In The Trouble with City Planning, former New Orleans planning director Kristina Ford challenges planners to rethink their normal practices by highlighting the failures of city planning there after Hurricane Katrina. One of the biggest problems she sees: plans are unclear and confusing to the people who are supposed to use them.
The kind of complex, richly- detailed plans that would get an A in a studio course are the kinds routinely ignored by decision makers and communities we try to influence. The #1 job of a plan is to influence how decision makers act. If it is not used, it is by definition useless.
Many plans are just too long, take too long to speak to the readers needs, and have too many details in their text. This makes them a chore for elected officials, developers and community decision-makers. Plans should provide focus and direction. When they say too much, or try to make everyone happy, they fail. Consider the 2004 Master Plan for Maplewood Township, New Jersey. It recommends 17 “key objectives” which should be given “equal weight.” Some of them, such as providing affordable housing to young families and promoting housing that would not have an impact on the school system, are practically impossible to achieve at the same time. Some objectives are specific – such as promoting the town’s cultural center – while others are just vague aspirations – such as “preserve and enhance the general sense of community.” Oh, and you don’t even get to these goals until page 15.
Plans that proved to be more effective was the Comprehensive Community Revitalization Program (CCRP) Plans for the South Bronx in the early 1990s. These neighborhood plans helped to generate millions of dollars in new investment and accelerate slow-going revitalization efforts. Today, the South Bronx is facing an issue that was too many unthinkable 20 years ago – gentrification.
By the way, the CCRP plans were written by the same firm that did the Maplewood Master Plan. I couldn't find an publicly-available online copy of the CCRP plans, but you can read about the plans' impacts.
CCRP lasted two years and each of the plans were short – around 30 to 40 pages. They were written in plain English, and had a few simple statistics and intentionally cartoonish diagrams. If they were submitted for a planning studio course today, they probably would have gotten a failing grade. But they were read and used by the community development corporations in those neighborhoods. (I worked for one of them). The CCRP plans provided clear guidelines for community leaders and developers to follow.
To be fair, it was the process, rather than the documents themselves, that generated enthusiasm among decision-makers. But that’s true of every planning process. What was different about the CCRP plans is that they provided clear guidance to leaders – and could more easily be shared with potential partners, funders and investors.
Another effective plan, by the Philadelphia City Planning Commission, helped to further the city’s growth as an arts and cultural heritage tourism destination. Extending the Vision for South Broad Street branded this place as an “avenue of the arts.” Today, South Broad is developing into a district for high-end performing and visual arts.
The plan, which by design looks and reads more like a coffee-table book than a policy document, was quietly criticized by some professionals – especially engineers – as not being serious enough. But it worked.
It’s not just an issue of length. Sometimes plans have to be long, especially if they might be subject to legal scrutiny because they advocate eminent domain or strategies that might reduce property values in an area. But the best plans – such as the CCRP or Broad Street plans – make their points quickly and clearly, and use just enough statistical information and graphics to strengthen their points.
Long plans by their nature are intimidating. Ford talks about a string of long plans for New Orleans, including the Unified New Orleans Plan that would run to 2,000 pages. As much as I enjoy reading plans, I would want to be paid to look at something that immense. You can imagine how the stressed and overworked decision-maker would look at such a document.
So how to make a plan that both your elected officials would want to read and the wonky naysayers would find credible? Split the plan into at least two parts.
The first part contains the executive summary, a statement of goals (please, no more than 10), a set of strategies to reach the goals, just enough detail to indicate why the goals and strategies are important and reasonable, and images that can illustrate ideas more efficiently than can be done in print. Think of the busiest person you know, and write this part of the plan for that person. If you go over 50 pages, go back and see what you can cut.
The rest of the plan can be appendix items with as much detail and statistics as you’d like. Nobody other than a researcher, lawyer or critic is going to read this part. So, make sure your facts are straight and don’t sweat the writing.
But always remember: the ability of the plan to influence decision-makers depends more on the planner’s powers of persuasion than the ideas in the plan.
The Professional Development Institute and The Leading Institute offer several courses to help planners become more convincing and persuasive. These include Professional’s Writing Studio, a Bloustein Online Continuing Education Program Deep Learning course, and Leading from the Middle, a leadership development program for placebuilders.
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