Solve Problems With Skill And Talent
Integrate Places, Public Services, Programs, And Policies
In planning practice, the places, services, programs, and policies in a city should be integrated with each other. Different government departments or agencies may work in isolated “silos” that separate decisions about the diverse components of a city: utilities, circulation, social and economic activity, environmental conditions, and visual appearance. Ideally these different aspects of planning should dovetail and support each other. In practice, however, communities must divide the tasks within separate subgroups, each with separate rules and budgets. This division of decision-making creates inevitable barriers to effective coordination. Part of the planner’s task is to help overcome the lack of integration in ways that help the community, avoid additional harm, and still allow for organizational efficiency.
The planner must learn how this process of social decision-making works and, at the same time, try to advance good decisions based on experience, analysis, and talent. Many planners work in teams. Sometimes the team of planners addressing a specific problem comes from individuals assigned to different departments, each with a different vantage point. For example, in urban design, multiple planners, each with a different organizational responsibility, might provide expertise and talent regarding diverse design issues such as aesthetic quality, symbolism, functionality, spatial composition, and integration with social activities.
When a planning process begins, a project manager (or equivalent) usually maps out a sequence of tasks, desired outcomes, phasing, staff assignments and related factors. For routine problems – especially problems that have been encountered and solved previously – past project management techniques are helpful. When, however, problems are more complex, ill-defined, and require higher levels of integration and coordination, planners have to modify the workflow to address unforeseen issues. Resources may need to shift, and assignments changed. Outcomes from one phase of the work may not dovetail with the next phase. We have all experienced these behaviors in team projects. Since planners usually encounter the most complex and ill-defined problems in communities it is important to embrace shifting patterns of teamwork. As solutions evolve so too does our definition of the problem and the need to change both the plan and the process.
Learn Problem-Solving Through Practice
From within an organizational setting the planner needs to use the tools and resources at hand. No single theory, technique or method will work in all cases. More importantly, just because planners know how to use a tool does not mean it is the right tool. A new piece of software may draw a building, street, or public place but that does not mean the drawing is a good solution — it may look “professional” but it is actually a bad idea. That is, sometimes “artificial” intelligence can be “superficial” intelligence. Put another way, using many tools and instruments may be necessary but may not be sufficient. Think of tools as if they were musical instruments. Assemble teams in which planners offer the talent to play the right instruments.
Planners develop their talents tacitly, through practice. They learn skills through teamwork. The most important management team-building skill is learning which tools work best for each task. Too many tools can obscure good ideas and waste resources. Ignoring unfamiliar tools can become equally foolish if not arrogant. The tasks described in this essay come from a menu of techniques and approaches prevalent throughout my career in the upper Midwest. Even so, successful selection and application of tools will always be different for each problem.
When planners must evaluate communities, pictures can easily (and appropriately) dominate numbers. Planners may learn more by examining the visual reality of a place than by quantitative analysis. Use both modes of evaluation together, but never numbers alone. These pictures reveal decades of knowledge, but you have to learn to see it. Seattle, 1972.
Start By Scanning The Context Of The Problem
Years ago, planners would start a project with a method dubbed a “windshield survey”. This phrase made a simple, informal activity, sound like a more formal method. The “windshield survey” from the past has evolved into multiple observational systems today. We can drive, walk, or bike through our communities or tour them virtually. We can gather more information faster. We can find knowledge through a computer search (although we cannot verify its validity). As we learn, we do not always understand all that we are seeing or how to interpret our perceptions. Sometimes planners find the most useful information through casual conversation, informal activity or a surprise image. No matter how we do it, planners must start with a robust, multipronged approach to finding relevant insights about the community in which we are working. The analysis of the context of our project does not suddenly stop when the next task begins but continues throughout the process. The act of planning should always induce or uncover new knowledge that was not present when the planning process began. If planners do not learn something new as they prepare their plan, the did not do it the right way.
Tools for the formal collection of information are well documented. Planners gather information about socioeconomic characteristics, physical conditions, programs and regulations, environmental data, demographics about income, age, and race, and so on. Mistakenly planners think that more information is better when, in practice, too much information or too much detail can be harmful by obscuring important facts (like the needles obscured in a haystack). Excessive information gathering also consumes resources that could be better spent on less formal but more revealing inquiries about a community (like chatting with residents in a local hangout).
By beginning with a robust overview of a community, we can learn the big issues first – what is driving a community to seek out a new plan. Knowing these issues at the outset helps us filter information effectively. The overwhelming volume of online information actually makes it harder to analyzing a problem. Planners must subjectively select the filters or the lens through which they observe a community. Perhaps this is more akin to the role of a curator whose talent determines the art to be selected. That is, planners must curate the knowledge they use. For planners, selective perception is not necessarily a shortcoming, but in fact may be an essential talent.
When commencing a planning project every community group or subgroup can usually state the specific aspirations they have for the future. What may seem like a critical problem to planners (such as economic hardship and social divisiveness) may not be a priority for a community who might emphasize aspirations regarding traffic or utilities or property taxes. Planners need to listen carefully and also provide well-structured questions to find underlying issues or needs. Currently there are several types of on-line survey systems that can help facilitate this process. However, the key is asking the right questions with the right audience. Overly complex or ambiguous questions can yield misleading answers which, in turn, can create dissatisfaction, or even harmful decisions, later on in the planning process.
Learn the History of the Situation
In recent years almost all of our plans begin with a section on the “history” of planning in the community. Whatever the current issues might be, they rarely began yesterday. Major issues have roots that can be found easily in past plans and statements of public policy. As a general principle planners should not reinvent plans completely just because they can. We need to think of a “new” plans as an incremental improvement to the prior plans. When we review the planning history of a community, we can often find many good ideas that were overlooked. At times, past plans were on the right track but were derailed because of internal or external political reasons that did not diminish the value of the plan. Examining tradition is essential to true innovation.
In addition, the history of a community – or an individual neighborhood – reveals new insights into the social and economic history of the people who lived there. In one of my prior essays, I noted that Walter Benjamin (in his collected essays published as the Arcades Project) described the buildings in a Parisian neighborhood as a poetic collection of memories and ideas. This type of insight does not come from examining the dates of construction or names of the styles or the designers. Yet this type of social history can be the best foundation for good plans.
Another aspect of making plans based on history of the community concerns the legacy of past populations. While current residents and officials always assume that the plans must prioritize current aspirations, it is also worth considering – and respecting – aspirations of prior populations. Historic preservation represents more than saving physical artifacts – it is also about remembering the past as a way to help enlighten the future. In recent years, for example, it might have helped many of our commercial corridors if we remembered the lessons in planning that could have been learned from past pandemics.
One day in the life of Grand Central Terminal reveals the complexity, value, and cultural history of a so-called “transportation” facility. This place, like many comparable facilities around the world, operates as a small city where the economic base of the immediate community is no more or less than the provision of movement. New York, 1967.
Propose Plan Solutions As Soon As Feasible
One of the most typical dilemmas in urban planning concerns the level of detail to show participants regarding future options. For example, when urban designers show highly detailed, sometimes photorealistic images, the community often expects that precise physical outcome to be built when, if fact, the photorealism provides a sensory experience not a construction document. The opposite problem can also occur if planners show overly general solutions which, in turn, fail to satisfy a community when those abstractions become a concrete reality that was unexpected.
Sooner or later, however, a physical plan has to include recommendations for solutions. If planners wait until the very end of the process to propose solutions, there is little time left to make modifications. Solutions should be proposed as soon as planners think they have reasonable suggestions. The sooner planners can get feedback from the community the sooner they can narrow down the options. My rule of thumb is that it requires at least three iterations to get close to a good solution:
a. The first iteration of a solution should be clearly emphasized as a “working draft” in which some drawings look intentionally sketchy while others may have reasonable details.
b. The second iteration – perhaps called a “preliminary draft” – incorporates the changes and details that come from the responses offered by the client and other consultants and persons with expertise about the project
c. The third iteration – the so-called “final draft” prior to approval – should be the last recommendation with potential future change described as possibilities
During these three major iterations, other minor revisions often occur almost on a daily basis. These iterations must always reflect the planner’s professional expertise, intuition, tradition, and critical judgment.
Finally, while the above lists are useful checklists for planning procedures, the actual content of the plan should be structured in way that is readily understandable without too much jargon, and focused on the mission of the plan. Many models for structuring different types of plans can be found online, especially with regard to designing public places. In my work, the general model we have used effectively is to show six factors that make up the plan:
• Historic features and key components of the area
• Visual character (lots of pictures and design guidelines)
• Circulation (multi-modal types of movement, major and minor routes, pedestrianization and parking)
• Environmental features (parks, gardens, natural areas)
• Social an economic activity (not just abstract land use but all of the types of local activities)
• Sustainability (in terms of operating costs and maintenance)
Define the Costs and Benefits of the Physical Plan
After the first presentation of a solution the inevitable audience question arises: What will it cost? There is no answer that will satisfy someone who basically dislikes or does not trust government officials. The best way to avoid this problem is to provide answers during (or even at the beginning) of a presentation. The key is to list both costs and benefits — not just for the local government client, but for others in the private sector and other public entities. Most planning texts suggest accounting methods for properly quantifying costs and benefits in terms of dollars. In practice, public audiences (including elected officials) may prefer less mathematical descriptions that also include qualitative and quantitative outcomes. This should be applied to both capital and operating costs.
Audiences usually look for ballpark estimates. In fact, overly precise estimates can be misleading. Most audiences understand that initial plans offer general opinions without specificity. Showing comparable costs and benefits from other projects helps significantly, especially if the explanations include images of outcomes. Planners should also list the major uncertainties underlying costs and benefits and the key topics that require further investigation. For most communities, the obvious costs are local tax dollars, and the key benefits are increased tax revenue. Other costs and benefits include other aspects of health, safety, and welfare. This may include new jobs (or lost jobs), service increases (or decreases), and other amenities or liabilities.
Use of future resources is also a critical issue impacting aspirations. A community can aspire to a specific aspiration which requires far more resources than available. Also, some resources may be anticipated from the private sector – such as a property investor – while others come from public funds. Creating visions that cannot be realized – overlay wishful thinking – may not help the community but lead to disappointments and a distrust of the planning process in the future.
Resources for realization of plans do not just include capital and operating expenses but also human resources. Most communities have employees and departments whose daily work assignments leave little room for new responsibilities. Plans which require new initiatives from current staff should be confirmed as feasible within the existing organizational structure.
Consider Implementation From the Beginning
Plans should be implemented. Otherwise, why plan? Even if a plan is completed solely to meet a regulatory, educational, or political commitment it should still contain recommendations intended for implementation. For example, I have often heard planners state that their plan can help, at least, to educate the community. When, however, you ask how that education will occur proactively the answer often seems lackluster For years, planners have rued “shelf” plans that go nowhere. Today, the plan on the shelf has become the plan online — it’s there but unused. These plans become documents that occupy time and space but do little to help the communities for which they are intended. Why?
Implementation of plans is exceedingly difficult for several reasons: required resources cannot be found; the social and political decision-making process ignores the plan; the organizations and individuals needed to implement the plan fail to comply. None of these obstacles to planning should come as a surprise. In practice, planners should consider these possibilities at the outset of the process.
For planning recommendations which can and should be realized, planners need to be fully cognizant of the human and financial resources that can be deployed. Each community has a different management structure. Even in places which have similar managerial systems, the skill and intentions of the individuals in positions of authority makes a huge difference. At times, just one elected official or staff person can stop a plan from moving forward or become the champion and make it happen.
Implementation issues should be discussed at the very start of the planning process. As indicated above, planners should learn the context of the project which includes the political and administrative conditions in which a plan might be implemented. I have worked on plans in which the local mayor indicated the community needed a plan solely to prove to another agency that a plan existed. At the other end of the spectrum, we have undertaken plans where local leaders indicated they wanted to include feasible redevelopment opportunities for over 20 sites within the community and, within a few years, those projects emerge from the ground up.
When plan components need to be integrated with each other, the implementation process also requires consideration of joint and coordinated actions among multiple organizations and agencies. Many plans require actions from the private sector as well as the public sector. In addition, public sector actions often involve agencies outside the purview of local government. It is not unusual for the implementation of a plan to require city, county, state and federal decisions as well as multiple investments from private companies and not-for-profit institutions.
The age-old saying that you should “not put all your eggs in one basket” applies to almost all implementation plans. We often propose one planning “framework”, within which multiple options are possible. This gives the community a much higher probability of success. For example, in a redevelopment project we may propose one simple geometry for a street and block plan and then indicate multiple investment opportunities which all fit into the same geometry. In this way one plan can actually respond to many social and economic development scenarios. Plans in which each market opportunity requires a different investment in the infrastructure of streets are more likely to fail in comparison to a plan that has one proposed infrastructure with many “market baskets”.
More ambitious, complex, and difficult problems imply an equally difficult process for implementation. Difficulties in implementation may have led to the problem in the first place. This is especially true of public service systems that require multi-level cooperation for systems providing transit, sanitation, safety and security, education, social welfare, housing, public health and so forth.
Which part of a plan comes first depends on many factors. Sometimes the best way forward is to start with what many call “the low-lying fruit” – that is, pick parts of a project that can be implemented quickly in order to catalyze the process. Usually, such projects should be less expensive and rely solely on the resources of the client community. At other times, the first projects are those which represent the most critical issues.
While some projects, when implemented, follow a routine well-known process, most critical planning recommendations have unique factors which requires separate analysis to structure the phasing for implementation. In typical redevelopment planning, the control of a specific property becomes the key to the entire project. Another example concerns regulations in which “entitlement” to construct a new building (or utility line or street) must be confirmed before any other actions are possible. Implementation plans should recognize how phases of investment link to local budgets for capital improvements, budgeting cycles, and election cycles.
A good plan does not imply that all recommendations are realized. In fact, part of the planner’s mission is to show communities ideas that may be beyond their reach. Nevertheless, problematic ideas are worthy of consideration if, for no other reason, than to change local perception and attitudes about the future of the community.
Help Plans Grow (Like Gardens)
Many planning procedures include a final phase of monitoring the proposed recommendations. Effective monitoring allows the planners and the community to learn from the outcomes, modify future phases of implementation and, when needed, update the overall plan. Monitoring a plan demonstrates a commitment. Even if critical components of a plan have failed, monitoring the outcomes provides a method to avoid mistakes in the future.
Monitoring and evaluation procedures can be very detailed, such as measuring the impact of a traffic calming plan on local vehicular movements. Did it work? Did new problems emerge? Do the actions need to be modified? Similarly, long term plans for redevelopment should be monitored. Did the redevelopment occur in a sequence and value that was expected? If not, were the outcomes better or worse? Why? What should we do the next time? Monitoring a plan’s outcomes should be viewed as closing the loop on the planning process and starting on the next plan.
Monitoring plan outcomes came also be viewed as a long term, historical process. What were the outcomes of urban renewal projects? What were the outcomes of the major flood control plans or power generation plans? Did some big plans lead to big disasters? In addition to these types of high profile, often controversial post-planning observations there are other factors which should be looked at from a long-term perspective. Planners and designers, for example, often create guidelines for new construction. Over time we can see if such guidelines had a desirable impact or if they made little difference. In some cases, a new planning effort should begin with a candid evaluation of the past planning efforts. Plans should not repeat mistakes but, at the same time, that should learn from those mistakes, understand what parts of the plan worked effectively, and build this wisdom into the next planning effort.
Find and Use Ideas – Learn Ideas In Practice
Perhaps the most important tool in the planner’s problem-solving arsenal is ideation and critical analysis. Solutions to planning problems come from good ideas. Planners must think critically, evaluate ideas, reinterpret and recombine ideas, and then customize them to the unique situations in which they can be applied effectively. This is the intellectual talent that underlies use of all planning tools and methods. Learning to think and act this way takes a while and requires considerable practice.
A personal note on learning to plan cities:
In the mid 90’s my 8-year-old son came running upstairs, highly excited. With great satisfaction he proclaimed that he had just built a city of 50 million people in less than an hour. I, however, had spent the more than 20 years learning about cities and planning practice. I could not come close to his achievement. When I asked who helped him build this incredible city, he said he did it alone. Remarkable! At that moment I developed a huge distaste for any computer simulations which taught children that they could solve urban problems quickly. Perhaps, if the game designers just improved their skills, they could teach our children to cure cancer in two hours or, with a little luck, achieve world peace in a day. On the other hand, I have always thought the game simulations that could destroy people and places quickly, through violence, had an unfortunately strong element of truth. The suggestions I make in these essays on learning to practice will not help you build a city in an hour, but they could, I hope, help avoid some of the worst mistakes, some of the damage, and, over time, help make a few places better.
Topic Summary
Integrate Places, Public Services, Programs, And Policies
Learn Problem-Solving Through Practice
Start By Scanning the Context of the Problem
Learn the History of the Situation
Propose Plan Solutions As Soon As Feasible
Define the Costs and Benefits of the Physical Plan
Consider Implementation From the Beginning
Help Plans Grow (Like Gardens)
Find and Use Ideas – Learn Ideas In Practice