Better Work, Better Pay

While at [IN]City, I’ve been wondering why public city planners exist at all.

I'm definitely being a little naive here, but honestly one of the things I really hope to learn through the program is one great reason why cities need planners. For one, what do they do on a day-to-day basis? If they aren’t working on a development project, what could they be doing? Collecting data? Doing Research? Even if this is true, any kind of research probably needs at least 5 years before it becomes valuable or actionable upon. So I ask again, what do planners do on a day-to-day basis that makes them valuable to a city? It seems to me that when states and cities need to tighten their belts, the planning department would be an easy decision to cut.

Instead, what if all city planners graduated and took jobs in the private sector at engineering/design firms, or started firms themselves? The way I think about it, any planner that works for a city that has funds to develop a project probably needs to contract out to a firm like AECOM or Parsons anyway to get the site actually built. These firms easily attract design talent and thus have the expertise to probably take care of any prior research and surveying that the city planner does anyway. So why the need for a standing city planner within the city budget?

Cities should look to hire private firms and either keep them on a retainer to carry out all research, design, and implementation of zoning laws, development, and other duties planners are responsible for, or hire them on and off when needed. Not only will the private sector be more efficient in both quality, cost management, and time, but they will be able to provide end-user solutions that cities could only dream about.

For example, suppose New York wanted to map out pedestrian traffic volume flows to build a new pedestrian mall for the summer streets program. It could hire IBM to carry out all studies and oversee the installation of any infrastructure sensors and monitors. IBM could set up a web portal for the city to utilize and see real time data, something the city would never be able to achieve within any budget or timeline. IBM could then work with a private engineering/design firm that shares the same technological advantage to actual build the pedestrian mall. All the city has to worry about is cutting a check (or two in this case). In case there were privacy issues about either company having access to information, the city could purchase the entire system and hire these companies on retainer.

Think about the SFPark system we heard about today. That kind of system, while funded by a Federal Grant for $20 million, could have easily been funded by a VC in the Valley, Austin, or NY and formed as a "city planning startup" or something like that. In the VC industry, $20 million is change at this point (although some would argue that we are in a VC bubble at the moment). In any case, although the number of VCs has decreased, the overall funds being raised by funds around the country by unnamed millionaires and billionaires has increased by 70% since last year. Startups are not only good for the economy, but I think that a new batch of startups focused on public goods like city planning, but with the efficiency and profit motivation of private firms would be extremely beneficial to our industry. With investment money, any type of "city planning startup" would be able to attract the necessary talent and build systems like SFPark rapidly. And as we are learning quite quickly, being a good city planner means having knowledge of law, politics, design, geography, and a host of other subjects.

For those of you who follow the space industry, we are about to see a similar market environment evolve over the next few years.NASA, with its final launch of Atlantis, is pursuing a strategy of disbursing funds to private companies for space projects. All it has to worry about is the final dollar amount, not all the costs associated with it. Private Firms will surely fare better.

Some probably have a view that in the public sector, planners are more aware of low income and public good projects. But even these projects cannot be realized unless the city has funds to pursue them. Therefore, if the city has funds it is willing to spend, why not use a more efficient, better organized private firm to carry out all research and implementation. As long as there are funds for the project, any private firm would be interested. With the US about to lose it's perfect Triple AAA credit rating, and many states struggling to pay their debts, the big projects we've been talking and learning about are great, but at the end of the day there needs to be some kind of return generated for us to remain competitive. Another century of losses on highways and railways won't work. With a private dependence, projects would be sure to produce a suitable return for cities, states, and the country to get back on track to fund other projects depending on the profit split.

And with many boutique design firms out there competing with larger ones, and hopefully with the addition of some startups, the market will be saturated enough so that there will be reasonably competitive prices so cities don't spend more than they have to. It's becoming quite clear that you'll need to devote a good portion of your time to only a few projects at the public level, and there's a good chance a majority of them might not come to fruition. Is it worth it?

The private option seems like a win-win-win situation for cities, planners, and residents.