Making City Planning Work

Chapter 2 "City Planning in the Context of Local Government", in Making City Planning Work by Allan Jacobs

While this chapter does not address urban design directly it provides a thorough overview of the complexities of local government - in this case the City of San Francisco. Combined with Jon Lang's article about the competing interests that make up the discipline of urban design the two articles complement each other in describing the diffused, confusing, competing, and often times inherently contradictory setting in which urban designers must practice. The Jacobs chapter, taken in the context of the urban design practitioner makes it very clear that Lang's conclusion that successful urban designers must always be collaborative. I would take Lang's statement that urban design cannot be divorced from the political situation in which it is practiced and say that urban design is, in fact, an act of politicking. Good urban designers use empirical evidence and communication strategies to assemble supportive, or at least non actively negative, groupings that express support for a particular design. These supporters are both horizontal and vertical from local neighborhood groups to members of the Board of Supervisors and across public agencies as diverse as Public Works, the City Planning Department, and sometimes Parks and Rec. A great urban designer cannot be judged by her/his designs alone but her/his ability to get good designs implemented.