By: Diane Benjamin
The City of Bloomington has Master Plans for everything – instead of fixing the roads, they spent MILLIONS of dollars on plans that are now out of date.
Gee, maybe they should just do the essential services citizens want and quit trying to create demand where none exists! (Limited Government – figure it out yet?)
Of course I have a link: http://www.newgeography.com/content/005610-d-j-vu-and-dilemma-planners
In 2016 – travel by car was up 2.8%
In 2016 transit ridership declined 2.3%
Highly urbanized counties are loosing population while suburban areas are flourishing.
“Millennials are starting to find jobs and relocating to the suburbs and smaller cities,” according to a recent Bloomberg article.
(Too bad Bloomington is in Illinois)
“Everything we thought about millennials not buying cars was wrong,” says the title of a Business Insider news story.
The planner is left in a dilemma. How in the world do we do long-range planning if we have so badly missed the mark about the future of mobility and housing choice?
Read the rest of the story yourself.
Too bad nobody at City Hall or on the Council has their head planted firmly in reality. Renner will continue thinking kids want to live downtown and want to bike on the busiest streets.
Common sense disappeared when most citizens failed to vote.
So What
So in summary, planners’ biases might be more relevant than in the past, our foundational knowledge of behaviors and relationships is getting shaky as the world changes in multiple dimensions, we often don’t know how to interpret the public’s aspirations, and the pace of technological change might be undermining our historically infrastructure-intensive strategy for dealing with transportation. So planners have some big challenges and important issues to address to insure scarce resources serve the public well. Responding to that challenge is a noble calling, to be sure. On the other hand, if you are overwhelmed with the challenges planners face, both Uber and Lyft are looking for drivers.
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There is an uncanny parallel between ‘planners’ and weathermen.
Ha ha!
If the planners ever plan the perfect plan, they’ll put themselves out of work which is not a part of their plan. So the real plan that planners plan is to plan on keeping the money coming in to facilitate their plans. That’s their plan and you can plan on it.
Koos and Renner have both watched the propaganda on “stacking areas” and envision their own little utopias where everyone lives in a tiny apartment and rides their bike or walks to their job, the coffeehouse, a trendy restaurant or three and of course a wine centered “bar”, and of course now and then partake of the “culture” such as a concert or art gallery exhibition or a theater presentation seldom venturing far from their enclave – with a city bus (or train) to take them if they dare to venture into the wilds of another neighborhood – OH kind of like many city dwelling Chicagoans live now. I truly believe that is their (Koos and Renner) vision.