Time

Have you noticed that everyone nowdays wants everything faster? Fast food, fast service, yelling at the microwave because it's too slow... It turns out this impatience can even cause the failure of redevelopment and revitalization.

In case anyone hasn't figured this out, it takes time to build something. What's less obvious is that the planning of any project can sometimes take longer than the building process. This effect is often exaggerated when talking about a public project. When you have to consider the input of the planning employees, then the management of the public entity, then the elected officials, who then have to incorporate the feedback of the public, it's by nature a long process. Even private projects have to face this to some extent, since they must go through public approval processes.

The problem often comes as a result of political time frames. Take a city with a council/manager structure - one in which the public elects a city council and mayor, and the council/mayor hire a manager and staff. The council, just after election, decides to undertake a revitalization effort. They tell the manager to have his planning staff put together a revitalization plan proposal. (If you just missed that, they need a document telling them what they already want. It's just the way councils work - they need to have an official vote on a planning budget, and need the planning department to get that budget for them.) After a month or two, they will hopefully have an approved revitalization plan budget, and send the parameters to an urban planning firm to create the revitalization plan.

Depending on the speed of this urban planning firm, they might get a plan back after 6-12 months. Then, typically, this plan has to go through several sub-committees, a process that can take weeks to months, and often requires the planning firm to make revisions. After revisions, we're probably up to 18-20 months into the process.

Here's where the real problem is: Many cities like this have staggered elections, with council members holding 4 year terms, but re-electing about half of them every 2 years. So, at this point, we're in election mode. Council is not thinking so much about the revitalization plan, as they are how the council is going to be after the next election. In the worst case, the makeup of the council has changed so much that no one is interested in the project any more. Or, because it took so long, the economic conditions may have changed, preventing execution of the project. Best case, it can still move forward, though it probably won't be approved until well after the election. Then you still have to go through the bidding and building part of the process.

Lest this sound like a whining session, here's what I suggest: Municipalities need to be very cognizant of the time-sensitivity of revitalization. At the very beginning, they need to create a plan for expediting the process - what items can be run simultaneously, how to handle changes so they don't reset the entire process, what committees need to approve plans and in what order. They also need to recognize the effect of the political process on this type of project, and plan accordingly to reduce the effect.

The success of the revitalization effort, and even the success of the city rides on the completion of these projects, not just on good intentions or good plans.