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This blog is meant to serve as an outlet for all my rants, pontifications, and general convoluted ideas that come to light on the topic of urban planning.  Enjoy!

Upon arriving to Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, I have been given healthy doses of planning theory, self-taught principles of real estate development, and descriptive statistics. On top of that, I felt I had a pretty solid basis for planning after a few internships at Grand Valley Metropolitan Council, the MPO for the metro Grand Rapids (MI) region and REGIS (Regional Geographic Information Systems), an agency of GVMC.  However, there is a giant gulf in knowledge of where I'd like to be.  Consequently, I'm hoping this blog helps me sort various issues I encounter during this educational experience of mine.

Here's the disclaimer, I'm a pretty bias person, so I can already imagine most of these posts dealing with planning issues and dilemmas concerned my home state of Michigan.  I'm pretty fond of America's high five, and I feel I can provide much more thorough insight to some issues seeing as I'm familiar with the culture of the area.  As I'm learning more regarding this field of planning, I'm starting to see how crucial public involvement is and how to appease constituents of the area you (a planner) works for.  I can't imagine how receptive people of a community would be to a planner recently hired from several states away coming in and proposing changes or making decisions about a community's future.  I realize planning is a professional expertise, and a planner can go anywhere in the world and work, but how effective can he or she be coming in with an outsider's perspective only.

I realize an outside perspective is always healthy and a probably good idea.  Corporations will typically hire a third party to conduct evaluations on their performance.  Government should be no exception.  A planner coming in with an outside perspective can be very beneficial and this is typically the role of private consultants, but day-to-day operations are best handled the denizens of the area in a more decentralized environment.  Planning, especially it seems in smaller towns and cities, involves a greater amount of personal relationships/politics.  This is where outsiders coming in may not be well received and more likely to be criticized for their efforts.