Suburban Nation - Andres Duany [58]
The absence of regional vision plagues neighborhood-oriented planners, especially in sprawling cities like Atlanta. They move heaven and earth to secure dozens of zoning variances and rewrite the engineering regulations, all in order to build walkable mixed-use neighborhoods. Yet, even with the improved lifestyle offered by these communities, it is impossible to go anywhere else without a car. Only when these neighborhoods are linked to a regional transit system will the broader world become truly accessible. Meanwhile, all of the surrounding subdivisions are designed in a way that makes public transit too expensive to provide.
The difficulty in establishing a regional planning authority derives primarily from the fact that few municipal bodies exist at the regional scale. Cities are too small, states are too big, and county lines are ignored under the creep of sprawl. Of the few significant regional planning authorities, most were put together to address single problems—environmental crises, usually—that are only incidentally of regional concern. For example, the South Florida Water Management District, organized to preserve the Everglades, is the only authority with a jurisdiction large enough to plan the megalopolis that stretches from Palm Beach past Miami. Similarly, metropolitan Los Angeles is fighting air pollution at the regional level through the Southern California Association of Governments. Where such organizations can be found, they have come to recognize their relevance beyond their original mandate and have joined the battle against sprawl. But there are few of them, and there is little demand for more.
At the federal level, it is generally understood that municipalities are interdependent with regard to a few obvious issues like transportation, which is why there is a new regional Metropolitan Planning Organization to coordinate transportation funding. But regional-scale social and economic problems are less quantifiable and have yet to receive recognition, let alone resources. And the idea of establishing an additional layer of government within the federal/state/county/town hierarchy is hardly popular. bw
Regional planning is also made more difficult because, by definition, it often runs up against local issues. The best plans are usually degraded by the short-term concerns of local residents and business interests. For example, there is a highly visible civic initiative in South Florida called Eastward Ho!, which encourages urban infill projects to counter the area’s westward sprawl into the Everglades. In response to that initiative, in one city in one year, twenty-seven separate projects were proposed by developers, all bucking the tide and trying to do the right thing. Of those, not a single one was approved, thanks to a local government unwilling to stand up to a few noisy neighbors. Twenty-seven well-intentioned developers wasted a full year, and are now convinced that doing the right thing does not pay.
Another example: In 1985, Miami built its elevated Metro-Rail transit system at a cost of $1.3 billion. Visitors often ask why it serves neither Miami International Airport nor Miami Beach, two of the city’s most common destinations. It turns out that Metro-Rail’s ultimate trajectory was strongly influenced by the city’s taxi lobby, which had everything to gain from making the transit system as useless as possible. Obviously, effective regional planning is not possible in the absence of effective regional political leadership.
Given the difficulty of implementation, it is of some comfort that at least the principles of regional planning are straightforward. Their primary purpose is to organize the growth of metropolitan areas on behalf of environmental health, social equity, and economic sustainability. Recognizing that it sounds easier than it really is, we present below an eight-step process for Regional Planning, admittedly in its ideal form.
THE EIGHT STEPS OF REGIONAL PLANNING
1. Admit that growth will occur. The first step of any recovery program is to acknowledge that a