The (Im)Possibilities of Planning

I just read all the responses to all my submitted comments, most of which were posted here on Amador Community News, to the General Plan Draft Environmental Impact Report. The planners are correct in saying that many of my comments don’t directly relate to “the adequacy of the General Plan”. My comments were critiques of the General Plan itself and its new restrictions on freedom. My primary intent was to inform County residents about ‘what is coming down’. With other of my comments they responded by citing wording that I had read as if I didn’t understand it. But I did and my thrust was lack of trust in how certain wordings of intent and rules would work in the real world along with the broader implications of over regulation. But most of my comments were relegated to their personal opinion category. It seems like what was once commonly called the American way of life is now personal opinion and no longer national consensus.

This entire costly process ignores the uncertain difficulty of knowing the future and committing resources to projections that aren’t yet realities.  I once attended a meeting of long range planners for the Grant Line Road corridor. This narrow rural road without safe shoulders and no turn pocket intersections had become an Elk Grove-Folsom rush hour nightmare. So based on a problem area that emerged almost a decade before, an expensive body of planners and engineers were assembled to design a solution 20 or more years into the future. This included an express bus system with origin and final destination shuttles on each trip end. They did not know what they were doing.  Americans only transfer once. People transfer far more when they don’t have other choices as in Third World countries. Is that what we are becoming as the “expert” class thrives and the road remains dangerous? While I don’t have hard figures handy, common sense would dictate fixing those intersections with frequent high speed collusions first, before the long range studies are financed. Our resources are being misappropriated, ironically creating a long range problem as the misappropriation mistakes cumulatively snowball. But the planning profession has been successful in convincing the politicians that they are the answer and the more the better.

In geology there is the concept of multiple working hypothesizes but in planning all too often the plans and projections take on a life of their own. About 25 years ago I redesigned the Modesto bus system, and as required, used the official plans. They included a significant residential development to the northeast. This happened and went bust in the housing crisis. But even if it hadn’t, there would be no transit potential until a teen age population emerged there in another 15 to 20 years.  However, the bus system’s form was altered to easily plug in a future service from the development area giving one transfer access to most of the city. As common sense awareness dictated no ridership demand has emerged from those developments and there is presently no bus service there. While I solved the problem I’d been given, I often wonder if those changes in the system had become just an inconvenience for most riders. So here the plan became the new reality, but only with a ghostly presence.

So the projections become plans and then morph into prescriptions. These then take on a life of their own and have entered the General Plan discussions here in Amador County. Some people imagine that an alleged exodus of software writers will choose Amador County out of a whole world of possibilities and make us the new beacon of prosperity. While believing in possibilities is basic and essential, it is now a prescription requiring adherence. The belief of these people is so strong that the survival of our railroad which is here and now could be sacrificed to an unlikely vision. A vision based on an activity cauldron that almost always occurs in big cities but in their way of thinking will preserve our rural way of life. This muddled mindset allows our General Plan to have adherents. But its far more than a strict prescription, it is an edict to goosestep into Agenda 21 and the new world order.

What will this new prescriptive planning produce? Many years ago in Amsterdam I took several of their light rail lines from Central Station to their far terminal and back.  When I saw the first few stations in new development areas they seemed like good planning. One got off their train at a plaza with dry cleaning, day care, retail food, etc right there. Americans often run their errands driving home from work and therefore find that a transit trip often necessitates an inefficient second auto trip. However my delight faded rapidly as all the new station areas looked alike. Finally I wanted to scream at the banality. But now these are emerging all across America, with financial backing from Obama, including Sacramento. I worked with those planners on TOD’s (Transit Oriented Developments) and asked this question: a new development at current costs would attract only, for example, a corporate chain dry cleaner over an owner/operator. The convenience would draw customers from the independent dry cleaner a few blocks away who would probably go out of business. Is this what you want? They never answered. But we all know that most unique businesses grow from a small business that is the vision of a single individual. Trader Joe’s, which many locals desired for the Pine Grove Dollar General site, started that way.

Are we talking about ignored factors, unintended consequences or a globalist/Agenda 21 plan? Ultimately it doesn’t matter since the outcome is the same and that outcome is the globalist/Agenda 21 plan. We now have prescription, not freedom. While the individual expressions may seem like clutter to those with overly compulsive desires, the hodge podge can develop its own distinct character. Built environments that succeed and delight are fine grained. This is vastly different that deciding between a rustic or alpine look for the Buckhorn Town Center. Is uniformity safer than freedom now?  Along with general planning morphing into prescriptive planning, the basic assumptions have changed.  Large public parks have always been considered land banks. This can provide a needed site without having to eminent domain someone out of their home or business. Gene Autry’s Museum of the American West endured a herculean struggle to occupy its site in Los Angeles’s Griffith Park in 1988. Just recently George Lucas’s Star Wars Museum got rejected for Chicago’s lakefront collection of public buildings because its site, a parking lot, was deemed critical open space. So we have moved completely from planning that provided for the future to one that contains it. When I got my master’s in planning it was essential to understand that the goal of planning was to create opportunity and zone enough land for affordable choice knowing that future demand will probably change. The context was freedom. That was a democratic attitude I endorsed. But planning has been usurped for very different outcomes.

Certainly, it is common sense to plan for the future. Big problems and bad decisions can be avoided.  Underneath the skyscrapers of downtown Buffalo, NY lies what was judged in the 1960’s as the world’s largest deposit of high grade construction gravel. Apparently the founding French fur traders of the 1750’s didn’t file their EIR. That won’t happen today. But we have situations like Galt allowing new homes too close to our only rail link and inhibiting or constraining current and future use. Not surprisingly the planning establishment’s answer to this is more planners and more regional planning powers. The regional agencies are run by “experts” who know what’s best for us and governed by appointed officials not elected for their specific posts. This is often a new tyranny and the implementation means of the new world order/Agenda 21. These are the people that see our future changing the bed linen of Bay Area tourists and living in service worker ghettos. More regional planning is obviously not the answer. It most likely would not preserve our railroad’s future, but rather endorse its destruction as part of their utopian deindustrialization. The ideological beliefs of the participants are paramount, whatever form the decision making process takes.

The beliefs enshrined in our General Plan and its prescriptions to achieve them are simply people removal. That means you and I. Not all at once, because that would engender public protest, but one by one we will be picked off. Wait until your septic fails or some similar circumstance. Yet some in our community are alarmed over the handful of unmitigatable impacts. Preventing any change, essential if we are to prosper, for a future that is unknown (excepting unforeseen events) reveals a belief in stasis. But that doesn’t exist and only leads to stagnation. Planning should not, and in reality can’t, proscribe a future. But it should, and can, prepare for the future. That is why the General Plan is called general.

Copyright 2016, Mark L. Bennett