Many of my posts in the last two months criticize planning and argue that, no matter who does it, planning is bound to fail. Yet some people are still planners. Who are these planners and why do they do it?
The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that there are about 31,650 urban & regional planners practicing in the United States. This probably does not include most forest planners working for the Forest Service, watershed planners working for the Corps of Engineers, or other agency planners. Yet national forest and other federal agency planning processes are remarkably similar to urban planning, so it is likely that these agencies hired at least a few urban planners to help them design their processes.
In 2005, planners earned an average of $57,620, meaning we spend close to $2 billion on planning salaries alone. This is not a large sum by government standards, but neither is it a trivial amount.
Nearly all of these planners apparently belong to the American Planning Association, which says it has 30,000 members. APA adds that about two thirds of its members work for state & local government agencies, while most of the rest work for consulting firms that, for the most part, are either hired by government agencies or by developers attempting to navigate government planning systems.
What do these planners believe? A history of UC Berkeley’s planning school suggests the following:
City planning was the last stronghold of utopianism.” Planners were “heir to the postulates of the Enlightenment with its faith in perfectibility, . . . and of the Anglo-American City Planning Movement with its focus on buildings, infrastructure, urban design, and land-use controls.”
They “sought social betterment through improved settings for social life through design of improved physical environments.” “Many came to believe that something akin to social engineering would soon be possible. If only we could accumulate sufficient scientifically derived knowledge of urban systems and if only we could apply that knowledge to social maladies, we could surely ameliorate troubling social problems.”
To be fair, some of these quotes refer to what planners believed at various times since the Berkeley planning school began, and not necessarily what Berkeley planners believe today. But these beliefs influenced today’s planners and provide insights into why they do what they do.
These quotes are not necessarily compliments. The American Heritage dictionary defines utopianism as “idealistic and impractical social theory.”
Faith in perfectability refers to a utopian belief in the perfectability of man, that is, that education and environment can change people than selfish individuals into altruistic members of society rather. As the UC Berkeley history goes on to suggest, the tool planners used to seek that perfectability was “improved physical conditions” through better “urban design, and land-use controls.”
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Planners gained their focus on urban design through their educational and historical association with architects. Most urban planners graduated from one of the sixty-nine schools accredited by the APA. Thirty-nine of these schools are affiliated with architecture schools. The historical association is even deeper: nearly all of the people who have inspired planners, ranging from Daniel Burnham through Le Corbusier to Peter Calthorpe, have been architects.
“Winston Churchill’s dictum, ‘We shape our cities, and our cities then shape us,’ was an axiomatic precept in city planning circles,” says a the UC Berkeley history. (Actually, what Churchill said was “We shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us.”)
There are two forms of hubris here. First is the arrogance of architects who believe that, because they can design a house for one family, they can design an entire urban area for a million families. This is hubris indeed when some, as Stewart Brand suggests in his book on How Buildings Learn, think that most architects are not even very good at designing a house.
Second is a faith in what Herbert Gans calls the physical fallacy: that by influencing urban design, architects and planners can create a new, utopian society in which people are happier, have a stronger sense of community, and spend less time isolated in their automobiles. I imagine that when planners paraphrase Churchill, they tend to identify themselves with the “we” who ought to shape cities, and everyone else with the “us” who are shaped by the cities. In any case, planners’ emphasis on such things as density, pedestrian-friendly design, and other designs (though the designs they favor change from generation to generation) are all examples of the physical fallacy.
Notice that there are two forms of hubris here. First is the arrogance of architects who believe that, because they can design a house for one family, they can design an entire urban area for a million families. That is something like gardeners believing that, because they can grow a rose bush, they can design an entire ecosystem for a million-acre forest. Second is a faith in the design fallacy: that by influencing urban design architects and planners can create a new, utopian society in which people are happier, have a stronger sense of community, and spend less time isolated in their automobiles.
Utopianism and hubris would not be problems if planners and their architect gurus merely said to people, “Here are some ideas that will improve your life. Why don’t you try them out?” According to Peter Hall’s history of modern urban planning, Cities of Tomorrow, most “of the early visions of the planning movement stemmed from the anarchist movement.”
To Hall, “the anarchist fathers had a magnificent vision of the possibilities of urban civilization, which deserves to be remembered and celebrated.” One of the major exceptions was Le Corbusier’s Radiant City. Le Corbusier was an “authoritarian” who Hall calls “the Rasputin of this tale,” because he represented “the counter-tradition of authoritarian planning, the evil consequences of which are ever with us.”
Sadly, most planners ended up following the authoritarian model. As Hall observes, “in half a century or more of bureaucratic practice, planning had degenerated into a negative regulatory machine, designed to stifle all initiative, all creativity.”
Yet I would argue that such authoritarianism is an inevitable result of the planning process. After all, if you have a vision of how people ought to live, and if you really believe that vision will significantly improve the world, then you don’t dare risk letting that vision be corrupted by the vagueries of the free market. So you turn to government to impose that vision on the world.
In sum, planners have historically believed that they could use urban design as a form of social engineering to perfect the world and the people in it. They acted on this belief by using the power of government to impose their designs through zoning and other regulations. The planning profession today continues to be shaped by these ideas.
The planning profession today continues to be shaped by these ideas [that planners have historically believed that they could use urban design as a form of social engineering to perfect the world and the people in it ] and so forth.
Yet another post with old examples and nothing from contemporary times to back your claim, Randal.
A good support for your argument would be, say, syllabi from the past decade or so showing how planners are taught that your assertion is real durn good.
But of course you can find few syllabi that say this, so you’re probably right that it’s best to just not mention this little bit.
DS
DS,
Thank you, Dan, for pointing out that history is old and contemporary events are new. I don’t know what we would do without you.
I guess what you are saying is that planners don’t worry about their history because it is old. Perhaps this explains why they make the same mistakes over and over again.
Some people think old is much more valuable than new.
Example 1 – “Antiques Road Show”
Example 2 – Some teenagers paint pictures in a cave. If it happened last week it is graffiti and is erased or painted over. If it happened 10,000 years ago it is a great historical artifact and photos of the pictures will be published in National Geographic.
Thank you, Randal, for the opportunity to further clarify your argument.
To recap, for those unable to scroll a short distance upward, I said: again, you use old references and examples with which to argue, and you haven’t shown that your argument is the case today, that outcomes on the ground today happen according to what you say Gans’ theories are** or according to your strawman argument about utopianism and authoritarianism.
You said that I claimed: planners don’t pay attention to history. Please read my comment again. That is not what I wrote.
You have neither provided interviews with planners, nor have you shown curricula from planning schools showing things get done as you say. All you’ve done is picked out old theories and examples from at least a generation ago, and held them up saying: ‘I don’t need to check this out, the words I choose fit with my ideology, so must be good!’ For that is the structure of the one-sided argument here.
For example, to have a cogent, well-supported argument you could show that, say, most LU planners (as opposed to designers) like Corbu, rather than reject his vision. Or you could pick out a planner’s book list to see who influences planner’s thinking: authoritarians or likely something else.
You should, also, Randal, contextualize the growth of cities by placing formal planning within the other forces [2] that shape cities [readers, note this is Peter Hall’s new program at Berkeley and note that nowhere in here does he seek to quantify certain arguments attributed to his seminal but of-another-era argument brought out here] and showing the influence.
You also should explain how the rise of PPPs negates your argument.
And, lastly, you’ll also want to write a letter to the APA and AICP telling us that we have so much more power than we knew. I’m sure that will be a comfort, as we have been living in a fantasy world where we thought what we said might get done if we get four votes. Instead – according to Randal – we should have been saying stuff needed to get built according to our fantasies and – shazam! – it happens on the ground.
See, we never knew that. Folks need to know, Randal, and you’re the man to break it to the profession.
DS
[1] http://www.planetizen.com/books/20
[2] http://metrostudies.berkeley.edu/research.shtml
** Which is exactly what Levittowners says doesn’t happen – rather, that denizens shape cities despite their use and ultimately their form, and that changing populations have different needs, but the basic fabric, if serviceable remains (hence TND, and reflected in what Gans found in Levitttown with the dense, walkable, streetcar-oriented fabric). We see, today, the Latinoification of certain parts of LA and their entrepreneurialism and seeking more urban services (and their market demand for walkable communities) in areas underserved by previously auto-oriented segments of society; they, as a society, have rejected the non-free auto-oriented fabric – the potential environment vs the ineffective auto-oriented environment.
“What do these planners believe?”
Clearly we all believe and do the SAME THING. I found it humorous that you cared to mention, correctly, that many planners are also architects. I previously worked for a firm that does planning and architecture, and I was trained by architects and landscape architects whose primary work was in planning. What’s interesting is that these professionals do consult for governments, but they also plan for public and private universities, hospitals, and private developers. The private development consulting is not merely for developers to navigate the system, but to choose the best and most profitable uses and design of a future development. How should it be phased, how much should go there, how much parking should there be? These are market driven considerations, and the same planners [with the same education and experience] you decry complete these tasks effectively every day. The planners who project for the future needs, character and design of a university are similarly challenged, and meet this challenge every day. The notion of “government planners” is simply too one-dimensional to apply in any meaningful way to the diversity of people in the planning profession, or their collective like-mindedness.
On March 5th, 2007, DE said:
“The notion of “government planners†is simply too one-dimensional to apply in any meaningful way to the diversity of people in the planning profession, or their collective like-mindedness.”
I agree. Private sector planning should not be lumped together with government planning. The comparatively small scale and persuasive implementation of the former makes it both effective and meritorious, while the large scale and coercion of the latter makes it neither.
Dan:
[1] http://www.planetizen.com/books/20
JK: I found this little gem on your list of 20 books every planner should read:
The Geography of Nowhere traces America’s evolution from a nation of Main Streets and coherent communities to a land where every place is like no place in particular
So, the accusation is that every place looks different? What is wrong with that?
and the countryside is a wasteland of cartoon architecture and parking lots.
And where there is less crime, loss pollution, less congestion and better schools.
With an information base like James Howard Kunstler, it is little wonder that planners produce stuff nobody wants (except planners).
Thanks
JK
On March 6th, 2007, JimKarlock said:
“So, the accusation is that every place looks different?”
Kunstler is wrong, but he is actually saying that everyplace looks the same.
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I’m not weighing in on the larger argument but I wanted to say that I graduated from the University of Illinois planning program which is in the same college as architecture and landscape architecture (and in the same physical building) but we had absolutely no contact with those students or faculty. The bottom line: the architecture department had no influence over our course of study. I’m not saying this is generalizable but it should be of note.
Many planners despise architects (and their limited ability to understand context) rather than emulate them.