Balance

There have been many exciting developments in the field of urban design over the last decade. While most of us in College Station were recently made unhappy to have so little community control in the development process, we have come a long way. The fact is that we were successful in stopping Weingarten from shoving a Super Wal-Mart right up against one of our valued neighborhood areas. Clearly more changes are necessary as this company continues to threaten us with trailer parks at our gateway, just as they had threatened us with lawsuits to impose their will without regard to our community values.

Few would argue that both business profit and community values are crucial to the design and develop of a community. Businesses know that a community’s growth is largely dependent on the quality of life found in that community. And citizens know that their city will be built by developers who exist to make a profit. While these fundamental mechanics are not in dispute, the ways that we seek to apply those mechanics are as different as a Bradley tank and a family’s minivan.


Two fundamental differences in the Bradley tank approach and the minivan approach are time and the very definition of growth. Citizens tend to look at growth over long periods of time. It is not necessarily the case that they want to stretch growth out over a longer period, but they do want to look at the impacts of growth further out than most businesses do. Business are looking for a quick return on investment and citizens are looking to create a city that they want their children and grandchildren to inherit. These are radically different concepts of time. Often we are trying to pit the one concept against the other. But, in fact, good development practices will allow us to treat these as two entirely different variables. Developers cannot wait generations to see a profit and communities cannot be left to the vagaries of the fast buck.

There are those who feel that this balance is best found with the push and pull of supply and demand in a laissez faire free market. But if that were true the endless stretch of strip malls found in Houston would be what we all strive for. But, In fact, that is exactly what most us say that we want to avoid. Supply and demand alone is the desolate landscape of an empty frontier. Once others begin to move into the frontier we can no longer dump our trash where we want. There are those who will not regard their neighbors when dealing with their trash unless there is a law enforced to make them do so. So, as the frontier gets crowded, we are forced to make group decisions about how we will live and grow together. We distinguish ourselves as a species in part by the laws that we create to govern our social conduct including the growth of our communities. Suggesting that community standards should not be an aspect of the free market is a little like suggesting that we should not use language to communicate.

And as for the difference in perspectives of growth, there are those who would measure our growth only in population and the volume of ad valorem taxes gathered. While these are good measures of certain business growth and they are easy to grasp, they do not, in themselves, accurately measure what most citizens want from their community and they are not, in and of themselves, even a good measure of long term business health. Basically citizens want a growth in quality of life. Certainly, increased population can give us access to improved cultural amenities that cannot be afforded by smaller communities. These amenities include things like larger entertainment venues and more diverse restaurants. But there are other aspects of quality of life that are easily threatened by uncontrolled growth such as increased traffic, pollution and crime. In college station we have also identified things like improved parks and bikeways as important components of our growth.