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The Challenge of Change

By Jerrold Bridges

Change has always been a fact of life.  Today, however, change is happening at a magnitude and speed, which most often results in reactive planning rather than proactive planning.  Such rapid change has presented new challenges to institutions as well as individuals.  Perhaps the most important question today is how to manage change.  This challenge requires not only constant innovation but also constant reassessment of actions.  Responding to this challenge reminds me of the words of Alfred North Whitehead that “the art of progress is to preserve order amid change, change amid order.”

To often we think of change strictly in the sense of technology because of its overwhelming presence in our lives rather than reminding ourselves that invariably all change stems from good ideas.  For it is in the realm of ideas that the seeds for change are planted.  Yet, the “progress train” many times ignores the fact that most good ideas are nurtured and grown with a good “old fashioned” helping of common sense and an understanding of the past.

As planning practitioners in the public realm, it is our responsibility not to forget the importance of planting the seeds for positive change.  Planting these seeds often requires educating others to the benefits or limits of change.  The first requirement of good planning should be education, for oneself and for others.  With the advent of ISTEA and TEA-21, a renewed emphasis was placed on the importance of planning and public participation.  Should we not be asking if part of that equation of planning and public participation include education?  This lesson was driven home to me six years ago in Madison, Wisconsin.  A sign in the planning department plainly stated that their first job was not to regulate, but to educate.

Education, like public participation, is a two way street.  It is our responsibility to not only offer education but to be open to educating ourselves as well.  At the same time we must question ourselves as planners about the validity of both old and new ideas. Nowhere is this more evident than the current debates about urban design. 

Several years ago our MPO was awarded a Transportation and Community System Preservation (TCSP) grant for livable communities research.  A primary component of our research has been in the area of design.  Great physical design has always been at the heart of great planning since antiquity.  History illuminates that great design, whether in a large city or a small village, helped to shape other aspects of community and provided the unifying aspects for developing the concept of “community”.  Ancient Greeks understood the importance of design and its impact on the “polis”.  However, it was the loss of good design and an over reliance on rigid codes and regulations that have witnessed planning’s demise of shaping more livable communities.  This loss of community is based on the fact that so much of urban life and its patterns of daily activity have been decimated by the current layouts and designs of our communities.  Where physical design of our cities was once geared toward a life of the social and civic community it is now one of scattered and lost continuity of place.

Opening our thoughts to challenge is often difficult when those ideas challenge what we do or believe.  But it is precisely the fact that we challenge those competing thoughts that often produces a better solution.  The current debate between the advocates of “new urbanism” and the traditional “suburban paradigm” offers a good example of my point.  New Urbanism has presented a whole new paradigm of planning that provides very viable competing ideas on good design, environmental benefits, cost savings for infrastructure, and alternative travel.  In our haste to accept new ideas, we sometimes forget to be rigorous in the analysis of why they may or may not be better.  Putting ideas to the test is what ultimately produces more viable acceptance for change if it is merited.  One our agency’s staff in a recent newsletter commentary recently illustrated a good example of this thought process.  Hopefully, you will take the time to read it and know that challenging change with good “old fashioned” common sense is as important as accepting that change also.

Commentary on New Urbanism’s New Challenge

By Jeff Collins

According to a recent report sponsored by the Congress for the New Urbanism, an increasing percentage of the American public is poised to financially embrace “walkable” and “smart growth” communities over the coming years. The announcement comes as welcome news to many planners who, over the past several years, have spent considerable time and energy campaigning to see that New Urbanist principles were implemented into their community comprehensive plans, ordinances, and development codes. Indeed, the marketplace success of New Urbanism constitutes a deserved, if not short-term, triumph for planners and livable community advocates nationwide. But continued success will require ongoing guidance and involvement from the planning community.

A recent article in the February 2002 edition of APA’s Planning explores the experience of Huntersville, a small town fifteen miles north of Charlotte, NC on the cusp of development. Fearing that their town would become just another sprawling suburb, Huntersville officials worked diligently to create and pass a development code heavily influenced by the principles of Traditional Neighborhood Development and New Urbanism. But as local developers adjusted to the new Huntersville code and the prevailing market, loopholes were exposed and exploited. When the dust finally settled, the town was saturated with developments featuring “narrow, bungalow-lined streets interspersed with the odd row of townhouses.”

It wasn’t long before former Huntersville mayor Randy Quillen and other town officials began to question the success of their well-meaning code. “(The new developments) are all the same,” noted Quillen. “What we really need now are some good old-fashioned cul-de-sac neighborhoods, just to break up the monotony.”

The Huntersville scenario serves to introduce some important questions to the planning community.  Namely, what happens when New Urbanist principles are implemented in the extreme? And is a city filled with New Urbanist look-alikes really any more aesthetically pleasing than typical suburban monotony? It seems to me that the solution to Huntersville’s problem, as well as many of the problems that planners face in their own communities, resides in variety and diversity. Rather than limiting ourselves to a single planning movement, we must continue to support a range of housing choices and developments, while remembering that the most important element in community building is good design.

While combating sprawl, the Town of Huntersville, NC learned a lesson familiar to planning professionals everywhere—that it is not so much an idea as its execution that counts. Selling the idea of friendly, convenient, safe, environmentally sensitive, walkable neighborhoods to the public is relatively easy. However, as New Urbanism enters the mainstream—a stage in which the practical realities of home building will come into play, and the New Urbanist movement will confront marginalization at the hands of developer “efficiency” and “cost-effectiveness,”—planners will confront fresh challenges. Overcoming these obstacles will require a renewed commitment on our part to plan with intelligence, perseverance, patience, and foresight.  The promise of New Urbanism may be bright, but we must not let it become blinding.

Jeff Collins is a Project Planner and Writer/Editor for the Madison County Council of Governments.