Takeaway 1: City planners are ultimately judged by the worst policies they uphold.
Takeaway 2: We have the ability, and responsibility, to change that.
Why It Matters: As always, if we don’t provide new solutions, others will.
Always To Blame
The stories of American city planning are all the same. It goes like this:
As a country, we started our urbanism by making walkable, bustling, vibrant places built on colonial designs that mimicked European cities. Over time, these places became the engine of progress but were ultimately stripped of life through the expansion of automobile usage and sprawl. From the 1950’s onward, planners continued a trend that worsened just about everything in this country by writing and administering zoning ordinances that made sprawl the default condition. Which is to say that planners are to blame for just about everything we don’t like. Feeling sad about the loss of open space? Planners and their zoning books made it happen. Frustrated by the housing shortage? Planners and zoning again. Lack of transportation options? Planners. Planners ruin everything. But not all is lost. The next generation of planners are here and they just might save the world by doing things very differently.
THE END.
That is the essential message of every story I’ve heard on the subject. Planners are associated with all manner of bad things, especially zoning. It seems like no one has much appreciation for anything done by this profession in the past fifty years.
So it goes.
The part that bewilders me is that, for all the blame the profession gets, it also receives a tremendous amount of responsibility for progress. Especially at the local level. People are angry with us and yet they ask us to do more.
Always Asked For More
Let’s give it to them. Let’s give them more solutions. New solutions. Especially in the realm of zoning. Because every story ends with how the next generation of planners can fix things and yet we seem to do a lot of stuff the same as it ever was. It is difficult to know where to start. Or how.
Here’s a good first step: let’s ask ourselves a question. What would zoning look like if we could start over? People want to know. They want you to tell them.
No One Else Can Do It
People want your expertise because you, as a planner, occupy a very unique position in the build environment. Engineers and architects cannot, by themselves, create the places we want because it requires more than the site-by-site design techniques. It takes systems. It takes governance. It takes City Hall. Not the literal building, of course, but the embodiment of its thinking—which is you. The city planner. You are the one who is most capable of speaking broadly, and intelligently, on big things.
This is why so much attention is given to planners. People see planners as being central to the problems; they also see us as being central to the solutions.
For decades, this level of influence scared us—the entire profession. It goes back to the guilt we feel over past transgressions. Jane Jacobs and many other activists rightly criticized the abuses of power from those influential few like Robert Moses and other power brokers. Again, she was truly correct in her stance. And it’s time for us to move beyond that. Jacobs’ problems of yesterday are not the problems we face today.
Back then, a small number of public officials wielded immense power in many cities. Mulholland in Los Angeles. Daley in Chicago. The infamous Moses in New York.
Today, that concentration has been successfully diluted and distributed through mandatory public processes and transparency laws that give the community far more access and opportunity. This is the new system at work. We should remain grateful to people like Jane Jacobs who made it possible. We should also realize the limitations of even this better, healthier approach.
Waiting For You To Lead Us
So back to the question: what would we do if we had the chance to do it over? Given all that we’ve learned thus far? What new direction would you want to explore?
The community wants to know. They assume that’s what you’re doing every day. They want you to keep doing it, too. So write new solutions. Tell people why. This is far more difficult than you may think but if every one of us does it together, we will develop new insights and practices that fulfill the promise of making things better.
What would zoning look like if you could write your own code today, on a clean slate, to achieve the vision of a great city?
It’s okay if you don’t have an answer right now.
You can create one.
You, too, can write a zoning ordinance. You can share it with the community, find what does and doesn’t work, and build from there.
We have the power to create solutions.
We have the trust of others to do it well.
If we don’t, others will. They already have. That’s how you inherited all those policies you don’t like—the arbitrary exclusions and onerous procedures.
You can do something better.
For more information on how to write your own zoning ordinance, check out the DIY Form-Based Code and other courses at Planetizen.com. I, and many others, have built great resources there to help us all level up. You can also check out the Zoning Minimalism article from the APA’s Zoning Practice magazine, December 2021.
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