In the mid-1990s, soon after I was hired by the town of Davidson, N.C., as its first full-time town planner, I attended a joint public meeting in the neighboring town of Cornelius. Davidson was at odds with the county’s proposed thoroughfare plan. The plan reflected the type of misguided investment that communities have been making for decades, furthering sprawl under the guise of development. Davidson city officials hired me because its people foresaw that a proliferation of subdivisions and shopping centers would irrevocably alter the dynamics of this old, distinctive college town and its countryside.
When I arrived in the dark-paneled, musty Cornelius Town Hall, a resident was berating the Cornelius planner, demanding to be told who had drawn the lines on the thoroughfare plan map. The lines represented future “major” and “minor” roads, and people knew instinctively what they signified: highways clogged with cars, surrounded by parking lots, stale buildings, sad berms and endless subdivisions.
I intervened and informed the resident that I had drawn the lines (although I hadn’t), and what about it? I explained that he and everyone else in the room were the reason for those lines. They had come to live in the countryside, and they had made the choice to drive everywhere in order to do anything. Suddenly, the meeting became productive, focused on what we were creating collectively, rather than what “the government” was inflicting upon them.
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Our work in the U.S. to make better neighborhoods, towns and cities is a hapless and obdurate mess. If you’ve attended a planning meeting anywhere, you have probably witnessed the miserable process in action—unrestrainedly selfish fighting…
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