Weekly Video: ‘Mistake by the Lake’
Tags: anti-planner, cleveland, drew carey, external video, fox news, houston, john stossel, libertarian, mistake by the lake, ohio, rock and roll hall of fame, rust belt, weekly video
Describing the field of urban planning to someone who is unfamiliar can be challenging. In my experience, most people have difficulty distinguishing between urban planning and civil engineering, even when I’ve reiterated my complete mathematical ineptitude. Still, there are those out there who have their own fairly strong ideas about what planners do — that is, when we’re not toting our hammers and sickles.
This week’s video from John Stossel’s show on one of the Fox News networks features analysis from a decidedly libertarian panel on the failures of urban planning in Cleveland, Ohio — otherwise known as the ‘Mistake by the Lake‘. Now, to be fair, some good points are raised by the panelists. For example, building a community revitalization effort around a mega-project (hello, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame) might not be the best idea, but calling for Houston-style planning policy doesn’t strike me as prudent either. Poor planning certainly exacerbated Cleveland’s decline, but it’s hardly the reason that the Rust Belt cities became so rusty. To do away with planning controls because bad decisions have been made in the past seems to be tossing the baby with the bathwater.
Anyway, those are my humble opinions. Watch the clip and formulate your own…
There’s more Cleveland discussion in this episode of Stossel. For other cool media, most of which is pro-planning, check out our external video section.
Vanessa said:
Mar 23, 10 at 11:45 amFascinating stuff. As a Canadian (although Albertan) I haven’t heard this perspective nearly as much as you Americans probably have.
These guys seem to ascribe more blame to government policy than to economic shifts for Cleveland’s decline.
matt said:
Mar 23, 10 at 2:16 pmYeah, similar to Vanessa’s point, this panel seems to be quick to blame public policy despite the fact that it was a changing global economy that created Cleveland’s challenges. Their analysis cherry picks details. I’d also add that their examples of the Cuyahoga River fire and dead fish actually illustrates that the industry was not being regulated enough, rather than too much.
I don’t know Cleveland politics particularly well, but considering the town’s old-economy union tradition, I have to assume there are some Democratic machine politics at play that at times may be making questionable decisions, i.e. mega-projects that aren’t having long term positive impacts on the economy. But this panel is seriously confused if they think you can revive or reshape a city’s/region’s economy without public intervention. Adding/renovating central city housing (be it low-income or middle-class), attracting new-economy industries, and re-training the existing workforce requires public support. I’m not such an ideologue to suggest that private sector partnerships aren’t also necessary, because that would be absurd; communities need private investment and governments need to be careful not to strangle it out. But these panelists are blindly putting faith in the market which is itself also dangerous. The price is wrong, Drew.