2011 Mile High Planning Co-op

Final Reflection

I would just like to start by saying I enjoyed being in blog groups with you guys.  It was helpful to be able to toss ideas around about the readings and seeing what other ideas and prespectives were out there.  This class really showed that there is more than one way to skin a cat so to speak when talking about the planning process.  There is no process that we discussed that is inherintly wrong.  It is a matter of if they are appropriate to the situation and how you use them.  As a planner it is important to have as  full of a tool box as possible of methods so that you can tackle the most difficult plannign tasks.  This class provided several tools. 

Final Reflection - 12/9

Maybe the lack of sleep this past week is causing a slight sense of euphoria, but I was kind of inspired by Bruce's final talk about what we should take away from this class. I really enjoyed this class. Learning about all of the planning paradigms that our profession has gone through and what has worked and when planners have gone too far in their ambitions visions was an eye opener to me, and I think it will influence the way I think and act in my professional life. I'm still not sure if I'll refuse those football tickets though.. Maybe I'll have a job in the private sector so I won't have to worry about it.

It was a pleasure blogging with you all. I enjoyed our discussions most weeks, and you all were a fun group to have for those weeks when we really didn't feel like discussing the topic at hand. I hope to work with you all again at some point.

Reflection Dec.10

Well guys, we did it.  I feel like our last class could have been only a tad more memorable.  Perhaps if we had held a masquerade ball...? Or a slam dunk competition? Nahhhh, who needs a slam dunk competition when you can have powerpoint!  Only Kidding.  I always gave one particular Professor of mine a hard time because we never knew how he felt about the topics he spoke on.  I always wanted to know his opinion.  For this reason, I am really glad we finished the semester talking about Bruce's research.  We spend much time learning from our Professors, so it only seems right that they would let us have a little window into their own academic passions.  It was obvious that resilience thinking in planning makes Bruce tick and its absolutely great to see this side of our teachers.  This particular one is of great importance to the field of planning and I felt especially moved that he feels this work can change entire social systems and ways of behaving.  I agree and I also feel that without that fire burning underneath you, one cannot honestly alter trajectories that are in much need of transformation.  His work is very interesting and I very much appreciated learning about it! 

Last Reflection

This has been a fun course! I think that my favorite discussion week was the Inclusive Planning week. Equitable growth is really important to me and I hope it remains on everyone's minds. We have to remember to plan for those that are not represented well and understand that their absense is not the opportunity to give them less.

It was nice to get to know all of you, and I hope to see you around in the future. I learned a lot! I feel that the groundwork has been laid for us to continue our building passion for planning.

Last Reflection

Hello wonderful blog friends! I am very excited that we have made it to this point. Thank you all for being a wonderful group to work with.

I got to be the blog discussion leader for this last week and am happy with the discussion we had. It is both scary and exciting to be looking into the future and seeing what is ahead in the planning profession. I hope in my career I am implement some collaborative planning processes. I would like to go into the realm of environmental planning so I think collaborative planning is especially important in this area.

I found this course valuable as a base course. I hope to build on the theories/ideas I learned and translate them into real world practices through out my next year and half of school. 

Reflection 12/8

Honestly I found myself struggling to keep an interest in today's lectures.  Perhaps it's the fact that it's jury week and I was absolutely exhausted, or perhaps it was the last class of the semester, or a combination of both.  I do appreciate Bruce's desire to share as many "nuggets" of information with us as possible though.

The part that did catch my attention was the slides about planning as a professional endeavor.  I think a lot of the subjects Bruce talked about often go overlooked as students transition from the "school" world to the "real" world.  A lot changes and it is easy to feel overwhelmed.  When I graduated from my undergraduate program and entered the workforce as an architectural inter, I found it extremely difficult to transition from one realm to the other.  To me, I think a lot of the slides presented took the tone of "easier said than done", but I think it's still important to establish a clear set of goals and never lose sight of the final destination.

This is Frank Zigmond, signing off from the 2011 Mile High Planning Co-Op!  Goodnight!

Discussion Question 12/7

I cannot believe this is the final discussion blog of the semester!  How exciting!

This week we are relating the planning meeting that we attended with some readings by Innes and Booher.  For my planning meeting I chose to attend the Denver Union Station Interior Development Proposal Presentations on November 3^rd.  It was great to see how a public forum can start to inform design strategies.  I was very impressed with how transparent RTD is with their design intentions.  Since this was really my first exposure to an authentic public planning meeting, I didn’t really know what to expect.  I guess it went similarly to how I had imagined it; there was an introduction followed by two different design schemes and a Q&A.  I think the moderator did a really great job of organizing the event.  He was efficient at keeping everyone on a strict time limit and pulled some really good questions from the audience.  It must have been challenging to prioritize possibly hundreds of questions, but overall I think the majority of the questions were effective.  To me, the Q&A section was really the heart of the presentations because it reflected the concerns that the local stakeholders had about the new development.  At the end of the day, the presentations are just a bunch of slick renderings and optimistic vocabulary.  It’s the public input that really gets to the heart of some of the issues surrounding the design changes.

Fainstein’s “just city” paints a unique picture of public collaboration.  She describes two different viewpoints: radical democrats and political economists.  She says that the radical democrats “…believe that progressive social change results only from the exercise of power by those who previously had been excluded from power.”  As I read this, I instantly thought of the occupy protestors.  The “radical” label aside, they seem to follow Fainstein’s model of radical democrats exactly.  The political economists’ theory more closely resonates with my own personal taste.  The purpose of political economists “…is to mobilize a public rather than to prescribe a methodology to those in office.”  I think the RTD meeting that I attended explicatively mobilized that public and gave them a chance to participate in designing their present and future community.

Discussion Question for 12/7

I attended the Union Station public presentations for to do my planning memo. I can't say I was suprised about anything, but it was an interesting presentation. There are two redevelopment plans of Union Station that are dueling for supremacy. One plan was to turn the second and third floors into a boutique hotel while activating the first floor as public space and train station. The other was a plan to activate the first floor similarly, but keeping the second and third floors as office space. I thought that even though the hotel plan sounds weird, it may be the best option, hotels never close, meaning that the station would be activated 24-hours. The office space plan was well put together as well, but office space will not activate the public space much longer after 6pm. The commercial may bring some activation, but why not bring more with a hotel? If you want to check the plans out, look here:

Union Station Neighborhood Company

Union Station Alliance (Hotel Plan)

Public participation was obtained by comment and question cards that were read to both groups for about 30 minutes each. People were also given a link to submit questions and comments online at a later time. I thought it was a good method for involving the public. There were a lot of people there and I believe that most people felt like they could be heard, however, this was very different from the smaller more intimate planning meetings, where individuals can speak more freely.

Innes and Booher conclude that institutional change is needed along with creativity and patience as change cannot happen overnight. Citizens need to make the difference by participating as well as seeking to be informed of whats going on around them. Planners have agendas to push based on their beliefs. Both sides need to be at the table trying their best to cooperate and know the opposite prespective. I believe RTD did this fairly well at the Union Station Presentation especially for the number of people that were in the room.

Is Denver striving to become "The Just City"? Is it a place where "the conditions for human flourishing" are the goal? Yes, but no... There are so many peices to the puzzle of a Just City, perfection is impossible, but maybe striving to be a Just City is all that needs to happen.

Discussion Question for 12/7

While attending the RTD monthly meeting, I saw a lot of the problems in the current participatory meeting model.  The public spoke with a combative tone and there was a repetitive number of speakers that even made a worthy cause loose its luster.  On the board side there was a lack of attention by different members at different time.  There was a frustration by the board when the public didn't follow the rules.  Overall it appeared that there was a frustration on both sides that the other didn't understand the issues and were not listening to the key points being made.

In regards to the question if  the agenda that Innes and Booher suggest the right one, I believe that the answer is yes but with a caveat.  I think that they idealize the participants too much.  That the participants will buy in one hundred percent, not have hidden agendas, and buy in to whatever plan is made.  This is especially true in today's society of only looking after ones own agenda and a winner and loser mentality.  I buy into what Innes and Booher are selling, I just believe that it is going to take time and patience to make it a practical way of planning.  There are going to be failures in the beginning but the more that the public sees the way it works and the success that it can generate there will be more buy in and eventually a different way of thinking about planning.  

I didn't really address the question in regards to the "just city" as I am having a tough time grasping the concept.  My little understanding of it is that it is the idea of social equality with economic growth.  I guess I don't understand how that is a method rather than a desired outcome.

Discussion Question 12/7

I was disappointed by the lack of public participation at my meeting. It was a downzoning of a development that would have resulted in a decrease from 246 units to about 46 units. I guess this isn't a hot button issue, since the neighbors would not oppose more single family houses like theirs going into the development. If it had been an up zoning I think there would have been more people at the meeting. In fact, the only person who spoke against the change was a member of the planning commission, who saw that this change clearly went against the goals set out in the Arvada Master plan, specifically the goal of increased density, affordability, and diversity in housing. I think this is the problem with relying too heavily on public participation. The people who already live in a neighborhood are not going to argue for more dense, affordable housing next to them.