I ran across this excellent piece from Thomas Campanella in Design Observer, discussing the deadly impact of Jane Jacobs on the planning profession. Campanella is a professor of planning at UNC-Chapel Hill’s Department of City and Regional Planning. I share it because I’ve encountered many of the same issues in my relatively brief time in the profession. An excerpt:
And all along I kept wondering: Why did this have to come out of a coffee shop and a classroom? Where were the planners? Why didn’t the town or county planning office act on this opportunity? A moment ago I argued that the public lacks the knowledge and expertise to make informed decisions about planning. If that’s the case, what does it say about our profession when a group of citizens — most with no training in architecture, planning or design — comes up with a very good idea that the planners should have had? When I asked about this, the response was: “We’re too busy planning to come up with big plans.” Too busy planning. Too busy slogging through the bureaucratic maze, issuing permits and enforcing zoning codes, hosting community get-togethers, making sure developers get their submittals in on time and pay their fees. This is what passes for planning today. We have become a caretaker profession — reactive rather than proactive, corrective instead of preemptive, rule bound and hamstrung and anything but visionary. If we lived in Nirvana, this would be fine. But we don’t. We are entering the uncharted waters of global urbanization on a scale never seen. And we are not in the wheelhouse, let alone steering the ship. We may not even be on board.
Lots of interesting stuff to chew on in the piece. I will say that vision isn’t in short supply amongst individual planners – from directors down to new staff – but articulating that vision within planning’s narrowed authority can be difficult.
Anyone in the field (or observing it from afar) should give it a read. I’m curious to hear what others think.
Skip reading that article, and instead pick up Jacobs’ other books. Campanella is just a cheerleader for planning, and uninterested in how cities actually work. I don’t think he read “Death and Life…” in order to learn anything, but rather to criticize it. He’s giving the same rallying cry that planners gave in 1961 in opposition to her book. “We’re an important profession! Listen to us, don’t listen to this crazy uneducated housewife! We know what we’re talking about, seriously! You can tell by our principles!”
Dave,
I have read Jacobs’ other books. I’m re-reading Economy of Cities right now, actually.
I also don’t think Campanella is criticizing Jacobs’ content at all. I don’t know of anyone who really dismisses it. You’ll also note how later in the article Campanella notes Jacobs’ frustration with the lack of vision employed by planners in Toronto later in her life. He’s writing a critique of how the profession responded to Jacobs, not a critique of Jacobs’ content.
Exactly: He’s not addressing the content of the book at all, just the impact.
The actual content of her works and the impact they had on the profession are quite different. There’s a stark contrast between her advocacy and her ideas. She said in interviews that she wanted to be remembered for her ideas, which she implied were in her books. In her books she could be solid and clear. In her advocacy in real life, she would compromise for the sake of achieving some change.
So the use of a phrase from her activism as evidence of her somehow thinking that planners should have a vision is a bit misleading.
The sad part about the whole thing is that it doesn’t question what Jacobs might have gotten right, what serious flaws there might be in the planning profession. The article seems too much written in defense of planning, uncritical of the idea that planners should be a great profession. And why on earth does he think education is the answer? Oh, right, because he’s a professor.
I learned a lot in planning school, but if I had it all to do over again, I would have skipped graduate school entirely and just read Jacobs. Especially after reading her critique of higher education in “Dark Age Ahead.”
I strongly object to Campanella’s notion that if an idea is good, planners “should have had” it. Ideas can and should come from anywhere. Experts cannot and should not have the monopoly on originating great ideas. Imagine what the web would be like today if only people credentialed in the IT expertise of 10-20 years ago were allowed to innovate there.
For more on this line of thought, see here:
http://www.humantransit.org/2011/05/the-death-of-the-expert.html
Jarrett,
I don’t necessarily disagree, but I also think Campanella’s context was appealing to a different idea. It’s not that planners should have the monopoly on these kinds of ideas, but that they’ve been so bogged down in mundane day-to-day red tape that they don’t have the capacity in their careers to explore those ideas.
Speaking personally, I know many planners who have lots of good ideas but very few means to channel them within the current professional framework. I certainly didn’t think Campanella was suggesting that non-planners not be allowed to enter into the fray.
I think Campanella is arguing not that professional planners ought to have a monopoly on vision, but that they’ve ceded the capacity to have vision thanks to various rules and regulations.