Planning Commissioners Journal

Reports from Leg 2 of "Circle The USA"

From PCJ Editor Wayne Senville:

I'm back from the second segment of my planned "Circle the USA" travels, covering Detroit; Troy and Flint, Michigan; and Elkhart County and northwestern Indiana.

 

I've filed the following reports. Take a look, and sign up for our Circle the USA blog feed and/or email updates.

 

-- When Rouge Turned Green

-- Preservation or Demolition?

-- Campus Martius Park in Downtown Detroit

-- A Suburb Plans for Change

-- Not Giving Up on Flint, I

-- Not Giving Up on Flint, II

-- Good or Bad Signs in Indiana?

-- A Main Street Succeeds in Tough Times

-- Planning for 46 Miles of Lakeshore

My next segment will include several days in the Chicago area, followed by stops in Kankakee County, Illinois; Dubuque, Iowa; and southern Wisconsin.

 

Again, check out our Circle the USA web site where announcements and reports will be posted.

Zoning Wars

From PCJ Editor Wayne Senville:

There's an interesting article posted online by Michael Saint, titled Carl Von Clausewitz, An historical yet timely perspective on "Zoning Wars."

Saint is founder, CEO, and chairman of The Saint Consulting Group, which provides consulting services related to land use politics. With Saint's permission, I'm reposting some brief excerpts from his article:

"When Prussian solider and writer Carl Von Clausewitz wrote his classic book, "On War" in the 1830's, his words were directed at the philosophy, strategy and tactics of successful ground wars in Nineteenth Century Europe. But his ideas are equally relevant to real estate zoning battles in 21st Century America. Twenty years ago, most commercial and residential real estate projects were easily approved at the municipal or county level. Development was seen as beneficial -- a sign of progress and growth, a source of new jobs and tax revenue for the community, a wellspring of new opportunity for the business community, and an example of accomplishment that local politicians could cite as a reason for re-election. All that has changed. Today from small towns in the Midwest, to suburbs on both coasts, to cities in the South, citizens are organizing to oppose all kinds of new projects: big box category killers (Wal-Mart, Home Depot), shopping malls, power plants, cellular phone towers, residential subdivisions, apartment complexes, affordable housing, office buildings, industrial parks and even churches, schools and playgrounds. ... To be successful, the modern real estate developer must assume every proposal will be opposed and that every project will require a campaign using the kind of battle strategy and analysis that Von Clausewitz brought to the battlefield two centuries ago. COMMIT ENOUGH RESOURCES ... Real estate developers must commit sufficient resources to defeat the opposition, or face wasted opportunities, contentious hearings, long delays, and ultimate defeat. Few contests are won cheaply these days. GET GOOD INFORMATION ... These days, devising a successful strategy requires polling, detailed political research, and analysis to identify likely opponents and tactics to neutralize or marginalize them; to identify potential supporters and methods of motivating them; ... BUILD A CROWD ... Neutralizing the crowd, so that public officials can safely vote in favor requires the developer to produce as big a crowd at the hearing as the opponents do -- not an easy task in a NIMBY world. ...

Personally, I've seen all of the factors Saint mentions come into play during the ten years I've served as a member of the Burlington, Vermont, Planning Commission. While NIBMYism can be a motivating force, I've also seen neighbors and neighborhood groups -- not just developers -- need to heed Saint's advice: marshall their forces, do "opposition" research, and turn out their supporters in large numbers. In some places, it's the developers who seem to have the inside edge.

One problem underlying all this is that land use hearings typically follow the adversarial model used in our legal system. Too rarely are consensus building techniques employed. In part, I believe that's because planning departments simply don't have the financial resources to provide for this. As a result, many times planning commissions or zoning boards have to leave it to the proponents and opponents of a project to come in with their own experts, and argue their case.

Planning commissioners and zoning board members, like judges, are often left in the position of having to evaluate often conflicting testimony. Sometimes staff can allocate the time to provide independent information and analysis, but many times not.

I'd be interested to hear your comments. How do controversial land use applications play out in your city? Are there better ways of doing business?

p.s., we've run a couple of articles related to the above. One is on the use of land use mediation. The other focuses on the growing use of charrettes -- a useful (but sometimes expensive) approach to resolving issues without needing to go to war.