb and might ‘interrupt the flow of traffic’.

With more than two decades in the field as both a government employee and a consultant, I find time and time again that we as planners, who look at the big picture, are all too often overruled by those who look at the micro… in a vacuum… without consideration for anything else. And that is even before it goes to the political side of things. But it seems that things have been mounting against me at a far greater rate over the past couple of years as development pressure is at a record high for us, and it is taking a toll on me.

Now, we have been able to get some things done that others said could not be done, and I am about to take on a few additional things that even some other planners find a bit ambitious, but I am always looking for additional suggestions.

What methods and strategies do you find to be the most effective when working with other agencies who have a micro-view based on their specialty?

How do you convince the elected officials that good planning is good for the community?

How do you show the value of good planning to developers and the public?

 

[MacheteJames]

I think of this often. From State Departments of Education who tie local aid funding for new school building construction to large-lot, auto-oriented site selection criteria, or state DOTs who control the rights of way along state routes and prohibit interventions that would allow the gradual conversion of stroads that blast through residential communities into something more human-scaled, to shell companies and shady ass LLCs that have site control over disused former gas station sites and refuse to put them on the market for redevelopment into uses the community actually needs. In my mind, you need little incremental victories in order to sustain you, and those other agencies that have the micro-view? You need to figure out how to give them the little incremental victories that they need to respond to the demands of their own internal powers that be in order to advance the broader set of planning objectives you want to achieve. Far easier said than done.

 

[ursus]

I think (worry) about this a lot. I know that how positive I felt about my own ability to affect change for the better was a lot higher five years ago than it was a year ago. At least here in northern Utah, I feel like the public really got less civil and less open to making the kinds of changes we had made a lot of progress on in the previous decade. I don't know, but it seems like from 2010 to 2020 we had a lot more success in bringing people along and getting buy-in from the public for adopting and implementing "good planning principles". Since then it feels downhill to me, and it makes me doubt we ever had the buy-in we thought we had.

What I do still know is that even if it gets me fired (which it already has ) I will keep on keeping on. I think you have to adopt that "Happy Warrior" mentality, and be a reasonable but firm professional, and hope that people see the good in the plans we put forward. I can't think what else to do. But I'm still here. And I won't quit.

 

[Faust_Motel]

What I have gleaned in my career and observations so far:

-Be around a for a long time.
-Build trust with other departments, DOTs, electeds, and citizens
-Some of it is going to be politics. Don't avoid politics.
-Don't be afraid to know what's right and say what's wrong- if that's professionally scary, work on the three items above first until you can speak candidly.
-Look at the long game- anything I have done that's worth a damn or is likely to outlive me happened because of stuff I started putting into place at least five and sometimes more like 10 years before it started happening. And It's going to take another 5-10 years to bed it in and make sure some planning/political fad or "first time things get a little difficult" doesn't undo it all.

 

[busrider]

I think (worry) about this a lot. I know that how positive I felt about my own ability to affect change for the better was a lot higher five years ago than it was a year ago. At least here in northern Utah, I feel like the public really got less civil and less open to making the kinds of changes we had made a lot of progress on in the previous decade. I don't know, but it seems like from 2010 to 2020 we had a lot more success in bringing people along and getting buy-in from the public for adopting and implementing "good planning principles". Since then it feels downhill to me, and it makes me doubt we ever had the buy-in we thought we had.

What I do still know is that even if it gets me fired (which it already has ) I will keep on keeping on. I think you have to adopt that "Happy Warrior" mentality, and be a reasonable but firm professional, and hope that people see the good in the plans we put forward. I can't think what else to do. But I'm still here. And I won't quit.

I think the dates are significant here. 2020 was a 'great break' due to the societal chaos wrought by the Covid crisis. It has affected local planning immensely.

I think the loss of trust in government is probably the source of a lot of the downward trend in public buy-in. Older people who voted for Trump don't trust any anti-Trumpers who want to make changes to their community. Gen Y and to a much greater degree Gen Z are burned by the post-Obama Democratic party, because they've failed to create a better world for Gen Z like the slow improvement in QOL their parents and grandparents enjoyed in the 1945-2000 period. And then you have the media and politicians saying there's a 'crisis' - a housing crisis particularly - it just puts people in fight-or-flight mode and makes them default to the 'protect our neighborhoods at all costs' position, because the value of their home is basically the last thing they can hold onto. Anxiety is high all over the place.

It's tough because the way the United States works militates against longer-term, more collective solutions. And @michaelskis, it seems you are from or practicing in Michigan, where local governments have a LOT of power and are empowered to be extremely parochial and local. I wager there's really no way to get around this except with very motivated politicians who can make the right deals and spin the right narratives. The public buy-in thing is important to focus on because non-Boomers have gotten EVEN LESS involved in the process. So, maybe the first thing to do to rescue whatever projects it is that are getting thwarted is to try and get around the white-hairs and reach the working 18-45 year old population. I will save speculation about how to do that for another post.

 

[fringe]

"...militates???"

To make 1945 to Y2K is too big a leap for a meaningful discussion.

1980 plus makes more since, as it is the font, the springfed freshet of the big lie of trickle-down.

Politics is just as local or moreso than it has ever been. My home state of GA has more counties than other, each one a little fiefdom ruled by local some bodies.

Planning as a function is mandated statewide but most plans developed are just sets of goalposts rarely met.

I don't think our age groups are drifting apart but our economic status ones are.

 

[michaelskis]

I am going to bump this tread based on a focus group discussion yesterday. A regional developer said "Mixed Use doesn't work here." Of course as a Planner, my first thought was this guy either does not know what he is taking about, or just wants to build Apartments because it is what he knows and can get financed. But then I started thinking about it deeper in the context of the community that I work in, which is a very auto oriented community.

After that my mind kept going down the rabbit hole regarding what we think is good vs what the people really want, and more of the question "is what they want the only thing they know and therefore are uncomfortable with the unknown?" A lot of the conversations that we have had with the community have lead back to one important thing, they want to maintain or enhance the quality of life. For a lot of them, it is a 1/3 acre side loaded two-story brick clad dwelling that is slab on grade. The idea of dense multifamily was a hot button topic during the last election and we still hear echoes of "No More Apartments" nearly every citizen community we have. I had to break it to the developers that if they want to do density, mixed use is the compromise and the politics have been clear, stand alone apartment complexes are a non-starter.

So back to the reason for the bump with two follow up questions:

What do you do to balance three competing interests of what the planners want, what the citizens wants, and what the developers want?

Second is what do you do to educate these different groups on the benefits of good design?

 

[Faust_Motel]

I am going to bump this tread based on a focus group discussion yesterday. A regional developer said "Mixed Use doesn't work here." Of course as a Planner, my first thought was this guy either does not know what he is taking about, or just wants to build Apartments because it is what he knows and can get financed. But then I started thinking about it deeper in the context of the community that I work in, which is a very auto oriented community.

After that my mind kept going down the rabbit hole regarding what we think is good vs what the people really want, and more of the question "is what they want the only thing they know and therefore are uncomfortable with the unknown?" A lot of the conversations that we have had with the community have lead back to one important thing, they want to maintain or enhance the quality of life. For a lot of them, it is a 1/3 acre side loaded two-story brick clad dwelling that is slab on grade. The idea of dense multifamily was a hot button topic during the last election and we still hear echoes of "No More Apartments" nearly every citizen community we have. I had to break it to the developers that if they want to do density, mixed use is the compromise and the politics have been clear, stand alone apartment complexes are a non-starter.

So back to the reason for the bump with two follow up questions:

What do you do to balance three competing interests of what the planners want, what the citizens wants, and what the developers want?

Second is what do you do to educate these different groups on the benefits of good design?

I think the thing is to help the community prioritize its desires. My community wants its former big-box "growth center" to turn into a "walkable downtown." The community has wanted that in municipal plans going back to the 1980's, but until recently hasn't been willing to allow the density that would make it happen and is still unwilling to invest in the public infrastructure necessary to make it happen. So I know what the citizens want, and as a planner I "want" them to understand what they are going to need to do to get there. In terms of what the developers want, I want the community to understand what's a "want" for a developer and what's the reality they are facing. Mixed use is harder to finance, and its more complicated to build, and we're working in a community that is under-housed WAAAY over-officed, and over-retailed. The developers aren't magicians and they will build if they (and their bank) think something will be profitable.

In terms of the benefits of good design, the best thing is to take people to a site nearby that has a building or site of the size they are afraid of and show them how good design works to make it better- then show people how you can help them adopt regulations that will get them that same good design while allowing for projects the private sector finds profitable. I have found it really unproductive to discuss things like building height, massing, and setbacks in a conference room- the dimensional standards just aren't meaningful there.

 

[mendelman]

At this time, I simply am focused on getting more housing built at all density and form types everywhere possible in my built-out 1st/2nd ring suburb.

I'm keen to get the excess Class B-C office complexes and outmoded commercial removed for more housing.

We have a perfect example here - Halston Market

It removed a bunch of old, outdated commercial uses/development and put 125 for sale townhouses right in the center of one of our primary commercial areas.

You get a brand new townhouse adjacent to all services you would need, by foot if you wish, and we actually get more property tax revenue from this land use than the previous one and remove excess diluting commercial sqft from the market hopefully strengthening the market for the remaining commercial in the immediate neighborhood.

So much of our existing central cities and 1st/2nd/3rd suburbs have these opportunities.

Here's another two in a 3rd ring suburb where I started my career in 2002 - Vacant office bldg (Kensington Fields) and vacant auto dealers (Higgins Crossing).

 

[Maister]

I want to recommend a movie that speaks to one of the points raised. The film is the 1952 Akira Kurasawa masterpiece "Ikiru" (to live). Yes, it's a foreign language film and that means you will have to read Japanese subtitles. But it's on par with other Kurasawa achievements such as Seven Samurai in my book. The story is essentially about an aging government bureaucrat who discovers he has terminal cancer and after coming to grips with that, how he chooses to use his dull paper-pushing functionary position to ensure that something of value to the community (a park) gets built.

 

[Planit]

There's a 2-block x 1-block parcel 9 blocks north of downtown. It was a former furniture frame shop on one half & 2 duplexes and a small office bldg on the other half, with plenty of vacant land. The whole block is for sale (since 2022). I have made sketch drawings of a whole block redevelopment including mixed-use and showed them around. Every response I get is "that'll never work here"

What's happened since? The 2 duplexes were sold, the office building sits vacant, and the frame shop is now storage. No vision. No real investment.