I worked for an agency once that did a lot of planning for a historic district, and while working as a practicing anthropologist, I associated with city planners, and occasionally consulted on small projects. I am not, and never wish to be a city, regional, or any other stripe of planner.
Why? Over long periods of time the entire process of city planning has proven to be, in my view, an exercise in masochism. Look at on city not to far away from me. A major regional plan for a highway was diverted to spite a political opponent. The new highway was diverted into the heart of an opponent’s district, cutting it in two. One group of planners was weaponized against another for political spite. Let the residents be damned. Error? No. Revenge.
The real motivation for the nonsensical diversion did not surface for years, and then only because other politicians and planners were looking to solve the social and traffic problems the diversion caused.
Problems – answers, and new problems
Wait there is still more. Todays’ solution is tomorrows problem. After the decline in shipping in many east coast cities it became popular to cut off the decayed waterfront from the tonier neighborhoods by running the large highway along the edges. You hid the decayed waterfront, wharves, piers, flophouses and sailors from the better lot. And you moved all those automobiles,too! Win, win. the planners patted themselvves on the back.
Fast forward forty years, and the harbor is getting a renewal. Hotels, restaurants, and romantic waterside views. What’s the problem? You can’t get to it because of the heavily traveled transportatiion corridor. Answer move, submerge, or do away with the transportation corridor. Problem? If not done right much of that traffic spills out onto the local streets. New problem.
I’ve lived on Manhattan with its designed grid system, and on Boston’s Beacon Hill with its cow path streets. I like the cow paths better. It seems to me that cows make more sensible designers. So you can see I’d never be a good city designer. “Here comes our city planner, with the cow herd! We’ll have our streets laid out on the ground in no time!Hurrah!” If a cow can do a better job than college-educated people, we’re in trouble.
But to be fair, it’s not the planners or the plans. It’s us. WE create autos and trucks for streets designed for feet and horses. WE allow undesigned sprawling suburbs first, and then try to find senssible transportation solutions for the communities the developers put up that make no sense.
I’ll take the cows, please.
Think it’s a new problem? Naw! Look at the architectural and planning history of some of the world’s great cities: sprawl, redesign, restructuring by political elites needing monuments, sprawl.
It’s just like the Billy Joel song:
We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
No, we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it
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This is what my town is going through. The way it looks now, it’ll be years before a solution is reached on how to do what. And then let’s bring in the out-of-town planners who know nothing about us and see how that works. Oh, yes…🤨🙄
But Lois, Florida, just borrowed the book from NY and NJ, where they originated lots of the bad stuff.
We don’t know what the future will be, that’s one thing. I plan a city every evening as I unwind by playing SimCity. My idiot town built a convention center (no one comes here) and now they’re building a fancy big-ass hotel across from it (no one comes here). All of this is on the road to the animal shelter, my vet, the old folks home (HomeLake built for Civil War veterans) and it ends in a 2 lane county road through two wildlife areas. To get there from “town” it’s a nasty dog-leg left across a major US highway but movers and shakers must move and shake. If I could move into a tiny home up in the mountains, I would. This is stupid.
At least in Sim City, it’s easy to bulldoze the mistakes.
I like to send the disasters. I’ve destroyed whole cities where the Sims are just assholes and don’t like anything I do for them.
Burn Baby, Burn!