I was intending to launch a new topic this morning – first of the month and all that – but instead I’m pointing your attention to the comments on the previous posting, about Locust.
It’s a good by-play on the pros and cons of town planning. Bob Remsburg, a former Locust city administrator, has weighed in, as well as former Locust council member Joe Bishop, as well as David Walters – whom the original post quoted. Also, Rick Becker, the mayor of Mineral Springs (in southern Union County) and Rodger Lentz, the planner who helped launch the “town center” in Harrisburg (in Cabarrus County, on the Mecklenburg line). It’s a good summation of how town planning evolves. As Lentz (now planning director for Wilson in Eastern North Carolina and president of the N.C. chapter of the American Planning Association) points out, the original vision can be compromised due to developers’ wishes or beliefs about the marketplace. As Becker points out, towns’ plans rely on utilities and if needed utilities aren’t present even the best plans can languish for years.
And as one of the “anonymi” points out, today’s beliefs about “good” planning might in the end be proven all wrong:
The “awful alternatives” that we see in many places ARE the result of planning. In Charlotte the most obvious and glaring example of that was the utter destruction of close-in residential neighborhoods such as Brooklyn, to be replaced by “planned communities” such as the now-defunct Earle Village. That nonsense was urban planning just as much as the “new urbanism” version. I know some folks are fond of claiming that planning has evolved, but things don’t evolve TOWARD something, and evolution does not presuppose an improvement. It is only a change in response to changing conditions. Since future needs, wants, and tastes can’t possibly be predicted, planning done today can’t possibly accommodate the needs, wants, and tastes of tomorrow. There’s no real reason to believe that a generation from now the planners and “visionaries” who hold sway to day won’t be vilified for what they’ve wrought.
It’s a caution for all who care about planning and city- and town-building: We may think we’re on the side of progress but sometimes it turns out “progress” isn’t.
(And thanks to all of you for reading and taking the time to comment.)