What is Urban Planning?
I have an associate who used to be the head of a planning department in our small city. He once said, “a planner’s job is never done until everybody in the room is equally unhappy.” My thinking was that would have to be a very tough job, but, I have to admit, he made it look easy.
Within a city a wild array of conflicting interests, differing agendas and opposing visions require city planners to hide behind regulation, maintain their jurisdictions, keep a low profile in committee meetings and, in general, avoid the lime light.
There is a “herding cats” kind of futility to the job, but there are exciting times when it feels more like herding tigers. There are times when it feels like progress is being made, but, there are just as many times when progress turns out to be a dead end.
Urban planners get a lot of satisfaction from knowing they are the first to know whats going on and building up in their cities, and they can feel a lot of frustration when they know whats going on and building up in their cities.
At times, planning seems like a forest they are stuck in, and they cannot see it because of all the trees.
Planners have a somewhat perilous career. Not that losing one’s job is very likely, but one can quickly become unavailable for promotion. So they have several strategies for formulating public planning policies that shield them from the public’s critique: 1) hire a consultant; 2) form a committee of volunteers; 3) hold public forums and create surveys, and 4) put an underling or an alderman in charge. If you’re going to make a room full of people unhappy, its best to be situated so that you can have someone else to blame.
So the culture of a city planning department remains a paragon of middle management practices; sound authoritative and say nothing, look busy and do nothing.
There was a time when I did not know that the city has two types of planning; planning and strategic planning. I was naive enough to believe that all planning was strategic. Not so; just plain planning is designed to sit on a shelf. Most of the time it is forgotten. If a developer walks in with a project, the plan can be evoked to either support or reject the project. However, most often, the plan is simply ignored, brushed aside, or changed to accommodate the developer’s project. The other type of plan is more like a real plan we are all familiar with; it involves a strategy for realizing a set of clearly defined objectives. So an ordinary plan, if it is to be realized, must also have a separate strategic plan. So to realize an ordinary plan involves at least two sets of consultants, two sets of committees, several types of public forums and surveys, and at least two aldermen.
Our little city has all kinds of plans. We have an overall community plan, we have several neighbourhood plans, we have a form based zoning plan for our downtown, we are in the midst of creating a transportation plan, we started planning for a waterfront property the city just bought, we are completing a five year financial plan, we are developing a plan for promoting arts and culture, we have an economic development plan, and we have a strategic plan. We are not a particularly dynamic community, nor are we growing at a very impressive rate, and our city budget is fairly constricted. Each plan costs between $150,000(Cnd) to $1 million. Each plan involves hired consultants, volunteer committees, at least one or two alderman (councillors), mapping projects, public forums, charrettes, open houses, online surveys, stakeholder meetings, town hall meetings, discussion papers, draft review processes, and final draft review processes, and, finally, council approval.
Do all these plans contribute to the overall well being of the city? That’s very hard to determine. Perhaps these plans give a predominantly white, middle class, suburban population a comforting sense that the status quo will be maintained, property values will not be adversely affected and their life style will not be challenged. Otherwise, as one developer put it, “the plan is of no consequence, the market will correct for it.” This city has been producing plans of various sorts since the early 1970’s, some of them have been award winning, but the degree to which these plans have improved the city remains so slight that it is difficult to measure. So far, I’m inclined to believe that the time, effort and money put into these plans can’t really be justified by the effect they have on city form.
I do believe that we must change the culture associated with urban planning; to make it more effective. Planning as an activity needs to be redefined so that, the urban planners we hire can be employed in a more useful way, public participation in the planning process can be more engaging, and city politicians can be given better information to aid their decisions.
First, let us all start to understand that real planning, effective planning, is always strategic planning. Every plan must embody the methods used to realize the objectives of the plan. If a plan is just a “wish list” of things we think would be “nice” to have, and we have to wait for a well meaning developer to come along to make all our wishes come true, than its safe to say that is not a plan worth having. We would better off just mailing those plans to the north pole.
At the very least,each plan needs to state a goal, describe a method for achieving that goal,describe bench marks and predict outcomes and side effects.
Second, let’s all understand that there are three principal considerations that need to guide the urban planner: 1) the health of fellow citizens; 2) safety; and, 3) efficiency. You may find this last consideration a little odd, but in truth, once health and safety issues are addressed, all an urban planner needs to do is argue for the ways to increase the efficiency of urban forms, urban systems and land use.
Efficiency is productivity minus consumption minus waste. Using urban systems to increase productivity while reducing consumption and waste makes a city easier to live in. I can illustrate this by employing a little thought exercise: Suppose I could reorganize a bus route so that it is five minutes shorter. That is, everybody who takes that bus gets to their destination sooner. That’s a certain amount of free time I‘ve given to those bus passengers. They can spend a longer amount of time in bed, spend a little more time eating breakfast, they have more time to do whatever they want do. If they choose, they can even be more productive. Also, the bus saves five minutes of wear and tear each time it completes its loop. It saves five minutes worth of gas. The bus lasts longer, and it consumes less, and it wastes less by producing less pollution. Just taking five minutes off a bus route improves productivity, reduces consumption and waste, and it makes life easier for those who have to take the bus.
If we understand that the urban planner’s job is to produce arguments to increase the efficiency of the city we live in, then we make the job of a planner a lot easier and lot more effective. We probably don’t need as many plans, but we will need some. Sometimes efficiency is achieved using several steps and a series of coordinated efforts. But there is no need for the great master plan, or the overriding “vision” that we all need to buy into to. Any change in the urban system that improves its efficiency improves the city. The more efficiency that is added to a system, the more robust that system becomes.
We can choose not to listen to the arguments of the planner, but unless we have an idea that would be even more efficient, we understand that the ongoing costs associated with inefficiency will continue to erode our urban systems.
If we allow the planner to focus on those things that make a city more efficient, than we allow the planner to be more productive, he or she can attain a more respected degree of professionalism, and they can make a contribution that improves the city to a degree that is worthy of their pay grade.
Increased efficiency allows a city to become more competitive relative to other cities. The city is more likely to attract the skilled and the talented. Its easier to create wealth, and the economy is more likely to retain more of its own wealth. The wealth retained is more likely to be more evenly distributed. The environment is more likely to be preserved and protected. Creativity is fostered and encouraged. Social and cultural institutions are more likely to be developed and sustained.
If a planner is arguing for more efficient urban systems then he or she is doing their best to make the city a better stage upon which to perform. If a planner is not striving to make the city more efficient , than he or she is, in all likelihood, doing nothing of any lasting or sustainable value.
Beyond planning, as the plan is implemented, or production begins, the role of the urban designer or architect will prevail. To a large extent the role of planner and the role of designer support each other. An urban designer would be doing as much as the planner, striving to make the city a better stage upon which to perform, but the designer would be expressing the value we place on that stage. An architect or an artist would be doing all that a designer is doing and also expressing the value we place on that performance.
Sometimes the role of planner, designer and artist can be jumbled into one person, but we have to understand that the activity of planning is important and distinct. A planner shouldn’t have to worry about making a room full of people unhappy, because everyone understands the value of their contribution.
On the stage, where planners perform their best, they argue for efficiency.
