Peter Vevang writes:
Planning is about looking to the future and imagining what our city should be like, and thinking about what we need and how we are going to get it.
I pretty much agree... but such planning seldom survives reality. Here in Minneapolis our CEPD none the less flounders along, coming up with ever grander plans like that for the upper river. That and many other plans will never see fruition, but CPED and our city beuracracy blunder along their blind path of central planning.
Case in point: It isn't rocket science to figure out that Minneapolis has all but banned new single family homes, preferring to jam as much assessed valuation on the available space by blessing townhouses and condos built by the usual handful of favored developers. One of my coworkers, a Kenyan immigrant, is trying to make a home for his family in Minneapolis on a Postal Worker's salary. With the cleverness of an immigrant he noted all the vacant lots on the Northside and bid on a nice house that has to be moved to make way for MNDOT's highway expansionism. He was the low bidder and with an immigrant's nievety assumed those city owned lots were really for sale. He's now being dragged into a hearing just to buy a long vacant city lot and ease our affordable hosing shortage- With the deadline to buy the house to be moved now days away Minneapolis has now killed the deal. He's also learning the hard realities of "planning" in Minneapolis- those lots are probably being held off the market for one of CPED's favored developers. I suspect he'll ultimately give up on the city and in a couple years we'll read about him becoming a major developer in greater Minnesota.
And while Minneapolis has wasted weeks dashing my coworker's attempt to create affordable housing for his family and increase our assessed value, Starbuck took less than a week to approve my request to rehab a commercial building into a home. No hearings were needed, and the whole process was done by electronic and postal mail.
headin' outa Hawthorne,
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