This week reading had brought some interesting view of how public interest and society portrays planning. Planning gets a bad reputation because of the history of dirty money being handled and pet projects that often happened in the policy planning sector, that often blame planners. What fails for me is, why the public policy sector does not want to admit that they really do need planners.
Because without them, often public meetings do not go smooth as there are no guideline or smooth transition that the public wants to see instead of thousands of tax dollars being swallowed without any proof done. Charlotte is an example of this when it came to low income housing in Noda neighborhood, Johnston Mill was geared to the artist population. Unfortunately the Mill had to close down and all the money funneled into the project is gone and now the city is trying to sell for 600,000 dollars to redeem some of the money back. It is almost pointless to even gather focus into it because it is all Public Policy trying to fix their mistakes.
If we could compare planning into a game, lets say Monopoly? We understand it is a property tax game, yet if we can change it to planning game. The community chest would change into how the public views the planning object by providing examples of real life planning scenarios. The ups and downs of public policy taking over the board, losing money as they forget about zoning. The private sector will lose as the politics gets in the way; changes the zoning like eminent domain where the government can come in and take your property at a lowest market price. The planners of the game would help things flow better and less money from public and private sectors would lose instead of tug of war. Planners do have a role, which is mediating and being a social worker in a way to bring solutions into the problem as well listening to interested parties. This displays fully on page 55 talking about Vilfredo Pareto critics on money examples.
Another point that was plastered in the reading was, how are planners now being viewed as a progressive? Is there another word that better describe them as I feel the term progressive is dirty almost like activist that the public tends to scoff and laugh at those kind of folks? I remember when I was in high school, I protested the Iraq war that almost got me suspended from school because I walked out of the classroom. My reputation was changed from there as I became the person who didn't follow the trend of the river. The point is that why does planners have to be revolutionist? Why cant the public policy and government do that? We, especially as a country have fought in wars with other countries on revolution. My concern is when did the shift happen that the government slowed down and started following private sector in leading the country.
I always fear that public policy as it seems to be a scheming thing where the city or government officials have their own pet projects that really can destroy planners and their position. Even in the Theory book (page 41) a professional suicide would be the case for planners if they were to have their own agenda.
What Aaron Wildavsky fails to mention is to parallel planning with policy. The policy makers may make a law or a zoning regulation but they need someone to help plan the ruling or give them guidance otherwise it will not be as effective. A good example of this would be North Carolina Global transpark in Kinston, NC. The county has a zoning control of 5 mile radius around the airport to drive economic development. However without proper zoning and advisement from planners, the usage of the area planning can foil and the money spent would be wasted.
It all relates to each other and to argue that one does not need another will throw off the ecological system of planning. The public would never have their voice heard, causing resentment with the public sector. The purpose is to bring all parties to the table instead of one lecture on how things will be done. The dark side of not having planners, as critics want can potentially harm the future globally, so respectively instead of being progressive, lets become innovative.
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