Quote:
Originally Posted by Good Baklava
Honestly yes. Touting “Vibrancy” is a cruel joke in the face of this issue.
While it’s obviously not just a planning issue, planners did play a role in creating this mess and therefore have the ability but most importantly the responsibility to assist in fixing it. Planners helped create this mess by influencing areas ripe for investment through public provision, without accounting for who was displaced or made to seem out of place. When planners talk about how retrofitting a park with all the latest urban design features will benefit everyone, they/we really mean everyone who doesn’t live there. “How many people will go homeless along this new light rail line?” is a question ignored by municipalities.
How could planners help? Or at least not be as bad? One would be to gather better data on these effects, or to at least devote a section of the economic analysis on the predicted negative effects. Two would involve waiving fees and prioritizing approvals for non-profit supportive housing, which are run by cash strapped organizations. Non profit-housing helps but expecting non-profits to solve the housing crisis is like expecting philanthropy to solve poverty. Non-profits have a shaky record when it comes to sustaining themselves and avoiding being sold off to developers, especially if they have to balance repayments to creditors and the needs of residents.
Of course, I’m really starting to seem out of place here when criticizing the negative side-effects of urban development on a site that’s about fetishizing it, not that I can always stop myself from fetishizing such projects either.
|
Good discussion. it seems like planning in general should be a little more holistic when creating plans for urban (and suburban?) areas. Rather than considering only the benefit to certain members of our population, negative effects should be balanced with the positives.
BTW, it's refreshing to read a post that's balanced. Yeah, we are all interested in urban design and new buildings or we wouldn't be here, but there's always an elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about, it seems. You should not consider yourself to be out of place, but just somebody with a broad point of view...
