INC NEWS - development process can be improved (but undercutting neighborhoods is not the answer)...

[John Schelp]

Under the current process, developers work with the
planning and other departments to refine and ensure
their plan complies with the Unified Development
Ordinance and other standards.

Developers have the financial resources and teams of
experts -- lawyers, land planners and designers,
traffic and civil engineers, consultants, lobbyists
and others -- to ensure their plans comply with the
standard required for approval.
 
The UDO is complicated and dense. It effectively
excludes from the planning process the citizens it
presumes to protect. Neighborhoods don't have the same
amount of resources, expertise or time to communicate
and negotiate improvements on a project.

Under the current system, developers work with the
planning department shaping their plans long before
citizens find out about what's going on. The staff
stakes itself out on what it likes and doesn't like
about a developer's plan long before any attempt is
made to find out what citizens like and dislike. By
then the developer has altered his plan to make staff
happy and the staff feels committed to back the
developer because they have influenced the developer's
plans. This is human nature, but it puts a
neighborhood -- which is already unsure where the race
course goes -- standing at the blocks because it can't
hear the gun go off.

~John