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Plans and studies
BACK-TO-BACK presentations by an American and an Englishman at last week’s land planning conference sponsored by the Piedmont Environmental Council provided a handy illustration of why so many Americans profess so little faith in the planning process.
The American, representing a federal agency, got up and told of all the wonderful things his outfit has done recently. Why, there had been a “study” in New England; the financing of a “plan” paid for down South; still some more “studies” here, a “study” there, and still more “studies.” There was one brief reference to an actual accomplishment: Some workmen in a small town had been paid to remove the accumulated grass of several decades from a 19th Century brick walkway.
That’s a precious little accomplishment for a whole lot of “study.”
Then the Englishman followed, and he, too, outlined a project that had begun with a “study”— one initially financed by a private businessman, incidentally, in “socialistic” England, and only later supplemented by local governments. But they didn’t stop there. After the “study” had been completed, the central government (read “federal” government, in U.S. terms) stepped in and put up the equivalent of millions of dollars to actually clean up and rehabilitate a once-blighted area in the midst of an industrial-urban “conurbation.”
IT’S AN important difference. The Brisish didn’t regard the “study” as an end in itself; they weren’t satisfied until they’d translated the study into an actual project. Too often in this country, it seems that the planners and the public alike—not to mention the federal governmentare content to let the “study” stand as a be-all and end-all.' It’s fairly easy to get grants for studies, practically impossible to acquire funds for a project, even one as basic as cleaning sewage out of a stream that is tapped for drinking water.
As long as “studies” are considered just so much bookshelf furniture, we’re afraid the planning process—and planners—will continue to inspire little confidence among Americans. Governments might do better to save their planning money for lawsuits, or remedial engineering.□
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