Musing About City Planning Leads to A Local Government Primer for Local Greens

Working to create sustainable, human scale, transportation modes depends on local folks -- and especially local Greens -- stepping up to be involved in the planning process. Here's how!

Roads for People

Streets, and especially sidewalks, are mostly planned, installed and maintained by local governments. City governements, or sometimes county government has the largest effect on whether people feel that they *must* ride a car somewhere or not.

There are usually appointed city and county Transportation Commissions, made up of ordinary local folk charged with giving advice to government staffs and elected officials on how to deal with mobility.

It makes a lot of difference if the people on these commissions understand, as most Greens do, that building more and bigger roads just leads to more and faster car riding.

Cities for People

Any city built up since about 1950 was built for the comfort of cars. Any city built before World War II was probably built for people, at a human scale, with identifiable neighborhoods. Greens know that we call the suburbia of last 50 years sprawl, and that it gets the blame for many of the ills we as a culture experience today.

Greens know that when it comes to increased urban densities it is not the number of people in a concentrated area that is a problem (within broad reasonable limits) but the amount and nature of the of travel required for work and life's necessities. Or, to oversimplify: Its not the number of people that live in a neighborhood, its the number of cars.

Planning Commissions, often without the aid of a Transportation Commission, make recommendations and even legally binding decisions on what gets built and how it looks. Often excoriated for "nimbyism," or as short-sighted, focusing on sales tax revenue from a downtown destroying big-box, there is nothing inherently evil about the typical planning commission.

Commissions and Committees -- For People

There are other commission areas with important roles, where Greens have good knowledge about a better way to do things:

• Parks and Recreation Commissions often have broad responsibility for green space, not just baseball diamonds and picnic tables.



• Library Commissions may set policies that benefit all users, and bring actually effective programing serving sometimes unserved segments of the communities.



• Design Commissions can protect the look and feel of a community -- again, not just in the stereotyped "nimby" suburbanite manner, but in a form that allows and even encourages public art, but bans billboard advertising.



• Utility Commissions, where there is a municipal utility, can influence policy with respect to renewables such as wind and distributed solar.



• Environmental Commissions, where they exist (such as in Pasadena) can help put biological thinking into play across a city's operations.
  

Commissions often have official standing, and a commission review may be required for many projects or proposals. But there are often many single-purpose committees -- sometimes called steering committees or stakeholder committees -- that get set up to do chores like a coordinated review of transportation policy, or parking codes.

These are usually made up of stakeholders from various constituencies, including yours. One great way to get invited onto these committees is to participate at City Council meetings and commission meetings as a member of the public, or on behalf of a neighborhood group or an issue group.

If you are able to communicate your viewpoint clearly and coherently, and do not seem dangerously unbalanced, or otherwise unable to work with other community members to arrive at consensus, you will often be invited to participate in these quasi-official steering committees.

And they do have real input and ability to affect what is on the ground.

Finally, its a cliche, but elected and appointed folk really do listen to the people who speak at public meetings. Great bouts of spirited oration are not needed; indeed, you may find you are unreasonably limited to 3-5 minutes. But if you (1) participate at all and (2) pare your comments down to the succinct essentials, I guarantee you will heard, and may well be headed. I have watched a comment from a member of the public take hold with an elected official and change the course of the debate and the outcome.

Over -heated rhetoric, personal attacks, satire, sarcasm -- these rarely affect the decision makers, and often undercut good points you may be making. And they will not improve your odds of getting invited to participate in the Non-Auto Mobility Improvement Steering Committee when that issue comes up later.

Act Locally. No Really.

All it really takes is enough thoughtful, right-thinking people to serve in these many many many capacities to begin the move toward more sustainable, just and equitable, local government policies. This is how the grassroots in grassroots democracy works.

Why would one want to serve on the local library commission instead of angrily protesting an injustice perpetrated by some far-flung empire?

Well, first, it may not be an "instead" issue; do both.

But second, which has more direct, immediate and life altering impact: Starting a program to underwrite a Reading Intensive Summer Camp for struggling readers in your neighborhood or funding a minority language outreach for your own community, or carrying a sign protesting global warming?

While the national and international issues are important, the next generation of policies are being made, right now, on the local boards and commissions of your city and county.

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Coming Soon: Thoughts on How to Get Appointed / Invited to Participate