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Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse
I don't actually think it's within the scope of urban planning to solve some of the societal-level social ills such as inequality and drug abuse. Yes there are ways in which communities can be designed to avoid exasperating such issues but the root causes such as the decades long descent into neoliberalism must be addressed.
It's like, if you have a building such as a school or library with major structural issues that require renovation and you're not even willing to consider addressing them. So you tell the general maintenance staff who do things like change light bulbs and oil squeaky doors that they're not doing a good enough job maintaining the building, and plead with them to find new ways to be more effective within the existing budget. Well, I'm sure they'll do their best to help...
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Blaming this on neoliberalism (whatever that is) is a stretch. The problem is that there are increasingly unrealistic expectations by a large segment of the population for govt to solve all their problems, whatever those may be. Politicians being politicians, they are loathe to ever say no, so they foolishly pay lip service to these requests by passing regulations and legislation and establishing various programs and agencies. But there is not enough money in the world to fund these things even halfway adequately, let alone in little old Nova Scotia's meager fiscal cupboard, so you get an office and a sign and some letterhead and an Exec Director and a Comms person and not much else. We would be far better off carving off about 30% of govt and tossing it over the side to focus adequate funding on the important priorities.