Do you design development of land?

[Andrew Garulay, RLA]

My question is whether you generally design the development of land or whether you generally do something else. This is not a question about what you care about, or how green you are, or how you impact social values, or any other philosophies or values that you may apply.

 

Please answer with ONLY ONE primary general function that describes what you do AND whether or not you cosider it to be design of development on the land.

[Pat S. Rosend]

I used to. Now I review and control development on land. I also design parks and park facilities on land. Does that cout?

[Andrew Garulay, RLA]

Yes, If you directly influence the design on the land then you are doing part of the design.

Thanks for the participation. I guess you and I are the only ones still working on land design. I’m not sure what everyone else is doing, but I really would like to know.

[nca]

Yes.

I design conventional subdivision master plans (just completing my first quarter section master plan), commercial site plans, eductional site design, parks, and signage.

I would consider all of that development driven.

In my limited experience as a designer I can honestly say that there seems to be no magic to conventional land development. Yes, much of what I am working on is driven by a land developers or grop of stakeholder’s objectives, but with a little creative thinking and the ability to communicate ideas I can see how we need not necessarily subscribe to convention. What I see, day to day, are consultants who are fearful of losing what little work they have by going a little against the grain so to speak.

In my opinion, it’s not about whether or not what we do is driven by land development, but whether conventional land development thinking and patterns are still working. The default response to this quation I think would be, ‘let the free market dictate change..’

I think we’re in the midst of a fundamental cultural shift in thinking about business, economics, and the environment. I think we can choose to be leaders or followers. Given, being a leader in this instance isn’t necessarily about out and out speaking against development. For me, it’s about getting really good at what I do and leading change that I think needs to happen through great work and strong critical thinking. Essentially, each project is a vehicle for the change we probably all what to see to some degree–better neighborhoods, preservation of natural areas and protection of the environment, safe places to live and raise children, and some degree f financial prosperity.

Some would probably call thi thiniking romantic or naive. So be it, let cynical, objective-based thinking be a testiment to the world we live in and places we go for education.

Hope thiskind of response is what you’re after Andrew.

[Andrew Garulay, RLA]

That is a great response, Nick.

That is not a new way of doing things, however. There are always new directions to steer toward. Development keeps changing as our values change and how we live changes. The things that we hate that developers do today were new and innovative ideas in the past in many cases. Once things are put into practice, the flaws eventually come out or we change our values and they no longer meet our needs. However, practices have gotten better and better over time other than that there is more and more development to meet the needs of an ever growing population.

“but with a little creative thinking and the ability to communicate ideas I can see how we need not necessarily subscribe to convention”
I don’t think this is romantic or naive at all. Welcome to my world. This is what I think most of us do. It is what I do and the people who I work with do. It is hard for others to see the results sometimes because they don’t realize from whence you moved the project from. Instead, they say “if I were doing that project, I would have ….” without knowing how much worse the project could have been. When you speak about it openly and plainly, many people think you are a sellout.

You can’t fix it if you are not working on it. You can’t work on it if you don’t want to be useful to the person paying for it. And when no development or re-development is going on there is nothing to work on to affect for the better. That is why development is a good thing and why we as a profession have to get rid of this anti-development philosophy.

I think you are right that there has been a big cultural sway in thinking about business, economics, and the environment by a great many people, but I am not ready to believe that it is a full change. As people realize the reality of what will be given up by too much change there will be more of an embrace of our roots in the business and economic area. It has been the mechanism to pay the freight. There is no perpetual economic motion machine other than profit incentive. Our nation thrived by using that reality to harness as the engine of our economy. We’ve pulled so much weight with it that many people no longer believe that it is the engine and they have made more people begin to doubt that as well. Fundamental change does not appear to be very well received, however and I believe there will be a reversal.

Environmental responsibility is a built in part of our culture and will continue to be no matter which way the economic philosophy goes.

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