What is a plan?

According to Webster dictionary, a plan is a detailed proposal that provides structure and diagram of something to be arraigned. with urban planning, we are expected to plan and provide an sequence of how we will get there. There is a understanding that to accomplish something, there are steps to be made. This is the case in MMC neighborhood that is now already in “train passed” stage where once you are on, there is no going back.

There is a reason why they want that because what if someone new came into the meetings, the vibe and the existing issues may be lost. The concern is there to keep forward movement going in hopes a resolution is being made. 

The readings this week discussed several examples of plans that have been case studies and examples of what happened in centuries past. The first one I studied quite a bit growing up in Chicago suburbs. Chicago itself is a large history textbook and many field trips to the city, I can say I understand the history very well or recall of something that happened with planning, the chicago plan 1909 also known as the beautification plan. While there are few evident of the plan but it helped the shape the city’s future. The goal was to bring people back to the city and live there while working, i.e. beauty in the city life. the failure was not of the plan but of the tax base at the time was not sufficient to build grand ideas from the plan.

The readings also mentioned “good planning must be distinguishable from bad” by listing several important things agenda, policy and visions. The vision part I believe should be by action of the people, which are the residents that should help make a vision. If there is no vision participation ie Villa heights/belmont neighborhood. The city made a plan and the residents had no say to it and it ended up being so bad that the city had to pay outside planning company to take over. The city of Charlotte made a mistake of not involving the residence, thus I wonder if the relationship between the residents and city since then have healed? There was no neighborhood organization, as we had to start from scratch. We had to help make a vision while finding future agenda for the next semester

Bad design plan would be not taking all three main points that is in triangle here and utilizing them to create a good plan. Last semester was my first semester learning how planning worked. One of the neighborhoods, Farm Pond needed an agenda as

undergrad students. Truth be told I was terrified and still terrified that the undergrads would/will fail this. Our group was very proficient on what we did and became very close in the end. We did what we could do to help Judith in the end, making sure there were stuff for her to give out and show them how amazing the neighborhood is. The goal as I felt was a good start and accomplished in the beginning by getting their vision and agenda. As for Policy, I think we introduced in near the end but never got to finish the conversation which I hope is continued in the next neighborhood meetings. I am very excited to see Farm Pond grow and hopefully the plan we executed will become the good plan with many more pages being added.

The plan I am very interested in and I hope to do more is hybrid plans as they combine land use, verbal and classification into one plan. I wonder what other peers would use if they had to pick? Is this by choice or is this told to us as a planner? Just out of curiosity.