Citizen Planning

We’re doing it wrong aren’t we?

Planners chew a pencil end and create. Managers look at the budget and frown. Planners go back and modify. Politicians call for a tent, people queue and some are beckoned. Hushed tones. Death by Powerpoint. Anti Climax. Shuffle on.

A cheerful alternative?

Why is planning our place so tediously joyless? We’ve not always done it this way. Man would never have built cities if this is the way we’d done it.

I don’t necessarily have an answer. What I will say is that I came across the image below on the Skyscraper City forum. You’ll probably recognise the place as our own White City. It’s just a few scribbles on a map, it won’t have taken more than a couple of minutes. What I will say is that the drafter got more into these scribbles than I’ve ever seen in any official consultation document. Maybe he or she has got town planning qualifications, maybe not; either way the scribbles tackle both current problems and current potentials and then solutions. There is no personalisation, no slandering of motivations. It is pure and free of bull. I love it. You can do similar.

Pick up your pens and start scribbling. Oh and don’t wait for that tent!