No Certainty Attached

I’m still perusing the newly released draft of the new Master Plan, and I am blogging some notes on what I’m finding. I discussed some of the interesting bits of the implementing of the overarching “plan” in my last post, now here is an overall impression of the bits (and it’s only a fraction of the whole) that I’ve covered.

First I’d like to remind everyone who has not read any of it that what in your mind might constitute a “Master Plan” may not bare any resemblance to this “Master Plan”.

It doesn’t take much looking to realize this is not a hopped up Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance (CZO). The CZO may be a part of the “Master Plan” and based it, but the plan is even remotely a land use regulation. It is more an amalgamation of ideas, approaches and general strategies that frequently passes the buck, and often veers perilously close to utter irrelevance and calls for touchy-feely kumbaya moments as a matter of public policy.

In the web introduction we are told:

Each of the Master Plan elements will include an implementation and action plan identifying WHAT should be done, HOW it should be done, WHO should do it, WHEN it should be done, and WHERE the funding could come from. The new Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance will reflect the land use policies in the Master Plan as they become available. MP

Well, that sounds really good, and the document is largely based on the premise of saying it being equivalent to doing it. But far more often than I’d like, I found myself having a real hard time getting any handle on WHAT exactly were they even suggesting, HOW any of this, outside of planner fantasyland, was feasible, WHO might fill the role of this shadowy and undefined entity that would do all this, WHEN the vague “someday” promises would materialize, and WHERE the magic money machine is or the political priority to fund anything more than the mandated CZO.

The only thing that is “real” in the whole plan seems to be that CZO. The rest is good information and some pretty great ideas, with a vague notion of “implementation” largely based on wishful thinking with some as of yet unseen force that will motivate those unnamed “leaders” to action.

I have often heard that past planning efforts were disappointing. Plans were summarily shelved never to see the light of day. While we are, in any analysis better off with this in place, the CZO alone is a huge step, I can really see no overriding reason why much of this isn’t slated for a similar fate.

I am sure someone out there is about to spit all over their screen bleating the “the people will demand it” mantra. Sure, it’s real inspirational, and civic action can push through on some limited fronts, but it is shear lunacy to base anything of substance on the hopes of some grand united front in a town where “transparency” is a code word. And I’m not buying the “give the people and neighborhoods real political power” mantra either until you can demonstrate that those “neighborhoods” will not suddenly find fifty new members show up at their next meeting and replace them with same “people” who have be on the graft gravy train for decades. But that’s another issue…

I'm working on a semi-fisk of one of the sections so you can see exactly what I'm talking about...since yall are too lazy to actually read the thing yourselves (at least a lot of you).