London 2024 Day Six
2 days ago
Thursday, October 09, 2008
Why Government Planning Always Fails
I read this Cato piece today published last winter. Interesting -- particularly in light of the impact of the housing bubble the author mentions and also in light of the high cost of housing in Hawaii and the current debate over mass transit in Honolulu. What say you?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I've been trying to think of a single government agency that does a good job and/or that can't be done better in the private sector. There's a lot I don't know and understand obviously, so if there's an agency that is efficient and successful, I would really be curious to hear about it. Of course, you can't really run defense and intelligence agencies in the private sector. Anyway, I've witnessed our really pathetic welfare system and I'm convinced we can do better if the government isn't the administrator. What about incentivizing businesses to give back to their own communities? I have a friend at Oracle who is involved in a new initiative there, called something like "corporate community responsibility", where they are creating a department focused on the company giving back to it's community at the corporate and individual level and creating a culture among the people that it's their responsibility to help with problems in their local communities. Why not reduce the tax burden and encourage and empower people and businesses to give of their own will. I believe people want to give but are so strapped when 35% + of our paycheck goes to the lousy government. Can you sense a bit of bailout related frustration? I just don't believe government is the answer; it's usually the problem. Not totally related to your article, sorry.
interesting and lengthy...
I didn't read it all word for word, but all that planning stuff is what we talked about a lot in school. The project called Pruitt Igoe in Missouri is fascinating to me. It took all the ideas that designers and planners believed would create a thriving community and it quickly became so terrible and out of control with crime that they had to tear it all down. It's crazy to look at the conditions there before they demo-ed it!
I guess that part of it is a lot of things sound great in theory: like dense living and walkable communities, open space, public transit, etc, but in reality things don't follow the predicted path. Portland may be thriving right now, i'm sure there's plenty of disgruntled suburbanites and tree huggers to make it thrive right now. and it seems sustainable, in theory it should be. But if what the author said about Europe is true and alot of people no longer want to live in traditional dense communities, then maybe Portland will eventually stop thriving? I don't know.
But it does seem like a good idea to preserve open space. Much of the country may be open space right now, but we need that open space to be easily accessible to everyone. Having cities without any nature for people to enjoy everyday, but then saying that there's plenty up in Alaska doesn't make sense.
I agree that a lot of times the government messes things up it tries to plan. The suburbs started when the government wanted more people to be able to own their own home and the car made it easy to have those spread out communities.
But the thing I struggle with is what has happened later. The crap we have now in places like Nevada and California, with their suburbs, exurbs and x-exurbs is enough to make me want to tear my face off. It's like Edward Scissorhands communities multiplied by infinity. And we got that stuff because the market gave the people what they want, cheap stucco homes, a yard, a mall with a walmart, McDonalds, Walgreens, etc... and it all looks the same, destroys the land and environment, and now that it's all built, we realize that it failed. But it's what the people wanted! I don't think that the problem is that they just need more roads, because traffic is often the biggest problem with suburban life. The problem is much bigger than that.
The concept of the suburbs seemed perfect in theory, but there are now tons of negative side effects coming out at people back in the day didn't or couldn't have known about.
So, I DO think that planning needs to be there. Maybe not government planning, but more community and local people from various backgrounds and professions figuring out what to do. I think architects need to be more vocal and get more involved in communities.
I'm really just rambling at this point, but to sum up for now, I think Hawaii at least is a special case. Planning is especially important because land and resources are so much more finite. I ride the bus everyday and it isn't empty like they might be in other parts of the county, it's packed and they have had to add more! I think i'm willing to give the rail a try. The author argues that modern life is so fragmented or autonomous that systems like rail don't make sense because everyone is doing their own thing. That's true, but on an island with basically one road that goes around the whole thing with one or two roads that cross the middle, then it just might lend itself to rail use. Plus, rail stations will create areas where development can occur and maybe control the growth into yet developed green space...that's again theoretical and we can't know people will behave how we think, but in Hawaii we must preserve some farm and other land for various things!
sorry this is long and tangential and probably doesn't make sense..
Post a Comment