Friday, October 16, 2009

Central planning is dead. Long live central planning

An article in the Portland Tribune this week is a great example of the ability of our local politicians and planners to refuse to acknowledge the failures of their policies.

The article, to summarize, says: "Shucks, it turns out that remodeling an entire region into our vision of new urbania, with bike paths and lite rail and high density makes those dastardly folks who actually employ people want to leave. Who knew? Guess we need our planners to turn their talents to planning the economy."

The hubris of these folks is startling. Faced with the utter failure of their "livability" dreams and schemes, now they pretend to be able to plan what industries will have job growth. "Clusters" they call them. And they want to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to put their helpful stamp on these burgeoning new employment sectors.

Never mind that the last next big thing, Biotech, which was the justification for their last several hundred million dollar boondoggle, so far has been an utter failure.

Nothing like failure to make them create new plans! It certainly couldn't be that planning itself is a failure. That would mean they wouldn't have jobs!

And THOSE jobs are the ones that these folks REALLY care about!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

While I'm glad they aren't totally blind, please don't let them get their grubby little hands on the economy too! We'll all be doomed!

Anonymous said...

Rob, have you seen this? N. Clack schools are bringing in law enforcement to enforce ATTENDANCE!

It's the second article, "School attendance pilot project"

http://www.nclack.k12.or.us/northclack/cwp/view.asp?A=3&Q=304062

OregonGuy said...

Does it pass the Afpel Test?

Do these planners really, really, really believe in what they are doing?

If so, you must let them proceed.
.

Anonymous said...

Can anyone tell me one claim of planners that is factually correct?

See http://www.portlandfacts.com/smart/smartgrowthlies.html