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BIG PICTURE PLANNING
“Let us make no small plans.” – Daniel Burnham
“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.” – John Muir
“Urban ingredients treated in isolation have no meaning.” – J.H. Kunstler
Every city has the same problems. Every city creates pollution and waste, and must manage it. Every city requires shelter for its citizens. Every city consumes energy and constantly requires new resources to consume. Every city has different people (class/age/sex/ability/etc.) with different needs. Every city has destinations which require travel, and spaces which are needed to hold the mechanisms that people travel in/with. Every city must consider the impacts of growth. Every city has crime and/or mechanisms in place to prevent crime. Every city has some level of community. Yet, every city is unique. Every city has its own history, it’s own special characteristics, topographies, environments, people, languages, etc.
Every city, state and country seeks to be the best. Best economically (the wealthiest), best environmentally (the greenest, the cleanest), best hockey team, best food, best citizens. The intrinsic fault of this competition is that someone else has to be worse. It is irrelevant to City A if City B produces less corn. It is irrelevant to State C if State D produces more greenhouse gases. It is irrelevant to Country E if Country F has a lower education or higher crime level.
Unfortunately, resources (human, economic, environmental) are wasted when each city, state and country tries to solve the same problems over and over again, by perpetually reinventing the wheel with varying degrees of success. Each city, state and country sets up its own coalitions, committees and task forces to tackle crime, poverty, homelessness, downtown revitalization, water quality, waste management, parking, and pollution.
To make matters worse, an architect in one city is given a limited budget, limited staff and limited time, and told to create a masterpiece. A planner in another city is told to think outside the box while working in a cubicle (a box). A citizen conceives an idea to drastically improve a development, but it has already received approval from the government.
Sir Peter Hall wrote that “we too often fail to realize that our ideas and actions have been thought and done by others, long ago; we should be conscious of our roots.”
Ancient Rome had aqueducts and sophisticated plumbing, yet reasonably efficient water and sewage systems were not available in the United States until the second half of the 1800s. And many countries today still do not have running water.
Across the ocean, solar-powered skyscrapers and geothermal power plants have been built in Europe while committees in offices in Canadian cities question if it is even possible.
Neighbourhood groups in many cities in Canada (population: 33.5 million, area: nearly 10 million km2) fight aggressively against development proposals which have “too high a density” when the Greater Tokyo Area in Japan has lots of experience with over 35 million people on an area of only 13,500 km2.
Even within our country, Edmonton is recognized as a leader in waste reduction, while Toronto ships its garbage out to whoever will take it. However, Edmonton has fallen short in other areas with a lack of mass transit, urban design, and walkable communities.
Every city has its successes and shortfalls. Every city can be better. The only real solution is to have every city, state and country working to be the best together. Every city work must together for first place.
This is the intent of my work and this website: to showcase the best practices in urban planning and design from around the world, to showcase examples from my travels, and to challenge other city planners through articles and publications, with the intent of making all cities better.
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