My knowledge
of the book publishing business is theoretical only. A few friends, mostly of the delusional sort,
have suggested that a book can be found somewhere within my four years of blog
posts. Thus far, I’ve ignored their
siren call, flattered by their words, but unconvinced that 1,000-word blog
posts, often with only tangential relationships, can translate into a 100,000
word manuscript.
Despite my
lack of real world experience, I finished “The Trouble with City Planning” by
Kristina Ford feeling as if I’d been present during the birthing of a book that
had been led astray by editorial and publishing revisions. The suspected revisions didn’t destroy the
book, but they left valuable insights semi-buried in superfluity.
So, with
full acknowledgment that I have no source of information other than my own dubiously-educated
observations and guesses, this is how I suspect the book was written.
Fresh from a
long stint as the Planning Director for the City of New Orleans, Ford embarked
on a book project, setting forth her thoughts, as refined during her time in
the Big Easy, on the interaction between planning, the citizenry, and development.
Among other
points, she notes how developers sometimes co-opt the planning process through
early lobbying of politicians, leaving planning departments playing catch-up,
how the public doesn’t understand the relationship between a city-wide plan and
the development that actually occurs, how much of the public only looks at a plan
when gearing up to oppose an proposal, and how planning goals needn’t represent
a consolidated, coherent vision, but can present a range of desirable outcomes
among which the planners must sort. (The
last is the point on which I discoursed in my prior post.)
It would
have been an insightful book, one that gave shape to many of the observations
that I’d been sensing about the planning process, but hadn’t found a way to put
into words.
But when it
reached a publisher’s desk, I suspect that concerns arose. Perhaps the publisher had been raised in a household
where the parental message was not to offer criticism unless it was be
constructive criticism and now found that Ford, with her mostly downbeat albeit
valid insights about planning, failed the test for constructiveness.
So, in my
imagination, Ford was asked to rework the manuscript to end on a more helpful
note. She complied, appending several chapters
suggesting an alternative format for written city plans, a format that she
calls Good City Plans. The direction she
proposes, which is to make plans more focused on people, their lives, their
hopes, and their dreams, is compelling, but ultimately deficient. Indeed, I find the Good City Plan concept
Pollyannaish.
For one, you’d
need to hide currency between the pages before citizens, not motivated by a
specific project, would peruse a city plan, no matter how readable.
Also, to
implement the concept as Ford envisions it, you’d need planners with the rare
talent of writing to a compelling narrative thread. I’ve read enough planning documents to know
that few planners have that skill.
(Not that I’m
singling out planners. Through 35 years as
a consulting engineer and cartons of red pens, I know that most engineers are
even worse than planners at organizing good prose.)
And yet,
even with the more upbeat ending, my imagined publisher still hesitated,
wondering whether there was an adequate market for a book about writing better
city plans.
Then Katrina
made landfall, wreaking havoc upon New Orleans.
To his delight, the publisher had on his desk a draft book written by
someone who had first-hand knowledge of how New Orleans came to be particularly
vulnerable to hurricane damage.
So the book went
back to Ford once more, this time to add in particular insights about the
history of planning in New Orleans. By
now wearying of the task, Ford did as she was asked, but her lack of enthusiasm
was becoming evident.
Much of the
first forty pages explain why New Orleans came to be particularly vulnerable to
flooding, with reasons proffered that are both geographical and hubris-based. A little further in, the troubling planning history
for post-Katrina reconstruction was offered, with the unfortunate conclusion that
the planning process eventually became more about satisfying the federal
bureaucracy than about meeting the needs of the city. And still further in, anecdotes from Ford’s
tenure in New Orleans are scattered through the book.
But overall,
the New Orleans connection seems undeveloped.
It may have been a fine marketing angle.
I purchased the book specifically I had plans to visit New Orleans this
past summer. But I suspect that any
major city could have provided examples that would have met the narrative needs
of the book nearly as well. Ultimately, the
book is about city planning, not New Orleans.
So what we have
is a 40-page preamble that unconvincingly ties the “The Problem with City
Planning” to New Orleans, a 30-page saccharin afterword that doesn’t provide helpful
direction in the real world, and 160 insightful and illuminating pages in
between about how planning really works in the trenches. Luckily for the reader, the 160 pages are
good enough that they overcome the weakness at either end. Good enough that I intend to read the book a
second time, with appropriate skimming.
The
editorial blunders that I’ve imagined above may have been unfortunate, but I’ve
read many books on planning that I’ve found less useful and thoughtful. I recommend “The Trouble with City Planning.” I also recommend reading with more
attentiveness in the middle than at either end.
In my next
post, I’ll take a look at Ford’s position on public involvement. While I acknowledge her years of experience,
I don’t completely accept her perspective.
As always, your
questions or comments will be appreciated.
Please comment below or email me.
And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)
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