Planning has come a long way

While rummaging through the municipal recycling bin the other day, I happened to come across an old textbook from 1991: Contemporary Urban Planning, Second Edition. Remembering that reusing is one notch better than recycling, I grabbed it and skimmed through some of the chapters. Chock full of photos of gleaming skyscrapers and various megaprojects, the textbook is a relic of a different age when the modern motor city was expected to wipe out traditional urban fabric altogether. I had to doublecheck the date to make sure this was really 1991, only 18 years ago. Planning has come a long way since this was written.

The chapter on transportation is fantastically bad. The following words are not in the chapter at all: bicycle, pedestrian, neighborhood, beauty, human, love, happiness. Instead, it's declared that "adequate circulation [of automobiles] is and traditionally has been a major planning goal" and the bulk of the chapter describes the models used to plan roadways to facilitate optimal traffic flow. What happens next to the lanes of fast-moving vehicles is inconsequential. Environmentalists get a little shout out, but only as obstructionists who thwart the rationally optimal siting of new highways. There's a couple of paragraphs on public transportation tacked on to the end, mostly to describe how it's unsuitable for suburban densities and thus must be "heavily subsidized" to exist. On the other hand, "the fact is that in a direct sense automobile transportation is paid for by those who use it."

The chapter on growth management lays out the tensions of limiting growth on suburban fringes quite well, but the idea of allowing more density in some areas to relieve the pressure in others never crosses the radar screen. The mantra "separating incompatable land uses" is sprinkled throughout the book, showing up in a chapter on urban design, another on community development, and in the introductory what-is-planning-anyway paragraph. Jane Jacobs' ideas of diversity are given a brief reference but she is drowned out by sheer volume. The chapters on history tell the story of urban disintegration and suburban triumph, ending with the notion that technology may be making cities obsolete altogether.

What distinguishes this era from our own? First, the New Urbanism movement had not influenced planning yet. Compact, mixed-use, and walkable neighborhoods were still something planners should be replacing, rather than preserving, or even creating. Second, global climate change and a focus on sustainability have pushed energy efficiency issues from the periphery into the center of planning.

Reading through this book gives me more insight into some of the negative perceptions of planners that are floating around certain circles. If that's where you are, just pick up any copy of Planning magazine or skim through Planetizen for a while. I think you'll see a very different picture.