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I tend to take the road less traveled.
For whatever reason, conventional approaches have never interested me. And the process I came up with for my city’s comp plan was no different.
Why? Well, first off, conventionalism leads to….. “BORING!” (Yell it out like no one can hear you!)
Slow and steady progress is built on an ongoing series of course corrections. Subtle variations in direction based on new variables, new challenges, and new innovations.
As times and circumstances change, some things inevitably become less productive. Or effective. Or conducive to contemporary sensibilities. So, we make changes.
Historically, they’ve been made by a matter of degrees. A minor turn here, a more substantial turn there. But today, in the modern era, we seem overly-fascinated with just one increment in particular. The most extreme increment. 180 degrees.
Out with the old, in with the new.
Since meeting Chuck Marohn, I’ve advocated for his rational Strong Towns approach to reforming our inefficient auto-oriented infrastructure system. Chuck’s message to focus infrastructure decisions on their long-term return on investment is radical because he is a Traffic Engineer. Honestly, the most frustrating and irrational meetings I have held are not with any citizen group or elected officials, but with local Traffic Engineers. Over the years, smarter growth traffic specialist like DeWayne Carver, Rick Hall, Rick Chellman, and Peter Swift have protected me from having too many direct encounters, but all are located east of the Rockies.
A while back, we talked about Connections, Community, and the Science of Loneliness, and how our laws have separated not just building uses — residential, commercial, retail, civic — but have also separated people. And that separation has led to a spate of ills — ill health, ill economies, and ill environments. We looked at some of the places that are reversing those use-separated laws of the last 80 years, allowing a mixture of compatible uses where people have a better chance of growing up healthy and aging in place.
In simple terms, a plan is an adopted statement of policy, in the form of text, maps, and/or graphics, used to guide public and private actions that affect our future built environment. A plan provides decision makers with the information they need to make informed decisions affecting the long-range social, economic, and physical growth of neighborhoods, districts and corridors. Regional, city-wide, neighborhood, and specific area plans usually provide a visual representation of the plan’s objectives and intent.
Earlier this month, writing about successful neighborhood planning, my fellow PlaceMaker Howard Blackson used the term “placeshaker” as a catch-all for the grass roots engagement efforts that empower, but don’t necessarily define, placemaking.
That got me thinking. Even though our firm is called PlaceMakers and our blog, PlaceShakers, I’ve never really given a lot of thought to the distinction between the two. Is there a difference and, if so, is it a meaningful one?
Last week, we were talking about how the form of a neighborhood either provides gathering places that build social capital and local resilience, or else makes for a lonely, disconnected, nowhere. Some towns and cities are using form-based codes to help reconnect people with each other and the places they call home.
At the end of last week’s discussion, I quickly mentioned ten points that can create problems with form-based codes. My friend, Bruce Donnelly, commented that some of these points bear elaboration. So today, I’m doing a back of the envelope on the biggest challenge to form-based codes: failing to establish a community vision that can then be codified — that is, made into law.
It wasn’t intentional but a look back at the past few weeks of PlaceShakers reveals that we’ve been working a bit of a theme. It began when I wrote about the failure of planners to ask meaningful questions, and how that not only sets the stage for unmet community expectations, but devalues the art and craft of urban design at the same time. I then followed it up with a look at the other side of the coin — corrosive elements lurking within communities that undermine collaborative progress.
I had the pleasure of presenting at the New Partners for Smart Growth conference last week in Kansas City, Missouri with Nathan Norris, Chad Emerson and Eliza Harris. Nathan assembled an entertaining panel (100 points to anyone who can identify the former Broadway star) to present the top 20 municipal placemaking mistakes. As we debated exactly what those top 20 were going to be, a lot of the usual suspects emerged — giving away connectivity, failure to provide resources for implementation, lack of a meaningful vision, ill-suited codes, and a host of others — all pointing to ill-advised actions or techniques. But what the discussion danced around was the software of the process: the personal leadership role of staff, advocates and elected officials.
In short, all the placemaking techniques in the world will fail if you embrace the tools but discount the skills of the person wielding them.
Community fascinates me. Not just the idea of it, but the dynamics, and how those dynamics end up stoking or choking our collective efforts to be together. Having worked in a lot of different places, I’ve had opportunity to study community in action, at both its strongest and weakest, in all different contexts — economic, political, cultural — and have tried to identify patterns that lead to results.
