I ended my last post by pointing out that people no longer just dwell in cities, but rather in large metropolitan areas that encompass several cities and towns. This seems like an obvious point, and yet the next step in the logic, that therefore cities should be managed and planned comprehensively on a regional level, is ignored.
So what do we have? We have planning departments in each of our municipalities. But each metro area is composed of many municipalities. Thus the nightmare we currently have: dozens of tiny planning departments, each out for the best ratio of property taxes to amenities in their own town, and caring little for what happens in the next town over.
In places where there is a regional metropolitan planning agency, such as Minneapolis- Saint Paul, it does not have much power. (Full disclosure: I wrote my thesis about this city so I will probably refer to it often). In MSP, the Met Council, as it is called, is appointed by the governor and has very little power over the planning that gets done in each individual town within its purview. It can review their plans, but not alter or veto them. So what does it do? It plans and manages the transit system for the majority of the region. Several of the richest suburban towns have opted out and run their own bus system, though. Of course it should be fairly obvious to anyone reading this blog by now that planning transportation and land development separately makes for a failing transit system and lots of sprawl.
A directly elected regional government
Enter Stuttgart, the city where I am working and living. Since 1994, the Stuttgart Region has had a directly elected Regional Assembly (Regionalversammlung). Each of the 6 counties selects a number of representatives proportional to its population size. The assembly is at least 80 strong, and composed of members of several of the different German political parties. The most recent assembly was elected just this summer, and its political composition is illustrated below.
The Regional Assembly of Stuttgart is vested with the power to oversee the creation of a Regional Plan every 10 years by the regional planning agency (Verband Region Stuttgart, which from now on I will refer to as VRS). The plan takes years to research and draft, and the Regional Assembly is re-elected every 5 years. So the planners are usually at great pains to get the whole process over with and the plan adopted before the elections change the political landscape.
This is not always easy, and in fact right now, though we have a brand new assembly, the final draft of the plan has not yet been formally adopted and is still vulnerable to last-minute alterations by politicians with an agenda. Naturally the planners I have spoken to are not happy about this prospect, as they have spent years working on it. It is quite a serious-looking document, weighs about the same as a coffee table book, and has a nifty pocket at the back filled with dozens of explanatory maps for the unfolding.
A legally binding regional plan
Despite these minor inconveniences, regional planning here is a reality, which continues to startle me daily, and the effects are far-reaching. Once the plan is adopted, it is legally binding. The staff of the VRS then review all local plans and decide whether they fit within the confines of the Regional Plan. Hundreds of zoning documents pass across their desks. They themselves do not accept or reject a proposal, but they present the proposals along with their verdict to the Planning Committee, which meets every few weeks. The latter is formed by members of the Regional Assembly, and I will be seeing this Committe in action tomorrow, so I will be able to report back what exactly they do there.
The main point is that they have a mandate not only to adopt, but also to implement the Regional Plan, and therefore the decisions they take on planning proposals are binding. As a result, we have the fairly dense radial pattern of development in the Stuttgart Region that you were able to see in the map from the earlier post.
0 comments:
Post a Comment