This Putz is planning more ways to make life miserable with Gov't Grants. The Data Problem: Planners Can’t Get Enough

He spent four years reading all the socialist dribble on central planning on how to relocate us for a "better" planned living space and environment. He knows best! m/r
From BookTV:

Jeff Speck, a city planner and former director of design at the National Endowment for the Arts, argues that urban centers should be designed to better suit pedestrians than automobiles.   The author focuses on small to mid-sized cities, such as Providence, Rhode Island, which according to the author, if redesigned to be more walkable, would improve the standard of living. 

The Data Problem: Planners Can’t Get Enough | The Antiplanner
from 2007

I count architect Andres Duany as a friend who believes in New Urban design but is skeptical of coercive planning. But his book, Suburban Nation (co-written with Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Jeff Speck), advises that “The most effective plans are drawn with such precision that only the architectural detail is left to future designers.”

This is from a section on “Regional Government,” so Duany is clearly advising regional planners to dictate land uses to landowners throughout their regions. Yet it is simply impossible to imagine that planners could do this.

In his classic book on Houston, Land Use Without Zoning, the late Bernard Siegan observed that planners would have to consider “questions of compatibility, economic feasibility, property values, existing uses, adjoining and nearby uses, traffic, topography, utilities, schools, future growth, conservation, and environment.” Before developers invest millions of dollars in a piece of land, they typically spend thousands or tens of thousands of dollars doing a market analysis and feasibility study to find out what is the best use of that parcel.

Planners don’t have that kind of money to invest in every parcel in their city or region, yet the job they claim to do is even more formidable than the studies done by developers. Planners say they want to assess externalities, public goods, and all sorts of other things that developers don’t study because they don’t affect the profitability of the development.

How much data would you need to do a simple transportation plan for a modest city of 100,000 people? Consider how many trips you take per week, how many miles you travel, and how many different destinations you visit. Now multiply that by 100,000. Now add in the externalities that planners claim to account for: pollution, energy costs, safety, congestion. Don’t forget the externalities that planners don’t bother to account for, such as the added worker productivity that comes from increased mobility.

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