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The Carrot Or The Stick

07.18.2010

“Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.”  Mike Tyson |

Katherine Gregor at the Austin Chronicle published a story last week about planning in Central Texas called Best-Laid Plans. Her point was well-taken: the patchwork planning landscape could benefit from increased coordination among planning agencies. Planning is expensive–consultants, computer models, polling, workshops–and perhaps combining a few planning processes across agencies would be more efficient.

But would it change anything in terms of outcomes? Gregor treaded lightly when it came to discussing the underlying challenges of planning, and I don’t blame her. It’s much easier to point a finger at bureaucrats than it is to talk frankly about our collective accountability for poor decision making and bad outcomes. We’ll get the regional future that we deserve, not because of flaws in the planning process, but because we’re unwilling to be honest about what we want the process to accomplish. Not what it can accomplish, but what we want it to accomplish.

In the article, Gregor highlights everybody’s favorite whipping boy, Envision Central Texas, and for the most part I think the treatment is fair. But it’s not an accident that Envision Central Texas has “failed” to implement its vision. It was never designed to implement anything. It was given neither the power nor the resources for implementation. So to criticize Envision Central Texas for lack of implementation smacks of revisionist history or dissembling, and I think there’s plenty of both going around. The calls for results lack conviction. Politicians don’t win elections talking honestly about planning. Tradeoffs don’t make good campaign slogans and the long-run has never been too popular with the electorate.

If we were serious about implementing ECT’s vision for future development in the region, we’d do it. CAMPO, for example, could restrict funding in its long-range transportation plan to only those projects that conform to ECT’s vision. Worried about water? Pass legislation that prevents water agencies from supplying water to developments that don’t conform to the ECT vision. Want to really cause trouble? Form a regional agreement that holds people accountable for their plans. That new highway you so desperately needed didn’t reduce congestion delay? Pay the pot back. Money has a funny way of making regional “dialogue” a bit more productive and results oriented.

Change requires a carrot or a stick and right now we’re unwilling to commit to either. Don’t blame Envision Central Texas or planners for that.

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