To Plan or Not To Plan?

The obvious answer is "to plan", right? I guess if I'm asking the question, then maybe the answer isn't that obvious. Of course, since it's me writing, I'm talking about master planning for real estate development.

My opinion here is that some planning is good, but over-planning is bad. Simple as that. Well, ok, anytime you have a "gray" answer like that, it's never simple. Let me give you an example. Let's say you're envisioning a town. You could just say, "ok, everyone, you can just do what you want on your own land. Odds are pretty good that you wind up with an incoherent mess.

How about taking that same town, and master planning every inch of the town. You can bring in as many consultants, designers, and planners, and yet parts of the town will not be functional for the people there. Worse yet, the town will look too perfect, too contrived. People enjoy visiting Disneyland, but no one lives in the park. Same thing will happen in a contrived plan. There's no feel of authenticity, of real life.

So, what's the perfect level of planning? Or is there a perfect level of planning? And who should do the planning? Part of the problem with answering those questions is that each of the 6.5 billion people on this earth is unique. With the uniqueness of the residents, business owners, visitors, etc., it's impossible to plan perfectly. Same goes with the uniqueness of the planners: some are more engineering-minded, some architectural, some economic, you get the picture. With that many stakeholders, there's no perfect answer. There's also no perfect plan.

Best answer to this question: Plan the infrastructure, and plan the concept, but leave the execution up to the market. In an urban environment, an open lot should be planned by a developer. The developer will carefully consider what the market's needs are and what it will bear, because their money is at stake. The streets, infrastructure, and major public safety items are better left up to city engineers and consultants.

I don't espouse making this a hard and fast rule, but it's a place to start.