Plan Obsolescence

Urban planning skeptic Peter Gordon on the benefits of sprawl, the war against cars, and the future of American cities.

Adrian Moore & Rick Henderson from the June 1998 issue

(Page 5 of 5)

Gordon: Well, I don't go very often. When I'm invited to speak at certain places, I think it's as a curiosity. There's the usual handful of people who thank you. God knows if they thank you because they've been informed or entertained or whatever.

But the intent is to uncover some facts, support them as best you can, put them in context, because there are all sorts of unfounded assertions out there.

Reason: Even so, the traditional planning community doesn't seem to shun you completely. In the Winter 1997 issue of the American Planning Association Journal, you and your USC colleague Harry Richardson engaged in a fascinating debate with Florida International University planning professor Reid Ewing. Your article, "Are Compact Cities a Desirable Goal?," was a straightforward exposition of the case against traditional planning and for consumer preferences. Ewing's "Is Los Angeles-Style Sprawl Desirable?" directly challenged your arguments. How did that come about?

Gordon: We sent them our article, and they wrote back and said, "We can run this if we run it with a counterpoint." There wasn't even the suggestion that they would run ours alone. I'm happy they did run both, because I want that discussion to be out there. Nevertheless, the editors of the journal of the APA felt they needed the safety of a counterpoint before even letting us present our side. But Harry and I were pleased to find out that the editors awarded us honorable mention for feature article of the year.

I was asked to address the L.A. City Planning Commission two years ago because there was a draft of their plan which favored transit-oriented development. And I said, "Here are the various reasons why it will not work." The response I got was a big yawn. There was zero interest in that, either [from] the commissioners who for some reason invited me, or [from] a lot of the staff people who were there. I just said their document was full of holes, but there was no interest as to asking why, or can you tell us what's wrong, or anything like that.

Reason: Is traditional planning becoming inconsequential? Are today's academic planners comparable to the slide-rule designers of 20 years ago, preparing to offer a product which has no market?

Gordon: We are trending away from planners in the traditional form, who primarily serve the interests of municipalities. But property arrangements are coming on line which require the developer to wear the planner's hat or the planner to wear the developer's hat. You could call this role "planning," but it's not traditional or public-sector planning.

People who are savvy enough to see the opportunities may be called planners, but they are less likely to operate in city hall and are more likely to operate in a development group, to arrange the types of developments that are successful. They will need a more sophisticated range of skills.

Maybe the world is changing so fast that what's coming out of the academy will lag behind [what the real world demands]. Maybe students will come out of the academy being trained in one way and find, once they leave, they need skills that direct them in another.

But that may be true of any number of other disciplines. It may be a problem professional schools in general face. We know universities are having a hard time keeping up. That's why we have think tanks [laughs].