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One of the hardest parts about being a city planner is that we usually don鈥檛 get the chance to see our plans actually carried out the way we envisioned them.聽 That鈥檚 often part of the job, because plans are meant to be 鈥渓ong range鈥�, in other words projecting a desirable future 20 + years away.聽 And many planners don鈥檛 stay with a city long enough to see the results of their work.聽 But there is a more important reason as well: planners don鈥檛 design and build the projects that re-make the city over time.

Although a city鈥檚 comprehensive plan and implementing regulations (primarily the zoning code) provide general guidance for what types of uses are allowed on large blocks of land, and control how buildings are built from a safety perspective, ultimately the decision about exactly what gets built where belongs to the property owner and developer and their design and construction team.聽 In some parts of Portland there are also 鈥渄esign review鈥� requirements, primarily downtown, but basically the decisions about which parcels will be proposed for development, or re-development, what type of building, and what mix of uses it will have are entirely up to the development team.

Its also true that planners may not be the best judge of what鈥檚 best for any given piece of land, but when a city decides through an extensive political process what it wants for its future, it can often be a painful experience watching over time as buildings go up that sometimes cause serious problems for achieving the goals of the adopted plan.聽 One way to help rectify this is for a public redevelopment agency to step in and lead the process of property acquisition and project design to better achieve those goals.聽 Unfortunately, these agencies can often be misused, but if the planning process and redevelopment process are tightly bound together, the results can be very good for overall plan implementation.聽 More on this in the future.