A Critique of Planning
By Christian Probasco, 2-28-08
My contribution to the upcoming “Designing the New West” seminar, sponsored by the incomparable New West Network is to review and analyze University of Colorado Department of Geography Associate Professor William R. Travis’ new book, New Geographies of the American West in the context of my own experiences. Being of an anti-authoritarian—bent, as I suspect a greater percentage of Westerners are, I was dubious about the planning genre, but I tried to approach the work with an open mind. I thought, this author, Travis, might be trying to reach out and make a connection with myself and other folks who are skeptical of central planning and “smart” growth, and not just preach to the choir.
I must report, however, that my open-mindedness was short-lived. As I also learned perusing many books in another genre, i.e. “New West” history, it is difficult to read an author who seems intent on insulting your heritage, contradicting your life’s experience and denying your values.
Before getting into that, let me list a few positive or novel aspects of Travis’ work. He has a bone to pick with those who would compare the current growth in Western populations to past “booms” in resource extraction. The West’s population, he amply demonstrates, has been on a steady rise since its initial settlement, despite “busts” in gold, oil, cattle, etc., and will probably continue on that course, with minor adjustments. He also acknowledges that the West, as a whole, is very far from being “built out”—a rebuke to those who might think they are trying to save the last vestiges of open space. In the satellite photo on page 34, in fact, cities appear spread out like galaxies in a vast universe.
Travis notes, in contradistinction to those who assert that the West’s population has exceeded the sustainable limits water might have imposed: “If anything, there is too much water in the West, so much irrigation water (some 80-90 percent of water use in the region is still in agriculture) looking for industrial and municipal buyers in a poor agricultural market that we have annihilated the West’s aridity…”
Finally, Travis’ graph on page 26 very well illustrates the future relationship between extractive industries and the service sector in the West, lest there still be doubters.
My chief concerns with Travis’ book are his lamentations about how land use planning lacks “teeth”; that is, teeth to coerce developers and the rest of us slobs who don’t want to be hassled by planners, the government, or government planners, at any level, to obey the dictates of a new planning nomenklatura. I have no problem with those who wish to live in planned communities, or to design such communities. I have no qualm with those who would wish to reduce their own ecological footprint through community planning or other means. I would not myself care to live in one of the many cookie-cutter suburbs decried by planners and new urbanites, unless there was no homeowner association and it was right up against a wilderness into which I could occasionally escape with my Jeep. What frightens me is when academics such as Travis try to push their own values on my property, my family, my car, my town or my county through fiats of state or federal law or regulation.
So when Travis says, “If the attention of local decision makers is too often captured by developers promising economic booms and the exigencies of public finance, in which growth appears to be the solution to budget shortages, then it is to the state and federal levels that we must appeal for discipline,” as he does on page 185, I start to feel uneasy. I know there are plenty of politicians and bureaucrats who would be more than happy to enlarge their own sphere of influence by utilizing the manifestos of urban and suburban planners.
Further, when Travis refers to property-rights advocates as an “insurgency” I am also wary. When he paints a picture of exurbs as “death traps” for local fauna, deer populations decimated by power line roads and yards, “caught in rope swings…injured on fences…limping around subdivisions,” as he does on page 128 (quoting a California Department of Fish and Game biologist), I am again skeptical. When he bemoans the lack of “centralized collection of land use data,” (page 184) I wonder whom he expects to pay for its collection.
I, for one, would prefer my tax money not be spent on such collections. If Travis wished to use his own money or funds from private donations to the University of Colorado in this regard, however, I couldn’t possibly object.
When Travis writes about “more participatory, more democratic, and more fruitful” planning, I don’t think he is referring to participation by blue-collar workers, or people who don’t share his aesthetic or ecological sensibilities. Anyone, in other words, who would even consider living in the “detritus of urban and rural sprawl” where most Westerners live.
My own take on the loss of “communitarian” values that planners and smart-growth advocates wish to reestablish through better community design, is that it was caused not so much by the much-maligned automobile, as has been posited by several in the above schools of thought, as by government services, and programs like Medicaid and social security, and by big corporations. For good or ill, people tend to look more to the government now for their personal safety and economic well-being than they do to themselves or, more importantly in this context, their neighbors. And they don’t do business with each other so much anymore as with corporations in their community. Add to these factors the advent of radio, television, video games, in-home movies and, worst of all, the internet, and you arrive at the present state of affairs, where each household is turned inward and most people mind their own matters and don’t worry so much about what their neighbors are up to, and prefer the same courtesy from them.
I base the above analysis on my years living in the very furthest extent of the sort of exurbs Travis despises, first in a trailer park and then in a travel trailer in the ponderosa forests of northern Arizona, with other near-indigent individuals and families who didn’t find dense developments nearly as “attractive,” as he does. There, ironically, where there were no taxes, there was no garbage service or roads division and there were no police, no policies, no planners and no plan, where beer and pot were the preferred currency, and where your neighbor might save your life or kill you, is also where I found the deepest sense of community.
What puzzled me at first about the planning community is also what puzzles me about the current political dialogue. The way I see it, when the Soviet Union collapsed and disappeared in the early nineties, it should have taken its primary tenant--centralized planning and control—with it. Especially now, with the internet allowing each of us access to an enormous, exponentially increasing quantity of decentralized information and analysis, we should also be enjoying the fruits of a decentralization in political power and capital. And yet, in national and regional political arenas, we still seem to be arguing, as we have since the New Deal, about how best to transfer more money and power from individuals to various and new corporate and government entities, of which the planning commissions of the type espoused by William R. Travis would be one.
Next: A Few Words From…The Antiplanners!
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Comments
I wonder if Mr. Probasco has ever lived in any of the numerous fast-growing, formerly-rural communities around the west that are being overrun by rampant growth, or if his experience is limited to the boondocks where people sit around swilling beer, smoking doobies, and rolling to dice to help them decide whether they're going to help their neighbor or rob them?
C'mon, Mr. Probasco. Good planning is not about creating cookie cutter suburbs. Its not about placing power in the hands of a few. Good planning is about making sure that water quality doesn't get impacted, that schools can handle the kids, that roads can handle the traffic, that taxes don't skyrocket. Its about making sure that, as places get hammered with growth, there is something other than a minority of individuals with a lot of money dictating how communities look and work. Its about helping ordinary folks (yes, blue collar people as well) identify what they care about in their community and designing reasonable guidelines to protect those values.
Mr. Probasco seems that think that a "live and let live" attitude will be perfectly sufficient. Perhaps for the boondocks, but try that attitude in any fast-growing area in the west and what you get are developers who honestly don't care, landowners who are constantly fighting because of a growing incompatibility in different types of uses, communities that have their values wiped out, and existing landowners who continually pick up the tab.
The argument in this article is sadly simplistic and is indicative of why this conversation is so difficult. Grow up, Mr. Probasco. People are moving here. You can't just retreat to your rural mountain abode and expect it to all go back to 1970. Local gov't in the west is amazingly accessible and is in no way comparable to the Soviet Union (isn't it 2008? Are we still comparing reasonable land use planning to the Soviet Union? Are you kidding me?). You should try getting involved with that local gov't. You might be surprised.
When I wrote, "I would not myself care to live in one of the many cookie-cutter suburbs decried by planners and new urbanites," I was not accusing planners and new urbanites of being responsible for them.
I've lived in Phoenix, Flagstaff, Henderson, NV--which was the fastest growing city in the West for a while--and Salt Lake City.
I don't expect to set the clock back to 1970. I was 3 in 1970. The community I described existed in the 1990s and I'm sure that culture still exists in N. Arizona, however.
I'm not comparing local government to the Soviet Union, I'm comparing certain aspects of the planning movement to it. I would much prefer a more individualistic, organic, bottom-up, "atomistic" (Travis' word) approach. That means a bare minimum of planning and sometimes allowing folks to express their own poor taste and/or judgement in how and where they build their homes.
I have a feeling that "ordinary folks" are already aware of what they care about and my fear is that the "reasonable" guidelines of which you speak will endanger rather than protect those values. Is it possible that we've already got too many "reasonable" guidelines?
Please note that I view much of the planning literature I've come across as equally simplistic as you view my argument. And no, I am not acting as a shill for any member of the development community. I will have to concede to you, however, that I am on the outside of the distribution curve when it comes to allowing people to do any fool thing they want as long as somebody else doesn't get hurt.
Two things you wrote where we have common ground:
1) "...letting people do any fool thing they want as long as somebody else doesn't get hurt." Here's my addition: I will concede to you that I interpret this more broadly than physical endangerment but am also including basic protections for property values, natural resources, etc. And I would also add that, sometimes, letting people exercise bad judgement in where they put their houses impacts everybody else (see the other New West article on wildfire problems and $$$ that's running concurrently to this);
2) paraphrase: "good planning comes from the bottom up". Here's my addition: The days of planners and gov't officials sitting around in back rooms devising plans are, hopefully, over. That's what happened in the '50's. The best planning process is one where local gov't engages the community, provides a solid foundation of information and a well-designed process, and lets the citizens drive the what happens.
The point I'd like to make is that, often, the only way to make sure "somebody doesn't get hurt" when people are piling all over themselves to move to a place is to have "reasonable guidelines". Those guidelines don't have to take the guise of legislating taste. They don't have to mandate house colors, roof pitches, or limits on animals. Most rural communities in the West are not facing the question of suddenly adopting academic, urban planning and zoning. Instead, the choice many rural communities face is often between minimal guidelines for development and nothing at all. The point is to have calm conversations about how people can protect their right to enjoy their property from neighbors (individuals, corporations, developers) who could care less. And it becomes difficult for these conversations to occur when "planning" is dismissed because of a misconception that it's all about centralized gov't and stomping on people's rights.
Thanks for a good debate. Hopefully some other folks will chime in.