Last November I was invited to give a talk in Toronto about the Community Board model in New York City, especially the community's role in planning. Toronto is experiencing growth and change, and the stakeholders want to come up with a fair, constructive way of engaging one another. It was tremendously exciting to address a hungry crowd of activists, officials, agency reps and special interests who all wanted to be part of a formal process of working together within a commonly-accepted framework. It's something we sometimes take for granted here in Gotham.

A couple of weeks ago I found myself again in the role of preaching to a choir of activists, officials, agency reps and special interests about Community Boards and neighborhood planning. The conversation took a surprisingly similar tone - in Toronto where a system does not yet exist, and in New York City where it does. Similar themes keep resurfacing (highlighted below). Perhaps because our system was devised over a generation ago and it has not been revised since. We can and must do better.

De-emphasize the product and reemphasize the process. Unless the plan has built-in flexibility to respond to changing economic, social and political climates - which most do not - once the ink dries on plans they stagnate. When people with varied perspectives, interests and agendas begin working together plans become dynamic and representative. Negotiation becomes the primary planning tool with consensus becoming the goal. When groups stop working together missed communication leads to miscommunication, which leads to mistrust and missed opportunities for everyone. The power of planning lies not in the product, but in the process.

Planning is not a short, linear process so why is the planning review process? Most of the real action takes place upstream, well before the review process, where there's still time to influence the thinking that goes into the planning. By the time a plan is presented for review, it's often too late to influence plans other than marginally. And after a plan has been reviewed by a community at the local level, there's no formal role for the community to play when changes are negotiated downstream by decision-makers. That train has left the station. Communities need to be a part of the conversation when plans are still conceptual; they should also have a permanent seat at the table to help sort out the final details. Disengagement leads to dis-ease.

Planning cannot be a democratic process; if there are winners and losers, everyone loses. The traditional didactic in planning world compares top-down versus bottom-up planning models. Many disenfranchised bottom-up advocates would like nothing more than to subjugate, a hypocritical outcome if ever there were one. There is another way. Planning should be more co-active. Communities should have a chance to minimize undue impacts while optimizing benefits. Developers should be encouraged to invest in communities and have an opportunity to earn profit. Agencies must be able to factor in area-wide and regional impacts. Government must also ensure that the planning process remain a fair, engaged, level playing field.

Everyone's values matter. Values are communicated in every planning conversation. Neutralizing judgment would significantly advance planning discussions. Like the Scorpion and the Frog - planners, developers, community and government stakeholders will inevitably be true to their nature, even if it may mean that everyone will suffer from their action. The key to moving beyond these irrational outcomes starts with an acceptance that stakeholders' true natures will not be in harmonious alignment and that pious conversion is unrealistic and divisive. With ongoing communication and respect, values can be modulated and mutual goals achieved.

They say if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. I, for one, am very excited to keep this conversation going. So who else is going to kick this can down the road? C'mon, don't be shy.