Flickr user Addison Berry
Vast seas of parking are one of many eyesores that can be avoided by planning for people, not cars.
Old habits die hard, as many people are finding out over the next 40-odd days as they give up swearing or chocolate or wasting time on social media in observation of Lent. We at MPC got to talking about what habits planners ought to kick to the curb for good, and very quickly we came up with this Top 10 list (in no particular order):
- Mandy: Using meaningless jargon when talking to non-planners. We at MPC are as guilty of this as everybody else (interjurisdictional collaboration, anyone?!). Here’s a handy list from Atlantic Cities; have you used any of them today?
- Kara: Using acronyms all the time. Especially when talking with non-planners, who are completely annoyed by it, but also with peers when they may not be familiar with which group you are referring to.
- Marisa + Kara: Setting up a table and chairs (and maybe some planters) and calling that Placemaking. Creating great places is about the process of people coming together to determine what ‘great’ means in their community, and then programming for that. It’s much, much less about money and much, much more about people.
- Abby: Treating water like it’s free. It costs money to get water to drinking standards, so wasting it through leaks, over-watering lawns, using it for flushing toilets and generally paying too little for it wastes our natural resources and our money.
- Abby: Thinking of our region’s three states—Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin—as competitors instead of partners. In a highly globalized world, the Chicago region has to compete with international regions to succeed. Our resources should be spent making the tri-state region the best it can be, rather than competing with our neighbors in a race to the bottom.
- Breann: Creating isolated and obviously cheap affordable housing. The region should strive to create integrated neighborhoods where a range of housing types blend together seamlessly, as is the case with Grove Apartments in Oak Park, Ill. Supported by the Regional Housing Initiative, the development is an example of quality design and construction located near transit, groceries stores and schools.
- Ariel: Planning for automobiles. We’ve gotten so used to cars, we’ve started counting them as the important factor instead of the human beings inside them.
- Abby: Designing properties to dump clean water into sewers. Before rain falls on the ground, it’s relatively clean. Instead of directing it to sewers and having to pay to treat it before dumping into a river doesn’t make sense when we could design properties to capture the water to reuse it for watering lawns and flushing toilets.
- Chrissy: Developing outside of transit. We’ve set a regional goal of doubling transit ridership by 2040 and we can take a big step toward that goal simply by developing near transit. Region wide, within a quarter mile of rail transit there is opportunity for a half million new residents and 100 million sq. ft. of commercial space.
- Tim: Cutesy presentations. While we’re all for people with passion, there is a time and place for everything. Unbridled enthusiasm to the point of unprofessionalism really harms rather than helps your case. (This goes for everybody, not just planners.)
Did we miss anything? Leave a comment below!