While the cult of the star architect has soared over the decades and property developers have displaced bankers as the new super-rich, the figure of the local town planner has become comic shorthand for a certain kind of faceless, under-whelming dullard. [...]
“Planning has become unpopular, disconnected from the public and increasingly beholden to the developer rather than the people it is meant to serve.”
— theguardian.com
2 Comments
It's an interesting subject, and even more problematic in the US.
I'd say this isn't a problem unique to urban places or the built environment - the American public seems to despise meaningful planning. Or at least hire politicians who do. Think how long we've argued about where to dump nuclear waste, whether to regulate CO2 emissions, how to reform the income tax or fund social security. Really, anything requiring any sort of public management seems to have been beyond the scope of allowable action.
Is the situation an ongoing reaction against the hard-edged planning of the 1950's-70's that resulted in a national highway system and urban infrastructure improvements but also terrible urban redevelopment? Or is it a reflection of a society too obsessed with individuality to submit to collective action?
Probably both. I hope I outlive it.
I think the public likes good planning as witnessed by countless successful New Urbanist developments. What they are suspicious of is government planning due to the abysmal record of the post war years when cities where dismantled through highway construction and slum clearances while the surrounding country side was paved over.
It dosen't help that the right wing has consistently bashed the government's ability to do anything competently, but also it dosen't help for architects to still be stuck on style when planning is somehting that should be agnostic stylistically. The biggest irony is those who get most hung up on style are the ones who claim its irrelevance the loudest.
Also, who cares if planners aren't cool. Cool people tend to be self involved prats. Even if they tried to be like starchitects (people who flip the bird if you criticze them), it still takjes their work 20-40 years to reach maturity. We just don't have that attention span anymore.
What did Patrik Schumaker just say!!!
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