The Plague of Planners

The Plague of Planners
Randal O'Toole, Globe & Mail

Probably the most vicious attack on planners, the planning profession, and city planning in recent years! I get upset when small-minded economists who clearly don't really have an idea of how the planning system works attacks my profession. Anyway, the author of this article, Randal O'Toole sparked controversies a couple of years ago when his book, "The Vanishing Automobile and Other Urban Myths: How Smart Growth Harms American Cities" came out attacking smart growth and while aggressively promoting suburbanization and even ex-urbanization (beyond the suburbs). In this Globe & Mail article, O'Toole made some very strong accusations against planners, to which I respond to below:

1) Comprehensive urban plans in the United States, and the rest of the developed and developing world, have a nasty habit of costing far more than the planners project, producing far fewer benefits and causing all sorts of unintended harmful consequences.

- Planners are not responsible for project cost inflation. Cost inflation is often due to labour issues, or the material used, or delays in the political approval process. In many cases, planners don't even determine cost estimations in projects.

2) Cities, like economies, are far too complex to scientifically plan. Rather than admit they can't do it, planners follow simplistic fads.

- So what should we do? should we just give up planning altogether? and just let roads, buildings, come up wherever and whenever? and hope the market will give us parks, sewage and water treatment plans, sidewalks, and maybe a bus that runs every 2 hours? Well maybe O'Toole should move to Houston then, a city that has no planning, no city bylaws, no zoning. The result: one of the most congested and un-transit/un-pedestrian friendly city in the world. Remember last year when Hurricane Rita threatened to hit Houston? Millions and millions of cars got stuck on the highways trying to leave the city. Most didn't get too far. Many had to actually abandon their car and walk because they couldn't get anywhere.

3) Planners' limits on the land available for development and other rules also drove up housing costs.

- Are planners so powerful that we can drive up housing costs? What about things like an economic boom?

4) Portland is closing four to six schools a year, yet still has a $57-million gap in its school budget because planners diverted so many tax dollars to their utopian high-density housing projects.

- Wow now O'Toole makes it sound like planners have God-like power and have the ability to even influence the budget! He should talk to the T.O. planners - they couldn't even fix park fountains without going through layers and layers of political approvals.

5) Rail transit, for example, is a simplification that limits, rather than expands, mobility, giving planners more control over people's lives. So planners in Portland, San Francisco and others eagerly propose to spend 60 per cent to 70 per cent of their regions' transportation funds on transit systems that carry only 1 per cent to 4 per cent of passenger travel.

- Has O'Toole ever visited Tokyo? or Hong Kong, or London, or NYC, or heck, even Toronto? There are so many cities out there that rely heavily on public transit yet are so economically successful.

6) The promises that planners make are simply impossible to keep.

- The reason why our promises are hard to keep is because we are constantly challenged by single-minded politicians who worry more on whether they could win the next election than on what's good for the public. It's not that we don't want to keep our promises, but how can we when we constantly face heavy political pressure, NUMB-IYSWIM, and budget constraints?

Sorry but O'Toole just pisses me off. I find it funny how he used Portland as his example, when that city is documented as one of the most well-planned cities in the world. His lack of consideration for the environmental costs to rural farms, to ecosystems, and to water contamination proves that this dude just does not see the whole picture. Urban planners have too much power? PLEASE. It's because planners are so low on the hierarchal chain of power that urban problems like congestion, poor transit systems, and poorly designed neighbourhoods, all of which O'Toole refers to, were allowed to occur. Read the article - the comments that readers made to his article are worth checking out.