Buyer’s Remorse

What is the problem with community engagement and urban planning? Yes, there are many issues but there is one crucial factor that makes such efforts meaningless: lies. When developers want to sell projects to a city, they tell countless lies in order to encourage the highest tax incentives. Thus, people are not truly engaging with how the city will work, but an inauthentic performance designed to ensure profits. In the end, the city has spent thousands to millions of dollars on private spaces that perpetuate the dominant narrative.

In Austin, where I started, there are three major projects that exemplify this concept, and we can start from south to north. Southpark Meadows was built with large parking lots, but was supposed to attract pedestrians as well. People were supposed to feel comfortable without driving, or were supposed to be comfortable parking in one spot, walking around, and then eventually making it back to their cars. Instead, the buses are in the middle of a plaza with almost no shade, discouraging transit without a bicycle. Also, even the meager amount of benches available have no shade, and do not encourage long term rest.

The Domain, also marketed as transit-oriented development, was executed as little more than an outdoor mall. Yes, there is an express bus route, but even the stop is monopolized by a large parking lot, and none of the businesses face the bus stop. It is almost as if the stop is designed with the premise of “the help” coming through the back to do work and leave. The more “acceptable” patrons have parking opportunities anywhere they want, and their needs are constantly accommodated.

Finally, Tech Ridge is the most egregious example of transit-oriented development gone wrong. The stop is surrounded by nothing but parking lots, and none of the sidewalks have shade. Everyone is expected to drive because that area is unsafe in the heat. The most populated express bus route goes to that center, but almost nobody rides that far north because of the unsafe heat conditions.

In truth, people who constantly drive have no clue how to plan for life without a car. The underlying motif is that transit riders will “grow up” and finance vehicles, revealing their contempt for those who manage their income by not financing vehicles. Planners who follow the status quo have no insight on changing economies and are not equipped to improve because they see no problems with their ideas.

These places are marketed as public/private partnerships, but tend to elevate private control over public collaboration. Therefore, residents have no recourse to hold companies responsible for making vast uncomfortable spaces that are barely occupied. Until companies see themselves as co-residents, there will never be effective, large-scale projects in big cities.