Sorry Wendy but the experts on neighborhood problems and neighborhood problem solving are the residents. So you are correct, only the communities need to realize they have that expertise and tell the "Experts" to sit down and act as an audience until they are needed to help something happen. There is a need for "expertise" on how to get things through the City, but your average concerned resident knows a great deal more, and has considerable more expertise on their particular neighborhood, than a planner would ever have unless that Planner also lived in the community.
Neighborhoods never designed a Cabrini Green; it took "professional experts" do something that stupid. I know of NO instance where community based planning is not superior to anything professionals have planned. An example is "New Urbanist" planning. This was nothing more than an attempt to bring to suburbs the original layout and design of "old" urban areas. Areas that were built by regular people before there were "professional" planners deciding how Cities should be built. Now City and Metro leaders have tried and paid to bring this expertise back to the City. The stupes should realize that such planning is already all around them and is what they are quickly attempting to tear down and make into a suburb. To the degree a planner is truly a professional is the degree to which that planner sees him or herself as a facilitator who weaves the dreams of the residents into reality. People do not need a planner to dream and plan for them, they need expertise about how to implement the plan. Good Planners should be called "Communicators" rather than "Planners". Isn't it funny when you hear a "professional" tell someone, "That is not what you really want and need for your neighborhood? What you really want and need is---". I always want to slap the "professional" and tell them what the neighborhood really needs is for professional jerks to take a hike. Community members have a lifetime of experience studying their community, they KNOW what they need and want. Of course city politicians become very threatened by communities and neighborhoods that realize this fact. It is very hard to "snow" a community, and bribe them with their own tax dollars, after they realize the "Emperor has no clothes". The empowerment of NRP gave people the vision and confidence to tell the "Emperor". It is the reason the unethical politicians want to kill NRP. There are fully half of the Politicians on the Council wishing to destroy NRP. Which six are they? Which six support Neighborhoods? Should we start looking for new candidates for those wards now where the CM is against neighborhoods? Just so we have time to build the resources for unseating incumbent politicians? Remember some CM's want exclusive power so they control where dollars go. I would expect these would also be the CM's with the largest campaign chests already derived from exploiting their positions. Wizard, paranoia is defined as an unnatural fear of something that will not happen. If it happens even once that suspicion is not paranoia. It is being very careful. I would submit that it has already happened more than once with politicians in Minneapolis, so we should all be suspicious of City Politicians. It keeps them a little more humble and honest Jim Graham, Ventura Village >>>The people are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty. - Thomas Jefferson _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
