The planning industrial complex
Kinda jaded, but want an honest conversation, so hear me out:
My first job out of college involved working in parks and public space advocacy at a non profit, supporting small community-design build projects run by local volunteers, and worked at my local parks agency as an intern while I was in grad school for planning. My time in parks advocacy was really rewarding, and I feel like I was making in difference in the community, even if they weren’t big, flashy projects. Alongside community orgs and volunteers, we raised money, held events, and hired local artists and designers to design and build functional public spaces, healthy gardens, and improve the overall public realm in so many different neighborhoods. I could see tangible differences, real benefits, and actual growth and positive change.
I decided to pursue a grad degree in planning, and while in grad school, I worked at my local parks agency as an intern. It wasn’t nearly as hands-on as my parks advocacy work, but cool to see how the agency worked with other departments to support childcare, public health, mobility, and a host other urban issues.
Now that I work at a private consulting firm, I am extremely suspicious about what value these firms actually bring to the planning and design ecosystem.
Note: I’m thinking of the ecosystem as public agencies, non-profits and CBOs, and private consulting firms.
I’ve been working at this firm as a planner for about a year and a half. I joined 6 months after finishing grad school.
Since I started this job at a consulting firm , my interest in planning has dropped to near zero.
All I do is draft reports, make outlines, look at excel spreadsheets, “determine key takeaways”, make simple maps on GIS, make an engagement flyer or board, and do a whole bunch of things to satisfy some “deliverable” on a scope of work sheet. That stuff gets handed up to my manager, who makes a few edits, hands it to the principal, who makes a few edits, and then sends it to the client. All in all, thousand of dollars were spent on making a PowerPoint, or a 6 page word document, or a simple GIS map. I understand most of this stuff is required in the RFP that these cities send out, but that’s the fucking problem.
- cities and towns post an RFP for an expensive plan to fix a boulevard, develop a housing plan, a parks master plan, a specific neighborhood plan, and so on.
- these cities don’t have the internal resources to actually write these plans and collect they data, nor do they have the budget to actually implement them. So they hire firms like mine to write plans.
- firms create a whole business going after these smaller municipalities with these multi million dollar RFP’s. We finish the plan, and then because the 400 page plans just sits on a shelf somewhere, it needs to be revisited and updated several years later because there was no $$$ to implement it.
Why have we created a system where municipalities can find hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars to fund planning services, but seemingly can’t build the permanent internal capacity to do much of that planning, or implement the recommendations?
And here’s the thing - The city that released the plan spent millions of dollars on a 400 page plan, still doesn’t have the staff to see it through, and much of the work the firm provided is actually specialized. And that’s where I feel useless.
I don’t feel like any of the work I do is important. Some planning staff person is going to read the materials I make (maps, reports, spreadsheets, etc), check a box, and never see it again. I don’t feel like those reports have any impact on the community’s were hired to serve.
I understand planning is a slow process, but god damn - for the money they pay these consultants, they might as well give the money directly to CBO’s to partner with to solve these issues.
I’ve been around long enough to see these plans adopted by council, but how many people in their own communities actually read these Master Plans? Or even know about the process unless they’re on NextDoor?
And honestly it feels like all the consulting firms in planning and design operate this way. They tout their awards and accolades at APA or ASLA conferences, but how have these firms actually benefited the towns they hired by? Other than adding another 400 page report to their shelf?
TL;DR: After working in nonprofit/community implementation, a public agency, and now private planning consulting, I’m increasingly convinced there’s a “planning industrial complex” where cities spend huge amounts of money hiring consultants to produce plans and deliverables without building the internal capacity or funding needed to actually implement them. I’m genuinely curious what value this cycle provides communities, and what I’m missing.
Public agency staff: what am I missing? When has hiring a planning consultant genuinely increased your agency’s capacity or resulted in something tangible getting implemented?
Consultants: how’d do you think about the actual value of what we produce versus the amount of money cities spend on it?