October 30, 2006

Embrace Politics

CHICAGO — Do not avoid politics, but embrace politics. Roger Waldon, author of Planners and Politics, feels that community planners too often shy away from the political aspect of the job. He encourages planners to embrace politics as a way to achieve community planning goals.

"Community planners are often in the middle of debates about growth and development. To move community planning forward, planners need to infuse planning principles and agendas into the political debate," Waldon said.

In Planners and Politics, Waldon profiles eight planners who successfully advanced good planning practices within their communities, paying attention to the political context. Each profile offers solutions that can help other professional planners overcome opposition to good planning. The planners profiled are:

• Arlington Heights, Illinois — Charles Perkins, AICP, planning and community development director
• Boulder, Colorado — Peter Pollock, FAICP, former planning director
• Chapel Hill, North Carolina — David Godschalk, FAICP, former planning director
• Dallas — Karen Walz, FAICP, planning consultant
• Liberty, Missouri — Steven Anderson, director of planning and development
• Philadelphia — Maxine Griffith, AICP, city planning director
• Pittsburgh — Paul Farmer, FAICP, former deputy planning director
• San Francisco — Alec Bash, AICP, Port of San Francisco, San Francisco Planning Department

Waldon found that each of the profiled planners made an effort to engage community members in the planning process. Sometimes this required physically going into the neighborhoods to encourage attendance at critical meetings. Always it involved making sure that all sides in a controversy would have equal access to information and resources. Waldon stresses throughout the book the importance of a planner understanding the needs of the community, and the objectives of the elected leaders.

Waldon was the planning director in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, for more than 20 years. He currently is a planning consultant for Clarion Associates. Planners and Politics is his first book.

Contact

Roberta Rewers, APA Public Affairs, 312-786-6395; rrewers@planning.org