We’ll Do Anything to Feel Less Like Pig Pen

A young planner’s perspective on renewal in places that fuel climate change

Written by Stephen Raitz. This article was originally featured in the Plan North West Issue 6, Winter 2020. You can check that out and more by clicking here.

This article is a response to Keil (2019) “Into post-suburbia: Planning the Canadian periphery after the suburb” as presented within the Canadian Institute of Planner’s centenary edition of Plan Canada and was completed with the support of Kyle Whitfield, Associate Professor with the Faculty of Extension at the University of Alberta.

Being 20-something in 2020 gives me a license to carry a considerable amount of angst. When one is steeped in anxiety regarding the climate crisis that will inevitably impact the future of one’s profession, life, and world, it’s easy to become crestfallen with the current state of affairs. I feel like Pig Pen of Charlie Brown’s fame. Instead of being imbued by dust, I’m enveloped in increasing greenhouse gases.

Do we bother planning communities for 50- year time horizons when the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change continues to produce reports which indicate that large scale and devastating shifts in global climate will occur prior to this? I think so, it would be irresponsible if we did not. Planners plan, it’s what we do! We can plan to reach outcomes which foster more sustainable patterns of development and living. So not only should we plan because it’s our job, we should plan because we can actually help.

When spritely young planners sink their teeth into the profession, they often feast their eyes on the core of cities. Is this where the most overt sustainable visions of our future lie?

In some ways, our education leads us to this vision. The development of renderings and reports for school are fueled by one too many cups of coffee from the café within a cute heritage building on the high street. Studio presentations showcase vibrant multi-modal thoroughfares supported by the density in glossy towers. After final exams, students end up at trendy bars downtown to celebrate.

Furthermore, where else is it clearer that you could be a part of planning for an exciting and sustainable future? As with any development, infill and redevelopment of brownfield sites still contribute to emissions. But it is so obvious to a young planner that planning the core accelerates the development of a more sustainable city. Less greenfield is sacrificed, commutes become less carbon-intensive, and resources can be more efficiently provided. Honestly, we’ll do anything to feel less like Pig Pen. And the cores of cities are, in the minds of the tenderfoot, the most obvious place to start. But, Keil (2019) challenges the planning community to not focus squarely on the core. How do planners plan for cities and regions where an urban-suburban divide deeply segments the wants and needs of communities?

I believe this challenge falls most squarely under the purview of the young planner. No, I am not trying to frame this as ‘us’ cleaning up the mess made by everyone before ‘us.’ Every cohort has its test. I do not envy the task of being the first to try and separate land uses to ensure the city wasn’t an actual pig pen. Additionally, I do not covet the chance to provide enough affordable family housing for a baby boom (babies freak me out, I still haven’t learned how to hold one).

The twinkle in our eyes should not only reflect the scintillation of downtown towers, it should also capture the lonely streetlight in the cul-de-sac. Our challenge is to foster a vibrant core that attracts sustainable growth in a globalized world while also supporting the wide swaths of suburbia as they undergo their own inevitable upheaval.

Out of these two tasks, supporting the suburbs will be more difficult. With increasing advancement and disruption in technology, employment, and society, the monoculture presented in suburban land use patterns, housing forms, and transportation options creates a cumbersome scenario that will likely not age well.

But it’s been built. Planners must plan for the best collective outcome. Keil (2019) suggests that, from an equity perspective, it is even more important to get renewal right in the suburbs.

The more diverse demographics that will call the suburbs home in the future will not have the same capacity to develop political momentum as the mainly white and very affluent previous inhabitants of the suburbs were able to. Additionally, as development patterns shift to infilling the core, capital and power concentrates here. Autonomous vehicles may also facilitate expansion beyond the city itself and intensify political power with those who can afford to live in and commute around exurban areas. The shifting power dynamics in our cities and regions is a process that planners must not take lightly.

Diminishing political clout in the suburbs may lead them to become overlooked in policy development as well as in operating and capital budgets. Suburbs will also have more disparate needs than before because of their increasingly diverse population. Spreading these needs over sprawling areas means they will be more expensive to provide for.

As young planners, it can be perplexing to support suburbs in a world that is warming due, in part, to massive amounts of unsustainable suburban development. But if we are planning the city for everyone, then we must be providing for everyone too. As suburbs diversify, it becomes increasingly important to incorporate equity within the planning process to reflect the needs of the entire public.

I am hopeful that we can rebuild our suburbs to support a more sustainable city. We must, or we’ll become permanently shrouded in dust like Pig Pen.

But with disruption comes innovation. The solutions to provide sustainable development in suburbs may not be here yet. Integrating evolving forms of mobility, employment, and redevelopment into our praxis will hopefully help us reach best collective outcomes. Before we regulated land use after the industrial revolution or facilitated the provision of massive amounts of housing during the baby boom, we did not know it was possible to do these things.

What’s important to take to heart, as Keil (2019) comments in the article, is that we must not provide for communities from the “birds-eye view” (p.132). In setting the agenda for city-building, we must be reactive to the needs and wants of the suburbs even if they do not, in their present state, integrate perfectly within our vision for a sustainable city on a liveable planet.

References:

Keil, R. (2019, June). Into post-suburbia: Planning the Canadian periphery after the suburb. Plan Canada, 59(1), 130-135.