Como algunos saben, estoy en el proceso de completar mi doctorado en planificación urbana. Muchos de mis amigos creen que eso quiere decir que estoy estudiando como definir el ancho ideal de una calle, o que tarifa podría maximizar los ingresos del área de parquímetros. La verdad es que la disciplina es más que eso. Al menos debería de serlo.

Este año los planificadores urbanos de Estados Unidos cumplen 100 años de haberse agremiado formalmente, y se han publicado una larga serie de artículos sobre el tema. Tras leerlos, preparé el siguiente texto, en el que resumo un poco mis ideas sobre los retos que enfrenta la disciplina. Está en inglés, y lleno de referencias a las lecturas de una de mis clases (pues aproveché y lo entregué como tarea, je), por lo que me disculpo de antemano si no está totalmente claro. Sin embargo creo que el argumento se sostiene. Espero que les parezca interesante.

What have we learned after one hundred years of organized planning practice? After going through this week’s readings, I get the feeling that planners in 2009 are at the same intellectual place of their forefathers in 1909. The tension between politics and science, between socially concerned Marsh and technically driven Olmstead, still illustrate the most important debates in the field. Is the discipline immersed in some sort of cyclical reinvention of the same dilemmas?

The storyline seems repetitious. A “problem” is clearly identified – congestion in 1909, or blight in 1950, or sprawl in 1990 or climate change today- which captures the imagination of reformers. These policy entrepreneurs first try to rationalize it, approaching it as a technical challenge. Data is gathered, alternatives contrasted, a solution adopted and implemented. Yet, results seldom meet expectations. Turns out, always, that “complexity” gets in the way. Private interests come in the way of public good. Implementers either lack needed information or sufficient expertise, or choose to further their personal professional and political goals. Minorities that are most affected by the chosen “solution” organize against it, more effectively than disinterested majorities that benefit little. We know the drill, and yet again and again declare ourselves surprised and disgruntled with the results.

Even planners educated when the folly of urban renewal first became evident and when the civil rights movement emerged victorious, surprisingly privilege technical, top down, “comprehensive”, solutions to problems such as those posed by rebuilding New Orleans, or by accelerated urbanization in China. After much talk about the desirability of citizen participation, planning continues to be a mystifying activity to the broader population. The examples discussed in class by Professor Fung provide reason to hope, but also illustrate how participation can easily become yet another tool for those keen on ‘capturing’ planning practice. To the average citizen, the planning professional is still more like a distant judge than like a friendly guide, more like a surgeon than a like a counselor.

Examples of the LULU (Locally Unwanted Land Uses) and BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone) syndromes are everywhere, and yet the planner’s default strategy is to justify projects (and secure political legitimacy) through technically sound cost-benefit analyses, instead of listening to the public’s stories and proactively looking for ways to accommodate or compensate losers. Just now I am reminded of the unsuccessful attempt to build a new airport for Mexico City in 2000, and the tension currently surrounding the project to build a new refinery in the State of Hidalgo. Both projects were planned “by experts”, presented as fait accompli to the broad public, and only seriously negotiated with the affected population in the face of loud protests.

This is not new. In fact history is plagued with examples in which grand plans fail or perform short of expectations (like those described in Scott’s “Seeing like a State”). In this era of fast and massive urban expansion, cases in which good politics are more important than technical soundness will abound (like those of Arlington and Poletown). Yet the discipline continues to fall short on providing practitioners with robust frameworks that acknowledge planning “as a political process”.

We agree that planning practice implies choices about the allocation of resources, and that therefore it cannot be disconnected from politics. Yet the “rational paradigm persists” (Baum), and planners who are challenged continue to “retreat to technology” (Selznick). From that safe podium, planners preach their truth, knowing that if politics gets in the way their conscience can rest. At least they gave it a shot.

The “solutions” to today’s planning problems seem technically well grounded. Planner-activists like Andres Duany, or Myron Orfield, or Anthony Flint, or Gerald Frug, or even Al Gore tell us that they “know” what to do: Smart growth, metropolitan governance, “transect” zoning, mobility on demand, transit demand management, carbon sequestration and a long etcetera. Their solutions are accepted by many as desirable and appear to be technically sound; yet their proposals are seldom implemented. Like the planners of generations past, these authors soon come face to face with the political messiness on the ground.

Soon planners rediscover that scientific, comprehensive, rational planning is a myth, the discipline appears to hit a wall. Different generations of planners have tried different alternative approaches to the problem posed by politics, only to realize their ineffectiveness, limitations or negative side effects. Progressive-era reformers suggested shielding planning from politics through non-partisan elections and referenda, only to open the door for parochialism. The civic-rights era planners contended that we should embrace politics, developing concepts like “advocacy planning” (Davidoff), which proved hard to scale up. Citizen participation and transparency today attempt to formalize planning as a political process, but clearly risk implementation stalemate and imply big price tags. The fact that the planning field keeps returning to the same question suggests that the political conundrum is still not solved.

If we agree that politics is an unavoidable factor, what is modern day policy prescription? Should practitioners play their cards like planners in the Twin Cities, reaching only for the low hanging fruits, concerning themselves only with their superior’s happiness and with their own political survival? Many practitioners, perhaps most, still do. But if a planner chooses to think of his profession in larger, more ambitious terms, what should he do? Almost half a century has passed since Altshuler’s classic book was published. Yet his closing remarks still ring true: “the question is not whether decisions must be made on the basis of simplified assumptions about the real world; it is rather which complicating factors shall be de-emphasized, how significance shall be judged, and what the substance of the assumptions shall be”.

The current urban politics literature has outlived its usefulness as roadmap for planners. Peterson concludes that regardless of “who governs”, developmental policies will be systematically emphasized, even if some limited attention to redistribution is necessary to grease the machinery. Stone adds that within the constrained policy space allowed by the dictums of economic development, informal and systematic dealings between local powerbrokers and interest groups shape urban policy. Yet these insights fail to teach much beyond the diagnostic. If developmental concerns dominate, and if agendas are controlled by a clearly defied local regime, is planning still relevant? If so, what is the discipline’s role? How should planners navigate political reality without becoming superfluous?

After 100 years, the answer to the last question is disappointing. Planners continue to justify their existence by claiming “expertness” and by suggesting to the broader polity ownership of the “solution” to the “problems” of the modern age. This is most evident after reading Birch and Silver’s piece on the centennial of planning practice in the United States. I am astounded by the list of “tools” that they consider indispensable for professionals in the field entering into the XXI century. “Rational” verbs like calculate, estimate, design, predict and formulate dominate the conversation. Only two out of ten professional capacities listed refer to the need to interact with diverse interests, to educate the public about alternatives and to communicate with the civilian population that lives beyond the walls of City Hall.

Birch and Silver identify a new “solution area” for modern day planning: sustainability and green cities, and call for practitioners to acquire the relevant technical expertise as a matter of survival. Yet, will technical tools be enough to implement our desired solutions? Will China lower its carbon emissions simply by being confronted by Al Gore’s graphs? Would Father Lynnehan be swayed into supporting the red line extension by a planner’s calculations demonstrating the economic benefits of agglomeration in Arlington? Not likely.

The preeminence of the political challenges faced by planning practice is most evident in Latin America. The urban landscape in cities of this continent is one of a “sea of unplanning”, with problems similar to those that concerned planners in the progressive era: congestion, lack of basic services, accelerated population growth. As in 1909, rational discourse continues to dominate the field and the typical approach to solving planning problems is still mostly of technical nature. “Problem solvers”, particularly architects and engineers, fill the ranks of planning practice.

Despite a recent history of democratization and decentralization, the discipline’s success stories in Latin America usually refer to a “visionary” leader that “knew what to do” and that “was able to inflict change”. Planners read case studies about Jaime Lerner in Curitiba and about Enrique Peñalosa in Bogota, a breed of planner/politicians that closely resemble Daniel Burnham and Robert Moses. The success of bus rapid transit (BRT) technology, and the emergence of successful public space interventions triggered planner’s excitement in a way that reminds of the City Beautiful movement. Officials from all over Latin America now make trips to Curitiba and Bogota with the same admiration and expectation as early planners visited Chicago. These role models suggest that politics is a hindrance, that comprehensive planning is possible and that enlightened planners embody the public interest (even if the public is not able to articulate it).

Yet, the stories of Curitiba and Bogota are more the exception than the rule. Few planner-politicians have the enlightened vision of Lerner and Peñalosa, and fewer still count with the political capital to ram their reforms through. Last January, I worked with a team from MIT as consultant for the Mayor of Cartagena, Colombia. The issue posed was how to relocate an informal settlement from downtown to a new “affordable housing complex” in the periphery of the city. It was soon clear that the project was urban renewal at its best. Residents might obtain legal tenure of their abode, and perhaps better quality services, but at the cost of displacement and loss of community ties. Soon after our arrival, it was clear that residents would not go peacefully, especially when rumor broke out that a hotel would be built in the soon to be razed neighborhood. Planners made hollow-sounding rational arguments. Residents only saw a political reality.

The result of the Cartagena relocation project was stalemate. The city government is still building its affordable housing complex, but residents in the informal settlement will not go peacefully. A similar stalemate was reached in the case of the aforementioned Mexico City airport. Landowners would not accept any compensation, and the airport project was postponed even as the current one is over capacity. The reality is that politics dominates planning practice in Latin America, even as planners cling to technical expertise and claims of rationality as a way to legitimize their practice.

To restate that planning is a political process is, by now, to suggest the obvious. However, instead of shaping practice to incorporate this insight, the “rational paradigm persists”. After a project in one side of town is derailed by failure to properly account for politics, planners typically undertake new projects in the other side of town following the same rational approach. They might be aware of the problem, but apparently lack sound practical alternatives.

This topic is one that continues to intrigue me, and hope to pursue related research in Mexico in the near future.

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