Suburban Nation - Andres Duany [90]
Make government proactive. The local planning department must be empowered and encouraged to propose development patterns ahead of the private sector. “You call this planning?” is a common cry of outrage as a new, seemingly random building project takes shape. This should come as no surprise. Most municipal planners are entirely reactive in their approach to development; often, their only role is to interpret the codes. Some will even argue that it’s entirely up to the market to decide what gets built where. So much for planning! And even when the municipal staff exhibit an enthusiasm and aptitude for design, they rarely have the mandate to produce plans for urban change. Given these limitations, how can government encourage the development and improvement of cohesive neighborhoods? Probably the best solution is to commission a professional public plan and then provide incentives for its private implementation. This approach works well with the fast-track permitting technique described earlier.
The public sector should also take the lead in the planning and development of public-benefit facilities such as convention centers, sport stadiums, and arenas. When initiated by the private sector, these projects rarely benefit anyone but their big-business sponsors. One ideal model for such development is downtown Baltimore’s Camden Yards baseball park, which was developed with government guidance, is accessible to all, and remains a source of civic pride. By way of contrast, Miami’s suburban Pro Player Stadium was developed privately on a cheap site far from transit, intruding on an existing residential community. Although highway improvements were provided to help counter its remote location—funded, of course, by the taxpayers—Pro Player Stadium remains inaccessible to many sports fans and contributes nothing to the city’s vitality.
Think globally, act locally, but plan regionally. Local municipalities must act with the understanding that the most meaningful planning occurs at the regional scale. This broad perspective stems less from a desire to help one’s neighbors than from simple self-preservation—more than one community has seen its own planning efforts sabotaged by the actions of another town nearby. Circling the wagons by, say, closing streets may be a temporary solution, but if the problem is a regional traffic crisis, traffic will be relieved only until surrounding communities do the same. When making local planning decisions, a municipality must consider the impact of its initiatives on the entire region. And the community that wishes to truly determine its future will take the additional step of advocating for the creation of a regional planning authority.
True citizen participation: a public design workshop brings planning out into the open
Plan with public participation. Citizen participation in the planning process—a horrifying prospect to some administrators—has proved to be the most effective way to avoid mistakes. In San Francisco, Indianapolis, and many other cities, we have seen a participatory process revive civic responsibility and action. Residents of West Palm Beach are now actively involved, from volunteering in the workshops that created the city’s new Master Plan, to monitoring the projects that must follow its guidelines. True participatory planning should not be confused with occasional orchestrated set pieces or legally mandated public hearings; rather, it should include community design workshops, citizen’s advisory committees, constant media coverage, and an ongoing feedback process.
That said, it is painful but necessary to acknowledge that the public process does not guarantee the best results.